Sam's Chowder House Visited 7/27/2013 3.5 Forks

Sam's Chowder House  4210 Cabrillo Hwy N., Half Moon Bay, CA 94019

When Neera first told me about Sam's Chowder House, I was beyond excited.  It is the kind of restaurant that is totally up my alley:  super casual but not dumpy, gorgeous views of the water, and an endless menu of seafood.   Heaven.   When we drove up to the restaurant at 11AM on Saturday, there already was a line just to get in.  I would strongly suggest recommendations if you want to eat at a reasonably hour. 

As I mentioned, there were tons of amazing sounding seafood options.  It ranged from a raw bar, different kinds of chowders and soups, poke, shrimp cocktail, crab cakes, calamari, mussels, different kinds of seafood salad, fish sandwich, salmon burger, daily catch of fish, several fried platters as well as  some "land" options of burgers, chicken, and pasta.  Sorry vegetarians, besides some side dishes, you're out of luck.  I wish I could have ordered almost everything on the menu, but we settled on splitting the Captain's Platter ($34.95) which included 4 oysters, 4 clams, 4 chilled shrimp, ahi tuna poke and seafood ceviche - which was perfect because there was 4 of us.   For my main, Neera and I split the New England clam chowder ($6.95) and the lobster roll ($21.95) and I also ordered a side of Old Bay fries ($5) because I love anything with Old Bay.  Levi got the spicy popcorn shrimp as an entree ($11.50) and Kevin got the salmon burger ($14.95).  As soon as the Captain's Platter came out I was ready to dive right in.  I'll start with the good news.  The oysters and clams were amazing (although I really wish the waitress told us what kind of oysters they were) and the poke was some of the best I've had outside of Hawaii.  It kind of made me regret not actually ordering the appetizer size portion of the poke because it had the perfect blend of soy, ginger and fresh ahi tuna.  The bad news:  the ceviche was pretty disappointing.  Kevin had mentioned that he had never had ceviche, so Levi and I were excited for him to try it out.  Normally when I think of ceviche, I picture raw pieces of fish or scallop in an acid/citrus base.  This one had a bunch of cold small cooked shrimp and cooked scallop in a mango avocado base.  It wasn't very impressive and I've definitely had much better ceviche elsewhere.  

After our appetizer, we then had to wait a while for our main entrees to come out.  First they started to bring out the wrong dish but soon realized that we didn't order the seafood spaghetti.  I assumed that our order would come out soon after that.  Well, it didn't.  Finally when our food came, I was ready to demolish the soup and sandwich.  I started with the soup - it's made with littleneck clams, yukon potatoes, smoked bacon and cream.  The restaurant makes it clear on their menu that they don't thicken their chowder with flour but instead use the natural ingredients to bring out the flavor and texture.  I'll be honest, but I kind of wish they did use flour to thicken their chowder.  It just felt like it was more soup than chowder.  Maybe my perception is skewed based on my childhood obsession with Campbell's Chunky Chowder, but I expect my chowders to be thick and chunky - you almost need to eat it with a fork.  The soup here was fine but I wish it also had more clam to it as well.  After I finished my portion of the soup, I moved on to the lobster roll.  For those of you who've followed my blog for a while, you know my complete obsession with a good lobster roll.  It's probably one of my favorite food items ever.  I usually like the mayo based kind but the one here was more of the Connecticut style kind with no mayo but instead chunks of buttered lobster.  The actual lobster was fantastic.  Big, large chunks of fresh lobster tail and claw.  I wasn't, however, a huge fan of the roll it came on.  It was too toasted and on the dry side.  I could tell that there was a lot of butter on the roll but it wasn't very soft.  At some point, I just started picking out the lobster meat.  To me, this dish seemed less like a lobster roll and more like chunks of buttered lobster out of the shell. 

While our waitress was super sweet and nice, she was very flighty and had to come back to our table to figure out how to split the bill among the 3 credit card.  I really really wanted to give this place at least 4 forks or higher, but between the long wait, disappointing ceviche and dry lobster bun, I had to settle for 3.5 forks.  But it's sitting on a beautiful waterfront property, so if you do find yourself in the neighborhood, I would recommend coming in and at least have a few drinks and some oysters.  Total bill:  $40/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit: Yelp

Buffet at Aria Visited 7/26/2013 3 Forks

Buffet at Aria  3730 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Las Vegas, NV 89149 

So I was back in Vegas and determined to hit up another buffet after my last buffet debacle at Mandalay Bay.  The Aria has a better reputation overall and I even checked out the restaurant the night before to ensure that the menu seemed like it would be a better experience.   With my jetlag, I showed up at 8AM on a Friday and there was no line and the place was half empty.   My first impression was that it was leaps and bounds better than the buffet at The Mandalay Bay without even tasting the food.  The line-up was much more diverse and of better quality.  The different stations ranged from the seafood bar (New Zealand Mussels, shrimp cocktail, ceviche, and seafood chowder), the Asian station (dim sum, fried noodles, fried rice, and pork buns), the Mediterranean station (I didn't get a good look at this station but it looked like a grain bar), the Indian station (curries and tandoori chicken), carving station, omelette station, mini fried chicken and waffle station, standard salad bar, fresh fruit/yogurt station and American breakfast station of eggs, bacon, sausage, etc.  Even though it was really early in the morning, I went straight for the seafood and dim sum station because that's what seemed most unique and the best bang for your buck.  They had a super cute mini dim sum steamer with 3 kinds of dumplings inside.  It wasn't amazing but for buffet dim sum, not horrible either. It clearly didn't taste like it was freshly made but honestly I wasn't expecting it.  I did appreciate the fact that the dim sum came in these individual portions to try to mitigate the issue that most buffets have tons of food sitting out there.  I then headed to the raw bar and piled up on the mussels and shrimp cocktail.   Yes, it is kind of weird to be eating seafood at 8AM but for good seafood, I will eat it any time of the day.  Given that this was positioned as a raw bar, the mussels and shrimp cocktail were served cold - which was fine for the shrimp but I still don't love mussels cold.  I still prefer them slightly warm in some broth.  But for buffet seafood, the quality of the seafood was totally acceptable, to the point where I actually got seconds.

