Timpano Italian Chophouse Visited 2/21/2014 3.5 Forks

Timpano Italian Chophouse 450 E Las Olas Blvd, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

• The girls and I took a well needed break from the cold and headed down to FL for some sun and fun. Jill's parent's condo is right off the main drag of Las Olas in Fort Lauderdale so there are tons of great dining options within walking distance.  Timpano is literally downstairs and for happy hour they have 1/2 price appetizers and drinks - so it was the perfect way to start the night.  The service started out well enough with them being really accommodating by literally carrying tables from across the restaurant so that we could all sit together outside.  Our first (yes, first) waitress was super bubbly and excited to help kick off the night with us.  We immediately ordered a round of drinks and a bunch of appetizers in order to take advantage of the happy hour specials.  We got 2 orders of the black skillet roasted mussels ($6/order for HH), 2 orders of the jumbo lump crabcakes ($8/order for HH), 1 order of the skillet clams ($7 for HH), 2 orders of the meatballs ($4.50/order for HH), 1 order of the calamari ($5 for HH), 2 orders of the shrimp cocktail ($6.50/order for HH) and a Tuscan flatbread ($11).  As you can see, we all love to eat and that's the beauty of hanging out with this crew - you will eat and drink well.  

The steaming hot mussels and clams came out first and I was super excited because there is nothing I love more than a good shellfish dish.  I was extremely impressed by how many mussels and clams they give you - especially during happy hour.  The entire skillet was piled high with them.  The mussels were served with olive oil and sea salt.  They were fairly decent sized and most of them were pretty plumb.  My one complaint was that there was too much salt and by the end of the meal I was extremely dehydrated from all the salt I was ingesting.  The clams were served with olive oil, sea salt, rosemary and fresh garlic.   Again, it was very heavy handed on the salt and rosemary.  I would have preferred a cleaner more simple seafood experience but let's be honest, it didn't stop me from gorging on about 20 of them.  The crabcakes came with a roasted red peper bearnaise and arugula.  As someone from MD, I take my crabcakes pretty seriously and these were ok - a bit heavy on the filler and I didn't really get the lump crabmeat experience but it was a decent happy hour serving.  The calamari was your standard bar calamari here too, so no complaints here.  The meatballs came with a healthy dose of marinara sauce on it and it was a great 2-bite happy hour appetizer - I could have eaten at least 3 of them on my own.  As this point, we were all pretty full and 2 cocktails in, so we didn't even really realize that our shrimp cocktail and flatbread didn't show up even though they did bring us fresh plates. 

After waiting for awhile, we just told our 3rd waitress (yes, somehow in the process of ordering, getting our dishes and getting the bill we went through 3 different waitresses) that we didn't mind that they didn't send out the shrimp and flatbread, but it would be great if she could just make sure it was not on our bill.  Lo and behold, when our bill came they were on our bill.   I mean, come on.  We had literally just told them 2 seconds to please check.  So we had to track down one of our 3 waitresses to take it off our bill.  Then our 1st waitress came and told us that apparently they delivered our food to the next table and instead of them questioning why they got it, they just ate it!  Then when we got our bill, we noticed that Jenn's credit card was missing and they had only charged 4 of the 5 cards.  The waitress looked at us like we were crazy but then she started looking around and saw that Jenn's credit card was lying on the ground outside the restaurant.  WTF?!

All in all, it was a great happy hour place and super fun place to chill out after a long relaxing day at the pool.  My only complaint was that the service was all over the place and even though I know it's not New York and things go at a slower pace, the combination of the comical service blunders puts this in the 3.5 fork category.   I can't vouch for a non-happy hour experience, but I'd say just try to get there by 7pm and you'll have a great and very affordable night.  Total bill:  $40/pp with drinks, tip and tax

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Mission Cantina Visited 2/8/2014 4 Forks

Mission Cantina 172 Orchard St (b/t Houston St & Stanton St), New York, NY 10002

This was a tough review because it's not quite a solid 4 forks but a bit above a 3.5 - it's one of those 3.75 reviews but since I did away with the quarter fork ratings, I'm just going to round up here to be nice. Mission Catina is the Mexican love child of Danny Bowien - owner of the wildly popular Mission Chinese.  I was thinking my experience would be similar to my experience at Mission Chinese in that I would have to wait for 2+ hours, so I was mentally prepared and had a small snack before heading over at 7:30pm on a Saturday night.  Surprisingly the wait was only 1 an hour and with so many bars in the LES area, it's absolutely no problem to kill time at any of the neighboring watering holes.  As luck would have it, just as Lav and I were getting our 1st batch of drinks they called us saying that there was two seats at the "bar" if we wanted it.  I had seen the space when I gave my name and the bar is not a real bar, it's literally 2 seats jammed into this small section by the kitchen.  We took a pass and said we would wait for table while we sipped on our drinks. 

