Update on Restaurants to Try for 2014

We are 6 months into 2014 and I decided it was time to update my list of restaurants to try for 2014.  We have done a pretty good job of checking restaurants off the list, but we have a ways left to go.  I would like at least a 50% success rate (plus at least one of the runners up) by the end of the summer, which I think is definitely do-able.  I'm thinking Betony and another trip to Brooklyn to try either Pok Pok NY or Roberta's, but we will have to play it by ear.  I have been very pleased with the meals we had at all of the restaurants on the list thus far; hopefully any other restaurants we visit will be similarly delicious.  If I were to add some new restaurants to the list (or the runners up) now, they would be The Gorbals (Ilan Hall was an early Top Chef winner and I love his show Knife Fight so I am excited to try his restaurant in Brooklyn once it opens this summer), Mu Ramen (their pop-up closed but I think they are also opening a restaurant this summer), Bassanova Ramen NYC (I know very little about this place but it made it on the NY Times list of Top 10 Ramen Destinations in New York and Serious Eat's Best Ramen Shops in NYC - plus their green curry ramen looks delicious), The Gander (we love Recette, so why not try Jesse Schenker’s new restaurant) and Decoy (the Peking duck restaurant by the Red Farm team).   

1. Brooklyn Fare
2. Parm and Carbone
3. Empellon Cocina
4. Pok Pok NY
5. Roberta's and Blanca
6. Fung Tu
7. Alder
8. Mission Cantina 
9. Pearl & Ash
10. Estela 

Runners Up:  M. Wells Dinette, Sripraphai, Perla, Charlie Bird, Toro, Betony, Sushi Nazakawa, The Cecil, Contra

Red Farm

RedFarm was by far my favorite restaurant that opened on the UWS in 2013.  We have been 4-5 times now and every trip I find a new dish that intrigues me.  We have a few standards that we order every time (the soup dumplings, the pastrami egg rolls and the crispy duck and crab dumplings, all of which are pictured).  Those soup dumplings are some of the best soup dumplings I have ever had - the broth inside is more flavorfulThere are a few other dishes that we order ALMOST every visit (the shrimp-stuffed crispy chicken and the bacon-fried rice), but depending on how many people we are there with and what dishes they want to order, they might not make the final cut.   Not every dish is a winner, but I have never left with less than an excellent (and innovative) meal.  Where else can you go to a "Chinese" restaurant that serves pastrami egg rolls and dumplings that look like pac man, horseshoe crabs and/or other little ocean creatures that are actually delicious?  Also, the chef there has the perfect touch with the deep fryer.  I'm usually leery of fried food - too often it comes out a little soggy and very oily.  But all of the deep fried dumplings and other appetizers at RedFarm come out perfectly crispy and tasty.  Some of the entrees and rice/noodle dishes are exceptional (their rib steak is a little pricey, but one of the most tender and perfectly cooked steaks I have eaten in the city and the grilled pork chops can be pretty fantastic), but most of the dishes that I have been less blown away by have been either entrees or rice/noodle dishes.  If you are going to RedFarm for the first time (or any time thereafter), I highly recommend loading up your order with a few different types of dumplings, one or two appetizers/salads and then consider the entree and rice/noodle options. You won't be disappointed.

More pictures after the jump!

Restaurants to Try for 2014 and My Favorite Restaurants of 2013

My restaurants that I am dying to try in 2013 (in no particular order, except that restaurants that have been on the list since last year are at the top) are:

1. Brooklyn Fare (still dying to go - maybe one day) 
2. Parm and Carbone (we made it to Torrisi Italian Specialties and it was amazing) 
3. Empellon Cocina
4. Pok Pok NY (we really enjoyed Pok Pok Phat Thai) 
5. Roberta's and Blanca
6. Fung Tu (I love Nom Wah so why wouldn't I love this upscale version?)
7. Alder (I have made and canceled reservations at Alder 3-4 times now but I am determined to go by the end of February) 
8. Mission Cantina (Alex went but I didn't get to go) 
9. Pearl & Ash
10. Estela 

Runners Up:  M. Wells Dinette, Sripraphai, Perla, Charlie Bird, Toro, Betony, Sushi Nazakawa, The Cecil, Contra

More after the jump!

