therese
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Posts posted by therese
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My husband and I are just back from a week's holiday in NYC and I'm summarizing our experience here. I posted in detail to threads for particular restaurants, but have some additional info here for anybody who is planning on a similar trip.
We booked our hotel on Priceline. This was my first time using the service, and I got help in figuring out how to do it from two web sites, Bidding for Travel, and Better Bidding, both of which give very good background info and can also give you an idea of the properties you're likely to get in any particular area.
We ended up at Intercontinental the Barclay, a 4 star property, for $160 per night before taxes, etc. The hotel lists this room at $329 per night (also before taxes, etc.). Room very nice, large by NYC standards and recently renovated. Bathroom also recently renovated. Turn down service every night, in room coffee (though the usual not great stuff). Not the most luxurious place I've ever stayed, but then I've stayed in some pretty swank places.
The hotel's convenient to the Lexington Ave trains, which you catch two/three blocks north at 51st St or six blocks south at 42nd St/GCT. Shopping, Central Park, and theater district all reasonable walks. Lots of dining options in the area.
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i'm staying at gaylord opryland hotel, so would love to hear about the eateries on site, as well as in other areas of nashville (downtown?). i won't have a car, but don't mind cabbing or grabbing a shuttle in search of good food.
Change hotels. Now. Really, I'm not kidding. Opryland Hotel is not only way outside of town, it's also it's own little slice of hell. Enormous place, really several huge hotels linked by miles and miles and miles of low ceilinged hallways (pay attention to the carpet patterns, as they'll help you navigate) and atria. The atria are sort of cool, as they're densely planted with lots of interesting things, but they do not make up for the other shortcomings of this hotel. The rooms range from okay to downright unpleasant, and the food on property is icky, all of it.
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Lunch this Friday in Chinatown. Husband had other plans, which was unfortunate as I wanted dim sum and dim sum is much better when you've got at least one other person along, and ideally even more so that you can try lots of things.
My first choice was Hop Kee/Sun Hop Shing (two names, same street address at 21 Mott). But as I was about to walk in a woman who'd just entered walked out and said that they weren't serving dim sum. I took her word for this (and then realized that I never take anybody's word for anything, so I must have been suffering from very low blood sugar indeed). My second choice was Dim Sum Go Go, but I couldn't find E. Broadway on the map (really low blood sugar) and so decided that Sweet-n-Tart would work, particularly as it was after noon and they prepare the items as they're ordered. Plus it was right across the street at 20 Mott.
Three floors, with the top floor apparently not serving at that time. The middle floor was nice, with windows across the front and a nice fish tank for visual interest. If you're facing away from the window you can see into the kitchen, so also an interesting view. Service fine, especially by dim sum standards.
Since I was alone and couldn't have too many items I stuck to basics: stuffed eggplant (excellent), shrimp and asparagus steamed dumplings (very good), vegetable dumplings (not amazing, with undercooked contents and too-thick wrapper). I wanted something different as a sweet, and considered one of the sweet soups, but decided against that option as I was going for bubble tea later in the day. So I chose glutinous rice with hazelnut filling. This turned out to very different indeed: a white chocolate truffle (like a Lindor candy) with a hazelnut in the center wrapped in glutinous rice/mochi and rolled in coconut. Interesting, but not what I was in the mood for.
So it was fine, considering, and next time I want to try some of the more interesting dessert items.
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Dinner last night at Aburiya Kinnosuke.
We'd been there earlier in the week to meet (but not dine with) a friend who'd just finished his meal and had enjoyed it. So we booked for Friday night at 7:00, as we had other plans at 10:00. You'd think that booking in person would be easy, but the pleasant young man looking to fit us into the schedule was having a rough time of it, finally fitting us in to a small "box" room. In the end I think we'd have been fine just showing up in spite of it being Friday.
Crowd largely though not exclusively Japanese.
We ordered a bit randomly, and things arrived from the kitchen in similarly random fashion.
The first dish to arrive was something that had been billed as "pumpkin salad." And though it was definitely made of kabocha, it was also not exactly what I expected of a salad, as it was hot mashed kabocha. Tasty, but not my idea of salad.