In an exactly an hour, they called and we headed over only to find that the table wasn't ready but that the group had been given the bill and our hostess was trying to give them the stink eye to leave.  The place is fairly small with less than 20 seats total so I was kind of annoyed that the table didn't recognize all the people waiting for a table.  By the time we sat down, Lav and I were starving and slight tipsy, so we were ready to order.  I should note that they don't have liquor license so they just have beer and soju.  I opted for the Como la flor cocktail which was soju with grapefruit and lambrusco - two of my favorite things - but honestly this drink was not that great.  I didn't even finish it.  For starters, we shared the creamed masa, fresh queso oaxaca, and the cebolitas preparades.  Then we each ordered two kinds of tacos:  Lav got the pumpkin and the winter squash tacos and I got the pork cheeks and fish tacos.   The creamed masa was delicious and served with beer braised collard greens which were a great addition to the bowl.  It was sprinkled with queso cheese on top and it was a nice warm bowl of goodness on a cold crappy day.  Lav wasn't a huge fan of the fresh oaxaca queso dish while I was a bit indifferent to it.  It wasn't awful but wasn't their strongest dish.  It was kind of like fresh string cheese with olive oil it.  It could have used a touch of salt to it.  As for the cebolitas, I wasn't sure what to expect but it was great.  It's basically char-grilled spring onions with butter and citron.  It tasted like it came fresh off the grill and it really enjoyed the smokey grilled flavor to it.  I didn't think I would like spring onions cooked like this but I guess throw anything on the grill with butter and what's not to like?  On to the tacos - fair warning, they are small and you only get two of them.  But I was pretty full at this point, that I was having a hard time finishing the ones that I got.  I'll start with with fish tacos - they were fantastic.  Not quite the same level of the ones I am obsessed with at ABC Cocina but they are pretty damn good.  They are made with skate wing tempura (perfectly battered) and then covered with avocado, crema and a hot sauce they really hits you in the back of your throat.  I appreciated that they used two homemade corn tortillas to really hold the whole thing together.  It was really a great 5-6 bites. I was also a fan of the pork cheeks tacos as well.  The cheek was incredibly tender and pretty much fell apart at first touch.  It was served with peppers and cabbage on top  of it.  My main problem with this dish was that they only put 1 layer of tortilla and the wetness of the meat juices seeped through the 1 layer and pretty made it impossible to pick it up or hold the thing together.  It turned out to be fine because I skipped the tortilla and went Atkins style and just ate the pork.  I only had a small bite of the squash taco and I thought it could have used a bit more heat or seasoning - it was lacking just a bit in flavor.   Even though I was pretty full and warm from my drinks, I was prepared to go for dessert but sadly they don't offer any. 

All in all, I was totally glad I tried it despite my usual disdain for super hyped up places.  It's smack in the middle of the LES and the perfect slightly nicer drunk food than a slice of pizza if you happen to be searching for some post-drinking food.  It's a a fun place to check out and might even be more fun with a larger party so that you can try all the different kinds of tacos (I would have liked to have tried the cumin lamb, carnitas, octopus, and mushroom) or get the whole rotisserie chicken to split.   They just really need to get a damn liquor license!  Total bill with drinks:  $43/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp  

Le Philosophe Visited 2/5/2014 3.5 Forks

Le Philosophe  55 Bond St (b/t Bowery & 2nd St), New York, NY 10012

You know when you've been in NYC for a while when a restaurant has turned over a few times over and you've been to several of its incarnations.  While I didn't recognize the address, as soon as I got to Le Philosophe, I realize I had been there when it used to be Hung Ry in 2011.   The layout is pretty much the same but the vibe is definitely very different.  It's now a very loud and very dark French restaurant.  The girls and I gathered there to celebrate Krush's birthday and we luckily got a nice corner table.  Even though it was a cold Wednesday night the place was packed to the gills - with a gather interesting clientele. One table had this couple who was wearing full on ball gown type outfits, another table with a really loud bunch of older women, and then there was us.

The menu has a lot of classical French dishes from Duck L'Orange, radish with butter, terrine, foie gras, and frogs leg to name a few.  It's a bit difficult to share French dishes, so we each ordered our own dishes with the exception of a few sides.  I started with the bone marrow ($17) and had the duck l'orange ($29) for an entree.  Luckily we started our meal with a few bottles of delicious wine because the service was atrocious.  While it wasn't really the fault of our waiter (who was quite pleasant and nice),  the prolonged waiting for our food made for a pretty unpleasant dining experience.  We were all starving and while I like a good glass of wine as much as the next person, most of us were about to gnaw our arms off at some point.  If I had known it would have taken so long to get our food, I would have chosen something more hearty than the bone marrow to start.  I'm generally a huge fan of bone marrow due to its intense and fatty flavors - I know every time I order it, it's probably taking 5 years off my life, but it can be so damn good.  Unfortunately, this one was a bit lacking - in actual bone marrow. I really scrapped the bone hard (ok, I know that sounds kind of gross) to get as much of the marrow as possible but the reality was that there just wasn't that much of it, which was pretty disappointing.  But the bread that it was served with was nicely toasted and soft in the middle and probably the best part of that dish.  When our entrees finally came out, I was totally ready to write the place off. 

