• pure carbs

    This is Why You’re Fat

    If there’s a good reason to be fat, this is it. It’s a Chips Ahoy! Chewy cookie, topped with a fire-roasted marshmallow, rolled in Nerds. My boyfriend, his friend Gary, and I concocted it in Gary’s backyard last summer while we were in California. We had already eaten four packages of Swedish cookies and a bag of marshmallows, and I guess the concern was that the sugarbetes wasn’t onsetting quickly enough. I really love irresponsible eating.

  • 4.5,  celebrity chef,  french,  great for dates,  michelin-starred,  midtown west,  restaurant reviews,  seafood

    Le Bernardin – Seafood/French – Midtown West

    For the longest time, the list of restaurants in NYC with three Michelin stars was three long, and there was one I couldn’t visit: Le Bernardin. My boyfriend, god bless him, didn’t want to drop a few hundred on a bunch of fish that he knew I’d only complain about, even after he went to the restaurant with a client and came home unable to stop talking about the things he’d seen. But after proving myself capable of continuing to gulp down guppies even in the face of great adversity recently, he finally relented and invited me to the three-course, $70 lunch. And just as he suspected, I’m going to…

  • 4,  cheap eats,  east village,  good for groups,  jeans-appropriate,  korean,  meat sweats,  restaurant reviews

    Momofuku Ssam Bar Rotisserie Duck – Korean – East Village

    Momofuku Ssam Bar‘s large format duck dinner is a whole rotisserie Long Island duck served with chive pancakes, bibb lettuce, hoisin, duck scallion sauce, crispy shallots, and two sides of your choosing. It’s $140, feeds three to six people, and is The Best. This and the bo ssäm (pork shoulder) dinner are the only ways to get a reservation at Ssam Bar, and that alone is enough to make the dinner worth it, as the wait at Ssam is regularly two hours in my experience. (Get there before 6:30 or after 9:30 on weekdays if you want to avoid the line.) My group of six included a couple of people…

  • i am a country bumpkin,  sea meats are gross

    The Time I Threw Up in a Restaurant and Everyone Saw

    I mentioned in my review of the chef’s omakase at Yasuda that despite my overall excellent showing in an all-seafood meal, there was one slip-up that night. My boyfriend was taking notes at Yasuda because he’s an encyclopedia of fish names, and I was no doubt going to be writing down things like “Motown shrimp” instead of “botan shrimp”. Well, at this point in the notes, he writes, “Katie loses her shit.” Let me explain first that I’ve been having trouble with oysters since about my second one. The first time I tried one, at Momofuku Ko, I didn’t even think about it; I just gummed it a little, swallowed…

  • 4,  cafe,  cheap eats,  jeans-appropriate,  restaurant reviews,  sweets,  upper east side,  vegetarian-friendly

    Sprinkles Cupcakes – Sweets – Upper East Side

    I had my first taste of the famous/infamous Sprinkles cupcake last year in their homeland of California when my boyfriend’s sister brought an anniversary cupcake cake to his parents’ party. My cupcake was yellow cake with chocolate frosting and a pink block letter of questionable edibility that seemed to be made of sugar but refused to melt in my mouth. Hardcore New Yorkers will stand loyally behind their Magnolia Bakery cupcakes, but I prefer the much more elaborate/gluttonous cupcakes from Crumbs Bake Shop and really only go to Magnolia for the banana pudding, so I was completely open to trying Sprinkles. And it was fine. Not life-changing. Not make-me-move-to-California-immediately-ing. But…

  • 4.5,  celebrity chef,  great for dates,  japanese,  michelin-starred,  restaurant reviews,  tribeca,  vegetarian-friendly,  wine-paired menu

    The Tasting Menu at Brushstroke – Japanese – Tribeca

    A good review can entice me to eat almost anything. David Bouley’s Brushstroke, with its very traditional and structured Japanese menu, isn’t exactly a comfort food haven for this corn-fed Ohio diner, but Adam Platt’s New York magazine review somehow had me craving kaiseki. Partly because I liked that they wouldn’t let him order sushi in the dining room and partly because there’s no way I’m resisting a restaurant once I see the words candied duck breast in a review. the book room Brushstroke is all recycled blonde woods, reclaimed steel from ship’s hulls, and 27,000 paperback books formed into walls inset with Japanese street scenes in the bar area.…

  • 4,  bistro,  chinese,  jeans-appropriate,  restaurant reviews,  west village

    The Duckavore Dinner at Wong – Chinese – West Village

    My foodie friend Lucy read about Wong‘s Duckavore Dinner on a Chowhound thread and sent the link to a couple of us. Tempted by the promise of the duckiest meal we’ve ever had (even the dessert!), our friend Tiffany made a reservation for four with the required 48 hours notice, and we converged in the West Village restaurant amid candles, school desks, and beakers for a wildly successful large-format meal that was more than just novelty. the menu bread Although quite confusing at first, the bread service perfectly set the tone for the meal. We still have no idea why one piece of bread was puffed and one wasn’t, and…

  • ohhhhh nyc

    Don’t Mess with the Bull, Young Man. You’ll Get the Horns.

    My friends Ellie and Jessica were visiting two weekends ago and wanted to eat some NYC finery, so I showed them a good time first at Tocqueville and then at Momofuku Ko. The dinner at Tocqueville included sweet shrimps, creamy winter squash soups, succulent chickens, truffled grits, and so many desserts we had to leave whole scoops of ice cream behind. It’s one of my favourite restaurants in the city, and I thought the reasons why were pretty clear to my friends. But the next night at Momofuku Ko, we were making smalltalk with our chef and mentioned that the girls were visiting from out of state. He asked where…

  • 4.5,  great for dates,  japanese,  jeans-appropriate,  midtown east,  restaurant reviews

    The Omakase at Sushi Yasuda – Japanese – Midtown East

    Earlier this year, I wrote about my only visit to Sushi Yasuda, widely regarded as one of the best sushi restaurants in NYC. I was still in my twenty-four-year phase of not liking fish then and had really gone out on a limb there by ordering a tuna roll. Since then, my boyfriend has mentioned going back approximately four hundred times. Usually I’d have no problem accompanying him and ordering the very safest items on the menu, but the problem was that he wanted to try the chef’s omakase, where you have no say in what you’re served. Which, from the reviews I’d read, involved everything from scallop roe to…

  • 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…