I then felt like I had to try some traditional breakfast food and I got the buffet scrambled eggs.  They were very wet, which is the way I actually like my eggs but I totally get that it's not everyone's cup of tea because it kind of has this undercooked quality to it but I was totally into it.  Since I had just came from the gym, I felt like I couldn't go too crazy, so I opted out of the bacon, sausage, the individual sized eggs benedict, and the super cute individual fried chicken and waffles - I exercised a LOT of self control.  I did try the steamed clams and honestly those were not as good as the mussels.  I usually like  steamed clams in a very clean broth but this one had almost this weird curry taste to it and the broth was very yellow, so that was kind of a turn off.  I had really wanted to end my meal with a fresh fruit plate and this is where the buffet disappointed me the most.  For a place that had so much variety and options, they had the lamest fruit line-up ever.  It was heavy on  honeydew, cantaloupe, and grapes.  I was hoping for watermelon or mangos to cleanse my palate.  Instead, I went for a bowl of cottage cheese which tasted like your basic cottage cheese you would get at the grocery store.  I did also get a bowl of pre-sliced grapefruit which was nice but they tried to fancy it up with thin shavings of mint which I wasn't really into.

All in all, this still wasn't the buffet of my dreams but it was way better than my previous buffet experience.  Also the fact that I was under a pretty tight timeline and had to be in and out of the buffet in an hour probably didn't really work in my favor either.  If I had more time to leisurely enjoy my meal and fully explore and indulge, then maybe I would have rated it higher, but given the quality of the food, probably not.  By the time I left breakfast there was a line out the door, so I would recommend getting there early if you don't want to wait in line for too long.  Total bill:  $23 with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Gobo Visited 7/23/2013 3 Forks

Gobo 401 Avenue of the Americas (between 8th St & Greenwich Ave), New York, NY 10014

Gobo is one of those places that I've walked past a million times because of its West Village location but never had enough of an interest to actually go inside.  It kind of always gave me that hippie dippie, too-cool-for school, organic feel to it and I'm not really been a huge fan of those kinds of places.  But since Vinyak had expressed interest in trying a vegan restaurant, Aarti figured that this could be a good option even though it's not 100% vegan but very veggie/health friendly.

The menu is pretty extensive and I will say that if you do have any sort of dietary restrictions (vegan, gluten, peanut, etc) they have a lot of options for you.  We all started with the wonton soup ($6) which was a very filling appetizer and probably my favorite dish of the night.  It was a clear broth with 5 very stuffed wontons and lots of fresh spinach piled on top.  The wontons were filled with chopped up veggies and some soy and while it was good, I still missed the real wontons stuffed with pork and cabbage.  Next came all our other dishes:  roti canai with malayasian curry ($8), the avocado tartare with wasbi lime sauce ($11), the seitan skewers ($9), the eggplant stuffed with tofu cheese ($12), the nori wrapped tofu in red curry sauce ($17), the butternut squash risotto with toasted almonds ($18), and the kale, seaweed, beet salad ($12).  Yes, we went a bit overboard and honestly could have done with 1-2 fewer dishes.  We all agreed that the roti canai with malaysian curry was our favorite dish of the entreees.  The roti was nice and soft but with a slight crisp on the outside to it and the curry tasted like a curry you would get at a mom and pop Thai place.  The avocado tartare was frankly just like a guacamole to me (which is not a bad thing at all!).  It was served with those weird fried noodle strips you get with a hot and sour soup but I actually liked that it was light on the salt so that you could really taste the avocado.  Sadly I didn't taste much in the way of wasabi which was kind of a bummer because that would have been a nice spice addition to it.  The eggplant stuffed with tofu cheese sounded like it would be a great dish and while it was fine, it didn't wow me very much.  The tofu cheese had no flavor to it and they essentially roasted the crap out of the eggplant to make it soft and edible.  The butternut squash had a lot of potential but it was way too sweet and for a place that has a real focus on health, it tasted like I was eating a cup of sugar.  I don't actually think they added any sugar to it, it was more that the sweetness of the butternut really overwhelmed the dish.  The nori wrapped tofu tasted exactly how it sounds - like tofu wrapped in dry seaweed.  Again, it wasn't a bad dish, I just felt like it was missing something to it that maybe a meat or fish would have brought out in the dish.  The kale, seaweed and beet salad also tasted exactly like how it's described.  It's chopped up and sauteed kale, thick dark green pieces of seaweed (not the bright thin seaweed they usually use in a seaweed salad but it's a long, flat version) and cut up pieces of cold beets.  I actually really love all of these ingredients individually so while it doesn't sound like a delicious dish, I enjoyed it more than a lot of the other dishes and felt super healthy eating it.  My least favorite dish of the night was the seitan skewers.  It just had no taste to it at all, even though it was served with two different dipping sauces.  The consistency of it was also dry and if we had to cut a few dishes, this would have been my first choice to cut.