Another Update on Restaurants in 2013

I know it has only been a month since my last restaurant update, but I had so much to add (and so little to say otherwise) that I couldn't resist posting another update.  Check it out - in the month of September I visited Locanda Verde, Torrisi Italian Specialties, Pok Pok Phat Thai and Boulud Sud.  And today we hit Red Farm after I saw on Eater that it was open for lunch starting today.  I made an emergency phone call to Alex and cancelled our original lunch plans so we could check it out.  I had a minor break from work (not enough to have time to plan and cook meals at home, but enough to make a few dinner reservations) and we went a wee bit crazy.  We also crossed an item off my NYC bucket list last weekend - walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, which is something that I was particularly excited about (hence the picture above).  We have been to Brooklyn, including DUMBO, a few times but somehow we have never visited or walked across the bridge.  We were in DUMBO for the DUMBO Arts Festival on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and after eating lunch at No. 7 Sub in Brooklyn Bridge Park we couldn't resist walking the bridge. 

Restaurants to Try in 2013

1. Brooklyn Fare (still dying to go but it's totally impossible to get reservations and really pricey)
2. Locanda Verde
3. Torrisi Italian Specialities and Parm (should also add Carbone and ZZ's Clam Bar)
4. Empellon Cocina
5. Pok Pok NY and Pok Pok Phat Thai
6. Biang
7. Red Farm (the new UWS location opened today for lunch!)
8. The Marrow
9. Roberta's and Blanca
10. Acme
11. Khe-Yo
12. ABC Cocina

Runners Up:  M. Wells Dinette, Pig and Khao, Sripraphai, Boulud Sud, Yunnan Kitchen, Red Rooster 

Runner Up from 2012: John Dory Oyster Bar

More after the jump!

Restaurants in 2013

I thought that since summer is quickly drawing to a close that I would post an update on the restaurants that I said I was dying to try in 2013 (and one from 2012).  We're not doing quite as well as last year in knocking restaurants off the list but we are trying!  I made reservations at Torrisi Italian Specialties for mid-September so that will take care of another restaurant.  Go us!  And I am determined to hit one of the Pok Poks, Red Farm and Khe-Yo by the end of the year.  I only have four months left so I had better get cracking.  The others will probably stay on the list for at least another year...  There are a few other restaurants that recently opened that I am dying to try, so I added them at the bottom even though they weren't on the original list.

1. Brooklyn Fare (still dying to go but it's totally impossible to get reservations and really pricey)
2. Locanda Verde
3. Torrisi Italian Specialities and Parm (should also add Carbone and ZZ's Clam Bar)
4. Empellon Cocina
5. Pok Pok NY and Pok Pok Phat Thai
6. Biang
7. Red Farm (the new UWS location is set to open in late September so I am determined that we will try it by the end of the year)
8. The Marrow
9. Roberta's and Blanca
10. Acme
11. Khe-Yo
12. ABC Cocina

Runners Up:  M. Wells Dinette, Pig and Khao, Sripraphai, Boulud Sud, Yunnan Kitchen, Red Rooster 

Runner Up from 2012: John Dory Oyster Bar

Of the restaurants we have tried, I have to say that Biang, Acme, Pig and Khao and Boulud Sud were all very different, but pretty fabulous nonetheless.  The Marrow was good, but not quite as good as the others.  Part of that might be due to the fact that we ate a meal that would have been very well suited to a cold fall or winter day in mid-July, when it was 90 degrees outside.  I should mention that we did have a fantastic corn salad there that might be one of my favorite side dishes for the year.  Yunnan Kitchen and John Dory Oyster Bar are probably the next level down.  The meals I had there were good, with a few memorable dishes, but they couldn't quite live up the meals we had at some of the others.

P.S.  I think it bears mentioning that we went to a number of other fabulous restaurants that weren't open yet when I wrote this list, including Mighty Quinn's Barbecue and Uncle Boon's, both of which are serious contenders for my favorite new restaurants of 2013.  This year's list is going to be a little all over the place because there are some restaurants we visited in Austin, TX (random but true) and Europe that definitely deserve to make the list.  

Europe 2013: Spring versus Volta

It seems a little odd to mention these two restaurants (and pit them against each other) in one post but the comparisons were inevitable.  For our Europe trip, I wanted to play things by ear for the most part, but I did want to try to plan two nice dinners - one in Paris (obviously) and one in Belgium.  I left Alex to make the plans for Belgium (picking the restaurant, making the reservations, etc.) and I took care of Paris.  I had the choice narrowed down to a few different restaurants in Paris (Spring and Septime were the frontrunners) and Alex found a trio of restaurants in Ghent that looked interesting (Volta, De Vitrine and Jef).  I ended up picking Spring and Alex went with Volta.  Both restaurants do a tasting menu and both are comparable in terms of price, so it was natural to compare the two, even if they serve very different food.  Both of these meals were incredibly memorable.  Both were delicious.  But the experiences couldn't have been more different for a number of reasons that I will go into in more detail below.  

