I’m dying to know other food blog writers! Leave me a comment or ten, I’ll start commenting on your blog, and we’ll become iFriends for life.
Before you make any judgements about me, let me make it clear that I do not in any way condone the use of the number four to replace the word for. However, when I went to buy donutsfordinner.com, I found that someone’s squatting on it and refuses to sell it for less than $1200 due to what they’re calling its “premium nature”. Which is hilarious and stupid.
Unlike normal people, who apparently don’t consider sweets a natural part of every feast, I don’t really consider the savory parts necessary. If ice cream had a little more fiber, I’d be having dessert for every meal. And so I give you donuts4dinner, my excuse to talk about the food I like and eat whatever I want with abandon.
Love, Katie
Two of my co-workers and I decided to hit SHO Shaun Hergatt for a Restaurant Week lunch at the last minute, and their dress code was listed as “jacket preferred”, so I changed into a pair of open-toed red patent leather wedges from my usual flip-flops and hoped no one would notice my jeans and my co-worker’s t-shirt. It must have worked, because they let us in (and were even nice to us!). And I’m sure glad they did.
Our crusty rolls came with the usual butter but also this dip, which our server told us is one of the chef’s specialties. It had the consistency of mashed potatoes and tasted very fresh and citrusy, thanks to the yuzu.
I think this is the first time I’ve had fried capers, and I really enjoyed their crunch and their peppercorn-ish flavor. The presentation was so beautiful that my photographer friend, Anthony, had to take several shots of this of his own to mess around in Photoshop with. The texture of the beef was so buttery and tender it was as if it had been cooked for hours.
I may have ruined this dish by starting a glass of sake before I tasted it, because I couldn’t taste the sauce at all. It reminded me of mayonnaise in texture, but the only taste I got were from the earthy beets and the toasted nuts, which of course I loved, because those things are objectively good.
I think pappardelle is my favourite pasta. Thin yet broad, it soaks up flavor and doesn’t overpower other ingredients with breadiness like thicker pastas do. This dish was wonderfully creamy and umami-y, perfectly cooked and YUM.
But the pork belly was better. I know I’ve said it before at Craftbar and at Sakagura, but I’m just so impressed that it’s possible for someone to take a half-inch thick layer of fat and make it not only edible but craveable. It tastes as good as the pork itself. Raw apples mixed with the soft cooked vegetables, and the salty-sweet soy-infused sauce had seeped into every inch of that belly.
I would be hard-pressed to call this milk chocolate if you asked me to describe it, because it was so dense and rich. The chocolate was substantial, too, creamy and whipped yet thick enough to stay on a fork. I admittedly didn’t taste the yuzu in the whipped cream, but the fresh raspberries were divine, as was the crumbly chocolate crust.
I loved the thin, nutty wafer on top, but the whole point of the dessert was the peach, which was so intensely ripe and sweet. I didn’t get more than a taste of it, so I want to go back and order it for myself.
These were really better than either of the menued desserts. The spongey chocolate cake was buttery and piped with a hazelnut frosting-like cream. The caramelized hazelnut was . . . gah. I like to save the best thing on my plate for last, so I had left a bite of my chocolate palet behind, but I gulped it right down after I had the first bite of this.
The gummy was so sugary it might scare off lesser sweet tooths, but I loved the juxtaposition of the more savory financier with this. And I was mad that I had eaten more slowly than Nik and Anthony, because had I gotten to it first, I would’ve grabbed both of theirs, too.
The great thing about eating lunch here during Restaurant Week (which SHO is continuing through Labor Day, by the way!) is that they give you a $24 gift certificate to come back for dinner. Which means that this lunch was essentially free. So go.
It’s Restaurant Week Summer 2010 here in NYC, and my boyfriend and I finally made a reservation for a place I’ve been eyeing for a couple of years now. Depending on the season, it’s called Park Avenue Summer, Autumn, Winter, or Spring, and the decor changes entirely with the seasons. Appropriately, all of the dishes we had on the first night of Restaurant Week were incredibly summer-y and some of the best we’ve had in all of our years of Restaurant Week-ing.
Does this look like a chunk of pineapple or what? 10 points for surprising me, and another 10 for serving me cream cheese and herbs with fruit. My boyfriend ate the pink hunk and said it was spicy, so another 10 for that. Not that these points mean anything or can be redeemed. Sorry.
