NYC – Pizza Success and Burgers #2 and #3

Luckily since Eleven Madison Park, we have had some successful meals.  I’ll start with Pizza. Monday night, we hoped on a train out to Brooklyn to try Roberta’s Pizza.  This place was recommended by the lady at the meat shop I had mentioned earlier, and it was recently written up by the New York Times.

When we got off the train, a couple of my dining companions remarked that this much be the “stabby” part of Brooklyn.  The neighbourhood did have lots of graffiti and razor wire, but I never actually felt unsafe.  When we got to the pizzeria, I started to doubt myself.  The front of it looks very run down which I could handle.  What threw me was the curtain in the doorway on the way in.  Curtained doorways and good food aren’t something I expect together

Entrance to Roberta’s

We had a few starters – a romaine salad, a charcuterie board, and bread and butter.  All good, and all memorable enough that I can still remember them (Roberta’s 1, Madison Park 0).  Interestingly my favourite meat on the charcuterie board (something with juniper) came from Salumeria Biellese which I had mentioned in an earlier post.  I have to admit I don’t fully remember the pizzas we had – mine had lots of fennel.  They were all quite good though, delicious crust and wood fired oven.  And for dessert I had “green strawberry shortcake” which was strawberry short cake with a green sauce that tasted of celery.  Quite delicious.

Burgers – on Sunday, our dinner was split in two.  I was incredibly hungry at around 4:30, and we were up somewhere in the 50 streets, so I suggested we stop off at Le Parker Meridian to visit The Burger Joint.  This place is odd – it’s very out of character for the high end hotel.  Gruff service, and about as far from “fine dining” as you can get (while still serving good food).  When I went last time, there was a line up out into the lobby of the hotel – luckily this time there were only a few people ahead of us.  The burger was good and I’d recommend it.  Tasty, cooked nicely, and simple.  The fries were McDonaldsesque, and the drinks were watered down fountain drinks.  The pickle was good, but not the best I’ve had in NYC.

A few hours of shopping later we got on the subway and headed to Shake Shack in Madison Park.  The line up here was much longer, and again we had burgers.  We tried to match them as much as possible with the burgers we’d had at The Burger Joint in order to make as fair of a comparison as possible.  I did get the shake sauce instead of mayo, but I don’t think it impacted my ability to compare.  We all agreed that the burger at The Burger Joint was better (slightly), but everything else (drinks, pickles, fries) were better at the Shake Shack.  I do have to say that the burger I’m most satisfied with this trip is still burger #1.

I’m falling woefully behind on my posting – I have two more posts that I want to write based on other experiences so far, and tonight I’m going to Le Bernardin so I will have even more to write about tomorrow.  I’ll do my best to get at least one or two more posts out over the weekend.

NYC – Eleven Madison Park

I’m a bit overdue in posting for Eleven Madison Park.  Four of us ate there on Saturday.  I had been really excited for this meal – perhaps more so than for any of the other reservations we have.  I mentioned before that last time we were here, this restaurant only had one Michelin star, and rated well towards the end of the San Pellegrino top 100 restaurants list and it still really impressed me.  This time around, the price was much higher, it has three Michelin stars, and ranks #10 in the world.

The decor was as I remember it.  Nice place, high ceilings, and kind of an Art Deco feeling to it.

Eleven Madison Park

Eleven Madison Park

The menu here is a little strange.  You have the option of a mix and match four course menu (each course has four options described only by a single word) or a seven course tasting menu.  Last time we were here, we opted for four courses while this time we opted for seven.

We started off with some cocktails which were all fantastic.  Our sommelier was very helpful in recommending these as well as wine.

Eleven Madison Park

Unfortunately, my happiness with the drinks did not extend to the meal.  Overall, it was good but not fantastic.  I would have been happy with this meal at most restaurants because it was fairly well executed and tasted good.  But it was not memorable.  While uploading pictures, I had trouble remembering what all the courses were – which shouldn’t happen four days after the meal.  And when you consider that last time I was there the food was better and less expensive, it makes the experience all that much more disappointing.

Last time I was there, I remember having a conversation with our waiter about the differences between them and Daniel, which at the time was the top rated restaurant in NYC.  I had found Eleven Madison Park to be much better despite its lower San Pellegrino and Michelin ratings. The waiter at the time (who I noticed is still working there) said that the one Michelin star restaurants try harder.  I guess it’s true. I’m including some other pictures of food (when I remembered to get the camera out).  The captions aren’t overly descriptive for the reason mentioned above.

Yogourt Lollipops

Apple

Beets

Plantain

Fish

Lamb

Sabayon (in the egg shell)

Lobster

The one redeeming point in the evening is when they gave us sauce spoons to use with the lobster course – I tried, but still haven’t managed to figure out how it can be considered useful. Even our waiter was at a loss to explain.

Sauce Spoon!

New York – don’t believe everything that you read on an awning

Last night we were very foolish.  We tried going to Vinegar Hill House but the wait was 3 hours.  So then we called Roberta’s and were told the wait was at least an hour an a half.  So we came back to our neighbourhood in search of a restaurant.  Now is where the foolishness comes in.  We ended up at Lombardi’s.  They have apparently been rated as the top pizza in NYC by Zagat, but I’m guessing that that was in the past.  Probably before people knew what pizza should taste like.

If you do end up in this restaurant, I would strongly recommend starting with a salad as we did.  The salads were so bad that they made the mediocre pizza that followed less disappointing than it would have been otherwise.  To quote some of my fellow diners, “this is a once in a lifetime experience…I hope”, “I think my favourite part of this meal will be when it’s over”, and the glowing “not as disappointing as I had expected”.