If you held a gun to my head and made me choose which restaurant I had to go back to, I think I would pick Spring.  But if you made me pick which overall experience I preferred, I would pick Volta.  In a head-to-head taste off I thought the rankings were as follows:

• Spring won the amuse-bouches.
• Spring and Volta tied for the red mullet versus the eel - the eel at Volta was more interesting, but I would be more likely to order the red mullet from Spring again.  I might give a slight edge to Volta because it really was tasty and memorable (as well as interesting).
• Volta won for the ham (and we can include the fish since there were an uneven number of courses, but it would have won on the ham alone) over the lobster and asparagus dish from Spring.
• Spring won on the lamb versus the turkey leg.
• Spring won on the desserts for me, although I much preferred the little cake at Volta to the chocolate tart at Spring.  In the spirit of full disclosure, Alex preferred his cheese plate and the cake at Volta to anything we had at Spring.

More details and pictures after the jump!

Europe 2013: Le Comptoir, L'Avant Comptoir and L'Office in Paris...

When we arrived in Paris I was starving.  I really needed some serious food and a glass of wine.  Traveling does that to me sometimes.  Alex was in even worse shape - not eating enough tends to leave him vaguely nauseous.  I just get cranky.  And I get progressively worse until I am fed.  You don't have to point it out - I am well aware that I'm rather like a 3 year old in that respect.  Unfortunately we arrived the afternoon of the same sex marriage protest and it was nearly impossible to get around.  Luckily our hotel happened to be located near one of the restaurants that we wanted to try.  We got a little lost on the way there but after about 10-15 minutes of walking/wandering we found Le Comptoir.  Only there was a wait for a table.  And we were too hungry to wait.  So we decided to belly up to the counter at L'Avant Comptoir for some wine and snacks.  Alex let me do the ordering while he polished off a crepe from their walk-up window outside.  Actually, Alex let me do the ordering throughout our trip since I speak French and he doesn't.  There were a few mistakes along the way, but I think my French served us remarkably well considering it has been years since I practiced.

Anyway, as soon as I looked at the menu cards dangling from the ceiling I couldn't resist ordering the pate (I have always had a weakness for pate), the pig ears (pate and pigs ears pictured below) and some sardines (pictured above).  I also wanted to order the croquettes, but I wanted to see how big the other dishes were first.  And then I forgot.  I probably ate more pate than you should safely eat in a year but I have no regrets.  It was deliciously porky and fattening.  Strangely enough, the sardines were my favorite of the dishes.  They were buttery, fresh and delicious.  And the butter they used in the sauce wasn't just regular butter but Bordier's salted butter, which is absolutely fantastic.  I loved those sardines.  And I dredged the bread all through the sauce because you really can't waste the butter.  It made me so happy.  Oh and I can't talk about dining in Paris without mentioning the wine.  I had a blast trying a bunch of different wines by the glass.  At L'Avant Comptoir we tried two different reds by the glass, but as the trip wore on we became far bolder about ordering lots of different wines by the glass.  If only the wines in the United States were as wonderfully plentiful, tasty and cheap by the glass.  Or by the carafe.  Being able to buy quality wine by the bottle, large carafe, small carafe and by the glass is amazing.  

More after the jump!

