celebrity chef
- 5, asian fusion, bowery, celebrity chef, great for dates, jeans-appropriate, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, wine-paired menu
The New Momofuku Ko
You wouldn’t know it from reading my blog, but Momofuku Ko is the restaurant I’ve been to most in NYC. I only ever reviewed my first meal there, because their no-photo policy meant that my reviews would just be words, and my dearest friends have let me know that no one cares about my writing. But I loved Ko for its creativity, its super-relaxed atmosphere where jeans were recommended and the soundtrack included everything from 70s prog rock to 80s alternative to current hip hop, and the way its counter seating allowed you to talk to your chef as he used tweezers to top your miso ice cream cone with…
- 4, celebrity chef, german, good for groups, great for dates, italian, jeans-appropriate, restaurant reviews, west village
The Marrow
I’ve read recently about how hard it is for a restaurant in NYC to survive after the initial buzz is over. A place opens, every blogger in the tri-state area rushes to review it, it gets no press after the first few months, and it dies. Naturally I accept all of the blame for this, because I’ve never been to any of the old Chef Harold Dietrle restaurants, but I’ve had my eye on The Marrow for months now. I watched him and cheered for him as he won the first season of “Top Chef”, and then I was so excited to live in New York City when he opened…
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April Bloomfield’s Salvation Taco
Having eaten a whole suckling pig at Chef April Bloomfield’s The Breslin a couple of years ago, I was excited to see what she could do with one of my comfort foods: tacos. What made Salvation Taco even more appealing to me is that it’s on 39th Street, just south of my boyfriend’s apartment, in this part of the Murray Hill neighborhood that’s mostly filled with highrises and Irish pubs meant to attract the after-work crowd. (It was ridiculously dark in the restaurant, so please excuse my heavily-lightened pictures.) 5 Island Rum, coconut horchata, cold-brewed coffee, Fernet Vallet, cinnamon and vanilla I’ve secretly loved the totally-Americanized horchatas I’ve had with…
- 4.5, celebrity chef, great for dates, italian, jeans-appropriate, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, west village, wine-paired menu
The Lunch Tasting Menu at Babbo
Our first trip to Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich’s Babbo was way, way back in 2010, before we had visited NYC’s Italian heavy-hitters like Torrisi Italian Specialties and Del Posto. At the time, I said that Babbo was doing Italian food better than anyone in its category in my usual superlative-laden way, and three years later, my boyfriend and I wanted to see how it’s holding up. This is the four-course lunch tasting menu at $49 with an extra pasta course each for $20 and $35 for wine pairings: marinated eggplant with pickled chilies, Pecorino and black garlic vinaigrette Very appetizing thanks to the bright vinegar notes. Just a touch…
- 4.5, american (new), celebrity chef, french, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, upper east side, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Daniel
I called our first visit to Daniel back in 2011 “as close to perfect a meal as Kamran and I have had in NYC”. It was our first time at a restaurant with three Michelin stars and our first time eating one of these over-the-top, wine-paired, France-fueled tasting menus. Since then, we’ve been to all but one of the three-Michelin-starred places (if anyone wants to put in a good word for Masa, I’m listening) and have basically had so much good food that we’ve started to question whether or not it’s been a mistake to ruin ourselves for mediocre food, so we decided it was time to go back to…
- 4, american (new), celebrity chef, great for dates, jeans-appropriate, meatpacking, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, wine-paired menu
Colicchio & Sons Tasting Menu
Tom Colicchio is special to my boyfriend and me, and not just because we’ve considered basing vacation plans solely on being able to visit the restaurants of “Top Chef” contestants. (Really just Michael Voltaggio’s.) Not only did we spend our last anniversary at Craft, but our first tasting menu there held the title of The Best Meal of My Life for the longest time. My first Craftbar pork belly is the standard by which I’ve judged all others, and we celebrated Valentine’s Day 2010 at Colicchio & Sons shortly after its opening. (My pictures from that were used in an NPR article making fun of food bloggers’s awful pictures. YES!)…
- 4, celebrity chef, chelsea, good for groups, great for dates, italian, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, wine-paired menu
Del Posto’s Eight-Course Captain’s Tasting Menu
When I wrote in my Torrisi Italian Specialties review that Italian food in NYC is terrible, bland, and uninspired, the good people of the Chowhound message boards went crazy, telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about if I hadn’t been to Del Posto, the Joe Bastianich/Lidia Bastianich/Mario Batali behemoth with one Michelin star. So in the name of knowing what I’m talking about, my boyfriend took me there for the $165, eight-course Captain’s Menu for a tasting of Chef Mark Ladner’s finest. Our first impression was that the place was gigantic and cavernous, decorated in dark, heavy fabrics that made it seem like the perfect setting…
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Long-Lost Brunch at The Dutch
I looked at my blog yesterday and realized it’s been almost two months since I posted here. I skipped the entire month of November. And you know I’ve been eating this whole time–and how. I have an Eleven Madison Park to write up, a Jean-Georges, a couple of Momofuku Kos . . . but I’m lazy, so I’m just going to post some photos from a trip to The Dutch this summer with my boyfriend and our friends Nik and Marko. It was getting buzz from the second it opened thanks to its chef, Andrew Carmellini, not only being super but having another restaurant with Robert De Niro. And I…
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Opening Week at Pig and Khao
My friend Ash, a food blogger in her own right, heard about Pig and Khao (get it? cow?) from her sister, who must have a Google alert for the words “pig face salad” to have found out about this place so fast. We detoured from our already-scheduled dinner in Ktown last night and headed to the Lower East Side instead to catch this Filipino/Thai collaboration between former “Top Chef” contestant Leah Cohen and the Fatty Crew (of Fatty Crab and Fatty ‘Cue) on its second night in business. Cutest pig butt ever, am I right? The promise of bottomless tap beer in the garden was tempting, but I couldn’t resist…
- 4.5, american (new), celebrity chef, jeans-appropriate, lower east side, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, wine-paired menu
wd-50 Attempts the Reinvention
wd~50 is one of the first restaurants my boyfriend and I visited once we agreed that while some couples exercise together and some couples vacation together, we were going to be a couple who ate really fantastically over-the-top meals together. We celebrated our second anniversary with a few savory courses and the five-course dessert tasting and then went back for the full tasting menu, which included dishes that we still talk about years later as iconic examples of molecular gastronomy. When we heard that the menu format had changed to celebrate wd-50’s ninth anniversary, we knew it was time to go back again. The “From the Vault” menu is five…