At the end of the meal, I did feel incredibly full yet healthy at the same time.  You could definitely tell that the food here is not processed but I did kind of miss having the flavors of meat, fat and a bit of oil in my food.  One thing to note is that we explicitly told our waiter that Vinyak has a very strong sesame allergy and they seemed very amenable to it.  But apparently something we ate gave him that allergy feeling but we couldn't figure out what dish it came from.  Our waiter did try to help and brought out the ingredient cards to show us but in the end, it's just a bit unnerving to have a bunch of food on your plate, knowing that you're allergic to something but that you just don't know what it is.  It's a good vegetarian/gluten free option but if you are a meat lover, it may not satisfy your palate as much as some other veggie friendly places in town.  Total bill:  $190 for 4 people with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Meskerem Visited 7/18/2013 3.5 Forks

Meskerem  124 MacDougal St., New York, NY 10012

Every year for Aarti's b-day, we try to keep a tradition of getting Ethiopian food.  Even though NYC is one of the most diverse cities in the world, strangely enough, there aren't a ton of Ethiopian options in NYC.  I wanted to try a new place, but we ended up going back to one of our usual haunts, Meskerem in the West Village.  There's not much in the way of ambiance as it's in this beat up downstairs area on Bleecker Street (a street full of NYU haunts).  It's small inside with tables that seat no more than 4 people at one time, but it was cozy enough for Aarti and I.  The menu is pretty extensive with lots of both meat and vegetarian options.  Since it was Aarti's b-day, we opted for the vegetarian combo for two ($28) and the avocado appetizer ($6).  After looking at the menu, I would say that the combos (either the veggie or the meat/veggie one) are definitely the way to go because it lets you try tons of different kinds of dishes at a fairly reasonable price.  If you ordered individually, single entrees of one type of dish would run you $13-15 each.   

The avocado dish was served on injera bread with chopped avocado, tomatoes, green peppers and onions.  It was kind of like guacamole but not all mashed up.  The dish was great but honestly the ratio of injera and avocado mix was way off.  There was about 3-4 scoops of the avocado and by the time we were done with it we were left with tons of injera and nothing left to eat with it.   The veggie combo comes with miser alech (lentils with curry), miser wat (lentils with berbere sauce), shro wat (chickpeas with berbere cause), sautéed string beans with carrots and onions, a mixture of cabbage, potatoes, and carrots, collard greens, and chickpea balls.  And of course it comes on top of injera and then served with another side of injera.  So yeah - it was tons of food.  To be honest, it was really hard to tell what was what on the plate because they all kind of look the same except for the cabbage, the green beans and the collard greens.  The injera was nice and soft and spongy and I started sopping up a little bit of everything from the plate.  All the mixes were flavorful and one of them had an especially strong kick to it.  I used the cabbage mix to cool off my mouth and to re-set my palate.  Even though there wasn't any meat on the plate, the injera really fills you up very quickly.  We were both really full after an hour or so and Ethiopian food isn't really the kind of food you want to take home with you.  While I really enjoyed all the different mixtures on the plate, it would have been nice if there was a bit more differentiation in texture/consistency among them.  

All in all, I don't have any major complaints about this place and for the price and what you get for the combinations it is very reasonable.  It's a solid restaurant that could just use a bit of touch up to their decor.  I would warn that most Ethiopian wines are super super sweet, so I would probably stick with the beer.  There are a few other Ethiopian places that I haven't tried that are in Harlem, but if you're looking to stick to the downtown area, Meskerem is a good but low key choice.  Total bill:  $57 for 2 with tax and tip 

Photo Credit: Yelp

Figs Visited 7/12/2013 3 Forks

Figs   42 Charles St., (between Chestnut St & Mount Vernon St), Boston, MA 02114

For some reason, I've never really had any interest in going to any Todd English restaurants before but when Lav mentioned that this place had really good pizza, I was willing to give his restaurant a try.  While his restaurant in NYC, Olives, is in the swanky W Hotel, this one in Boston was a pretty low key, informal restaurant.  The restaurant is in this incredibly cute and charming part of Boston and while I would never actually move to Boston, this neighborhood did kind of capture my heart that morning.  I had just had a pretty filling breakfast, so I opted to go a bit lighter and get the spinach salad  ($11).  But of course my eyes started to linger and I saw that they had clam chowder ($9) on special.  Now since I was in Boston, I felt like I had to get the clam chowder, even though I wanted a "light" lunch.  Meanwhile, Lav and Eric split a pizza which was half Bianco and half Crispy Eggplant ($18.50).   

My spinach salad came with heirloom tomatoes, avocado, feta cheese and a vinaigrette dressing.  It was a good basic standard salad but I should have asked for the dressing on the side as it was a bit too heavy on the dressing.  I'm pretty sure it was probably one of those salads that seemed healthy at first but if you read the calorie count you would pass out.  But what really did me in was the soup.  My one pet peeve about the soup was that it was served in an enormous bowl.  I mean it almost took up the entire side of my table and when I put my spoon in the bowl I realized how shallow the actual bowl was.  It was just kind of annoying to have a giant soup bowl and a giant salad plate in front of me as it made it pretty difficult to maneuver around the table.  They would have been better off putting the bowl in a small deeper bowl to save space and it would have been presented better.   I had been hoping that since I was in New England that I would be blown away by the chow-da.  But it really wasn't that great.  It was very heavy on the bacon and I didn't really get a lot of clam or potato and it was actually a bit on the thin side.  It just didn't seem like what a good clam chowder should be: thick, chunky and full of big pieces of clam and potato.  I almost prefer the Campbell's Chunky Soup version to this one.  I didn't try the pizza in the restaurant but by the time we got to New Hampshire I was starving and warmed up a couple slices of the leftover pizza.  The Bianco side consisted of fresh mozzarella, sweet onions, tomatoes, arugula, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and the crispy eggplant side had tomato sauce, sliced eggplant, mozzarella, whipped ricotta and basil.  The pie and crust was of the thin square version and was still pretty nice and crunchy despite having lots of ingredients piled on top of it.  I actually didn't have a specific preference for either of the pizzas as they were both pretty good.  The ingredients were all very fresh and while it wasn't as good as the pizza at Roberta's, it totally hit the spot despite having been in our car for almost 3 hours.  If I were to end up at Figs again, I would skip the soup, opt for the pizza to share and if I did order a salad, ask for the dressing on the side.  Total bill:  $15/pp with tax and tip. 