Yunnan Kitchen and Pig and Khao

I'm happy to say that Alex and I started off this year by knocking off two of the restaurants that were runners up on my list of Restaurants to Try for 2013.  If I had my way we would have knocked off at least one restaurant on the actual list if the reservation gods didn't hate me so much.  But we (when I say "we" I really mean "I" since I have been the one making all of the calls) finally managed to get reservations at Acme for this weekend so I am pretty pumped about that.  I tried to get reservations at Brooklyn Fare, Blanca and The Marrow and basically failed spectacularly each time.  Actually, I could have made reservations at The Marrow at 9:00 pm this past Sunday but I decided that was too late for a Sunday night.  And since The Marrow has only been open for a very short while I am tempted to let it mature a little more before visiting.  So I will probably try again this summer.  If the 7 train wasn't in the midst of some crazy renovations on the weekend, we would probably have trekked to Flushing by now to try Biang, but we're going to wait until the planned service concludes at the end of March.  There are other ways to get out there, but I'm not in a huge hurry so we will just wait it out.  I'm hoping that by beginning of summer, we will have tried at least one or two more of the restaurants on our list, not including Acme, Yunnan Kitchen or Pig and Khao.  The most likely candidates are Pok Pok Phat Thai and Biang, but who knows?  If the Red Farm location ever opens on the UWS we might make it there too!  Strangely the two restaurants we have tried are both on the LES.  I say strangely only because we rarely make it down to the LES because it's a pain in the butt to get to from the UWS and not because of a perceived lack of quality restaurants down on the LES.  The LES has a ton of wonderful restaurants - including Pok Pok Phat Thai.  Brooklyn Fare and Blanca might remain wish list items since reservations are impossible to obtain, but such is  life.

More after the jump!

Things I love about Austin, Texas - Take 2...

Alex and I just got back from another trip to Austin, Texas and I have to admit - I really like Austin.  I'm not sure if I would want to live there, but the city has a great food scene (you can eat everything from BBQ to fine dining), nice weather, etc.  It's just a really fun city.  We happened to be in Texas for a wedding, but I planned out our free time (particularly the meals) weeks in advance.  There was one restaurant that I knew we had to hit.  The last time we were in Austin we tried the Salt Lick and went on a BBQ pilgrimage to Lockhart, Texas.  You can read more about our last visit here.  But we didn't make it to Franklin Barbeque.  And it is probably for the best because I was already just about barbeque-d out.  Franklin has been getting a lot of hype since it opened in 2009 and I was really curious to see if it lived up to its reputation.  Coincidentally, I picked up the current issue of Bon Appetit at the airport and flipped it open and not only did it have a short article on Austin, it also named Franklin Barbeque as one of The 20 Most Important Restaurants in America.  So I knew we had to go.  And I knew we were going to to go Paul Qui's East Side Kings at Hole in the Wall for lunch on Friday.  Our plan was to get off the plane, pick up our rental car and go straight to Hole in the Wall.  I even knew exactly what dishes I was planning on ordering.  That's how prepared I was.  

I had a few other restaurants that I was tempted to try for dinner on Friday.  I wanted to go to Uchi because we tried Uchiko during our last visit and were blown away by how tasty it was.  And I thought sushi would be a nice counterpoint to the BBQ we were already planning on eating.  Another coincidence - Bon Appetit also included Uchi/Uchiko as one of the 20 most important restaurants in America.  But Uchi didn't have any reservations available for Friday night.  I also wanted to try Barley Swine because I saw it on No Reservations and it looked and sounded amazing.  But I was worried that Barley Swine wouldn't fit into our weekend.  They don't take reservations and we weren't sure that waiting 2 hours for dinner on Friday night really fit into our agenda.  And to be honest, I have a limited amount of patience for waiting in lines.  We already knew we would be waiting 2-3 hours for Franklin Barbeque so waiting another 2 hours for Barley Swine just seemed excessive.  Alex came up with a counter proposal - Second Kitchen and Bar, which sounded good, but I was worried the food would be too heavy.  I didn't make reservations anywhere for Friday night and figured that we would play it by ear.  We didn't end up eating lunch on Friday until about 2:30 pm (and we totally overate so we were still pretty stuffed around 6:00 pm), so we gave up on the idea of trying to get int Uchi or Barley Swine.  So we had to come up with a back up plan.  Luckily, the Bon Appetit magazine came to the rescue.  I remembered that when I flipped through the magazine during the flight there was a blurb about a Thai restaurant called Sway and Mexican restaurant called La Condesa with the same owners.  It turned out that La Condesa was close to our hotel so we decided to go with that. 

More after the jump!

