Zengo Visited 9/29/10 3 Forks

Zengo  622 3rd Ave, (between 40th St & 41st St), Manhattan, NY 10017

  A couple of my b-school girlfriends and I went to Zengo in honor of my friend Vivi who had moved to LA recently and to see her adorable new baby girl.  Zengo was chosen mostly because we needed a place that was within walking distance of where Vivi was staying so that the baby could go home without any hassle. The location is not really in a super glamorous part of NYC...it's in midtown east, near Grand Central Station, which to me is a part of NYC with very little character. It's just lots of tall grey corporate buildings.  But none the less, this big, trendy restaurant is smack in the middle of them.

This place looks like it should be in the Meat Packing district...it's very cavernous inside (similar to Buddakhan) and dark with trendy decor and staff in suits and earpieces (unnecessary).  The staff was very accommodating to having a baby there and sat us at a nice large table in the front.  When I looked at the menu I was confused by their concept: Latin-Asian.  To me, those flavors and dishes are pretty different and wasn't so sure what to expect.  The menu had a mish-mosh of dishes from Tuna Wonton Tacos to Ceviche to sushi.  So yes, you can get a feel of the mix of asian and latin influences. We were told to order 2 appetizers each, so instead we decided to go with 1 app and 1 main entree per person.  In all honesty, after we ate, I almost think that was too much.  For apps we had the small cut up ceviche, thai chicken empanadas, tuna wonton tacos, duck tacos, and lettuce shrimp wrap (all at about ~$12 each).  My favorite was the empanadas...there was a really good coconut/curry flavor to it.  The shrimp lettuce came with 3 nice pieces of butter lettuce which I love, but the shrimp was a bit small and it was actually pretty spicy from the chorizo.  The tuna wonton taco was ok, I thought that the wonton was too stiff; it was literally like a wonton chip and it cut my mouth. I think I would have preferred it in a soft taco version inside.  Which leads me to the duck taco..conceptually, I liked that they were trying to do. A thinly shaved cucumber was the wrap/taco part, which I thought was creative and a nice refreshing touch, but the actual duck was dry and overcooked.  When we ordered the ceviche we had the option of the "large chunks" or "small cut up" kind.  I think people were turned off by the term "chunks of fish", but I think that probably would have been better.  The ceviche was cut up too small and I could barely taste the fish.  It just tasted like a lime juice mixture, which is a good base to a good ceviche, but it should be complimenting the fish. 


Entree-wise Maggie and Amanda got the scallop dish.  For $24 they got 4 pieces of scallop on a bed of seasoned rice.  It looked like it would taste good, but I would think for that price there should have been more scallop.  I ordered the roasted chicken with garlic yucca fries ($19) which I ordered mainly for the garlic yucca fries part.  The chicken was extremely tender and juicy but it was covered in this sweet red sauce and was not what I envisioned when they called it "roasted".  Sadly, the yucca fries I was so looking forward to were not good.  They were not garlic-y and very dry.  I know that yucca is traditionally very hard to cook right and it didn't really work for me here.  Jenn got a tofu dish that sounded pretty good on the menu ($17) and Vivi got a chipotle miso soup ($4) and a veggie sushi roll ($10).  Vivi was initially a bit unsure about the soup, but the waitress said it was pretty good and Vivi didn't seem to have much complaints afterwards. 