Photo Credit: Yelp

Oleana Visited 7/11/2013 4.5 Forks

Oleana - 134 Hampshire St, Cambridge, MA 02139

I had heard a lot about Oleana from Lav and Eric enroute to New Hampshire, so I was pretty excited to give it a try.  Even though it received tons of raves reviews, I wasn't going in with really high expectations since I had never heard of it before. But I was totally in love with our dinner there and it was worth the crazy drive up there.  I was pretty surprised at how completely packed it was given that it was 9pm on a Thursday night.  Even though we had a reservation, but still had to wait about 20 minutes, which in relation to a NYC wait was totally ok. 

The menu here is Mediterranean, vegetarian friend and heavy on the flavor and spices.  While I wasn't starving when I got there (I totally blame the gigantic Auntie Ann's pretzel I had at the rest stop), my eyes definitely got big from all the yummy sounding dishes they had.  They have a LOT of tapas style entries as well as large sized entrees.  For starters, we all split the whipped feta with sweet and hot peppers ($5), saganaki ($10), and the sultan's delight ($13) and for my entree I got the hanger steak with a feta and chickpea salad ($29).  The one thing that disappointed me was the fact that they didn't have a Greek salad on the menu because I was totally in the mood for a good solid salad.  But luckily the rest of the dishes were so delicious that it didn't make me miss that the salad wasn't on the menu.  The whipped feta was amazing.  It had the strong flavor of the feta but with a nice combination of the roasted peppers to give it a sweet flavor.  It was whipped so smoothly that it almost had a butter-like consistency.  The saganaki was also fabulous and served with ouzo, sesame and really delicious grilled figs.  But my favorite appetizer was the sultan's delight which was tamarind glazed beef served with a smokey eggplant puree.  The beef was melt in your mouth and almost like a short rib in texture and consistency.  The puree was also spot on and had a very subtle smokey flavor that wasn't overwhelming but add a great touch to the dish.  I was pretty full at this point but I had to leave room for the hanger steak.  I am always a sucker for really good steak and this one absolutely did not disappoint.  It was good perfectly medium rare, closer on the rare side with a beautiful juicy red center.  The "salad" that came with it was more of a sauteed of peppers, onions,  some feta and chickpeas.  I could have done without it or just less of it because by the time I got to the bottom of it, there was a puddle of oil in the bowl that made it a bit unappetizing.  I had a taste of Eric's trout spanakopita ($24) and it was a nice blend of fish, spinach, avocado and roe.  It was bit heavy on the phyllo dough but otherwise it was a pretty unique dish that I haven't seen anywhere.  I didn't try any of Lav's dishes but she raved about the spinach falafel ($12), the walnut muhammara ($11) but mentioned that the corn and kohlarbi ($8) was lacking in flavor and a bit bland and her least favorite dish of the night.  We really decided to make it an overly decadent meal and got 2 desserts.  I totally apologize but I can't really remember what we got but I just remembered that one of them was too heavy the basil flavor and didn't seem right for a dessert.  

All in all, the food here had fabulous and strong flavors and it was most likely due to all the spices used in the dishes.  Eric actually had the cookbook for the restaurant and we tried to make a few of the dishes the following night (fairly successfully but still not as good as the restaurant) and the key to all the dishes were all these unique spices.  I know my friends were nervous about taking me here for dinner but they didn't have anything to worry about at all.  I've always said that I think Greek/Mediterranean food is like a sleeper hit - very unassuming but always a winner - and Oleana is no exception.  I would be more than happy to see a branch in the NYC area soon.  Total bill: $75/pp with tax, tip and wine

Photo Credit: Yelp

Uncle Boons Visited 7/10/2013 3.5 Forks

Uncle Boons 7 Spring St.(between Bowery & Elizabeth St), New York, NY 10012

The trend of hipster expensive Asian food a la of Mission Chinese and Pok Pok continues with the opening of Uncle Boons and frankly, I'm starting to get sick of all this hype.  Uncle Boons has pretty great pedigreed (owners came from Per Se) and while the food was good, there's just something about waiting almost an hour in line for food that starts in the $15-20 range, that is a bit tiring.  But I guess I'd rather wait for good Asian food instead of any other ethnic cuisine.  Nancy and I decided to try Uncle Boons on a Wednesday night at 6:30 hoping it wouldn't be too long of a wait.  So the one thing that really bothered me is that they wouldn't let me put our name in and tell me how long the wait is until the entire party was there.  I get it, but don't like it, when restaurants won't seat you until the whole party is there, but to not even let you put your name and get a time estimate (when you KNOW it'll be long) is totally ridiculous.  Luckily, Nancy was right behind me and they told us it would be a 45 minute wait.  By the time 20 minutes had gone by, the hostess was quoting 3 hours to people.  To lesson learned, get there before 7pm if you don't want to be quoted a ridiculous wait time.  We grabbed two seats at the bar and began our wait.  A word to anyone who plans to eat there in the summer, the A/C doesn't really work in the front part of the restaurant, so be prepared to sweat while you wait by the bar or eat at one of the 2 tops in the front of the restaurant.  I had to cool down with a beer slushie ($7) which was basically a frozen Chang beer served with a straw - love it.  Of course by the time our table was ready, our only choice was the two top right in front of the restaurant away from any A/C.  We were sweating before we could even put our drink orders in.