Eden Center - Huong Viet and Song Que

One of my favorite thingns about visiting my family in Maryland is the opportunity to eat good Vietnamese food.  I don't know why Vietnamese food is sub-par in New York City (or if that is even a fair characterization, but Northern Virginia has a huge Vietnamese population and I grew up eating amazing Vietnamese food so I may be a little spoiled), but nothing in NYC can compare to what I can get in Maryland or Virginia.  I mean, look at the quail in the picture at the top.  And then the assortment of Asian fruits and desserts in the picturese below.  You just can't find some of this stuff in NYC since there is only one Vietnamese grocery store and only a few Vietnamese restaurants in the city.  This past weekend I went down to Falls Church with my mom and visited a shopping center called Eden Center.  For those of you who know the area, Eden Center is essentially little Vietnam.  The shopping center is full of Vietnamese restaurants, banh mi shops, bakeries, bars, jewelry stores, etc.  And every little strip mall in a 2 mile vicinity has even more resetaurants, bakeries and banh mi shops.  When Alex and I got married we had a small wedding banquet of sorts in a Vietnamese restaurant near Eden Center called Present.  And we have tried a number of other restaurants, bakeries and banh mi shops in the area.  Our favorites are Present, Huong Viet, Viet Royale, Song Que and Ba Le.  Of those five, Huong Viet, Viet Royale and Song Que are all in Eden Center.  There is a new restaurant in Eden Center called Rice Paper that the Washingtonian recommends that Mom and I will have to test out some time.  Maybe during my next visit we will give it a shot...  This visit we decided to go to Huong Viet for their quail (pictured above), lotus root salad (pictured below) and butter-fried frog legs (also pictured below - I know it sounds weird, but they are really tasty) versus Viet Royale for their banh xeo (Vietnamese crepes with shrimp and pork) and caramel fish.  After lunch we then hit up Song Que for their coconut bubble tea smoothies (they make the absolute best bubble teas) and tons of tasty Vietnamese desserts.  Song Que also makes banh mi, but we prefer the banh mi at Ba Le.  When I was little I was obsessed with these little rice cakes called banh bo (the banh bo are the little colorful cakes on the far right in the picture of all of the various saran-wrapped green desserts).  My grandmother used to hit the Asian markets and come home with little styrofoam containers of roast duck and banh bo for me and I was the happiest little half-Asian girl in the world.  For some reason they don't seem to sell banh bo in New York City (although they do sell other somewhat similar Vietnamese desserts at Tan Tin-Hung) so every time I come down to visit my family I try to get my banh bo fix.  So I guess I am still a little obsessed.

More (including more pictures) after the jump!

Restaurants to Try for 2013 and My Favorite Restaurants of 2012

My restaurants that I am dying to try in 2013 (in no particular order, except that restaurants that have been on the list since last year are at the top) are:

1. Brooklyn Fare (still dying to go, even more so after seeing the meal that Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert had there on the last episode of No Reservations)
2. Locanda Verde
3. Torrisi Italian Specialities and Parm
4. Empellon Cocina
5. Pok Pok NY and Pok Pok Phat Thai
6. Biang
7. Red Farm (they are opening an UWS location in the old Fatty Crab space and I have really high hopes for it)
8. The Marrow
9. Roberta's and Blanca (also attributing this addition to the last episode of No Reservations and the meal that Anthony Bourdain had there)
10. Acme

Runners Up:  M. Wells Dinette, Pig and Khao, Sripraphai, Boulud Sud, Yunnan Kitchen, Red Rooster

**SPOILER ALERT - Alex and I hit one of the runners up last night and it was phenomenal.  More on that later

More after the jump!

Restaurants in NYC in the Last Six Months

I will be the first to admit that I have been a little lazy with the blog recently.  My posts are becoming shorter and shorter and some just never make it up there.  For instance, Alex and I had two great meals at City Grit (one with Paul Qui as the guest chef and another with Ricardo Zarate as the guest chef) and I never posted about either.  We also tried a number of other restaurants that somehow never made the cut, even though we really enjoyed our meals there.  Sorry everyone.  I know there is no real excuse for being so delinquent.  I have decided to post at least a few of the pictures of the meals I enjoyed most over the past six months or so with some (brief) commentary.  
 