We were offered two options for chicken tsukune, one described as "salty," the other with egg. We chose the former, and it was very nice, served with chewy bits of dried seaweed.
Braised pork belly with (I think) turnip was delicious.
We chose tongue from the robata grill. Nice, and served with fresh wasabi.
Eggplant, served with shaved bonito and ginger.
Cod roe, cooked on a shichirin at the table. My single favorite dish.
Tofu wrapped in nori and deep fried, served with a dipping sauce.
Soup of the day, miso with mushrooms (for my husband, who was cold).
For dessert my husband had white sesame seed pudding (served with ice cream) and I had warabi mochi. I'd not had these before: they're little blobs of mochi (except that I think this type of mochi is made with bracken starch, not rice), rolled in a brown powder (kinako, ground dried soybeans?) and drizzled with a sweet brown syrup of uncertain provenance. My second favorite dish of the meal.
Service very friendly and helpful, with marginal English skills offset by our server's enthusiasm.
Altogether a lovely meal, and not that expensive in the end: all of the dishes I've listed along with two draft Kirin, one "lime sour" (a sort of spritzer of shoju and club soda that comes with a half lime and your own little mini juicer; other citrus options available as well as one with umeboshi that I tried on our first visit), and a small carafe of cold sake came to $108 before tip.
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No thread specifically dealing with Maison, but since I figured that anybody considering dining there might find this thread I'm posting to it, basically as a public service.
We ended up there last Sunday for lunch prior to a matinee show. I'd planned on going to Molly's, a bar/pub sort of place where I'd eaten last summer, but we were running short on time and I basically just plugged in our coordinates on OpenTable and came up with Maison. Clearly nothing fancy, but then we weren't up for fancy and they had breakfast-y sorts of things and that would work since we'd not had breakfast yet.
Husband had eggs Copenhagen which he described as acceptable but certainly not worth a second visit.
I, on the other hand, in one of those moments of gallic nostalgia which in retrospect seems so clearly misguided, chose a crepe. Said crepe was described as ham, cheese, and egg. When I ordered it I specifically asked about the egg: on top of the crepe and runny, not inside and scrambled or otherwise fully cooked.
So when said crepe arrived with a fully cooked egg plopped on top of it I was unhappy. Not unhappy enough to send it back, as our orders had taken quite a long time and we were in a time crunch, but still very unhappy. After sampling the crepe underneath I realized that no amount of runny eggy goodness was going to rescue it in any case, so just finished it and paid up.
It was, at least, a small serving.
Interestingly the crowd actually included a lot of French visitors or ex-pats. More gallic nostalgia, I suppose.
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Glad you enjoyed your visit, Melissa, though it's too bad that you had to eat so much food downtown, at both the Marriott and Azio. I'm not surprised that your hotel breakfast didn't include grits, as of course almost everybody eating those breakfasts will come from someplace other than the southeast and pretty much nobody will touch grits. Sausage gravy not a local thing so far as I know.
The white truffle chicken salad sandwich at Watershed is indeed excellent. Seems like the sandwich with fig conserve used to be lamb, though it's been so long since I had anything other than the salmon croquettes or one of the vegetable plates that I can recall for sure.
And you didn't get to Dekalb Farmers Market, did you?
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The lighting remains at a provincial NY level and too dim for what I think of as a world class restaurant. Service can be slow at times, and I suspect intentionally so to allow time to digest when a very long menu is undertaken.
It is a bit dark in the dining room, now that you mention it. And it's positively gloomy in the WC.
We sat down to dinner (having had cocktails in the bar while waiting for the rest of of our party) at about 6:45 and barely made the 11:something train back to the city. About as long as I spend on a comparable meal in Atlanta, but my travel time is only 5-10 minutes each way.
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In all, really really terrific.
Yep. Really, really terrific. The only thing different about my meal was that my pre-dinner cocktail was a margarita made with sorrel, using a prep that maintained it's intense green color. Very cool.