The menu here is much more authentic Thai food than you'll find at your regular Thai place.  You won't find any pad thai or eggplant and tofu here.  We started with the Mee Krob ($14) which was spicy sweetbreads with crispy noodle salad-peanuts, sawtooth herb and tamarind sauce, the Kao Pat Pu ($25) which was crab fried rice with egg, cilantro and lime, and the Khao Soi Kaa Kai ($20) which was Northern style golden curry with egg noodles, chicken leg, pickled mustard greens and coconut milk.  Even though I've had sweetbreads before, the concept of them still kind of creep me out, but I was ready for them.  They were actually the favorite part of my meal!  I know this is such a cliche, but it really did taste like chicken - crispy fried chicken nuggets.  It's juicy and moist on the inside and lightly battered fried on the outside and tossed in salt and pepper.  It was delicious and I could have popped more of them in my mouth.  It really wasn't that spicy but it had enough heat that the salad cooled my mouth a bit and ended with a tang from the tamarind sauce.  Next the two main entrees came out at the same time.  Size-wise I thought the fried rice portion was pretty small considering it was $25.  The flavor was great, the rice was cooked to the right texture and they clearly used fresh crab meat - I just wished there was more of it.  We had poured a spicy lime-cilantro dressing on top of it and that really took the spice flavor up a notch.  But what really kicked my ass spice-wise was the golden curry.  It wasn't the curry itself but the red chili sauce that came with it.  I thought I would be bold and poured a bunch of that on my curry and good god, my mouth probably could have caught on fire at that point.  The curry was nice and thick from the coconut milk and the chicken leg was extremely tender.  I was going to ask for a knife to cut the chicken but it was so tender that you only needed the fork and the entire thing fell apart to the bone.  I wish there was more than 1 chicken leg as that's not really enough meat for two people.  The curry was served over a bed of thick egg noodles but there wasn't enough noodles in the dish for two people either.  By the end of the meal, I was sweating from the heat of the restaurant and from the spiciness of the curry dish and  I was just so uncomfortable and cranky that I couldn't wait to get out of there.  

After having a few days to cool down and think about my meal, I do think that all the dishes had a lot of flavor and were very solid non-your regular Thai dishes.  The sweetbreads were particularly delicious and I loved that the fried rice had real chunks of fresh crab meat but I did find the prices to be about $5-9 more than it needed to be.  The food is definitely a notch above your average corner Thai place but it's still hard for me to justify spending $50 on Thai food no matter how good it is.  The lack of A/C probably made me a lot crankier than I would have been if I had been sitting the back air conditioned room, so you should probably take this review with a grain of salt.  Total bill:  $50/pp with tax and tip.

Photo Credit: Yelp

Sweet Chick Visited 7/6/2013 4 Forks

Sweet Chick 164 Bedford Avenue, (at At North 8th St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

Holy crap this place was delicious.   It's a straight up down-home Southern cooking restaurant that was all sorts of yummy and definitely not for the faint of heart.   Everything about the place is just freakin cute from the uber trendy jam jars they use to serve every single beverage to the adorable font they use for their menu.  I got there around 11:30 and it was jammed packed so Dan and I opted to sit at the bar - which I usually love to do anyways.  Honestly I barely looked at the menu because as soon as I saw eggs benedict (they called it eggs benny - $12) I was sold.  They are pretty well known for their chicken and waffles but that concept just never really appealed to me but it looked like lots of people were going for that.  Dan opted for the pork hash and a coffee and sangria.  Given that I had just had a night of heavy drinking the night before, I wasn't in the mood for any of their cocktails but it looked like they had a pretty serious bar and some great sounding cocktails if you are there for dinner or lunch. 

The food came out relatively quickly given the packed house which I greatly appreciated given the ridiculous wait times I had at Littleneck.  When I actually looked at my eggs benedict I realized that I hadn't really looked at the details of what was on it very carefully.  I kind of assumed it was your regular eggs benedict  of 2 poached eggs on an English Muffin and ham with potatoes on the side - which is always fine by me.  But instead this one took it up a notch because it came on a buttermilk biscuit and pulled chicken on top of it.  Jesus, talk about a full meal.  The biscuit could have been a bit moister but honestly once I broken open the 2 very well poached eggs, it didn't matter very much because the yolk just covered it all.  I loved that fact that there wasn't a ton of hollandaise sauce - not because I don't love hollandaise but because too much of it will kill me and it masks the taste of the other items on the plate.  The chicken had a slight BBQ rub flavor to it and it was just a really unique touch to what is a pretty standard breakfast dish.  The roasted potatoes had bit of ham in it to really give it a strong Southern touch to it and it was also sauteed with green pepers and onions.  I could barely make it through half my meal and had to take the rest home because it was just too damn filling.  I had a bit of the pork hash and it was also pretty killer.  It was essentially a cast iron skillet full of pulled pork, roasted potatoes and topped with 1 poached egg.  There was so much of it that every time I turned around, it looked like Dan hadn't made a dent in it event though he had been eating it for an hour.  He also got a cup of coffee and a sangria and this was the one small thing that bothered me.  The coffee was one of those fancy french press kind - which is fine but it was $6.  Luckily I don't drink coffee but $6 for coffee, no matter how fancy pants it is, is a bit ridiculous.  Plus when they served it, they didn't bring any milk, sugar, or a spoon.  I know some people drink coffee black but it would have been nice if they at least asked if we needed any of the other usual coffee items.  The sangria was tasty with a very heavy hand on the red wine.  I ate some of the sangria soaked apples and they were amazing and could get someone drunk if you ate enough of them. 