First and foremost, City Grit is one of my favorite discoveries of this year.  It calls itself a "culinary salon," which really boils down to the fact that they host a few dinners a week in a furniture showroom connected to a parochial school (no joke - you actually use the parochial school bathrooms), some of which feature guest chefs from all over the country.  Paul Qui won the last season of Top Chef and we had an amazing meal at Uchiko in Austin earlier this year.  So when I saw him on the schedule at City Grit (and I honestly have no idea how I came across City Grit) I knew we had to go.  We had a number of memorable dishes that night - my favorites were the tuna jamon (raw tuna wrapped in lardo with melon) and the pork jowl (pictured below).  I also really enjoyed the "tomato water" (a tomato consomme with mussels, celery and basil - pictured above) and the sunchoke dashi (pictured below).  So that was Paul Qui.  And then a few months later Ricardo Zarate came to town and I bought tickets to his dinner.  I had never heard of him before, but his restaurants in LA sounded really interesting and we don't have a lot of good Peruvian in the city so I decided to give it a shot.  When the meal kicked off with a kampachi ceviche with leche de tigre jelly, I knew we were in for a fun (and delicious) meal.  The next two dishes - a Peruvian bouillabaisse with crabmeat and a raw quail egg (pictured below, although my picture was taken before they added in the broth) and a scallion and uni tiradito (also pictured below) were my two favorite dishes of the night.  That night I was introduced to a crazy Amazonian fish called paiche that is apparently among the largest freshwater fish in the world and is similar in texture to Chilean sea bass.  The meals at City Grit take forever and the air conditioning leaves a lot to be desired, but it is a really fun experience.

 More after the jump!

Chicago

In case you haven't noticed, there haven't been very many posts on the blog lately.  Sometimes the blog suffers from neglect because I am busy with work and sometimes it happens because I am traveling too much.  This quiet patch was due to the fact that we haven't had a quiet weekend in NYC in quiet some time.  Two weekends ago (Labor Day) we were in Cincinnati for Riverfest (which, incidentally included the most impressive fireworks display I have seen in quite some time) and last weekend we were in Chicago.  Thankfully we were in town this weekend and I carved out a few hours today to cook breakfast, post about our travels and to tee up some posts about the relatively few meals we have made recently. 

I had a large to-do list for our trip to Chicago and we somehow managed to do check quite a few things off our list.  We saw the Bean (pictured above) in Grant Park (which was pretty spectacular), we visited the Art Institute of Chicago and Navy Pier, we did the Chicago River architecture tour, we laughed our way through Second City, visited the Chicago beach at Lake Michigan and then we ate and drank a whole bunch.  We probably walked a good 10 miles over the course of the weekend.  I really wanted to go to The Girl and the Goat during our visit, but it was impossible to get reservations and we were only there for a short period of time so we skipped it.  But I checked out the Eater 38 for Chicago and added a few other restaurants to my list - two of which we managed to hit while we were there.  There was one other restaurant from the Eater 38 that I really wanted to visit while we were there, but it was kind of far away and given the time constraints we didn't make it there.  But the next time I visit Chicago I am hitting Urban Belly because the menu just looked so phenomenal and I will be making reservations at The Girl and the Goat insanely far in advance just to make sure that I get to eat there.

More pictures, etc. after the jump!

Mission Chinese Food

With this post I am officially and gleefully jumping on the Mission Chinese bandwagon.  The place is AMAZING.  One of the best Asian meals - traditional, fusion or otherwise - I have had in a really long time.  If you find yourself anywhere near the LES of Manhattan and you enjoy spicy, interesting food, you should haul ass to Mission Chinese.  And then be prepared to wait because the place is tiny and well worth all of the buzz.  Or you could do what Alex and I did and trek down there from the UWS at 2:30 pm on a freakishly hot Sunday and avoid the wait.  But if you are like us and you are running late (which was only partially our fault) you might give yourself heat stroke or an aneurysm over worrying whether or not you are going to make it before they stop serving lunch at 3:00 pm, so you should weigh your options and decide whether you want to risk missing lunch (and the ensuing depression, etc) or whether you want to just bite the bullet and wait... 

More (including more more pictures) after the jump!

Thoughts on 2012 thus far (including thoughts from our list of Restaurants to Try in 2012)...

 Let's see.... Where to begin?  I thought I was busy last year at work, but last year had nothing on the first half of this year.  This year has been a killer.  But through it all, Alex and I have managed to eat at a number of really good restaurants - including a few from our list of Restaurants to Try in 2012.  I consider it a huge accomplishment that we have made it to three of the restaurants on our list (Empellon Taqueria, Tertulia and ABC Kitchen) and two of the runners up (Ayada and Zabb Elee).  I know I made a resolution to (try) to knock off one restaurant a month from our list, so I am behind schedule, but I am hoping that we can visit a few more restaurants over the summer so that by August we will have made it to... 5 of the restaurants on the list (not counting runners up).  If we hit 50% of the restaurants on the list by the end of the summer I will consider this whole experience a win!  Either way, we are already ahead of 2011, where we only managed to hit 1 restaurant on our list...  And now that we have knocked off a few restaurants, I have come up with a few new restaurants for our list that either weren't open when I debuted the list originally, or somehow missed the cut - Empellon Cocina, Mission Chinese and Lotus Blue (which edged out the other new Yunnan restaurant Yunnan Kitchen by a hair based on the fact that it opened a month earlier).  My new runners up are Pok Pok NY and Red Farm.

