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Nougatine at Jean-Georges – French – Upper West Side
Dr. Boyfriend and I were convinced that we hadn’t gotten the true Jean-Georges experience at The Mark back in July and decided to try again with the tasting menu at the more established Nougatine. homemade ginger-lemon ale and passion-fruit-lime sodas Easily the best part of our last Jean-Georges meal, these proved to be a highlight at Nougatine, too. I cannot urge you enough to go to one of the Jean-Georges restaurants just to drink. I am so serious about it that I am not contracting the words cannot and I am. See the way the bottoms of the glasses are all dark? That is PURE FLAVOR, people. poblano and corn…
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Loving Chain Restaurants Does Not Make You a Bad Person
Last weekend, Dr. Boyfriend and I went to The Modern at MoMA for a tasting menu that included grilled foie gras with champagne-vinegar-preserved strawberries and a harissa tuile: This weekend, we’re going to Outback for a Bloomin’ Onion: The funny thing is that Dr. Boyfriend, I think, is waaaaaay more excited about Outback than he was about The Modern. He’s never been there and is under the impression that it’s just the chain version of Peter Luger. This is going to be awesome.
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Wechsler’s Currywurst – German – East Village
I would go to Wechsler’s every day. It’s one of those quintessential East Village finds that’s tiny, cozy, and cheap, yet unlike most of the East Village, it’s somewhere you can actually take a date. Not, like, a snobby date. A date like me. Basically, I just want to go back to Wechsler’s, and I want you to go with me. Anyway, here’s a picture of some meat covered in some sauce: That’s what currywurst is: sausage, sliced and covered in a saucy blend of tomato and curry powder. It’s traditionally a German street food, but when I recommended Wechsler’s to my friend Steve, he reported back the next day…
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The Lemongrass Grill Curry Puff – Financial District – Thai
The curry puff is common to Thai, Malaysian, and Singaporean cuisine, but none of those cuisines is common to me, so the first time I tried one, I was in heaven. Sort of like an empanada, sort of like a samosa, it’s pastry stuffed with a thick curry, chicken, potatoes, and onion and deep-fried. Since that original curry puff, I’ve tried as many as I can find in NYC, but I always go back to the one at Lemongrass Grill. It’s the flakiest, the curry-est, and the most way-too-delicious-to-last-more-than-two-bites. The puff isn’t hard like a samosa’s, so the filling gets to mingle with it. But really, it wouldn’t be anything…
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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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Pumpkin Cake at Dim Sum Go Go – Dim Sum – Chinatown
This is the entire point of eating at Dim Sum Go Go, a sleek little dim sum joint on the edge of Chinatown that won’t make your head spin with gaudy gold decorations like the famed Jing Fong: It’s listed on the menu as “pumpkin cake“, and I didn’t even bother trying to get more information about it from the waiter before I ordered. If it’s pumpkin-flavored, I’m there. It’s pretty clearly not cake, though. It’s more like a firm custard with a little bit of gelatin thrown in, thick enough that you can slice it but wiggly enough that it’ll fall onto your neighbor’s lap if you get distracted…
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Mark (St. Mark’s Burger) – Burgers – East Village
Mark is cheap, delicious, and comfortable. The menu is tiny: sliders, fries, chili, pie, milkshakes, beer. Hidden away under a staircase on St. Mark’s between 2nd and 3rd Aves., it’s a long, skinny place that looks like a bar but feels like a café, with an open front wall, little ottomans to sit on, and no crowd at all when I was there with my friends Meredith and Jordan. Our waitress described these as “like White Castle but better”, which is an understatement. They do taste a bit like White Castle’s, but they’re at least twice the size, meaning you don’t need a sack of 10 to get full, and…