Today was better.  We went out to Smorgasburg where we had delicious smoothies, smoked meat, fish tacos, and found good bread.  Tonight we’re off to Eleven Madison Park – I didn’t want the (hopefully) glowing reviews for that in the same post as Lombardi’s so I had to post before we head out.

New York – Week 1

French butter selection at Dean & Deluca

It’s approaching the end of week 1 and I feel guilty for not having posted yet.  We’ve had a few culinary/coffee successes so far, and a few failures as well.

Coffee first – I was very pleased to find out that Bluebird‘s coffee was as good as I’d remembered.  It was my first stop in Manhattan and a very enjoyable one.  It’s also about a 2 minute walk from where we’re staying.  The first day I also went to Kaffe 1668 which was delicious as well, although Bluebird is still my favourite.  Since then we have had coffee at Gimme!, Café Grumpy, Abraço, and Stumptown.  I’d say that Abraço, Grumpy, and Kaffe 1668 were all close behind Bluebird and since coffee is a personal thing, I think they’re all worth trying out.  Gimme! and Stumptown were good, but not quite on the same level as the others – Stumptown is the only place that S has had to send back a Latte so far for over-steaming his milk and I seem to remember he had to do the same once on our last visit as well.

As for food, my culinary highlight so far has been discovering that you can buy imported French butter.  We found some at Dean & Deluca and have seen it in a few specialty shops since.  I’m going to try to upload a photo of the butter selection at Dean & Deluca – we’ll see how that goes.  We are very unlucky in Canada to have some sort of dairy mafia that controls all of our dairy products so the only butter we get is lower in fat content than the deliciousness they serve in Europe.  Talking to someone in a market today it sounds like in general the butter situation here isn’t much better, but having imported butter so easily available is a huge step up from back home.

We’ve tried two restaurants so far – both found using google.  First, we tried a pizza place a few blocks from where we’re staying.  Motorino served decent pizza, but I wasn’t overly impressed and have definitely had better.  It was a specific type of pizza (brussel sprouts and pancetta) that came up on the google search of best pizzas, and neither of us are big on brussel sprouts so we tried alternate pies so maybe our selection impacted our impression.  The food was good, but it wasn’t great and I won’t be in a big hurry to return.  The second restaurant was found using a google search for good burgers – The Burger and Barrel.  This place is also really close by – and the burger was quite tasty.  I plan on comparing it to a few other places including The Burger Joint and we’ll see how it stacks up.  We grind our own meat when we make our own so it’s hard to impress us on a burger.

Other than that, we’ve been eating in using the rather sadly equipped kitchen in the apartment.  We’ve been on the hunt for a good bakery, cheese shop, and charcuterie/salumeria.  We tried one cheese shop and the selection was decent, but the staff weren’t overly friendly so it wasn’t the fun cheese shop experience I like.  We found adequate bread in an interesting little market nearby but we’re going to try to find better.  There is a meat counter there as well with very friendly staff – all their meet is local and we tried a couple of hams.  They were sort of a cross between a prosciutto and country ham – not bad but not really blow your socks off.  I’m planning on going back to try some of their other selections though and see what else is in the market.  The staff was great too – gave us a few restaurant suggestions that I’m hoping to check out.  They have both cured and fresh meats and they seem to be of good quality so if you’re cooking for yourself while in NYC, they’re worth checking out.  We also tried Salumeria Biellese because my favourite cheese shop in Denver sold their sopressata (Denver suggestions will be written up separately when I have a chance).  It wasn’t at all what I expected.  More of a deli/cafeteria than an artisanal meat shop.  I do still like their sopressata but they didn’t have much else that appealed to me.

Tomorrow two friends are arriving and we have our first reservation on Saturday at Eleven Madison Park.  I’m very much looking forward to that!

NYC – the prequel

We are getting ready to spend the month of June in Manhattan.  We’ve rented a two bedroom apartment in the East Village, close to the coffee shop that was our favourite last time we were there – Bluebird Coffee.  We wanted a two bedroom so that friends could come and stay with us, and we wanted to be close to good coffee since that’s the one shop you may need to go to several times in a day.

So far we have made reservations at 3 restaurants.  The first one we’ll be going to is Eleven Madison Park.  Last time we were there, this restaurant only had one Michelin star and was in the 51-100 part of the Top 100 restaurants in the world list.  The food was delicious and very reasonably priced – I’d have paid more for what I got.  Since then, they’ve added another two Michelin stars and climbed to #10 in the world so I’m excited to see how they’ve changed.

Our second reservation is at Le Bernardin.  Neither of us are big on seafood, but a friend who is visiting is one of those “not big into red meat” people.  I decided to use this as a reason to go – I’m a bit apprehensive about shelling out so much money for food I’m not generally the biggest fan of, but at the same time I’m hopeful that they can make seafood that I will at least enjoy, if not love.

Our third reservation is at Per Se.  We’ve been once before and agree that it was the best meal we had in New York (and the second best we’ve ever had).  This is THE meal of the trip and I’m salivating just thinking about it.

We also want to go to Momofuku Ssäm Bar but they don’t take reservations.  We’ll also be investigating other food opportunities I’ve heard of through friends, books, and online.

Very excited!

-I

First Post

Finally taking the time to figure this out and post something!  We have lots of ideas for the website – had recent trips to Denver, Vancouver, and Toronto; and of course we really want to mention a few of the places in our home town of Victoria. 

Once we get the formatting fixed so that the posts are actually legible, we’ll start posting.  We are heading to NYC for a month starting this weekend so we definitely need it up and running by then!