i am a country bumpkin
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Look Hotter and Get a Better Table
I saw a great Q&A on Chow.com today entitled “Too Frumpy for the Good Seats?” in which a woman asked if she and her friend were relegated to the old people’s section of a restaurant’s dining room because she wasn’t dressed like a tramp. This is something I wonder to myself allllllllllllll of the time, because while my boyfriend always pairs snazzy blazers with cute t-shirts and sweater vests and looks better than anyone else everywhere we go, you’ll never see me in a cocktail dress and stilettos. I would hope I still look nice, but my style trends more toward granny-in-pearls than hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold. So when we got seated in…
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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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Enjoying a Diet Coke After a Meal Does Not Make Me Lowbrow
My boyfriend and I had just finished a 3-hour, 9-course meal at Seäsonal. He had ordered a coffee, and I had ordered a Diet Coke, and our food was quietly digesting as we discussed what I should do with my life. The table next to us, which was approximately six inches from ours in true NYC fashion, had been mostly well-behaved all night. Two of the four people seemed to be dating, and the guy had brought along a British friend who was new to the city, so the girl had brought along a friend for him. One of the girls had graduated from culinary school, but she wasn’t being…
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I Have an English Degree! Quit Trying to Eff with Me!
So, I just called Becco to confirm my reservation for tomorrow night, and the voice recording that picked up pronounced it BECK-o. Even though pretty much anyone who knows anything about Italian has told me it’s BAYCH-o. Should I take this as a clue that I’m not going to have the most authentic Italian experience possible tomorrow, despite this being a Lidia Bastianich restaurant? Also, do I need to start a blog entirely devoted to NYC restaurants with easily-mispronounced names? Why’s everyone always trying to make me look like an idiot?
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Yes, I Wear Flip-Flops to Expensive Restaurants, but
I’m really enjoying Foodspotting these days now that it’s getting more popular. You just upload your photo, tell the site what the dish is and what restaurant it’s from, and people “nom” it if they’ve had it or want to have it. There’s also a “Great Shot!” button that I use to encourage people who understand that it’s not okay to use a flash when they’re dining out. It’s a really great site for those of us who appreciate food but don’t get any recognition because we don’t do any cooking of our own. But today, while I was busy nomming the borscht at Veselka and the pork soup dumplings…
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Domino’s New Pizza Recipe: a Review
I love chain pizza. In order of preference, my favorites for years have been Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Donatos, Uno’s, and then Domino’s. I’m not embarrassed about it, nor do I think it indicates an inferior palate. In fact, my problem with pizza in New York City, which is held up as some sort of bastion of flavor and structure, is that it has neither. The sauce never has any spice*, the crust is always limp, the dough is either too moist or too dry, and the toppings are always sparse. As a person who loves pizza–I mean really loves pizza–and could probably eat it for every meal every day…
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21 Club Kicked Us Out
On Friday night, my boyfriend and I had reservations at 21 Club. Despite the fact that their Restaurant Week menu was fairly hum-drum and of course didn’t include their $30 burger–which is really the whole point in going–we decided to give it a shot simply because it’s one of those classic New York City restaurants you always see in programs like “I Love Lucy” and in movies like Rear Window. You’ll note that both of these examples are from the 50s and should have tipped us off as to what sort of attire would be required of us, yet neither of us thought a thing of it when Kamran donned…
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Financier’s Bûche de Noël
I figured it was too late to post about my first bûche de Noël experience before I left NYC to spend the holidays with my family in Ohio, but since Blondie & Brownie revealed that Financier is still selling them, it looks like I’m good to go. Being from the Midwest and being very much culturally sheltered, I had no idea what a bûche de Noël was until my office decided on a whim to order a couple of cakes from the downtown Financier Patisserie the week before Christmas. When I called at 3 p.m., the order-taker told me that they were down to a couple of roll cakes, one…
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Oh, maybe this is why I gained five pounds over Thanksgiving.
In the wake of Eating the Road‘s unapologetically gluttonous fast food romp, the Big McSausage Egg Surf & Turf Mac, I feel confident that the Internet can handle my own Tower of Gorge: click here for the full size, which is really, really enjoyable for a second until you think about it and puke That’s two McDonald’s cheeseburgers, an everything bagel with garden vegetable cream cheese from Tim Horton’s, and a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza, topped off with extra pickles. The pumpkin pie milkshake that I followed it up with isn’t pictured but was heartily enjoyed. My total caloric intake for that meal alone and not including the Cheesecake…
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Chowing at the Circleville Pumpkin Show
I grew up ten minutes from Circleville, Ohio, and have such fond memories of going to the Circleville Pumpkin Show as a kid that flying home to Ohio from NYC every year for it just seems natural. And I’m not alone in my venture: millions of people come from all over to world simply to visit “the best free show on Earth”. My friends and I are pretty up front about the fact that there’s nothing to do at the Pumpkin Show but eat. Luckily, we don’t need another reason to go. This year’s feast included: Deep-fried Buckeyes. Buckeyes being Ohio’s state nut. Except that these are peanut butter balls…