We also ordered a bunch of drinks and an order of churros ($8) because we just couldn't say no to dessert.  The churros were actually pretty good, but then again it's hard to get fried dough sprinkled with sugar wrong.  All in all, I think the food was fairly good and they tried very hard to combine 2 very different cultures, but I thought for what we got it was way overpriced.  Everything should have been at least $5-8 less than what it was.  This was why I was so confused when our bill came.  In my head, I was sure that it was around $45-48/person but then it came out to be $56/pp I ended up tipping our waitress slightly less than 15%.  Opps, my bad.  I think this place would do much better if it moved to another location in order to justify it's "trendiness" (and therefore, then they could theoretically get away with their prices) 

Momofuku Fried Chicken Meal Visited 9/23/10 - 3 Forks

Momofuku Noodle Bar 171 First Avenue, New York NY 10003
                                                                                           

I had been to Momofuku Noodle Bar years ago before David Chang blew up in New York City.  And my impression then was "eh".  Sadly, after so much hype and excitement over eating at one of his famous "for the table" meals, I still think it's a bit eh.  I'm not quite sure what all the hub-ub is about.  Each of his restaurants has a large group meal: in Saam it's the pork butt, in Ma Peche it's the beef 7 ways and here it's the fried chicken meal.  It's 2 1/4 chicken cooked southern style or asian/korean style and then it comes with pancakes and a bowl full of butter lettuce, carrots, radishes and basil.  And it's $100 total for up to 8 people, so obviously the more people you have the less each person has to pay. The only way to get this meal is through an intense online lottery system where you battle for only 2 time slots.

My friends at work were looking for a nice upscale meal since all their VPs were out of the office and I thought that this was a great idea and wanted to get in on it. I was surprised at how many people were in the restaurant just having a leisurely lunch.  Apparently I am working for the wrong company or just need to marry rich and be a lady who lunches.  I thought I had read on the website that the meal comes out 15 mins after your reservation, but for us when we sat down they said it would be another 25 minutes.  So we ordered 3 orders of pork buns while we waited.  Now I will say that the buns were Amazing. They had giant and perfectly cooked pieces of pork belly with slices of cucumber and hoisin sauce.  It's definitely one of the better pork buns I've had in the city but for $10 for 2, it seems a bit excessive.

Finally, the fried chicken came out.  I started with the southern style first, mostly because the asian style ones were mostly wings and I never found wings to be satisfying enough. While the inside of the chicken was pretty moist, I found the skin to be dry and not very crispy.  It almost seemed like there was too much batter on it...the skin wasn't thin and crunchy.  Instead it was very thick and just bulky.  Flavor wise, it has a hint of Old Bay, which I usually love, but it just seems to dry the skin out.  They also give you four different dipping sauces:  Spicy garlic, oyster, chili, and ginger scallion. I'm not quite sure why they felt the need to treat this chicken meal a la Peking Duck because it just didn't work.  The chicken didn't hold up well because the pieces aren't sliced as big as it is with duck or other pancake/meat combination.  I then moved on to the Asian style chicken and I actually liked the sauce on this one better.  But it was still also too thickly coasted and it was mostly on skinny wings which is frustrating because there isn't a lot of meat to it.  Unfortunately, since we only had 5 people we had about 5-6 pieces of chicken left.  So I think 6 people would be the perfect number for the meal and it would help to spread out the costs as well.

All in all, I was a bit disappointed with the meal given all the hype.  But the pork buns is what carried this review above 2 forks because they really were that good and I do like the communal/group meal idea. The total bill was $170 without tip....which frankly seems too high for fried chicken.  I think you're much better off going to BonChon or some other korean fried chicken place for much less.

Boutique Eat Shop Visited 9/18/10 3.75 Forks

Boutique Eat Shop  559 W 22nd St, (between 10th Ave & West St), Manhattan, NY 10011

 Ok, I will admit that this place is kind of out of the way.  11th avenue is a good 15 min walk from the subway, which doesn't really seem that bad, but when you are in the hurry, seems to take forever. 

I chose this place because I had a 25% BBE code and it was close to my friend's Yilin's apartment and it was on the way to the American Natural History Museum, where Dan and I were going to after brunch.  