Mildly controversial ssues addressed here upthread include the decor, service style, and bread. I think the first is perfectly suited to the locale, the second is similarly appropriate (though this may reflect some changes as per Fabulous Food Babe's remarks about the wait staff's dress), and I loved the bread. I loved the bread so much that I kept on eating it long after I should have stopped.
Oh, and I have absolutely no recall of the rice pudding, and what was the flavor of the souffle?
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Therese, I know this is off the topic of this thread, but I just want to say that if I were someone who liked Sidecars and I were to find myself near the mid-50s in Manhattan, I would be sure to stop in the Bar at Town (56th between 5th & 6th, north side of the street) and order one of their Cardinal Sidecars -- a really superior version of that drink.
Way off topic, though I suppose if a Cardinal Sidecar were red (and I gather it's not) then I could somehow compare it to borscht.
I wouldn't have minded trying schav (which I've had, but never in a restaurant) if they'd had it, but I didn't notice it on the menu. Anywhere in town routinely serve it?
The closest thing I had this visit was the sorrel margarita at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Definitely not schav.
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Well, there I was posting merrily away re our dinner Wednesday night at Tintol, when eG's server went haywire yesterday afternoon and I lost it all.
So rather than recreate the post I'll just make the following points:
1. Excellent food all around, with mostly classic tapas.
2. Nice wine selection, and some interesting non-wine beverages including a passionfruit cocktail and various digestifs. I tried the mandarin-flavored one, proving that one need not necessarily order a sidecar to consume a sidecar equivalent.
3. Cool vibe, a bit night clubby but also relaxed. Staff welcoming and professional.
4. Great value overall, and incredibly great value considering that this place is in the theater district.
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You know, our waiter offered us tequila, too, in an obviously joking kind of way. We replied that what we really wanted were Alabama Slammers.
Slender guy with curly brown hair and soulful eyes? Or maybe all the waiters at Tocqueville have taken to suggesting to their female customers that they might prefer tequila shots to the usual after lunch coffee.
I was actually stunned (briefly, to be sure) into a state of speechlessness.
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Do you remember if the boiled dumplings were rolled in dried bread crumbs and then lightly sauteed in butter? This is how my grandmother would do it. I always wait (and usually miss) making these stuffed with apricots during their short season. I should just get on with it and make them now and serve them as they did with just a fruit sauce.
Seems like the liver dumplings in the soup might have been done that way, but the quark dessert dumpling wasn't. I can't say I'm necessarily the most reliable reporter in this instance, though, as I've now had way too much food in way too short a period of time.
(Off topic aside: Based on your past recs I sent a friend attending a conference in Atlanta this week to Mary Mac's. I'm jealous I wasn't there....)I hope he/she liked it. You did point out the importance of correctly choosing the side dishes, right? Emphasing balance of color and texture, etc.?
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Lunch at Barney Greengrass yesterday. We'd not researched ahead of time, just took the advice of a friend who mentioned that he always ate there whenever he visited the Natural History museum, so decided to try it.
Tiny dining room about half full when we arrived, and I'd say that we brought the average age in the room down about three decades. I'm not even from NYC, much less the UWS, and I was experiencing serious nostalgia.
Having walked from E 48th we were hungry and thirsty when we arrived, and I ordered a glass of borscht. I was expecting red borscht, so the pink dairy version was a bit disconcerting. Fortunately so disconcerting to my husband that I got to drink the whole thing by myself and so restore my blood sugar to levels compatible with life.
Husband had a tongue sandwich (he loves tongue so much that we've actually made it at home). Salty, very good.
I had matzoh ball soup, which was very good but not as good as my hometown version (Royal Bagel in Toco Hill in Atlanta---note that matzoh ball soup is not part of my cultural heritage, and so my preference is just personal) followed by an appetizer portion of sturgeon. My first time eating sturgeon (I think) and so I've no point of reference, but it was delicious.
Staff all very friendly and service prompt. We got a couple of mini black and whites for dessert as we waddled our way out back out down Amsterdam Ave.
We never did make it to the museum. Maybe today.
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Dinner Tuesday night at Blaue Gans.
