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Macaron Day NYC 2011!
I missed Macaron Day NYC last year and had to read about it after the fact, so you can bet I was on top of it this year, watching the website and following the planner of the big day, @francoispayard, on Twitter. When the website revealed the date, it happened to be the very weekend my boyfriend and #1 dining partner would be out of town, celebrating Persian New Year in California with his family. I was distraught! He encouraged me to go with someone else, but I couldn’t think of anyone who’d be able to keep up with me for an entire afternoon of meringue-chowing. A few hours later,…
- 5, celebrity chef, columbus circle, french, great for dates, restaurant reviews, Uncategorized, vegetarian-friendly
Per Se – French – Columbus Circle
Proving I like seafood enough to make a trip to Per Se worthwhile has been my goal for a couple of years now. I’ve made an effort to eat every oyster, every bit of fish roe, and every octopus mosaic my boyfriend, Kamran, has offered me in the hope that I could weasel the tasting menu out of him. So when he finally relented, it felt like a real victory for me. Even if he really just wanted to reward himself for finishing the New York bar exam. Getting a reservation at Per Se is quite a complicated maneuver, at least in our experience. We watched OpenTable for weeks and…
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goodburger – Burgers – Midtown East
The only time I’d tried goodburger, my boyfriend and I had ordered it for delivery, and while we didn’t exactly have any complaints other than a half-melted shake, it wasn’t the sort of burger we’d seek out repeatedly. So I was admittedly pleased when I received an e-mail from goodburger’s PR firm asking me to try out their revamped menu and offering up a list of reasons why the new goodburger is a better goodburger: a tastier bun, the freshest toppings, and a burger made with Pat LaFreida beef and cooked on a open flame in a green-certified restaurant. One of their six locations is just down the street from…
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Pi Day 2011!
This is how my co-workers and I celebrated Pi Day yesterday: I lured everyone to the kitchen with promises of “gourmet apple pie” and “artisan ice cream”. I secretly don’t think anyone was disappointed.
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Exciting New Ratings System
After an excellent lunch at goodburger last weekend (review forthcoming!), my boyfriend and I left talking about the rating I’d give it, and we ran into a problem. Up to this point, I’ve been using the same ratings scale for everything from super-fine dining to interesting supermarket finds, which is of course this: When we started talking about goodburger’s rating, though, we realized that comparing a burger to a nine-course tasting menu with wine pairings is a little ridiculous. So I made up a lovely little donut hole graphic to be used in rating cheaper restaurants. I thought it was sooooooo clever. But most of my friends agreed it looked…
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Free Starbucks Petites!
Starbucks rolled out a freebie promotion today to introduce their new line of Petites: eight different flavors of cake in different bite-sized forms. Now through March 12th, any time you purchase a drink at Starbucks from 2 to 5 p.m., you’ll be able to choose from the Birthday Cake Pop, Lemon Sweet Square, Red Velvet Whoopie Pie, Salted Caramel Sweet Square, Carrot Cake Cupcake, Peanut Butter Cupcake, Rocky Road Cake Pop, and Tiramisu Cake Pop. My co-worker just got the Birthday Cake Pop, and it was the moistest yellow cake covered in icing and sprinkles and put on a stick. Adorable! Starbucks is promoting the fact that they’re all under…
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Kellogg’s NYC in Times Square
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My Pick for America’s Next Great Restaurant
Thanks to a tip from Grub Street, my boyfriend and I hurried to Grand Central on Friday afternoon to pig out on foods inspired by the new NBC show “America’s Next Great Restaurant” and have our picture taken with Bobby Flay so I could later deface it with inappropriate Sharpie drawings. The pop-up automat was serving mac & cheese, marinated chickpeas, grilled cheese, fried chicken sliders, and Spanish meatballs to preview some of the ideas presented by the would-be restauranteurs on last night’s premiere episode: Bobby wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but the meatball made up for it: Did any of you catch the show? It was especially interesting to…
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Convivio Closed!
Tucked away in the neighborhood of Tudor City, on a hill overlooking 42nd Street, Convivio was a hidden gem in Midtown East. Even as someone who’s let down by Italian food in New York City time and again, I thought Convivio deserved its Michelin star. I passed it every day on my way to my boyfriend’s apartment after work, and coming home from a night out, we’d often stop and look at the menu posted on the stone wall outside the restaurant. Just last weekend, we talked about coming by soon to enjoy the very reasonably-priced prix-fixe. But when we passed Convivio today, we saw this: click to see larger…
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Tocqueville – French/American (New) – Union Square
My boyfriend and I ended up at Tocqueville for the first time almost by accident, but serendipitously, it turned out to be one of our most memorable dining experiences, and we were excited to return for their three-course, $39 lunch prix-fixe with wine pairings. I clearly wasn’t as excited about actually blogging the experience, since I’m just now getting around to it after five months, but that doesn’t reflect at all how I felt about the meal. I think Tocqueville is one of (if not the) most overlooked and underappreciated restaurants in NYC, yet I have a hard time recommending it because of its atmosphere. It’s not for everyone. It’s…
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Crêpes du Nord – French/Scandinavian – Financial District
It only makes sense that the ladies behind Goodies First and donuts4dinner would team up for a crepes luncheon, right? And we even had the good sense not to skip straight to dessert. Crêpes du Nord opened about a year ago just a few minutes from my office in the Financial District, but that whole Stone Street restaurant conglomerate sort of scares me with its frat house feel. The street is closed to traffic and filled with umbrella-shaded picnic tables, which would be lovely if they weren’t constantly crowded with light blue dress shirts and uncomfortable heels. But that’s New York, I guess. I had a gift certificate, which made…
Reviews of the Best Restaurants in NYC
