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Atera and the Art of Foraging
The moment the four-star, accolade-laden reviews started rolling in for Atera–not all of them from people who had actually been to the restaurant, naturally–I called for a reservation. And then freed up every Saturday for a month in case the waitlist paid off and my boyfriend and I could get a spot. It was being compared to Momofuku Ko, our favourite restaurant in NYC, and Brooklyn Fare, our favourite restaurant in NYC to hate on. The chef, Matthew Lightner, trained at the #1 restaurant in the world and the #3 restaurant in the world, was named Best New Chef and Rising Star and everything else in Portland, and has brought…
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What I Ate at the OC Fair
My boyfriend’s family has lived in places like Iran and Idaho and Ohio but thankfully settled in California, giving me an excuse to visit once a year for sunning, beaching, and stuffing my face with his mom’s fine Persian cuisine. This year, we happened to pass some signs advertising the Orange County Fair on one of our many drives between his parents’ house and In-N-Out and decided to go one night. We rode the skyride, just like my sister and I used to with our mom as kids at the Ohio State Fair, until the year she happened to accidentally kick off her flip-flop while we were still up in…
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Wasabi KitKat?!
Everyone knows I’m only dating my boyfriend for the Persian cotton candy his family sends us, and similarly, my friend Roy had the good sense to find a girl who’d bring back candy for him from Japan. He first shared a green tea KitKat with me, which was nice and grass-tasting and not at all weird, partly because it was so mildly-flavored that it was almost like eating white chocolate. Then, he brought in what he claimed was a wasabi KitKat. I was pretty excited about the play between sweet and spicy, but biting into it, we didn’t notice any difference between it and the green tea bar. We decided…
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Restaurant Review: wd-50
Evidently finally seeing my review of our first dinner at wd~50 made my boyfriend crave some foams and powders, so before we left for Christmas vacation in our respective home states, we made a reservation to return. The only time we could get on Saturday night, even with a few weeks notice, was 6 p.m. Which means that despite the terrible economy, New Yorkers are still lining up to pay $200 each for dinner. We were oddly seated in the same exact table as last time, which happens to have a straight view into the kitchen, where we saw chef/owner Wylie Dufresne talking to Chef de Cuisine Jon Bignelli (who…
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Restaurant Review: wd-50
It was more than a year ago that I announced my impending trip to wd~50 on my personal blog and got a load of comments from my mostly-Ohioan readership that mostly talked about how ridiculously small and not-at-all-like-real-food the dish in the picture I posted was. I was skeptical, too, to be honest, but it turned out that the meal was fantastic–really, really fantastic–surprising, playful, and memorable. It must have overwhelmed me so much, though, that I failed to write about it, and my boyfriend has been bothering me about it ever since. Now that we have a January reservation to try the current tasting menu, I figured I owed…
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Office S’Mores
Fun things to do after hours at the office when you’re hungry: 1) Grab two space heaters and place them on the floor, facing one another. 2) Find a random metal rod on a nearby desk that may or may not be used to itch someone’s butt. 3) Procure leftover ghost-shaped Halloween marshmallows from the candy bowl at the reception desk. (Note that though marshmallows are orange and brown and may appear to be flavored, they are, in fact, just like white marshmallows.) 4) Stab the leftover ghost-shaped Halloween marshmallows with the random metal rod. 5) Hold the marshmallows between the opposing heaters for ten minutes. 6) Grow anxious and…
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Pretzel + Hot Dog = Pretzel Dog
It’s an Auntie Anne’s pretzel wrapped around a Nathan’s hot dog, and I ate it at the airport, which is really the only place you should be able to find a hot dog wrapped in a pretzel. This one only had 310 calories and 20 grams of fat, so I can’t wait to find a place that sells the JUMBO pretzel dog so I can get the full 600-calorie experience. I will be dipping that one in cheese sauce and wrapping a slice of pizza around each bite, justyouwaitandsee.
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Fishies with Their Skin Still on
I ate sardines prepared three ways tonight. Please don’t let this change the way you feel about me. Even if it changes the way I feel about myself.
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An Ugli Fruit and an Ugly Mug
My boyfriend has been visiting his family in California all week, and I was thinking this morning about how much I missed him. But then I found this photo: It may be pronounced OO-glee, but this grapefruit/orange/tangerine hybrid from Jamaica is about as pretty as Kamran’s face right there. We didn’t buy the fruit that night in Whole Foods, and honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t leave him there with it. (xoxo, Kam.)
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Otafuku’s Okonomiyaki in NYC
The New York magazine review of Otafuku says, “It’s very rare to find this stuff in New York. Consider yourself lucky.” Similarly, my boyfriend has been going on about this place for the entire nearly-three years I’ve known him. He went there on a date with a girl before my time and claims that while the date sucked, the food was life-changing. I don’t actually believe him about the date, but I was at least interested in the food. Otafuku is not a restaurant. It’s a hallway divided in two by a counter, with men cooking on one side and customers ordering on the other. There’s enough room for four…
Reviews of the Best Restaurants in NYC