• irish,  midtown west,  restaurant reviews

    Kennedy’s Non-Sticky Non-Divey Irish Restaurant

    Since late last year, my officemates and I have been holding a monthly dinner club where we invite our favourite co-workers past and present to dine with us on various cuisines from around the world. As last month’s dinner fell on St. Patrick’s Day, I asked my friend Beth to choose something Irish for us. No one was excited about the prospect of this, I should mention. Not only did no one believe there’s such a thing as Irish cuisine, but we all imagined being forced into this crowded, divey bar with sticky floors and slobbering drunk frat boys. But when I walked into Kennedy’s, I discovered comfortable booths, old-timey…

  • 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,…

  • midtown west,  pure carbs,  sweets

    Magnolia Bakery Whoopi Cookies

    At dinner on Thursday night, my dear boyfriend got incredibly sick. Now, I was fairly suspicious that it was just his attempt at keeping me from making any plans with friends for the weekend out of guilt and empathy so we could hole up in his apartment together, but I expressed a workable amount of pity, anyway. He came home from work on Friday night with a soup container and a bag that he said was full of crackers, so I accepted that his sickness meant I was going to have to forage for my own dinner and went about my business. We made smalltalk about our days, and then…