• administrative

    Exciting New Ratings System

    After an excellent lunch at goodburger last weekend (review forthcoming!), my boyfriend and I left talking about the rating I’d give it, and we ran into a problem. Up to this point, I’ve been using the same ratings scale for everything from super-fine dining to interesting supermarket finds, which is of course this: When we started talking about goodburger’s rating, though, we realized that comparing a burger to a nine-course tasting menu with wine pairings is a little ridiculous. So I made up a lovely little donut hole graphic to be used in rating cheaper restaurants. I thought it was sooooooo clever. But most of my friends agreed it looked…

  • pure carbs

    Free Starbucks Petites!

    Starbucks rolled out a freebie promotion today to introduce their new line of Petites: eight different flavors of cake in different bite-sized forms. Now through March 12th, any time you purchase a drink at Starbucks from 2 to 5 p.m., you’ll be able to choose from the Birthday Cake Pop, Lemon Sweet Square, Red Velvet Whoopie Pie, Salted Caramel Sweet Square, Carrot Cake Cupcake, Peanut Butter Cupcake, Rocky Road Cake Pop, and Tiramisu Cake Pop. My co-worker just got the Birthday Cake Pop, and it was the moistest yellow cake covered in icing and sprinkles and put on a stick. Adorable! Starbucks is promoting the fact that they’re all under…

  • a taste for tv

    My Pick for America’s Next Great Restaurant

    Thanks to a tip from Grub Street, my boyfriend and I hurried to Grand Central on Friday afternoon to pig out on foods inspired by the new NBC show “America’s Next Great Restaurant” and have our picture taken with Bobby Flay so I could later deface it with inappropriate Sharpie drawings. The pop-up automat was serving mac & cheese, marinated chickpeas, grilled cheese, fried chicken sliders, and Spanish meatballs to preview some of the ideas presented by the would-be restauranteurs on last night’s premiere episode: Bobby wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but the meatball made up for it: Did any of you catch the show? It was especially interesting to…

  • news

    Convivio Closed!

    Tucked away in the neighborhood of Tudor City, on a hill overlooking 42nd Street, Convivio was a hidden gem in Midtown East. Even as someone who’s let down by Italian food in New York City time and again, I thought Convivio deserved its Michelin star. I passed it every day on my way to my boyfriend’s apartment after work, and coming home from a night out, we’d often stop and look at the menu posted on the stone wall outside the restaurant. Just last weekend, we talked about coming by soon to enjoy the very reasonably-priced prix-fixe. But when we passed Convivio today, we saw this: click to see larger…

  • 4.5,  american (new),  french,  great for dates,  restaurant reviews,  union square

    Tocqueville – French/American (New) – Union Square

    My boyfriend and I ended up at Tocqueville for the first time almost by accident, but serendipitously, it turned out to be one of our most memorable dining experiences, and we were excited to return for their three-course, $39 lunch prix-fixe with wine pairings. I clearly wasn’t as excited about actually blogging the experience, since I’m just now getting around to it after five months, but that doesn’t reflect at all how I felt about the meal. I think Tocqueville is one of (if not the) most overlooked and underappreciated restaurants in NYC, yet I have a hard time recommending it because of its atmosphere. It’s not for everyone. It’s…

  • 3,  cheap eats,  financial district,  french,  restaurant reviews,  scandinavian

    Crêpes du Nord – French/Scandinavian – Financial District

    It only makes sense that the ladies behind Goodies First and donuts4dinner would team up for a crepes luncheon, right? And we even had the good sense not to skip straight to dessert. Crêpes du Nord opened about a year ago just a few minutes from my office in the Financial District, but that whole Stone Street restaurant conglomerate sort of scares me with its frat house feel. The street is closed to traffic and filled with umbrella-shaded picnic tables, which would be lovely if they weren’t constantly crowded with light blue dress shirts and uncomfortable heels. But that’s New York, I guess. I had a gift certificate, which made…

  • Uncategorized

    24 Years of Hating Seafood

    Sushi Yasuda is considered by many to be the best sushi in New York City–indeed, much of their website is devoted to the formal customs and proper ways of eating it–and my boyfriend has been eyeing their omakase for years now. The problem is that the omakase–which literally means “it’s up to you”–is a tasting menu of the chef’s choice, and while I’m down for anything an American or European restaurant might serve as part of their tasting, there’s some concern with Asian restaurants that I may get a whole squid or a live baby octopus. And it’s not that I don’t want to be able to eat everything the…

  • 4.5,  american (new),  french,  hell's kitchen,  restaurant reviews

    La Silhouette – French/American (New) – Hell’s Kitchen

    After reading a short blurb about La Silhouette and its owner, Sally Chironis’s, connection to Le Bernadin in the New York magazine food blog, Grub Street, I checked out the menu and found that I wanted to try every single thing on it. Well, except for maybe the Mixed Baby Lettuce salad, but the inclusion of a snail risotto made up for that. So my boyfriend and I booked a reservation for last Saturday, a mere two weeks after their opening. Their liquor license wasn’t in place yet, so we brought a bottle each of Eins Zwei Dry 2008 and Chateau Padouen Sauternes 2006 with us, which were immediately put…

  • 4,  american (new),  great for dates,  restaurant reviews,  restaurant week,  west village

    One if by Land, Two if by Sea – American (New) – West Village

    So I forgot to charge my camera battery before we went to One if by Land, Two if by Sea for Restaurant Week, and I was reminded that what photographers always say about great pictures coming not from great cameras but from great photographic eyes is entirely untrue. I had to use this seven-megapixel Sony with the tiniest LCD, and it just didn’t compare in any way to my Canon S90. Of course my Canon doesn’t compare in any way to a real DSLR, so now I’m wondering how different my pictures would be if I went crazy and decided I’m willing to lug ten pounds of camera around with…