While the walk is long, it's a really nice walk through a great neighborhood.  Chelsea is really a great part of New York and you get to walk through the Art Gallery section as well.  The inside of this restaurant is quite funky.  It's got velvet couches, the jugs filled with wax as lighting and a giant white house cut-out in front of the back bar.  The menu has traditional brunch food with a slight upscale twist.  My first impression was that the prices were about $2-3 too much for what it should be.  In an effort to be healthy I got the egg white omelet with fresh tomato salsa ($12), while Dan got a smoked salmon benedict with a side of asparagus wrapped in bacon ($14).  Yilin also got the benedict and her husband, Josh, got the french toast.  The waitstaff was super nice there and offered up the fact that the benedict isn't a "hot" dish.  They also ooh'd and ahh'd over Yilin's super cute baby and made no fuss about the fact that we had a baby in a slightly nice restaurant. 

Overall, I thought that the food was very good.  Maybe it's because I went the healthy route, but I still felt a bit hungry afterwards.  My meal came with a nice side arugula salad, which I'm honestly not used to.  I usually get a side of bacon or sausage to help fill me up.  Dan's benedict was very good and it wasn't as cold as they waitress made it out to be.  The twist on it was that it was on a nice fluffy piece of challah-type bread, not your typical english muffin.  It also came with a healthy heap of spinach, which is nice because usually with benedict you have to choose between salmon or spinach.  

With the discount, the total bill came out to be $60 total, which isn't horrible but when you factor in that I had to use a 25% discount to get to that figure, it's a tad bit overpriced.  But if you're in the area or are near the art galleries or Chelsea Piers, it's a good place to eat.

Ayada Visited 9/11/10 3.75 Forks

Ayada  77-08 Woodside Avenue (77th Street), Elmhurst, Queens

 I was fortunate enough to get free courtside tickets to the Women's Final at the US Open on Saturday night.  After having already been to the Open earlier in the week, I knew how expensive the food was there and was determined to get food somewhere else.  Queens is probably best known for its delicious ethnic foods: Chinese, Thai, Indian, Ecuadorian, etc.  I have always wanted to do a food tour of Queens, but this was not the time.  I had thought about going to the famous Sripraphrai but after reading that the food wasn't as good as it used to be and that it was cash only, I decided to look for a new thai place.  I had read about this place in the NY Times recently about how authentic it was and it wasn't too far off the 7 train, so I thought why not? It's a few blocks away from the 7 train stop in Elmhurst/Jackson Heights in a pretty quiet and unassuming street.  If I hadn't read about this place I would have never found it.

The place is small, clean and cute.  The menu had a pretty good list of authentic and your usual suspect thai dishes.  We were kind of in a hurry to make it in time for the match, so we didn't really order with too much thought.  I wish we had more time and more people to order more food.  I had read about some mussels dish, but I didn't see it on the menu, which was a bummer because I love that thai mussel dishes usually use plump New Zealand mussels.  Instead I got my usual chicken pad thai ($8).  I know, as someone who likes food, its kind of a cop out to order pad thai when there are so many other great thai dishes, but in all honesty, a really good pad thai is just as good as any dish.  Aarti got the garlic eggplant with tofu ($8).  The waitress had asked how spicy and surprisingly Aarti had said "medium".  But given our previous experience in more authentic thai places, when you say spicy, it's really is spicy and it can be borderline inedible.  The food came out relatively quickly given that there were 4-5 other tables. 

Aarti took the first bite of my pad thai and she said it was amazing.  So I gave it a bite and it was fabulous.  Just the right amount of sauce and not too sweet.  A lot of times pad thai can be too dry or there is something off about the sauce, but this was perfect.  My only complaint was that there wasn't enough. A lot of thai places gives you an entire heaping plate of food, but this place gives you probably the right amount that one should eat for dinner.  Aarti's dish was also very good, and just like she had anticipated, it was pretty damn spicy for "medium".

