Don’t be fooled by the look on my boyfriend’s face as he eats his seseri, or grilled chicken neck, at Yakitori Torys. This is actually his favourite thing on the “Chicken Limited” menu.

That, the crispy chicken tail, and the chicken oyster sell out fast and are well worth arriving early for. I can’t speak to the grilled soft knee bone, though, as it’s been sold out every time we’ve been there in the past two years.

The place also has the best decor for taking faux-serious photos.

The only thing really worth talking about at Daniel Boulud’s DBGB is the mint chocolate sundae. The Yankee Burger didn’t compare to Shake Shack’s, even with the added cheddar and bacon. The winter squash soup wasn’t nearly as good as Métrazur’s. All of my lunch companions were sort of meh about everything they ordered; no one complained, but no one seemed really excited to go back.

But that’s because they didn’t try the sundae.

It looked like run-of-the-mill chocolate gelato, but it had the taste of mint. Not mint flavor, mind you, but actual fresh mint leaves. I wasn’t totally sold on it with my first few bites, to tell the truth, because I’m used to super-sweet, super artificial-tasting desserts. All of the different topping components–the dark chocolate chunks, the meringue drops, the whipped cream–had just the slightest hint of sweetness, and the gelato itself was borderline savory. For someone who can’t get enough cupcakes and milkshakes, it was an unusual and challenging dessert, but it tasted like a lot of thought and effort went into it, and it didn’t leave me feeling as if each bite was going to give me the sugarbetes. So many restaurants don’t seem to care about their desserts, especially during Restaurant Week, but this was meant to impress.

If you’re curious, here are the other dishes my co-workers and I tried:

winter squash soup

chop-chop salad

tuna nicoise salad

yankee burger

lamb and couscous

one of the many sausages, which my dining companion unfortunately can’t recall the make of

Brussels sprouts

I love Tom Colicchio’s food and would travel to the ends of the earth to feast upon it, if necessary, which is lucky, because Colicchio & Sons is basically located there. Is it going to be the sort of place I visit so often that the waiters recognize me? Not a chance, if not for the location, then for the douchebags who eat there. Is it the sort of place I’ll want to visit every time the menu changes? For sure.

I know it’s supposed to be insignificant, but I make a lot of judgements about a restaurant based on its bread basket*, and the super-crunchy breadsticks at one of Tom’s other restaurants, Craftbar, have always been such a crumby, the-least-they-could-do-is-make-them-taste-like-pretzels disappointment to me.

But Colicchio & Sons has rolls! Soft, buttery rolls that glistened under the tungsten bulbs above our table! After pretending like I was just going to have a taste of one and then actually slamming three of them, I was ready for some fungus and bone butter.

gnocchi, chestnuts, bone marrow, black truffle

I had bone marrow for the first time on one of my earliest dates with my adventurously-palated boyfriend at Blue Ribbon Brasserie, and at the time, it freeeeeaked me out; I scooped the tiniest bit of it possible onto my bread and tried my hardest to act like I felt fine about eating the insides of a cow bone. Years later, I was excited to try it again, especially when accompanied by gnocchi, one of my favourite foods in the entire world, and of course, black truffle.

I thought I’d had good gnocchi before, but this was different. I understand now why people talk about the little balls of dough being too dense sometimes; it’s not that heavy gnocchi is bad, but it’s that this light, airy gnocchi seemed to absorb more flavor, to complement rather than overpower the rest of the dish, and was just all-around more pleasant to chew on. The bone marrow melted like butter, the black truffle was so rich and earthy, and the chestnuts were sweet and hardy.

roasted foie gras, lady apples, sassafras root

My boyfriend thought the foie gras had “a nice melt-in-your mouth texture, with a nice thin crispiness to the seared top”. It was more gristle-y than other foie gras he’s had, like it hadn’t been perfectly trimmed, but he still thought it was “a nice hunk”. The sauce was deeply-flavored, sweet, and aromatic, and he thought the apples were a nice complement, but the sassafrass was basically just there for color.