More after the jump!

Reasons why jury duty in NYC doesn't totally suck...

Actually, there are really only two reasons.  First, you're not in the office and the days are shorter (now this can backfire because I had to go into the office after jury duty two out of three days, which made the days much longer).  Second, you are right next to Chinatown and every day you have at least an hour lunch break.  So I took it upon myself to eat at a new Chinese restaurant for lunch every day (some old favorites and one new restaurant) and to have a dan tat taste off (my favorite Portuguese-style dan tat at Double Crispy versus the traditional dan tat at Bread Talk pictured above).  For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, dan tat are Chinese egg custard tarts and they are pictured above.  I heart dan tat.  Serious Eats did a taste taste last August and they judged the ones at Bread Talk to be the best, so I had to give them a shot.  In the end I preferred the Portuguese-style dan tat from Double Crispy (I thought the texture of the creamy filling was better as well as the flaky, buttery crust).  I was actually somewhat sad when my jury duty stint ended yesterday because I had one more restaurant (and one more dan tat bakery) picked out to try.  Oh well!  I'm sure Alex and I will go down there soon enough.

Restaurants to Try in 2012 and My Favorite Restaurants of 2011

I have decided to post this list as a means of forcing myself to do my best to eat at all of the following restaurants in 2012 (and to remind myself of some of the excellent meals I had in 2011).  Some of these restaurants have been on my list of restaurants to try for years and I think it is do or die time.  I have had enough of restaurants lingering on my list of places to try for years and years - this year I am going to be proactive about it.  Most of last year's list is going to be repeated here because the only restaurant I made it to was Graffit (which is now known as Gastroarte).  How sad is that?  I am hereby making a resolution to (try) to knock off approximately one restaurant a month, until I get through all of the restaurants listed here.  I say try because we all know how my personal life goes - one minute I have one and the next second I am working nonstop, which makes trying new restaurants a little hard.  But I am bound and determined to try!

My restaurants to try for 2012 are:

1. ABC Kitchen
2. Red Rooster
3. Brooklyn Fare (this might be a wish list item because it is almost impossible to get reservations, but I am putting it on here anyway)
4. Locanda Verde
5. The Dutch
6. Tertulia
7. Torrisi Italian Specialities
8. Fatty Cue
9. Empellon
10. Boulud Sud

Runners Up:  John Dory Oyster Bar, Eleven Madison Park, Zabb Elee, Sripraphai and Ayada Thai.

More after the jump!

Meatopia 2011

I love living in NYC.  There are so many things I love about it that I can't picture living anywhere else right now.  I hear that it eventually gets old, but I'm nowhere near that point right now.  Food festivals are among the many things I love about living in NYC and Meatopia is one of the best.  Alex and I had a long discussion on our way back from Meatopia about which food festival is our favorite and we had a hard time deciding between Meatopia and LUCKYRICE Night Market.  In the end I think we decided that LUCKYRICE was our favorite because there was more variation in the dishes we ate there.  Meatopia is obviously all about the meat (which generally meant sandwiches of some sort, or random hunks of meat), whereas at LUCKYRICE we had soups, salads, tofu, noodles, spring rolls, and sliders.  I would say that the quality of the food was the same at both.  We had some really delicious dishes, some good dishes and some forgettable dishes at both.  Not everyone can be a winner I guess.