Unfortunately, we had to get out of there pretty quickly, but I really enjoyed my meal (total bill was only $17!! and they take credit card...and AXP to boot, which is kind of rare in these mom and pop restuarants).  While the food was great, Queens is just a bit too much of a pain for me to come here often.  I have to take 3 trains to get there and the local 7 train is just brutal.  I would definitely eat here often if it was even remotely close to me (if it wasn't for the location I would have given it 4 forks but in a way it's location is also what makes it different. sigh.).  But if I ever find myself in Queens, I would have no hesitation to come back.  I would love to come back to Queens more and try even more of these cheap and authentic places.   

Traif Visited 9/11/10 4 Forks

Traif  229 S 4th St, (between Havemeyer St & Roebling St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

 I had read so many amazing reviews about Traif and they were all right.  The food here was incredible, one of the most delicious meals that I have had in a very long time.  The only reason I didn't give this place a 4.5 or 5 forks was that the service was a bit slow and it kind of tainted the whole experience.


Traif is located right at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, so it's a bit away from all the craziness.  The backyard has a super cute garden that seats about 5 tables.  It was a perfect day to sit outside and enjoy our meal.  We started with 1 hot coffee, 1 Vietnamese iced coffee, and a whiskey cocktail ($10).  Dan's hot coffee came out first and as coffee goes, it was pretty damn good. Then my iced coffee came out and I thought it was going to be with the whole set-up that you usually get with Vietnamese iced coffee, but it came pre-made already, which was a bit disappointing.  But after I tried it, I was in heaven.  I'm not sure if it had as much condensed milk as it should, but there was a hint of hazelnut that made it even sweeter.  The whiskey cocktail had green ice, mint and whiskey in it...it tasted pretty much like an iced tea with a shot of whiskey. 


For food, we were really torn on what to order. I was pleased that the most expensive thing on the menu was only $14, with everything generally falling into the $8-10 mark.  I had read that their dinner portions are tapas-esque, so I wasn't sure if brunch was also, but it's usually a bit hard to do bite size brunch dishes.  I was torn between the egg-in-a-nest or the chicken and biscuits.  In the end I chose the egg-in-a-nest ($9) because it sounded different and a side of bacon donuts ($6).  Dan got the Costanza which was a lobster scramble with marscapone cheese ($14).  The food was amazeballs!!! Seriously the food is about a 5 forks level, it was simply amazing.  Dan's dish was especially yummy with actual good size chunks of lobster meat in it, although honestly the eggs were so good, I would have even loved it without it.  My dish was a brie-roast portabella mushroom grilled cheese with truffle cream.  Dear god, it was so delicious.  The cheese was not gooey but had the right about of melt to it and the truffle flavoring was just right, because it's super easy to go overboard with truffle and ruin a dish.  The egg was poached perfectly so that the yolk ran down the sandwich just so.  Both of our meals came with a really simple but great tasting salad.  If it wasn't incredibly rude and gross, Dan and I both agreed that we would have taken the plates to our faces and licked them clean. 

When I ordered the bacon donuts, I had told the waitress if she could bring them out last since it came with ice cream and I didn't want it to melt.  I had thought that she would monitor our meal and then put the order in when we were almost done eating.  Instead, she waited for us to completely finish and then she put the order in.  This was a bad move because then we ended up waiting a really long time between dishes and we were actually pretty full that we could have done without the dish.  When it finally did come out, it was a bit of a disappointment.  Maybe it's because our main dishes were so good, but neither of us were blown away by this dish.  It just tasted like fried dough with bit of bacon on top of it.  The coffee ice cream it came with was pretty good and when you mixed the ice cream and donut together it was a pretty good sweet/salty combo.
By the time we were done, the place was pretty crowded so I understand that the waitress was probably super busy but it took at least 15 minutes to hail the waitress and get our check.  I think if I had ended the meal at our main dishes, I would have given this place 5 forks, but the dessert and the long wait for our check knocked off 1 star.  Despite that, I would definitely come here anytime and would love to try out the dinner menu.  Total bill with tax: $46

Bugaboo Creek Visited 9/3/10 1.5 Forks

Bugaboo Creek  15710 Shady Grove Rd, Gaithersburg, MD 20877

Every time I come home I have a list of the usual places I go to: Pho 75, Takshibana, Dim Sum, and ordering crabs.  But this time my mom kept telling me about this "great deal" that her friend was raving about and she even went for a "test run" at this place before I came home.  So I felt bad not going, so I thought I would give it a try. 

