• 4,  chain restaurant,  cheap eats,  chelsea,  healthy,  meat sweats,  restaurant reviews,  sandwiches,  tribeca,  vegetarian-friendly

    Muscle Maker Grill – Healthy/Sandwiches – Tribeca

    I know it’s awful to talk about dieting on a gluttonous food blog, but the truth is that when I’m not shoveling sweets into my piehole at fancy restaurants, I’m trying to avoid carbs at home. Not being much of a cook, it can be rough trying to find anything for lunch, so I was pumped to randomly type “low-carb” into Seamless.com‘s search function and find Muscle Maker Grill. With a menu full of items made from lean meats and low-fat cheeses and served on low-carb and whole wheat wraps, this is the kind of place that makes me feel guilty about the food I’m eating until I remember that…

  • food porn,  meat sweats

    BACON EXPLOSION!!

    WARNING: If you don’t like appalling displays of meatiness, you’ll want to stop here. Otherwise, strap on your drooling bib and get ready to catch the drips. Profiled by The New York Times and reviled by lovers of heart health everywhere, the Bacon Explosion is one part bacon, one part sausage, and all parts belly-busting. My co-worker Adam has been talking about it basically since the day he started at our company years ago; in fact, he probably mentioned his desire to concoct one and bring it into the office to share in order to get hired. In the throngs of grilling season, he finally made good on his word…

  • 3.5,  american,  celebrity chef,  east village,  french,  meat sweats,  restaurant reviews

    DBGB – French/American – East Village

    When my friend Kim saw a four-person dinner at DBGB pop up on GiltCity for $150, the first thing she thought was, “SUNDAE!!” And the second thing she thought was, “Can I eat four sundaes by myself?” And the third thing she thought was, “Guess I have to invite Katie.” I’d had a very so-so experience the first time around at DBGB, but my subsequent tasting menu at Chef Boulud’s flagship restaurant, Daniel, was so outstanding it changed the way I rate all other restaurants; naturally, I was interested in a second try at DBGB. So Dr. Boyfriend and I met Kim and her friend Kelly on Friday night to…

  • meat sweats,  ohhhhh nyc,  sandwiches

    The Great Hot Dog Cookoff 2011

    After our 1 hour, 42 minute wait for a souvlaki earlier this year at a similar event, I was understandably a little hesitant about last weekend’s Great Hot Dog Cookoff. Not only do New Yorkers notoriously flock to food happenings like that, but it was also supposed to be the second-hottest day of the year. Luckily, there were a few factors working in my favor: 1) Only 600 tickets were being sold. 2) There were 23 different hot dog concoctions to choose from. 3) It was the best-organized food function I’ve ever been to in NYC. After showing our IDs to a first line of volunteers, we were then shown…

  • 4,  burgers,  cheap eats,  meat sweats,  midtown east

    Bareburger is Anything But

    Lately, all of my friends (and by “all” of them, I mean “two”) have been going on and on about how great Bareburger is. And even before I tasted the burger, I was pleased by the people making it and their commitment to all-natural ingredients like grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, and organic produce. As much as I love my home state of Ohio, my friends there have to hunt for grass-fed beef, while I have easy access to restaurants like this that serve nothing but tasty, tasty, vitamin-rich cowmeat. Now, the astute reader will recognize that I have a bit of a carb problem, so on the days that I’m…

  • 3.5,  great for dates,  meat sweats,  midtown east,  restaurant reviews,  steak

    Michael Jordan’s The Steak House N.Y.C. – Steak – Midtown East

    If you can get past the fact that it’s owned by Michael Jordan and is called Michael Jordan’s The Steak House N.Y.C. (what?), this place is actually a decent steakhouse with atmosphere that beats the usual Harvard-crimson carpeting and gold-lacquered everything. My boyfriend and I talked casually about visiting The Steak House every time we spotted it overlooking Grand Central Terminal, but it took seeing Chef Michael Vignola on an episode of The Food Network’s “Chopped” to make us seriously consider a reservation. On the show, the chef was super-creative–quite the opposite of what we expect from someone just cooking steaks and lobster all day–and we were excited to see…

  • 4.5,  cheap eats,  east village,  german,  great for dates,  meat sweats,  restaurant reviews

    Wechsler’s Currywurst – German – East Village

    I would go to Wechsler’s every day. It’s one of those quintessential East Village finds that’s tiny, cozy, and cheap, yet unlike most of the East Village, it’s somewhere you can actually take a date. Not, like, a snobby date. A date like me. Basically, I just want to go back to Wechsler’s, and I want you to go with me. Anyway, here’s a picture of some meat covered in some sauce: That’s what currywurst is: sausage, sliced and covered in a saucy blend of tomato and curry powder. It’s traditionally a German street food, but when I recommended Wechsler’s to my friend Steve, he reported back the next day…

  • japanese,  meat sweats,  midtown east,  restaurant reviews

    Yakitori Torys Weird Chicken

    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. Yakitori Torys 248 East 52nd Street New York, NY 10022 (map)

  • meat sweats,  midtown west,  restaurant reviews,  steak

    Restaurant Review: Keens Steakhouse

    I went into my dinner at Keens Steakhouse with an extremely open mind. I’m a lover of Peter Luger, but I was under the impression that $90 steak is $90 steak wherever you go, and I was excited about the scotch-and-cigars atmosphere of Keens. I hadn’t known to specify in my reservation that my boyfriend and I wanted to sit in the main dining room, so I was worried when all of the people in front of us were sent to different parts of the restaurant, but we were luckily seated downstairs under the ceiling entirely covered in clay tobacco pipes. The atmosphere is much darker and cozier than Luger’s,…