By the time we left, the place had almost cleared out even though it was only 12:30.  I would totally come back again not just for brunch but for dinner to check out the rest of the dinner menu.  But I will say that the food is not for someone looking for a light summer meal and was probably not the best idea on one of the hottest days of the year as it just weighted me down afterwards.  But this new Southern restaurant is definitely worth a trip to Bedford and Pies n' Thighs should watch their back.  Total bill: $50 for 2 with tax and tip. 

Photo Credit: Yelp

Littleneck Visited 7/3/2013 2.5 Forks

Littleneck 288 3rd Ave, (between President St & 4th Ave), Brooklyn, NY 11215

I really really wanted to give Littleneck a better review and it's probably one of the few 2.5 Fork reviewed places that I would totally go back to but I always said that my reviews would be based on the experience that I had and not on what I heard/read on other blogs.  Littleneck has so much potential because it's a cute New England style type seafood shack in the up and coming Gowanus area of Brooklyn.  When I lived in Park Slope, 3rd Ave as a total waste land.  But now on this one strip of 3rd Ave there are 3 great looking restaurants:  Littleneck, The Pines and Stone and Runner.  My how times have changed.

I really dug the vibe of Littleneck when I walked in around 6pm and even better was the fact that it was happy hour for another hour!  They had $1 oysters so Anuja and I immediately ordered a dozen oysters to start.  The menu isn't huge but it has a lot of great seafood shack staples such as lobster roll, clam roll, steamer clams, clam choward, mussels, and an arctic char.  Of course I went straight for the lobster roll ($18) and Anuja opted for the clam roll ($16).  Since neither of these sandwiches came with fries, we also ordered a side of fries ($5).  So everything was going fine for a while but then this is where things went downhill.  We waited almost 40 minutes for our oysters to come.  I know the place was busy but this is really pretty unacceptable, especially when they don't even have bread on the table.  I was kind of hoping that if we liked the oysters that we could squeeze in one more order before happy hour ended, but we didn't even get our 1st order until 6:40pm and happy hour ended at 7pm.  When our oysters finally came, our waitress just put them down on the table, apologized for the wait, and left.   It bothered me was that she didn't even tell us what kind of oysters we were eating.  It would be nice to know what the hell we were eating, right?  Regardless, the oysters were great.  They were a bit on the small side, but they sweet and earthy and the tangy vinaigrette that they came with was nice and tart.  They were not the creamy variety but more of the briny type.  If we had gotten our order earlier, I probably would have ordered more at the happy hour rate.  After they took our oysters away, we went through the waiting game again.   When our sandwiches finally came out, I couldn't understand why it took so long because they weren't really big at all.  In fact, it's probably one of the smallest lobster rolls I've seen in a while - but to be fair is it cheaper than other places as well.  Despite the small size, the chunks of lobster was sweet and delicious from both the tail and claw.  The roll was pretty clean in that there was very little mayo mixed in.  It was essentially lobster meat with 1 small dolp of light mayo on a small buttered roll and not much else.  Meanwhile the clam roll was not what we expected.  It was a fried full belly clam strips with tartar sauce on a buttered roll - which is what we expected but the tartar sauce was incredibly spicy.  It wasn't just a tad spicy but full blown throat tingly spicy that it just threw us off.  Given the size of the rolls, we were done fairly quickly and ended up noshing on the fries for the rest of meal.  They were the kind that were slightly burned and crispy.  By the time we finished the fries, we were pretty full but it was pouring sheets of rain, so we ordered a slice of Steve's Key Lime pie ($8).  I've had Steve's before as it's a Red Hook local vendor and it's fantastic.  It's tart, sour, and the graham cracker crust was sweet and crunchy.

All in all, the downfall of this review was the awful wait time.  I almost expected them to comp us something because we waited for so long.   Even though they acknowledged the wait time, it almost made it worse that they knew we waited forever but didn't do anything for us.  Also - the small size of the lobster roll was kind of a bummer too.  I know how much lobsters cost retail and it would have been nice if they added just a bit more lobster to make it worth my while.  But I'm such a huge sucker for quaint seafood type shacks that if someone wanted to give this place a try, I would still go with them.  Total bill: $49/pp with tax and tip.

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Takahachi - Tribeca Visited 7/3/2013 4 Forks

Takahachi - Tribeca  45 Duane St (between Broadway & Church St), New York, NY 10013

I met up with Rene again one last time before she left to go back upstate and 2 nights before I had promised her that we would have some good sushi before she left.  When we lived in Park Slope together, we used to order sushi all the time and watch tv together, so even though we weren't in our old apt watching tv, it was still kind of a nice trip down memory lane to have sushi with her again.  Unfortunately, I had to work the day before the 4th, so she came downtown to meet up with me.  I wanted to take her somewhere good since she doesn't really get the opportunity to have good sushi in Germany but I rarely eat sushi for lunch during work.  I didn't really want to go to Wei West, even though it was the closest, but then I remembered that a few friends of mind had mentioned that Takahachi had opened a location in Tribeca.  The Takahachi in the East Village is a long standing favorite for me and several of my friends and even though I had heard that it's not the same as the one in the East Village, I was excited to try it out.

I should have known that anything in Tribeca is automatically going to be a different vibe than the East Village.  The reason why so many of us love the outpost in the East Village is because it's got fantastic sushi, lots of great variety and it's a no fuss kind of place.  It's very low key and casual but with high quality sushi.  The Tribeca location was a bit of the opposite.  It's a bit more high brow and formal but not super stuffy.  It just had a more sleek and modern feel to it and the menu reflects that.  The menu here, while still good, seemed to be a bit more trimmed down than the East Village one.  Regardless, we were still able to find tons of delicious sounding things to order.  Usually when I go out to a sushi place for lunch, I order something off their lunch special menu because it's such a great deal.  It was no different here.  Rene and I both ordered the sashimi lunch box special ($17.50) which came with 3 kinds of sashimi, soup, salad, and 2 sides of the day.  We were so tempted to order some rolls as well because they sounded great, but we figured we'd wait and see how the full we were before ordering more.