I kind of got this against my will. It was an extra $5, I hate tomatoes, and I wanted the corn soup. But whew, boy, if the menu had explained in detail what this was, I would’ve ordered two. The cheese is regular mozzarella on the outside, but the inside is a blend of mozzarella and cream, making it this dreamy texture. And also making it funky. It was at once the youngest-looking and oldest-tasting cheese, and it paired so nicely with the fresh cucumber. And the tomatoes? They were actually not as gross as I expected, because there was this rich tomato sauce under them that drowned them out.
I hear chefs talk about how important acid is, especially when it comes to raw fish, but I never got it until this tartare. The first thing I tasted was CITRUS!, and it was glorious. This was probably my favourite dish of the night, just because I’m usually not a fish person, and this made me want to be.
This was an extra $10, and my boyfriend made me get it just to be nice, but I secretly wanted his chicken. I’m really bad about not getting all of the meat off anything served on the bone, so I thought it was going to be a waste of good meat. And then I took one bite and realized I’d be picking up the bone and gnawing on it later. (There are pictures.) Super-chargrilled on the outside, super-pink on the inside.
The funny thing was the side. Now, I love corn like nobody’s business, but do you know what I tasted with the first forkful of succotash? PIZZA. I swear, it tasted exactly the way green peppers on a pizza do. And my boyfriend said the exact same thing without me telling him that’s what I was thinking! They must have used a lot of oregano in that salad or something.
The peaches were really the highlight here and almost overpowered everything else, which is not a complaint, because the chicken, in my opinion, really would’ve benefited from some spice. I really loved the crispy edges, though, and the crunchy pine nuts. My boyfriend liked the sweet sauce and was reminded of zereshk polo, a Persian dish from his childhood made with chicken, rice, and barberries.
Grace Kang from Serious Eats said this was like eating frosting and was “so decadent I could never finish one by myself”. So obviously I didn’t even look at the other desserts. I would say that she was right about the goat cheese being frosting-esque, but I could’ve eaten a whole mixing bowl of it easily. I loved the thin yet moist wafer and the lemony sauce under the raspberries. This dish was so un-sweet that my boyfriend said it was like having a cheese course for dessert, but the honeyed fruit added just enough natural sugar that it completely satisfied me.
You know how the best part of a Dairy Queen, Dunkin’ Donuts, or Carvel ice cream cake is the uber-crunchy layer of chocolate bits? Now imagine a whole glassful of those, drizzled in banana-flavored butterscotch. WHAT? YES. Delicious.
My boyfriend and I went to The Mark because the Times called it “unambitious” and the whole blogosphere was seemingly up in arms over the two-star rating they gave it despite that. I was prepared to be blown away, anyway, and to give it the many-doughnutted review it deserved.
These sodas were sort of an afterthought, and they turned out to easily be the best part of the meal for me. Ever since the major ginger ale brand in the U.S. started advertising that they use real ginger, I’ve become way more interested in the stuff; I don’t know what I thought was in it before, but it sure wasn’t actual ginger.
If you like drinking that super-commercial style of ginger ale, this might be too much for you to handle, because it is so unbelievably flavorful that you’ll never be able to buy a 2-liter ever again. The ginger was actually settling in the bottom of the glass between sips, which makes me heart pitter-pat just thinking about it. I wish The Mark was closer to my work, because I’d convince all of my co-workers to have happy hour at the bar every day just to get faux-drunk on this stuff.
Obviously, this was good. A crunchy, airy crust with an earthy, umami middle and that fresh frisée on top. It wasn’t quite as earth-shattering as I expected, though, maybe because it was too easy. Or maybe because I’m becoming a snob who’s becoming too accustomed to black truffle.
This was a dish I’d definitely order again. I had never tasted beets until my boyfriend took me to Jules in the East Village three or so years ago, so they’re still a little foreign to me and therefore exciting. Having three different kinds on the plate was like Christmas, and I was pleased to find that they all had distinctive flavors.
The endive with walnuts and grapes was heavenly, and we were sopping that crazy cheese sauce up with our breadbasket.
