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Brownie Batter: Decadent, Shameful
On my last night of Christmas vacation in Ohio, my best friend, Tracey, and I invited my cousin Bethany and our friend Michelle over to her house for cards, videogames, boytalk, and other things girls in Ohio do. Tracey and I decided to make brownies for the occasion, and by that I mean we poured a box mix into a big bowl and added an egg. Tracey kind of hinted that she wasn’t entirely interested in actually cooking the brownies, because like cookie dough and oysters, brownie batter is best eaten raw. I said, “Well, maybe we can separate half the batter and only cook a small batch.” And she…
- 5, american (new), celebrity chef, french, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, upper east side
Daniel – French/American (New) – Upper East Side
Having left both Bar Boulud and DBGB feeling like I was missing what all the fuss was about, I was hopeful but not convinced about Daniel and the third Michelin star it received this year. To celebrate my boyfriend, Kamran, finishing law school(!), we ordered the 6-course tasting menu with wine pairings. We had hoped to try the 8-course menu, but it’s not available on the weekends due to the increased crowds, and in the end, there were more than enough surprises that we definitely didn’t need the extra courses. amuse bouche: parsnip mousse, green apple, duck prosciutto around crostini The texture of this was as creamy as it looks.…
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Just Another Thing to Be Snooty About
I just saw a review of a restaurant in which the woman complained that her server didn’t know to bring her a black napkin to match her black pants. Pardon my ignorance, but is this a thing? Should I be embarrassed about the countless times I’ve sat with a white napkin on my black pants? Should I also be expecting restaurants to have a stockpile of sequined and gold lamé napkins, too? Seems a little ridiculous to me, but I am a farmgirl.
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Soba Totto – Japanese – Midtown East
Soba Totto is one of the true gems of Midtown East: it’s delicious, simply but beautifully appointed, and surprisingly not overpriced. My boyfriend and I were pleased to both find ourselves with a day off last week so we could finally enjoy Totto at lunch. We were totally in the mood for chicken meatballs and were sad to find that they don’t serve yakitori at lunch, but it forced us to try something we may have liked even better. Chicken Soboro Don: sautéed minced chicken, poached egg, scallions, seaweed, rice I was worried I might actually be playing it too safe by ordering this. I’m trying to push myself to…
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The Modern at MoMA – American (New)/French – Midtown West
The Modern inside the Museum of Modern Art always shows up on NYC’s Restaurant Week list and always gets completely booked well before I’m even aware Restaurant Week is upon me. This summer, my boyfriend and I attempted a walk-in and almost got laughed out of the place, so we decided to plan ahead and save it for our anniversary. Here’s the tasting menu, served in the formal dining room: amuse bouche: porcini- and rosemary-dusted popcorn The flavoring on this was too uneven to make much impact, but we liked the idea of it a lot. amuse bouche: deconstructed vichyssoise: russet potato, leek soup sphere Quite an impressive presentation, right?…
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Dirty Quesadilla
I have basically a nonstop craving for the Quesadilla Enorme from Baby Bo’s Cantina in Murray Hill. There’s always a crazy wait to get into the place, so discovering that they deliver to my boyfriend’s apartment is the best/worst thing to happen to my midsection in a long time. The Quesadilla Enorme is a giant tortilla splayed out and covered in cheese, potatoes, a dark rich BBQ sauce, and your choice of protein, covered with another tortilla, grilled until the edges get perfectly crisp, topped with dollops of guacamole, creamy chipotle sauce, jalapenos, and sour cream, and served with chips and salsa OMG. I always order the pork version, but…
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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…
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Babbo – Italian – West Village
It’s hard to get into Mario Batali’s Babbo. They don’t do online reservations, and week after week when I called, they would tell me they were full. At one point, my boyfriend and I said, “Screw Batali! We don’t want his relatively cheap ($75) tasting menu with also-cheap ($50) wine pairings if it means being jerked around like this!” But once we finally did get in, we realized why the place is always full and why our persistence was totally worth it. We sat in the upstairs portion, which has a lovely skylight that made me excited to take photos. The problem was that as the sun set, so did…
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Souffles Don’t Entirely Suck, It Turns Out
I really, really love chocolate–from the worst mostly-sugar milk chocolate to the bitterest cacao nib–and that’s why I think I don’t care for chocolate cake. Why would I eat chocolate-flavored flour when I could be having a creamy chocolate tart, chocolate ice cream, or even chocolate pudding? That’s why, since I started fine-dining with my wonderful boyfriend four years ago, I’ve avoided the ubiquitous chocolate soufflé and, in fact, soufflés in general. Little did I know, though, that I was denying myself a real pleasure by not forcing restaurants’ kitchen staff to display their technical prowess for me. My first great soufflé was at The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges. In…
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Aquavit – Scandinavian – Midtown East
Two days after Marcus Samuelsson won the second season of “Top Chef: Masters”, my dining companions and I settled in at the bistro of his restaurant Aquavit and prepared to be wowed. Instead, we were merely contented. matjes herring (mild salt herring), roasted yellow beets, scallions, sour cream herring sampler, boiled potatoes, Vasterbotten cheese cherry and wild boar salad sage-roasted Penobscot (Maine?) chicken breast, broccoli rabe, Swiss chard, snap peas, spring onion crème Undersalted! Bland! Only slightly saved by the delicious sauce! smörgåsbord! cold-poached salmon, red quinoa, wax beans, chervil hollandaise Nik and Kamran Jack and Anthony (they’re single and like good food, ladies!) chocolate pot de crème cardamom pound…
Reviews of the Best Restaurants in NYC