spice-roasted lola duck, cabbage, chanterelles, kumquat chutney

I was really torn between this dish and just about every other red meat dish on the menu. I like duck when it’s done right, but I think it can get really gamey and really tough really fast. But of course Tom wouldn’t do me wrong. The top layer was a breast piece with a crust of spices, and underneath was a roast of even more tender, more flavorful pieces. I liked the sweetness of the kumquat, but the rest of the dish was a throwaway for me. Still, it was worth the price for the duck.

roasted sirloin, salsify, bacon, black garlic

My boyfriend called this rich, deep, and musty and said it had a nice sear but was soft and buttery on the inside. I thought the salsify had the taste and texture of more-flavorful French fries, so I was surprised to read that salsify is known as “oyster plant” because it supposedly tastes like bivalves. Surely there’s no chance I’d actually like eating oysters, right?

coconut cream doughnuts, Meyer lemon marmalade, macadamia nuts, caramel ice cream

No joke–we’re still talking about this dessert almost a month later. The sugar-drenched dough sticks were bursting with coconut cream that glooped out all over the plate when I cut into them. The lemon marmalade was so sour on its own but so complementary to the sweet dough and savory nuts, and I loved its gel texture. The current menu says the marmalade is now being made of the fake-sounding limequat, which gives me a great excuse to go back.

Cinnamon-raisin pain perdu, pinenuts, grapefruit, rosemary ice cream

I basically talked my boyfriend into getting this so I could relieve the last experience I had with Tom’s rosemary ice cream, and it was still the best part of the dish. My boyfriend thought the bread was “a little dense in a bad way”. He found it too hard and didn’t like the way it stuck to the plate, but he did think it was “cinnamony and sweet, like a really good cinnamon roll”. The rosemary and grapefruit surprised him with how complementary they were.

chocolate-covered peanut brittle, red velvet cake

The kitchen sent out these complementary bites to end our meal and also sent us home with carrot cake muffins for the next morning’s breakfast. Which, you know, is the kind of thing that totally steals my heart.

The service was impeccable, of course, and the decor was sleek without being unapproachable. We were disappointed to not see Tom roving around the restaurant, as I’d read other reviews that said he could be seen everywhere from the kitchen to the hostess stand. I’m going to assume that since it was Valentine’s Day, he just didn’t want to distract me from my boyfriend.

*The best bread basket in NYC, in my opinion, are the buttery, salty, herby rolls served at Quality Meats.

Right before I left for Christmas break, my boyfriend and I watched a Food Network show about a company known for its pre-decorated gingerbread houses, and all we could talk about was how badly we wanted to rip the roof off of one of those things and go to town on it with our teeth.

Well, while we were in an-unnamed-discount-store-that’s-taking-over-the-world in December, my best friend, Tracey, and I spotted shelves loaded with gingerbread house kits for only $10 and decided to go for it, not only to make my boyfriend jealous but as an added benefit.

We imagined how hard it’d be to attach the roof to the sides, to keep ourselves from crushing the soft gingerbread underneath the weight of our decorations. What we didn’t find out until we got back to Tracey’s house and took the thing out of the box was that it was preassembled and hard as a rock. But hey, we’re lazy.

Can you imagine how great it is having the job of putting this thing together? Whoever it is obviously doesn’t have to be concerned with neatness, and I fantasize daily about slopping icing onto giant cookies.

The house came packaged with icing mix, hard candy balls, and spearmint leaves. Tracey added the orange slices because we’re gluttons.

Here’s Tracey making a wreath on the front of the house with the bowl of icing beside her. Mixing the icing powder into water was literally the only thing we had to do before we started decorating. You’ll note the giant K on the side of the roof, which I put there, because I’m narcissistic and also uncreative.

The finished product, with Tracey’s Christmas tree in the background to prove that we actually did do this in December and not just last week. Unless Tracey kept her Christmas tree up until March just in case we ever found a gingerbread house kit on super-clearance, which is quite possible.

Beauty shot! You’ll note the fine reindeer-covered fleece blanket Tracey held up as a backdrop for me.

Tracey posed for this picture in which she was pretending to go at the house with a spoon before we figured out that it required a hammer to actually break through any of the gingerbread.

Hard as it was, though, that shit was 4 realz delicious.