Right when we pulled up to this place, I knew it was going to be bad.  Everything about it screamed CHAIN restaurant and bad chain restaurant at that.  It looked like a bad version of Outback, if that's even possible.  But again, I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt since my mom said it was ok the last time she went.  The place has all these fakes mooseheads and was full of kids and older people.  The menu is full of your typical chain restaurant food: nachos, spinach dip, burgers, etc.  We all split an order of the spinach dip to start ($7.95).  My mom had these coupons for lobster specials ($15.99), so that's what we all ordered...it was originally $24.99, which after eating the meal is absolutely ridiculous overpriced.  On paper the lobster dinner sounded like a good meal:  1 1/4 lb lobster, a side salad, corn and choice of 1 side.  In an effort to be healthy I got a side order of steamed broccoli instead of fries or mashed potatoes. 

We waited a bit for our food to come out and then it did, it was just bleh looking.  The corn looked like it had been run over by a truck and could not hold a light to the yummy farmer's market corn that I have been eating at home.  The lobster felt more like 1/4 lb instead of 1 1/4 lb...I was done with it in about 5 minutes.  The salad was actually pretty good and the broccoli was fine (I mean, how do you mess up steamed veggies).  When Dan's meal came out, his butter dish literally had 1 drop of butter.  Even our waitress looked at his meal and was like WTF? and was super embarrassed by it.  Our waitress was fine and nice enough but generally forgot lots of stuff and just seemed overwhelmed on a Friday night. 

I could tell that most of us didn't like our meal at all and I felt bad to insult it given how much my mom had talked about it, but I think she recognized that it wasn't the best meal.  The total bill with the coupon was $100, which I still think is outrageous given the quality of the food, but I guess that's what we get for going to a chain restaurant hidden behind a Red Lobster.

Egg Visited 9/3/10 4 Forks

Egg  135 N 5th St, (between Bedford Ave & Berry St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

I have been to Egg once before and really liked it.  But for some reason, Dan had blacklisted it and we never went again.  But this time, we were looking for a breakfast place on a weekday and I had somewhere convinced Dan that Egg was the only place open. 
 
Even on a weekday, Egg was pretty crowded (alright, I will admit it was the Friday before Labor Day weekend and everyone was not at work).  I like that instead of trying to find a hostess, you just sign yourself in and they go down the list.  Luckily, we were seated after about 15 minutes because the other 2-fer wasn't a complete party yet.  The menu there has a lot of great traditional breakfast food: grits, hash, waffles, biscuits and gravy, etc.  I was torn between the biscuits and gravy or the grits and eggs ($9).  In the end I thought that grits and eggs were slightly "healthier", although I'm sure it's probably pretty debateable.  Dan ordered the duck hash ($12) and a french press coffee ($2.25).  I normally hate places that don't let you have unlimited coffee re-fills, but I can't help be won over by their cute french press coffee and I guess I can see why it wouldn't have free re-fills. 
 
The grits and eggs came out and they were delicious.  I got my eggs scrambled and they were done perfectly wet and not overcooked (and I didn't even have to tell them how to cook them).  I wasn't sure if the grits had cheese in them, but they were pretty flavorful and tasty.  The kicker was that the meal came with a side of 2 sausage patties that were really well done.  All of these items combined were salty and savory and extremely filling.  I had one bite of Dan's duck hash and it was cooked very well too.  The duck was very moist and the potatoes were just right (a bit crispy on the outside).  Usually whenever Dan gets duck at a restaurant it never seems to come out right, especially in a breakfast setting, but this hit the spot that even Dan admitted that he liked his dish.  While I love the food here, I can see how the wait and long lines here over the weekend can become intolerable, so I'm not sure when my next meal will be here, but hopefully it will be soon.

