neighborhood
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La Silhouette – French/American (New) – Hell’s Kitchen
After reading a short blurb about La Silhouette and its owner, Sally Chironis’s, connection to Le Bernadin in the New York magazine food blog, Grub Street, I checked out the menu and found that I wanted to try every single thing on it. Well, except for maybe the Mixed Baby Lettuce salad, but the inclusion of a snail risotto made up for that. So my boyfriend and I booked a reservation for last Saturday, a mere two weeks after their opening. Their liquor license wasn’t in place yet, so we brought a bottle each of Eins Zwei Dry 2008 and Chateau Padouen Sauternes 2006 with us, which were immediately put…
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One if by Land, Two if by Sea – American (New) – West Village
So I forgot to charge my camera battery before we went to One if by Land, Two if by Sea for Restaurant Week, and I was reminded that what photographers always say about great pictures coming not from great cameras but from great photographic eyes is entirely untrue. I had to use this seven-megapixel Sony with the tiniest LCD, and it just didn’t compare in any way to my Canon S90. Of course my Canon doesn’t compare in any way to a real DSLR, so now I’m wondering how different my pictures would be if I went crazy and decided I’m willing to lug ten pounds of camera around with…
- 5, american (new), celebrity chef, french, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, upper east side
Daniel – French/American (New) – Upper East Side
Having left both Bar Boulud and DBGB feeling like I was missing what all the fuss was about, I was hopeful but not convinced about Daniel and the third Michelin star it received this year. To celebrate my boyfriend, Kamran, finishing law school(!), we ordered the 6-course tasting menu with wine pairings. We had hoped to try the 8-course menu, but it’s not available on the weekends due to the increased crowds, and in the end, there were more than enough surprises that we definitely didn’t need the extra courses. amuse bouche: parsnip mousse, green apple, duck prosciutto around crostini The texture of this was as creamy as it looks.…
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Soba Totto – Japanese – Midtown East
Soba Totto is one of the true gems of Midtown East: it’s delicious, simply but beautifully appointed, and surprisingly not overpriced. My boyfriend and I were pleased to both find ourselves with a day off last week so we could finally enjoy Totto at lunch. We were totally in the mood for chicken meatballs and were sad to find that they don’t serve yakitori at lunch, but it forced us to try something we may have liked even better. Chicken Soboro Don: sautéed minced chicken, poached egg, scallions, seaweed, rice I was worried I might actually be playing it too safe by ordering this. I’m trying to push myself to…
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The Modern at MoMA – American (New)/French – Midtown West
The Modern inside the Museum of Modern Art always shows up on NYC’s Restaurant Week list and always gets completely booked well before I’m even aware Restaurant Week is upon me. This summer, my boyfriend and I attempted a walk-in and almost got laughed out of the place, so we decided to plan ahead and save it for our anniversary. Here’s the tasting menu, served in the formal dining room: amuse bouche: porcini- and rosemary-dusted popcorn The flavoring on this was too uneven to make much impact, but we liked the idea of it a lot. amuse bouche: deconstructed vichyssoise: russet potato, leek soup sphere Quite an impressive presentation, right?…
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Dirty Quesadilla
I have basically a nonstop craving for the Quesadilla Enorme from Baby Bo’s Cantina in Murray Hill. There’s always a crazy wait to get into the place, so discovering that they deliver to my boyfriend’s apartment is the best/worst thing to happen to my midsection in a long time. The Quesadilla Enorme is a giant tortilla splayed out and covered in cheese, potatoes, a dark rich BBQ sauce, and your choice of protein, covered with another tortilla, grilled until the edges get perfectly crisp, topped with dollops of guacamole, creamy chipotle sauce, jalapenos, and sour cream, and served with chips and salsa OMG. I always order the pork version, but…
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Michael Jordan’s The Steak House N.Y.C. – Steak – Midtown East
If you can get past the fact that it’s owned by Michael Jordan and is called Michael Jordan’s The Steak House N.Y.C. (what?), this place is actually a decent steakhouse with atmosphere that beats the usual Harvard-crimson carpeting and gold-lacquered everything. My boyfriend and I talked casually about visiting The Steak House every time we spotted it overlooking Grand Central Terminal, but it took seeing Chef Michael Vignola on an episode of The Food Network’s “Chopped” to make us seriously consider a reservation. On the show, the chef was super-creative–quite the opposite of what we expect from someone just cooking steaks and lobster all day–and we were excited to see…
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Babbo – Italian – West Village
It’s hard to get into Mario Batali’s Babbo. They don’t do online reservations, and week after week when I called, they would tell me they were full. At one point, my boyfriend and I said, “Screw Batali! We don’t want his relatively cheap ($75) tasting menu with also-cheap ($50) wine pairings if it means being jerked around like this!” But once we finally did get in, we realized why the place is always full and why our persistence was totally worth it. We sat in the upstairs portion, which has a lovely skylight that made me excited to take photos. The problem was that as the sun set, so did…
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Aquavit – Scandinavian – Midtown East
Two days after Marcus Samuelsson won the second season of “Top Chef: Masters”, my dining companions and I settled in at the bistro of his restaurant Aquavit and prepared to be wowed. Instead, we were merely contented. matjes herring (mild salt herring), roasted yellow beets, scallions, sour cream herring sampler, boiled potatoes, Vasterbotten cheese cherry and wild boar salad sage-roasted Penobscot (Maine?) chicken breast, broccoli rabe, Swiss chard, snap peas, spring onion crème Undersalted! Bland! Only slightly saved by the delicious sauce! smörgåsbord! cold-poached salmon, red quinoa, wax beans, chervil hollandaise Nik and Kamran Jack and Anthony (they’re single and like good food, ladies!) chocolate pot de crème cardamom pound…
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French Macarons at Financier
As a lover of intense flavor experiences and creamy desserts, meringue cookies are about the least interesting treat in the entire world for me. They look nice and all, but their taste is always too weak, and biting into them is like biting into a hunk of diabetes-inducing chalk. But after being served a mango macaron at The Wright for my birthday, I keep finding myself unexpectedly craving those little French cookies. They have the tiniest layer of crunch on their outsides, easily broken just by holding them, but then their centers are somehow super-moist, almost like raw cookie dough. And their flavors are always wildly dense, like heavily-concentrated versions…