Yerba Buena Visited 3/5/2011 4 Forks

Yerba Buena  23 Ave. A, New York, NY 10009

For some reason whenever I have to think of a restaurant to go to for dinner, I can never think of anything!  I end up surfing the net for hours and deciding that everything on my ever growing list of new places to try are just not right for some reason.   So it was good that Aarti and I were able to agree to Yerba Buena rather quickly.  Luckily for us, it was a great pick.

 I agree with Immaculate Infatuation's assessment that at first glance the prices were a bit expensive and there weren't many veggie options for Aarti.  But she was able to order enough veggie side dishes to make a great meal and while the prices were high, the service and quality of the food did make up for it.  Even though it was 8pm on a Saturday and it was crowded, we didn't have to wait too long for a table despite the small size of the restaurant.  At first when the waitstaff took my coat, I was a bit annoyed because I hate coat check, but they actually just carried it to our table and put it behind our chair.  Nice touch.  Food wise, I ordered the Brazilian paella ($27) which came with shrimp, calms, calamari, crawfish, white fish, arroz verde and it's cooked in a coconut milk.  Aarti ordered the rice and beans ($7), the hearts of palm ($7) and the corn ($7) and we shared the guacamole ($10).  The guac was a bit small but it was tasty and the chips were nice and salty and crispy.  The waitress had told us that the hearts of palm look and taste like chicken tenders and I had no idea what she was talking about.  But you know what? It were breaded and fried and DID taste like chicken tenders.  It came with a fabulous spicy aoli mayo, which you all know is one of my favorite dipping sauces.  Aarti really liked the rest of her dishes, which was a great relief since most of the entrees were not veggie friendly.  I actually didn't love the corn that she got because it was the more Latin/South American corn which are really large nut tasting kernels and not the smaller, fresh, crisp kernels.

My paella came out and it was quite delicious.  You could really taste the coconut milk and there was plenty of seafood...at least 5 clams, 2 large crawfish, 2 very large and well cooked shrimp, and plenty of other okra, and white fish.  The one thing that I would have like was for it to have more rice.  There really wasn't enough rice (which was quite good because it was arroz verde so it's got this green cilantro flavor to it) to the point where it was just like a curry broth instead of a rice-heavy paella.  We were so full from our meal that we couldn't have any dessert, although there wasn't a lot that was screaming at me, but I'm sure that they would have been super tasty.  The total bill with 2 cocktails (apparently my mojito was called the Best mojito in NYC by the NYTimes) and without tip was $89.