There were a lot of really good dishes at Meatopia last night.  My favorites included the spicy lamb ribs from Ilili (pictured above) , the Mangalitsa pig's head torchon from Edi & the Wolf (pictured after the jump), the roasted kid goat from Floyd Cardoz (no picture, but Floyd just won Top Chef Masters and I can totally see why) and the Vietnamese-style Mangalitsa ham and bacon pops from Lee Anne Wong.  There were two other dishes that really stuck out in my head as being very good, but didn't quite make the favorites list - the spit-roasted whole sheep served on flatbread with cherry tomatoes from Seamus Mullen (his restaurant Tertulia should be opening soon and I can't wait to try it out) and the mulefoot whole hog pulled pork sandwich from April Bloomfield of The Breslin, The Spotted Pig and The John Dory Oyster Bar (pictured after the jump).  We tried a ton of other dishes, but those were definitely my favorites of the day.  The coolest spread was definitely at Bar Basque.  They made Hampshire pork 7 ways - pork belly, steamed buns, sausauge, ice cream...  We tried their pork belly and clams and their bacon ice cream, both of which were very nice, but weren't among my favorites.  I wish I had been able to try their morcilla sausage (aka blood sausage) but they were out when I wandered by.  Oh well.  But now that I know their food is so good, I am adding the restaurant to my list of places to try.  The same goes for Ilili and Edi & the Wolf.  I recently tried Seasonal, which is the other restaurant by the same people as Edi & the Wolf and it was delicious, so it's no surprise that Edi & the Wolf was so good.  Another thing I love about Meatopia is the demonstrations - while we were there they had butchering demos and Pat LaFrieda was roasting an entire cow.  And they left the head on so it stared at you while they cooked it.  I'm not going to lie - it was kinda creepy, but cool at the same time.

More pictures after the jump!

Tacombi at Fonda Nolita

After my pilates class yesterday Alex and I were wandering around Soho trying to figure out what to eat for lunch.  Generally when I do pilates downtown on Saturdays we head down to Chinatown afterwards for dim sum.  But as I mentioned in last night's post on Pork Souvlaki, Alex didn't think that dim sum was appropriate hot weather food.  He either wanted something cold, or just something on the lighter end of the food spectrum.  First I suggested Cocoron for some cold soba, but then I remembered that there was a taco place nearby I had been meaning to try.  Alex agreed that tacos were appropriate hot weather food (his logic was along the lines that Mexico is hot, therefore the food they serve there is hot weather food).  So I busted out my phone and started Googling for tacos in Soho.  I love Google.  And to be honest, I have no idea how I survived before I had a smartphone.  The ability to Google on the go, or do a Yelp search for nearby restaurants is totally key when Alex and I are wandering around NYC trying to decide where to eat.  And then the maps are key once we figure out where we want to go, but don't know exactly how to get there.  Anyway, after about 15 seconds on Google I found what I was looking for - Tacombi @ Fonda Nolita.  As you can see in the picture above, Tacombi @ Fonda Nolita features an old school VW van parked inside what looks like a former garage.  According to NY Mag the space actually used to be a clothing store, but that is beside the point.  The idea with Tacombi was to replicate the feeling of a taco truck at the beach in Mexico (the original Tacombi, launched by the owner of Tacombi @ Fonda Nolita, was actually parked in Playa del Carmen).  The idea is really interesting and I'm of the opinion that it is totally successful.  When you walk in the first thing you notice is the VW van, but then you start noticing the rest of the decor.  It easily could come off as cheesy, but I think it really works to make the place low key and fun.  After a brief primer on how to order and pay (you buy tickets at the counter and then take the tickets to one of two windows for your food - the VW van has all of the meat and vegetarian options, the window in the back has the breakfast tacos and fish tacos), we picked out 6 tacos (3 from each window) and sat down to eat.

Pictures and our favorite taco after the jump!

Black Market Bistro

 

Back in high school my best friend's family introduced me to a restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland called Black's Bar and Kitchen.  I loved it so much I took my family and we have been going there ever since.  Sometime when I was in college (or not too long after I graduated), the owners of Black's opened up two additional restaurants in Maryland and DC - Black Market Bistro and Black Salt.  For Father's Day I decided to take my parents to Black Market for dinner.  The last time we went there was back in 2005-2006, before I moved to NYC and I wanted to see if it was as good as I remembered.  The last time we went, the dish I remembered loving the most was their New Orleans style shrimp and grits.  I had never heard of shrimp and grits before I went to UNC, but I love them now.  And man did Black Market make an awesome version.  It was just as good as I remembered - creamy, cheesy corn and cheddar grits topped with perfectly cooked and seasoned shrimp and some sauteed veggies.  I couldn't tell if the greens were collards, or something else, but they were nice.  My dad ordered the seared sea scallops special and my mom ordered the Addie's Mussels.  They each had gazpacho for their starter and I tried the wax bean salad (also a special).  Everything we ordered was perfectly cooked and seasoned - the mussels were tender, the shrimp was flavorful and the scallops were meaty and sweet.  I absolutely love this restaurant.  The food is so good - homey, but ten thousand times better than anything you could ever make at home, unless you were a four star chef.  I loved it.  I would kill for a restaurant like that here in NYC.

More pictures after the jump!