Very pleasant space, with a high curved white ceiling, posters and other ephemera on the walls, and very comfortable banquettes running around the room. We got there about 7:30 to find the dining room about half full, and scored a corner table in the back from which we could survey the proceedings and (inadvertently) overhear our neighbors. The table to one side of us turned twice while we were there, but it would have been difficult to tell if you hadn't been paying attention, as each party comprised two youngish business sorts talking about the same sorts of things.
Service very good, informal as suits the space. Water glasses refilled promptly, cutlery replaced as appropriate, etc.
I'd had lunch at Tocqueville earlier in the day, so took the beef consomme with liver dumpling to start and another appetizer, duck salad with chestnuts, to follow. The liver dumpling was coarser than versions I've had before, presumably reflecting the various chefs' grandmothers' taste in this manner. The crepe noodles (there's presumably a name for these) very nice. Consomme strongly flavored. Duck salad was sliced rare duck breast, so a bit like a carpaccio with a small green salad (server joked that it was one of the two green vegetables in the place). I love chestnuts, so nice seeing them on a menu.
Husband had a special to start, wurstsalat. The "salat" is a bit of a misnomer, as there's not much in the way of anything from the plant world in it unless you count the sliced cornichons scattered throughout the mayonnaise-y julienned wurst. It was also a large serving, very nearly breaking the "never eat anything larger than your head" rule. He managed to eat half and then followed it with jaeger schnitzel and spaetzle. Excellent, with very fluffy spaetzle and again an enormous serving.
For dessert we had sorbets (husband) and quark dumpling with strawberry-rhubarb compote (for me, as I'd wisely saved room).
Wine was Nittnaus Blauer Zweigelt. I can't recall what we paid altogether, but it wasn't much considering the quality of the food. We managed to make up for it at Pegu Club later on, of course...
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Maybe your sidecar side-swiped your memory!
Just kidding.Very possibly.
And there might have been some sort of intermezzo in there as well, but neither nor husband nor I can recall it if so.
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Dinner Monday night at Aquavit ended our long run of unpleasant food experiences in New York.
We had an 8:00 curtain, so arrived early to find the staff to patron ratio running about 10:1. Beautiful dining room, elegant and comfortable.
Husband started with champagne, and me with a sidecar, bringing me to the one slightly perplexing moment of the evening: our waiter's query (after a trip to the bar) as to whether I'd prefer my sidecar made with brandy or rum. Um, brandy. Somebody somewhere apparently makes sidecars with rum. Unsugared glass rim, but hardly anybody does that.
Two amuses bouche, neither of which I can remember precisely: one a foamy soup with some bits in it, the other a little wafer topped with American sturgeon roe and a dab of something described as (I think) egg cream.
We chose from the pre-theater menu: wagyu carpaccio and slow-cooked salmon for me, salmon appetizer and lamb for my husband. The carpaccio was the single most interesting dish, as it comes wrapped around pureed taro spiked with brisket, topped with julienne green papaya and fresh horseradish, and at the last minute is dressed with a mushroom broth. Very flavorful, but a lot more food than one expects. In fact, all of the courses were large, so large that we made a point of reassuring our server that it had all been great, just too much food.
Dessert for both of us was a frozen parfait of goat cheese with passion fruit puree and berry sorbet.
We skipped coffee in the interest of time and were sent home with small boxes of ginger snaps. Great for breakfast the next morning.
Overall an excellent meal with excellent service, and very good value to boot.
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I love licorice and anise flavored candies. Some of my favorites are Lakrits (like plain M&M's, but with licorice in the shell), Allsorts, and Grisettes (a hard candy from Montpellier). Recently tried another anise flavored hard candy, Anis de l'Abbaye de Flavigny and really liked it.
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Is the party over at two of Midtown's former hotspots.I went to one last Thursday at 8pm without a reservation and to be blunt,sparse would be a charitable description of the crowd. the other I drove by on the way home and there wasn't anyone on the patio-a nice night-and the front tables .visible through the expansive front window,were empty.Guess the fact that they both have had their big name chefs recently move on to other venues has had some effect.
