If munching on bar food isn’t your bent, perhaps you’ll reconsider in the sanctuary of Bar Masa in the Time Warner Center.
It may seem like folly to plunk down $15 for a few ounces of grilled chicken, but when you consider that Bar Masa’s wings are packed with at least three times the juiciness and flavor of your average hibachi wings, the dish starts to look like a bargain.
Each of the five little wings is cooked over a charcoal flame and painted with a light marinade of soy sauce, sake and ichimi chili peppers. They are grilled to a modest crisp and served with a lemon wedge and moist towel. Finger licking is discouraged at this understated and elegant locale.
If the wings look a little different than usual, it’s because the chef splits the arm in two—the part connected to the little drumstick—to create more surface area for the flame to catch. It’s a clever method that results in a wing that is cooked thoroughly but not for a minute longer than necessary. And because the drumsticks are relatively small, they don’t require much more heat than the arms.
Until recently, diners knew precious little about the provenance of their meals. These days, however, restaurants love to dazzle us with vivid verbiage about the lives—and deaths—of the animals we consume. They’re grass fed, grain fed, free range, line caught and—this just in—freshly killed. My server-bar tender at Bar Masa cheerfully announced that the bird from whence my chicken wings came was killed earlier that day. It’s difficult to know how to respond to such news, but the information goes a long way in explaining how chicken meat could be so impossibly tender. The less time it sits around, the more juice it retains and the better it tastes.
For Bar Masa customers who like to enjoy their meat in blissful ignorance, don’t ask and they hopefully won’t tell.
Atmosphere: Sophisticated and dimly lit
Notes: Reservations recommended but there is often room at the bar for small groups.
Bar Masa
10 Columbus Circle, 4th Floor
West 60th St. and Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-823-9800
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