I’d be a liar if I said I wouldn’t eat this every day, because come on, look at that crust. The chicken was so moist inside, and the lemony butter sauce only enhanced that, although I needed twice as much of it. When I compare chicken to pork and duck and beef in my mind, it’s so flavorless, and I’m always happy when a chef changes that for me (even if just for a moment).
I’m as disappointed in us as you are for only ordering one dessert, but it was quite the dessert. I usually feel like souffles are more trouble than they’re worth, but this one was so crusty/creamy/orangey. My boyfriend was nice and let me clean out the ramekin, which I did with my finger when our server wasn’t looking.
I liked the formal yet not overly-romantic atmosphere, and the professional service (though our waiter did a double-take when I ordered a Riesling to accompany our meal, but I will not feel bad about my dessert wine love), but for someone with three Michelin stars, it definitely felt like an easy venture rather than a super-passionate one. We left feeling like we’d eaten a nice meal by an accomplished chef, but we didn’t feel wowed. I’m not writing Vongerichten off, though, and I do hope to write an our-socks-were-knocked-off review of his other restaurant, Jean-Georges, soon.
When my boyfriend suggested Seasonal Restaurant & Weinbar because it was awarded a Michelin star this year, I pictured a lively Austrian pub type place with comforting foods like bratwurst and sauerkraut and girls named Brunhilda serving them. What I got was a sleek formal dining room with an inventive menu that put me in the mind of wd-50 or Degustation.
This is one of those unfortunate cases where I had the dinner a couple of months ago and was so overwhelmed by the idea of writing about all of the awesomeness I experienced, so pardon my slim review and (hopefully) enjoy the photos.
The tasting menu:
I basically love anything with one of these green purees. They always taste so refreshing, and they make me think I’m eating something more exciting than leafy vegetables. I’d be so healthy if my life involved more green purees.
I’ve had an interest in white asparagus since Leah said on season 5 of “Top Chef” that it’s her least-favourite ingredient (because, you know, she’s my least-favourite “Top Chef” contestant). Besides tasting fresh and springy, it also has the dubious honor of being the vegetable most resembling a penis. Win-win!
The best-looking sweetbread you’ve ever seen, am I right?
This might be the dish that really brings me around to mushrooms. I can handle mushroom flavor but hate the look of the things, so putting them in a foam is genius. And hiding the other kind of mushroom underneath that foam is über-genius. I think this may have been my favourite dish of the night because it was difficult and yet delicious.
I still think about this dish once a day. There is no reason that lime flavor and steak go together, and the fact that they not only go together but bring out all of the best flavors in each other is mindboggling.
I have no idea what this was, but it really looks exciting, right?
Finding restaurants that can hold a group as big as my office’s monthly dinner club of co-workers past and present can sometimes be a major challenge, so super-touristy places like Becco are sometimes our only choice. Luckily, super-touristy doesn’t have to mean super-might-as-well-have-gone-to-McDonald’s.
I know the last picture is awful, but that carrot was so crazy soft and delicious that I had to publicly preserve its memory.
My friend Ash ordered the osso bucco, and everyone was amazed as she went to town on it, scooping the marrow out of the bone with a tiny fork first so she could be sure she didn’t fill up on anything else.
But Becco’s main draw is its unlimited pasta special. For a stupidly low price, you get the three house pastas of the day brought to your table in heaping piles until you beg your server to stop. That night, ours were:
(Even with my usual distrust of mushrooms, the ravioli was easily my favourite of the three.)
Now, I have to admit that pasta never exactly blows me out of the water (unless it’s gnocchi). A lot of it is way too bland for me after growing up with a mother who must have used half a gallon of oregano in her spaghetti. But this was really, really good pasta. My boyfriend couldn’t stop talking about it for days, actually. And even the Brooklyn-born Italian in our group didn’t complain.
This dessert was the hugest disappointment of my life, but I don’t think it was Becco’s fault. When I ordered it, I guess I was thinking of streusel or an apple brown betty or something, because I expected apple pie filling with a crumbly brown sugar topping. Instead I got apple pie filling and a flaky crust. NOT THE SAME. Very light and not overly sweet, but these are not the things I look for in a dessert.