Which two Midtown hot spots are we talking about here? The second sounds like Spice, but you'll have to give us a hint about the first.
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Considering Aquavit for a pre-theater dinner tonight, and looking for some reassurance in light of some really underwhelming meals yesterday at Maison and Inagiku.
Any recent experiences? We'd likely order the pre-theater prix fixe, and if this happens to just be too hideous for words please let me know now.
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So I guess it depends on whether you mean "New York Chinese place" or "well-designed place affiliated with famous chef".
The latter, believe me.
I actually expected the food to be much worse and more expensive than it was, so my impression was shaped to some extent by low expectations.
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What's even weirder about that line is that I first heard it from a friend who is (well, was---he got bored with it and now does more general food writing and some other general sorts of things) a restaurant reviewer, and he made it one night over a less than fantastic dinner in a restaurant that he was reviewing.
Dinner last night was a great example of the principle. The husband's an old friend of mine, our spouses had never met. We ended up getting along really nicely, so pretty much would have enjoyed anything at all.
That said, it was a very pleasant experience overall. Very glam but comfortable space next to The Knitting Factory. Staff gracious, service excellent and friendly throughout. The menu's a bit of a hodge podge, and after reading through it we decided to leave the decisions up to the kitchen so that we could chat and all chose the tasting menu at $66 a person. The prices for a la carte items, by the way, are very reasonable, especially for this sort of place.
What we got (that I can recall):
tuna tartare with tapioca and lotus root chips
soba with cucumber
fried shrimp prepared two ways
peking duck (extra pancakes on request)
cod with ginger
shu mai
mushroom dumpling
asparagus with lotus root
molten chocolate cake with coconut ice cream
assortment of fresh fruit
banana spring rolls
Everything very good, if not necessarily amazing. Generally a bit on the salty side, so not ideal if you don't want to salt load. Servings on the large side, but you end up eating over several hours, so it doesn't feel too excessive until the end.
As for 66 being empty, it was quiet when we arrived for our 7:30 reservation, but filled up as the evening wore on, and was positively packed by the time we left. I'm pretty sure we were the oldest people in the restaurant, and the noise level is high: music and conversation bounce off the hard surfaces used throughout.
On balance a fun, high energy evening with reasonably priced well-prepared food.
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Then we'd better hurry, I suppose. Friends from NYC suggested it and I've agreed.
Sometimes dinner isn't about the food. I'll report back.
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Anybody been to 66 recently and care to report?
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Anything I should be sure to ask about if it's not on the menu? Anything to avoid? Are their wines adequate? Or should I go with the group to be sociable but plan to eat somewhere on my own, either before or after?
I've never been (which might tell you something right there) but at least it doesn't have "hellish tourist/conventioneer trap"written all over it and should be reasonable. The company's opening one of their smaller operations in downtown Decatur, so I may try it.
I'd eat with the group. You won't find anything all that much better downtown.
Bright lights, big city
in New York: Dining
Posted · Edited by therese (log)
So, what did we eat? Well, maybe the better question here is what didn't we eat?
Saturday
We arrived at LaGuardia in the early afternoon on Saturday and spent the chilly afternoon walking around Central Park and listening to music. We'd eaten lunch at the airport in Atlanta (Paschal's, in the adjacent bar, where I had meat loaf and collards---a person can go into withdrawal if she goes too long without collards) so didn't need to eat again until that evening.
We'd made plans for dinner with friends who've both worked in New York (he for a branch of city government, she for the UN) for the last twenty years or so. I'd only just met the wife the week before, and the husband was the brother of a friend from high school, so I asked them to pick them to pick the restaurant. When they suggested 66 I had to laugh, as I still recalled details of the Vanity Fair review from a few years ago and somehow couldn't quite imagine this couple there.
Dinner was fine (details in the link above) and afterwards we walked down to the WTC site and talked about what they'd done and where they'd been that day, etc. Since we hadn't planned on visiting the site this was a nice way to do it.
Home via train from the City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge station. Our friends were impressed that we'd already purchased MetroCards.