Bill's Burger Bar Visited 8/2/10 3 Forks

Bill's Burger Bar  22 9th Ave, (between 13th St & Little W 12th St), New York, NY 10014

Dan's brother was in town so we thought that burgers are usually a fan favorite of everyone and we didn't want to spend hours racking our brain of someplace to try.  I actually really hate the Meat Packing area and in retrospect, I wish I had thought of korean fried chicken earlier (who doesn't like fried chicken!?), but it was in a easily accessible location. 

Bill's is located in the old Hog Pit bar area and next to another BR Guest restaurant, Dos Caminos.  The set up is pretty simple, a bar with several tables with red checkered table clothes.  As the name of the menu would imply, they have mostly burgers and shakes on their menu.  I ordered the mushroom and swiss burger ($7.50) and split an order of the sweet potato fries ($4.95) with Dan.  There were a bunch of other good sounding burgers, but I always love a good mushroom and cheese burger.  I had read online that they serve burgers on english muffins, but ours all came out on regular buns, which was a bit disappointing. 

So the burger itself was fine.  Nothing special, just ok.  I had ordered it medium rare, but it was definitely more towards medium because it wasn't very pink on the inside.  I didn't like that the bottom bun got very damp from the burger and started to fall apart before I could finish my meal.  The fries were also overcooked and could have been a bit more crispy.  For some reason, I tend to get annoyed at places where fries (or some kind of side) is not included in burger order.  I mean, why the hell would one order just a burger and no sides?!  But everyone else seemed to really like their meals and the waitstaff was pretty nice (they comped us a beer because they told us one type of beer wasn't available, but then was available, so the brought it out free).  While it's not amazing place, it's a decent place to go for a bite to eat in an over-price neighborhood.

Xi'an Famous Foods Visited 8/31/10 3.5 Forks

Xi'an Famous Foods  81 St Mark's Pl, (between 2nd Ave & 1st Ave), New York, NY 10003

Xi'an has been written about in many foodie blogs and I was excited when they opened a branch in the East Village so that I don't have to trek to Flushing to try it.
 
It's not really a restaurant...there are 2 tables and then a small wall lined with about 4 stools, so it's definitely more of a take out type of place, but if you really wanted to sit down, you could. The last time I walked past this place there was a line out the door, but this time, I went after work and there was only 1 person in line.  They are famous for the liang pi (translation: cold skin noodles) and the lamb burger, so I decided to get both.  If you are intimidated by ordering there, don't worry, they have a wall full of pictures and you can order by letter and number (i.e. A1).  The kitchen is pretty small and you can see right into it, so you know that the food is fresh. 
 
They were kind enough to put the hot chili sauce in a separate bag so that when I carried it out, it wouldn't splash all over the place.  I tried the lamb burger first ($2.50)...it's basically a bunch of finely chopped up lamb meat with spices and large chunks of pepper.  It was good but my wasn't blown away as many bloggers have described their experience.  I actually thought that the bun that they used (it's like a thin white bao) was a bit dry and there wasn't enough meat in it.  But for $2.50, it's definitely a good value and I would get it again.
 
However, the liang pi noodles ($4.50) were amazing.  This is what I can see what people were raving about.  There is something that is just ridiculously addicting about it.  It's a bunch of cold thick gelatinous noodles mixed with cucumbers, cilantro, bean sprouts, and something that looks like tofu, but it isn't.  It's then coated with this spicy red chili sauce and the result is amazing.  I didn't even get it super spicy but it was definitely just enough spice to make me feel the heat all over my mouth, but the cold cucumber and bean sprouts perfectly offset the heat.
 
While I wasn't completely overwhelmed by the experience, I did enjoy the food and for $7 total, there is probably no better deal out there.