Funnily enough, I chastised my boyfriend and the Italian for ordering the zabaglione with seasonal fruit, thinking it was the equivalent to a stupid fruit cup with some whipped cream. But dude, zabaglione is great. The custard was suuuuuuuper-intensely flavorful and much more dense than I would’ve imagined. GET THE ZABAGLIONE. You’re welcome.
I kind of get a kick out of going to places like this from time to time, because they’re so unlike most NYC restaurants. Meaning huge and bright and full of people who actually eat. I definitely recommend Becco for big groups and anyone who wants to feel like he’s at a huge family dinner for a night.
I love crushing things with my fingers. I also love chocolate that has been melted and then resolidified.
One day, I found a mini Crunch bar in my pocket. I have a particular affinity for Crunch bars, because in high school, my best friend would bring a Crunch bar in her lunch every day, and she’d bite off the C and the H so it just said RUN. And then we’d sing Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” in as exaggerated a manner as possible. No one considered us normal.
Anyway, this Crunch bar had melted in my pocket, so I spent a good 10 minutes of my lunch hour pulverizing every last little crunchy bit inside of it (with the wrapper still on, of course). Then I waited an hour while it cooled off and reformed into a bar. Then I greedily unwrapped it and excitedly tasted it.
Weirdly, it was not delicious.
Sometimes I feel bad about reviewing food when I have such a huge bias against some major dish components:
• seafood (except crab that I don’t have to pull out of the shell myself) • mushrooms (except when I can’t tell what they are–like their essence in a foam(!) or tiny pieces of them concealed in a ravioli–because I don’t hate the taste but the appearance) • tomatoes (except when they’re heavily cooked)
Mostly I feel this way because Dr. Boyfriend refuses to take me to Per Se until I can not only stomach but actually enjoy all of the foods they’re going to serve me there. He’s withheld the place from me for so long now that no matter how good it is, it’ll never be as good as I’ve made it out to be.
But my best friend sent me a link today to an article on The Kitchn asking what foods people have tried to like but can’t.
And I rejoiced! It turns out that everyone hates seafood and mushrooms and tomatoes! And I love the distinction the post draws between not liking something and trying to like something but failing. No one wants to hate certain foods! My life would be a thousand times easier if I could just eat and enjoy everything. But I haven’t been able to yet, and I don’t have to feel guilty about it anymore, and Dr. Boyfriend can suck it!
(But please suck it after you’ve taken me to Per Se, Kamran. Thank you.)
I like ice cream more than any other dessert. I rarely order it in restaurants, because it’s usually not being made in-house, but I lovelovelove to visit ice cream parlors. I wanted to try Sundaes and Cones, I’ll admit, because I read a review that described their scoops as “too big“, and I thought that was idiotic.
I tried the corn and the chocolate-peanut butter flavor and would happily go back for both. I thought the corn could use some of the berry swirl you usually see at other gourmet parlors to sweeten it up a bit more, but someone who likes less-sweet desserts would love this one. And, well, the picture pretty much tells you how chocolatey that chocolate scoop is. Not an ice cream for those afraid of flavor. Not one for those afraid of gluttony, either.
A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail from a journalist who was working on a piece for NPR about food bloggers–or “food paparazzi”–and whether their photos and reviews were helpful or hurtful to restaurants, if their shots are “sleek and beautiful” or “harmful and amateur”. And then she asked if she could use some of my pictures from Colicchio & Sons.
I wrote back and said, “I have to laugh, knowing that you’re asking because those photos in particular are the exact opposite of sleek and beautiful.” She replied, “We do want to show a range of photos, of all qualities, so I’m glad that my request seems transparent.”
I bragged to everyone that NPR was going to make fun of my photos, because like they say, all press is good press. And in actuality, I was excited about the piece, because I have no idea why food bloggers are getting such a bad rap lately. Suddenly, I see articles everywhere about diners setting up tripods and lights, standing on their chairs to get better angles, and letting their food get cold while they take the perfect shot. Obviously my boyfriend and I eat out a lot–literally more than anyone else I know–and I’ve never EVER seen someone use a tripod, extra lights, or their chairs as stepstools.
Anyway, despite showcasing two of my photos, the the NPR article totally disappointed me. I guess the author wanted to take an unbiased stance, but I know I couldn’t have helped but rip into her when the VP of Operations and New Projects at Craft Restaurants said “she doesn’t want amateur food writers influencing people’s dining decisions”.
