cuisine
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Restaurant Review: Primehouse New York (Restaurant Week Summer 2009)
My boyfriend, Kamran, and I base most of our Restaurant Week dining decisions on the inventiveness of the menu, which is why we chose Primehouse New York over Smith & Wollensky or Delmonico’s on the 31st. Passion fruit and gazpacho? Yes, please. • APPETIZERS • Passion Fruit Gazpacho Lump Crab & Avocado Grilled Double Cut Bacon Roasted Figs, Frisée, Maytag Blue Cheese Heirloom Tomato & Goat Cheese Salad Micro Basil, Sea Salt, Aged Balsamic • ENTREES • Scottish Salmon English Pea & Mushroom Risotto, Preserved Lemon Beurre Blanc Marinated Hanger Steak Grilled Portabella & Arugula Salad, Roasted Pepper Salsa 7oz Dry Aged Petit Sirloin Caramelized Summer Vegetables • DESSERTS •…
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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…
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Restaurant Review: Tao (Restaurant Week Summer 2009)
I’m sure I knew what Tao was all about by virtue of watching this past season of “Celebrity Apprentice” and seeing how many times Dennis Rodman recommended it, but the Restaurant Week menu somehow made that seem unimportant. It became important again, though, about five seconds after I walked in the door and heard the thumping club music and saw the crowds of yuppies and tourists holding drinks in the waiting area. After an uncomfortable fifteen-minute wait where we were bumped into multiple times despite leaving plenty of room around us for people to get by, my boyfriend and I were led upstairs, across a bridge, and to a booth…
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Schnipper’s, the Fast Food Alternative in Times Square
I never look forward to eating around Times Square. My second date with my boyfriend was at Chevy’s Fresh Mex, but that’s only because we changed our movie location at the last minute and weren’t familiar with the area at the time. Since then, we’ve had one unexpectedly delicious French meal inside Port Authority at Metro Marché, a great sushi experience at Haru, and “real barbecue” at Virgil’s, but the majority of Times Square fare is along the lines of Applebee’s and McDonald’s. Even when I’m excited about a restaurant in the area, the idea of the crowds and the lack of cleanliness and the way the restaurants cater to…
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Otafuku’s Okonomiyaki in NYC
The New York magazine review of Otafuku says, “It’s very rare to find this stuff in New York. Consider yourself lucky.” Similarly, my boyfriend has been going on about this place for the entire nearly-three years I’ve known him. He went there on a date with a girl before my time and claims that while the date sucked, the food was life-changing. I don’t actually believe him about the date, but I was at least interested in the food. Otafuku is not a restaurant. It’s a hallway divided in two by a counter, with men cooking on one side and customers ordering on the other. There’s enough room for four…
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Thumbs Down for Thai Me Up
If I was to tell you there’s a sandwich shop on 14th Street called Thai Me Up, which of the following would you think?: 1) Heeeeeeeeeee. 2) Laaaaaaaaaame. 3) Grooooooooooss. 4) A combination of 2 and 3. I appreciate a good pun as much as you do, but what if I told you the store is owned by this guy and his hair?: And what if I told you that the ingredients in one of the dessert drinks is magic? And what if I told you the website says, “Thai Me Up Sandwich Bar opened in march of 2007 to rave reviews from visitors loving its delicious dishes and fun,…
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Restaurant Review: Sakagura
The sign outside of Sakagura is a perfect representation of the restaurant as a whole: to use one of my favorite clichés, it’s like putting pearls on a pig. Maybe I’m squeamish, but I had my doubts about the place when I discovered I had to walk through an office building, past a security guard, and downstairs to the basement through a cinderblock hallway to get to the dining area. The restaurant was nicely decorated, with lots of bamboo and spot lighting, but I couldn’t help feeling that the dark look was less trendy and more meant to hide the fact that we were sitting in a dank back room.…
