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Recipe: Low-Carb Hostess Chocolate Cupcakes
I was in Ohio last weekend and spent much of it with my best friend, who–like me–finds lots of excuses to “cheat” on her low-carb diet. Meaning that whenever I’m in town, we go crazy and eat whatever we want, which is everything from Dairy Queen to Pizza Hut to McDonald’s with a couple of local joints thrown in as long as they’re all as unhealthy as possible. We’ve said 100 times in the past year that we’d love to try “being good” one time when I come home for a visit, but this time we actually meant it. As luck would have it, the lovely Maria Emmerich posted a…
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Restaurant Week Summer 2010: SHO Shaun Hergatt – French/Japanese – Financial District
Two of my co-workers and I decided to hit SHO Shaun Hergatt for a Restaurant Week lunch at the last minute, and their dress code was listed as “jacket preferred”, so I changed into a pair of open-toed red patent leather wedges from my usual flip-flops and hoped no one would notice my jeans and my co-worker’s t-shirt. It must have worked, because they let us in (and were even nice to us!). And I’m sure glad they did. potato-yuzu dip Our crusty rolls came with the usual butter but also this dip, which our server told us is one of the chef’s specialties. It had the consistency of mashed…
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Restaurant Week Summer 2010: Park Avenue Summer – American (new) – Upper East Side
It’s Restaurant Week Summer 2010 here in NYC, and my boyfriend and I finally made a reservation for a place I’ve been eyeing for a couple of years now. Depending on the season, it’s called Park Avenue Summer, Autumn, Winter, or Spring, and the decor changes entirely with the seasons. Appropriately, all of the dishes we had on the first night of Restaurant Week were incredibly summer-y and some of the best we’ve had in all of our years of Restaurant Week-ing. watermelon amuse-bouche Does this look like a chunk of pineapple or what? 10 points for surprising me, and another 10 for serving me cream cheese and herbs with…
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The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges – French – Upper East Side
My boyfriend and I went to The Mark because the Times called it “unambitious” and the whole blogosphere was seemingly up in arms over the two-star rating they gave it despite that. I was prepared to be blown away, anyway, and to give it the many-doughnutted review it deserved. homemade cherry yuzu and ginger ale sodas ($5) These sodas were sort of an afterthought, and they turned out to easily be the best part of the meal for me. Ever since the major ginger ale brand in the U.S. started advertising that they use real ginger, I’ve become way more interested in the stuff; I don’t know what I thought…
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Seasonal – Austrian/American (new) – Midtown West
When my boyfriend suggested Seasonal Restaurant & Weinbar because it was awarded a Michelin star this year, I pictured a lively Austrian pub type place with comforting foods like bratwurst and sauerkraut and girls named Brunhilda serving them. What I got was a sleek formal dining room with an inventive menu that put me in the mind of wd-50 or Degustation. This is one of those unfortunate cases where I had the dinner a couple of months ago and was so overwhelmed by the idea of writing about all of the awesomeness I experienced, so pardon my slim review and (hopefully) enjoy the photos. The tasting menu: octopus amuse bouche…
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Becco – Italian – Hell’s Kitchen
Finding restaurants that can hold a group as big as my office’s monthly dinner club of co-workers past and present can sometimes be a major challenge, so super-touristy places like Becco are sometimes our only choice. Luckily, super-touristy doesn’t have to mean super-might-as-well-have-gone-to-McDonald’s. antipasto misto I know the last picture is awful, but that carrot was so crazy soft and delicious that I had to publicly preserve its memory. osso bucco My friend Ash ordered the osso bucco, and everyone was amazed as she went to town on it, scooping the marrow out of the bone with a tiny fork first so she could be sure she didn’t fill up…
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A Crunch Bar Without Any Crunch
I love crushing things with my fingers. I also love chocolate that has been melted and then resolidified. One day, I found a mini Crunch bar in my pocket. I have a particular affinity for Crunch bars, because in high school, my best friend would bring a Crunch bar in her lunch every day, and she’d bite off the C and the H so it just said RUN. And then we’d sing Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” in as exaggerated a manner as possible. No one considered us normal. Anyway, this Crunch bar had melted in my pocket, so I spent a good 10 minutes of my lunch hour…
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Why My Boyfriend Won’t Take Me to One of NYC’s Best Restaurants (and Why It’s Not My Fault)
Sometimes I feel bad about reviewing food when I have such a huge bias against some major dish components: • seafood (except crab that I don’t have to pull out of the shell myself) • mushrooms (except when I can’t tell what they are–like their essence in a foam(!) or tiny pieces of them concealed in a ravioli–because I don’t hate the taste but the appearance) • tomatoes (except when they’re heavily cooked) Mostly I feel this way because Dr. Boyfriend refuses to take me to Per Se until I can not only stomach but actually enjoy all of the foods they’re going to serve me there. He’s withheld the…
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Sundaes and Cones – Sweets – East Village
I like ice cream more than any other dessert. I rarely order it in restaurants, because it’s usually not being made in-house, but I lovelovelove to visit ice cream parlors. I wanted to try Sundaes and Cones, I’ll admit, because I read a review that described their scoops as “too big“, and I thought that was idiotic. I tried the corn and the chocolate-peanut butter flavor and would happily go back for both. I thought the corn could use some of the berry swirl you usually see at other gourmet parlors to sweeten it up a bit more, but someone who likes less-sweet desserts would love this one. And, well,…
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Proud to Be Part of the Food Paparazzi
A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail from a journalist who was working on a piece for NPR about food bloggers–or “food paparazzi”–and whether their photos and reviews were helpful or hurtful to restaurants, if their shots are “sleek and beautiful” or “harmful and amateur”. And then she asked if she could use some of my pictures from Colicchio & Sons. I wrote back and said, “I have to laugh, knowing that you’re asking because those photos in particular are the exact opposite of sleek and beautiful.” She replied, “We do want to show a range of photos, of all qualities, so I’m glad that my request seems…
Reviews of the Best Restaurants in NYC