THE YEAR I ATE NEW YORK So Many Sardines

Our diner-at-large looks back on six months of tinned fish, Little Gem salads, and beef-curry potpies.

- E. ALEX JUNG

I’ve been eating New York for half a year now, and while some nights have come close to perfection—Eyval’s (25 Bogart St., at Varet St., Bushwick; eyvalnyc.com) dynamic vision of Persian food; the casual opulence of St. Jardim (183 W. 10th St., at 4th St.; stjardimnyc .com) and Place des Fêtes (212 Greene Ave., nr. Grand Ave., Clinton Hill; pdfnyc.com)— many of my dinners have blurred together: Alt-martinis and glasses of volcanic whites usher in bread baskets with “house butter” and rustic Italianate pastas that mark a midway point before large-format proteins (“to share”) and a slice of cake or bowl of custard for dessert. The New American wine-bar trend—small plates leading to progressively bigger ones—has become the New York paradigm. Little Gem is the “It” lettuce (apologies to kale), while early-pandemic vestiges such as bean salads and tinned fish endure amid the pick-me decadence of caviar, oysters, and seafood towers. But within the sameness there is excellence, and I can imagine a meal that cobbles together the best versions of some ubiquitous dishes.

I’d start with the collection of breads from Nura (46 Norman Ave., at Guernsey St., Greenpoint; nurabk.com), yeasty warmth delivered in the form of garlic-coriander naan from the tandoor oven and Parker House rolls in rotating flavors like saffron and perilla. To drink: a martini, the exact definition of which continues to be stretched. The cocktails at Oiji Mi (17 W. 19th St., nr. Fifth Ave.; oijimi.com) impressed me with their Korean spins on European drinks; the martini gets a woody fragrance from pine soju.