When we ordered the lunch box, the waitress asked if we wanted red or white miso soup.  Huh? In all my years of eating sushi, I've never been asked that.  Apparently the red one is made with fish sauce instead...so of course I had to try that one.   Honestly, it didn't taste all that different.  It was a bit more salty but it still tasted like miso soup at the end of the day.  Next came the salad and similar to my last sushi outing there was no ginger carrot dressing here.  Maybe they are phasing that out of that kind of dressing but that's what makes these boring green house salads so yummy.  Then came the sashimi (with rice) and the 2 sides of the day which were shumai and zucchini katsu.  The sashimi came with your standard fare of salmon, tuna, and white fish.  They were all fresh and solid pieces of raw fish.  I would have liked to have the cuts to have been a bit bigger as I was still a bit hungry after eating them.  But then you layer on the rice and sides and you can get yourself somewhat full.  The sides were great and different than your typical sides in a lunch box. The shumai was fairly large and didn't seem like the kind that you by frozen and just steam and serve.  I can't quite describe it but the skin wrapped around the entire dumpling so it didn't look like your usual shumai, but it still tasted great.  The zucchini katsu was lightly battered and fried pieces of green and yellow zucchini served with a thick dipping sauce and I loved it.  They were fried to perfection but you could still taste the vegetable inside.  Rene loved the food here as well and I was glad this place turned out to be great because I wouldn't want her last sushi experience in NYC to be a dud.  The lunch box turned out to be a great deal and we didn't even need to order any extra rolls later (although I would have totally eaten one if we got one).  It's a little bit of a walk from my office, but worth it to have something a bit more upscale.  Total bill: $49 for two with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Barn Joo Visited 7/1/2013 3.5 Forks

Barn Joo 893 Broadway (between 19th St 20th St), New York, NY 10003

One of my dear friends was in town with her husband from Germany so I figured that we should eat a cuisine that they normally can't get or don't have a lot of in Germany.  My friend suggested Thai/Korean and I was originally going to suggest Laut since we were in Union Square but while it's a solid place it didn't seem like a place to take guests.  I had remembered reading about Barn Joo somewhere and since it was new to me as well I figured it was worth a try for all of us.

The decor was nice and spacious with lots of dark wood accents.  I figured the place would be a bit more crowded since it was a new place but there were very few people inside.  I guess maybe because it was a hot Monday night?  In any case the one kind of cheesy thing they did when they seated us was that they said  "Hey if you check on Facebook or Foursquare you can spin the wheel (yes, they had a giant wheel in the front of the restaurant) to win some cool prizes!"  Um, ok.  Honestly that kind of detracted from the slight mid-up scale experience.  I expect that at a county fair not at a New York City restaurant.   The concept here is Korean tapas food as well as all natural, organic, grass fed, hormone free, farm to table food (that's from their website).  That is a lot of trendy, hip buzz words crammed into one sentence.  It's a bit of overkill and they could have probably sufficed with just 1 or 2 of those words because I didn't really feel like I was eating some healthy super food.  In any case, there are a ton of options on the menu and I liked that it's broken down into easy to understand categories such as chicken, greens, seafood, meat, rice, pancake, noodles, and rolls since Korean food can be tricky to figure out for those who don't eat it as much.  We ordered the scallion and chive pancake ($16), the chicken galbi pot ($13), the pork pot ($13), and the mixed rice in cast iron plate ($16).  It didn't sound like a ton of food but we ended up being pretty full by the end.  My one small pet peeve about the meal was that we didn't get all the yummy sides that you usually get to start a Korean meal like kimchi, bean sprouts, or cold spinach.   That's one of the best parts of eating at Korean places.

Luckily the food came out pretty quickly and since we were sharing they all came out at once.  The pancake had a nice taste to it with the chive, scallion and mushroom layered in the middle and it wasn't too oily to eat with your hands.  I probably would have liked it to be a bit crispier on the outsides but it wasn't really a huge issue.  The rice in cast iron plate was essentially a bimbimbop - it consisted of thin slices of yummy bulgogi, kimchi, greens, crunchy rice, and a sunny side egg on top.  It didn't have as many veggies as a typical bimbimbop does but it was still a great dish.  The chicken and pork pot were very similar as they were both marinated in a spicy Korean sauce and served with a variety of greens.  The pork one had a bit more heat to it and there was a bit too much sauce on both dishes as it was a bit hard to actually see the meat (we had to taste the dishes to figure out which was which because we couldn't tell just from looking at it).   Neither of these dishes come with rice, so definitely order at least a few sides of rice to go with them.  While all the dishes looked a bit small because they were tapas size, they are much bigger than your Spanish tapas sized dishes and we rolled out of there pretty full.   All in all, it was a nice take on Korean food without straying too far from the classic flavors.  The prices are a little high for tapas style food but it's worth a shot if you're in the Flatiron District and looking for something a bit different for the usual. 