The same woman also said, “When you feel like they’re having that influence without really knowing what they’re talking about, it’s very frustrating.” Sorry, not really knowing what we’re talking about? Because to enjoy or not enjoy food, you must have endured hours of classical training? Well, I’ve endured years of classical eating, bitch.
I’m sort of just kidding about that, but the thing is: my photos show what the food REALLY looks like under the ACTUAL restaurant lighting. In fact, if I’ve Photoshopped my pictures, then the food looks BETTER than it did in the restaurant.
When it comes to reviewing, I don’t order things I don’t expect to like, and I have a very open mind. If your dish doesn’t delight me, there’s something wrong with it. I’m aware of my biases against seafood, tomatoes, mushrooms, and desserts that don’t fill me up to the point of puking, and I make sure my readers are aware of that bias, too, so they can tailor my reviews to their needs accordingly.
And the idea that restaurants could possibly hate being written about blows my mind. How many times have I gone somewhere (Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurant, The Mark, most recently) just because I wanted to argue with someone else’s (the New York Times) negative review of it?
Restaurants should be taking advantage of food bloggers, not poo-pooing us.
Dr. Boyfriend and I were trying to decide where to book a dinner reservation last week and saw that Fig & Olive has nearly 700 reviews on OpenTable, which is more than everything else we saw by a long shot. After going there on Friday night, I understand why.
The place is just plain meant to appeal to a lot of people. The menu is interesting but not adventurous, the prices are high enough to keep out the riffraff but low enough that you wouldn’t feel bad about taking a date here even knowing she wasn’t going to put out, the lighting is low, the furniture is plush, the service is neutral, and no one’s pretentious.
We both ordered from the prix fixe menu, which is your standard 3 courses for $36. Even after I added a $6 supplement for my filet mignon, I thought it was a great deal. Here’s what we feasted upon:
Wikipedia tells me that phyllo dough is sometimes used for samosas in the West, so I’m refrain from calling this dish blasphemous, and even if it was too soft to be the kind of samosa I’m familiar with, it was delicious, and the only thing wrong with it was that there was only one. The harissa oil and yogurt combo was spicy-good that I had to use our leftover bread from the complimentary olive oils they served us to sop it up.
My boyfriend’s favorite part of this was the big caper berry on top, which I had never tasted before. I don’t care that much about capers, but caper berries are delightfully pickley.
We were scheduled to go to a steak house the next night, but after I finished this filet, I said, “I’m not sure I can eat steak without butter now.” The little pat of herbed cow juice melted all over my meat, soaking into it and leaving the herbs behind on the seared exterior. The potatoes and peas were an afterthought, but it didn’t matter. Steak snobs would be aghast at the fact that the server didn’t ask how I wanted it cooked, but it came out perfectly medium, and I sort of like a chef who refuses to cook food anything but the right way.
My boyfriend didn’t much care for this paella, to be honest. It was definitely delicious–the paprika-sodden rice alone was mouthwatering–but he expects a paella to be full of all sorts of treasures for the unearthing. This was rice with a few vegetables and sea meats sprinkled on top. The flavors were there, but the portion and presentation were off.
This was a very creamy, slightly-vanilla custard with a blanket of strawberries and blueberries cooked down to their sweetest point. A chunk of very crusty cake accompanied it and made for a nice texture addition.
Dr. Boyfriend’s dessert looked a little too simple to me, frankly, and I was secretly glad that I’d been the one to get the pot de crème at first. But simple as it was, it was special. The creamy cheese with the crumbly bread, the syrupy-sweet berries with the savory basil? YUM.
Overall, I wouldn’t say Fig & Olive is a place I’d send my pickiest foodie friends, but it’s great for casual dates, meeting with friends (as nearly everyone there seemed to be doing), and having steak covered in butter. Not a place you’d go if you only had a weekend in NYC but a place you’d go to take a break from the formality of more-expensive restaurants.
and
420 West 13th Street New York, NY 10014 (map)
808 Lexington Avenue New York, NY 10021 (map)
5 donuts: transcendent experiences
4 donuts: extremely awesome meals
3 donuts: good-ass eats
2 donuts: food I could have made myself
1 donuts: dinners not fit for the dogs