Photo Credit: Yelp

Korean traditional sweet soy marinated thin riyeye roll, caramelized kimchi, farmer’s greens, rice, sunny side up egg - See more at: http://www.barnjoo.com/bar-and-restaurant/korean-tapas/#sthash.9sFWKdVE.dpuf

Korean traditional sweet soy marinated thin riyeye roll, caramelized kimchi, farmer’s greens, rice, sunny side up egg - See more at: http://www.barnjoo.com/bar-and-restaurant/korean-tapas/#sthash.9sFWKdVE.dpu

Korean traditional sweet soy marinated thin riyeye roll, caramelized kimchi, farmer’s greens, rice, sunny side up egg - See more at: http://www.barnjoo.com/bar-and-restaurant/korean-tapas/#sthash.9sFWKdVE.dpuf

Hearth Visited 6/30/2013 4 Forks

Hearth 403 E 12th St., (between 1st Ave & Avenue A), New York, NY 10009

Hearth is one of those places that I've walked past a million times and always say to myself that I should go but never end up at.  Luckily, Aarti mentioned it as a place to try for brunch and I was in.  We got there pretty late on a Sunday (around 1:45pm) so I figured it shouldn't be hard to get a seat.  But when we walked in they asked if had a reservation and we said no, they said we could either at the bar or one of these random side tables near the bar.  We picked the side table and it turned out to be fine.  When we sat down the couple next to us was eating the two dishes that I had been thinking about ordering: the veal and ricotta meatballs with polenta and the baked eggs with kale.  I was glad that I got to see the dishes before I ordered because one glance at the meatballs and I was sold.

Since it was a late brunch, Aarti and I got the grilled bread and ricotta with fresh snap peas ($7) to start as well as the fresh fruit plate ($7) since it was boiling hot outside.  As I mentioned, I got the meatballs ($19) which wasn't easy for me to decide on because I usually have to have eggs in the morning but it just looked too good to pass up.  Aarti got the braised market greens (which was rapini that day) with 2 poached eggs ($12).  The grilled bread with ricotta was pure heaven.  It was similar to a bruchetta with the outside of the bread being nice and toasty and the inside of the bread nice and soft.  But the best part was the sweet whipped ricotta on top. It was like eating fluffy whip cream.  The snap peas were also sensational as they had a perfect bite to it.  They tasted like they literally came straight from the farm to the table.  This ricotta dish rivals the fantastic version at Locanda Verde. The fruit plate was nice palate cleanser with fresh slices of pineapple, watermelon, cherries, and blueberries.  When my meatball dish came out, I was convinced that I wouldn't be able to finish it since each of the 3 meatballs were the size of my fist, but of course I have a problem where I can't say no to good food.  The meatballs were covered in a delicious marinara sauce on top of a bed of cacio e peppe polenta.  The polenta was nice and creamy but the meatballs were the real winner here.  Since they were made with veal and ricotta they were incredibly moist and flavorful and quite meaty at the same time.  To make it a bit more brunch-y I probably would have preferred it with one less meatball and maybe a poached egg with the polenta.  I couldn't finish the polenta but it was smooth and not overly grained although I probably could have done with a bit less sauce on top of everything.  I didn't try Aarti's dish but it looked great and the eggs looked perfectly poached with nice runny yolks.

All in all, Hearth was a super cute place.  While it's located in the East Village, it really had much more of a West Village feel to it. It's not yuppie-esque but it doesn't have that gritty edge that I would expect from a place on 1st Ave.  The quality of the food was all very fresh and tasted like they came straight from the local farmer's market.  The price of the meatball dish is a tad expensive for brunch but I guess it is New York afterall and I've just resigned to the fact that I am constantly spending all my money on eating out.  Total bill:  $38/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Bayside Buffet Visited 6/28/2013 1.5 Forks

Bayside Buffet Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd S, Las Vegas, NV 89119

Ah, Vegas buffets.  Outside of gambling and clubbing, Las Vegas buffets are probably the one thing that most tourists get excited about it.  They are legendary for their extensive and endless variety of food and some of them are even pretty well respected as a food destination.  I will say that even though I generally find buffet food to be kind of gross, I was a tad bit excited to check out at least 1 buffet while I was in town.  Unfortunately, I didn't really have time except for Friday morning before I left for the airport and honestly the only reason I even went to one was because I got up around 6AM due to the time difference and was starving.  I knew that the one at the Mandalay wasn't going to be a luxurious buffet but I figured Hey, it's Vegas, how bad can the buffet be?

Umm, the answer is kind of bad.  For $20, I only managed to muster up one plate of food and the best part of the meal was the fresh squeezed grapefruit juice.  The buffet is divided up in to the "main" buffet and the dessert section.  The main section consisted of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, pancakes, a make your own eggs benedict station, omelettes to order, steak, and a large baked salmon.  There's also a bagel station, fresh fruit station and ice cream station.  Truly underwhelming basic selection of breakfast food.  It reminded me of the buffets I used to love when I was a kid at Bob's Big Boy but that was also over 15 years ago and also when I had a less discerning palate.  It only took one glance at the food to see that it was truly mass produced food.  The food looked like it had been sitting out for a while as well.  I nibbled on some bacon which was a bit too greasy for me and eggs w/salmon, which wasn't that great since the salmon was too dry.  The hash browns were nice and crispy and that was probably the 2nd best part of the meal after the grapefruit juice.  I also tried the steak which was over cooked and dry.  The bit of smoked salmon that I got was fine, not awful but not amazing either.   I remember the last time I was in Vegas I went to the breakfast buffet at the Paris Hotel and was so blown away by the sheer variety of food that I probably spent hours there just because I wanted to try everything.  It was the total opposite experience here and maybe I set my expectation levels too high because I spent about 30 minutes and then left.  I finished off my meal with a plate of fruit because I felt like I had to get something else for my $20 besides what amounted to a Denny's breakfast.   I don't think I would complain so much about it if it was $10 but for $20 I should have definitely saved myself the money and gone straight to the lounge and had some pretty decent lemon ricotta pancakes and herbed eggs with a fresh glass of champagne instead.  

Photo Credit: Yelp