Luckily I didn't because god damn, that was some amazing duck.  I usually stray from ordering duck at a lot of places because it's really easy to f-up and tends to end up dry.  But this was probably one of the juiciest and most flavorful pieces of duck I've had in a long time.  It was 2 breasts and cooked medium rare with the skin fantastically crisped on the outside.  It was served with turnips and a thin layer of mashed potatoes.  It was as close to a perfect duck dish as I've had in a long time.  I had a quick bite of the flat iron steak, which was quite delicious as well.  The fries on that dish was served with what seemed like a pure butter sauce.  I was pretty stuffed at this point but no birthday dinner is complete without dessert and we ordered the profiteroles ($10) and the chocolate mousse ($9).  I only had a bite of the profiteroles and they were a nice palate cleanser to what was really a very fat-filled meal.  

While I loved my entree, I had to knock this place a 1-1.5 forks for the absurd wait time and god awful acoustics - I could barely hear Richelle who was sitting about 2 inches away from me.  They definitely redeemed themselves with the main entrees and the duck is definitely worth coming back for but don't say I didn't warn you about waiting around.  Total bill:  $105/pp with drinks, tip, tax

Photo Credit: Yelp

Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop Visited 2/1/2014 4 Forks

Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop 600 11th Ave (b/t 44th St & 45th St), New York, NY 10036

Ever since the opening of Ippudo a few years ago, NYC has had a love affair with ramen with new places opening up seemingly every week on a different corner of the city.  I was particularly excited for Ivan's because it had gotten glowing reviews in many of my favorite blogs, appeared in various pop-ups across the city and has a famous version in Tokyo.   Plus it was located in the brand new Gotham West Market.  Gotham West is this large warehouse space all the way on 11th Ave that houses various mini restaurants (not quite stalls but not quite full sit down restaurants) that all sounded amazing and interesting and I had been dying to check it out since it opened before the holidays.

Anuja and I met at Ivan Ramen on a Saturday night and I didn't realize how quiet the place would be.  I expected this large space to be buzzing with people, but I guess I could see it being a more of a daytime place to check out.  There is a pretty small menu of 5 different kinds of ramen (there is a veggie version) and 3 different kinds of rice bowls.  Anuja and I were both torn about what to get so we finally settled on splitting the Smoked Whitefish Donburi ($12) and the Chili Eggplant Mazemen with an egg ($13 for the dish, +$2 for the egg) and each getting a Yuzu Lemonade ($3).  You pick wherever you want to sit in the place and they will call out your name and/or bring it to your seat.  Both of our dishes came out around the same time (although they did call me "Jane" for about 10 minutes before we figured out that I was Jane).  I didn't know what to expect with the Smoked Whitefish dish but it was fantastic.  I do love a good rice bowl and this one did not disappoint.  It's filled with a warm and very flavorful rice base which has sesame seeds, nori, bonito flakes, and fried onions.  It's then topped with tons of slivered cucumber, scallion, smoked whitefish, and a heaping of salmon roe.  I am a total sucker for salmon roe rice bowls - so this was even better with all the other delicious ingredients that came with it.  The saltiness of the roe and fish was balanced out with the cucumber and the rice was seriously addictive.  The best part was that there was so much whitefish - it wasn't just a bowl of rice with a sprinkling of fish.  I would definitely come back for this dish and if I worked near this place for lunch, I could see myself getting it frequently.  The Chili Eggplant Mazemen is a bit different from your typical ramen in that it doesn't have a broth.  Instead it's got more of a light sauce base.  The eggplant is slow cooked and is served with a smoked chili soy sauce.  It was indeed very smoky from not just the eggplant but the chili as well.  The noodles were thin and nicely coated with the sauce so that it didn't seem to miss lack of broth.  The egg was a good addition to the rest of the dish and I liked the chewiness level to the ramen.

All in all, I enjoyed my meal and it was a nice change from a place like Ippudo, Totto or even Yuji where is it just a madhouse to try to get a table.  The rice bowls are a great addition to the menu and I dare say, even better than the ramen dish.  Even though a bunch of the other places in the market were closed, it's definitely a fun place to check out and I look forward to returning and trying out some of the other places.  Total bill:  $16

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Galli Visited 1/30/2014 3 Forks

Galli  45 Mercer St (b/t Broome St & Grand St), New York, NY 10013

In celebration of my good friend Cicily's birthday, Betsy, Cicily and I thought it would be good to gorge on some comfort Italian food on a cold Thursday night.  Galli is on a cute street in Soho that is almost boarding Chinatown.  I had never seen or heard of it before but it's a cute space and a nice place to catch up with friends.  The food is indeed Italian comfort food and it's solid but not completely mind blowing. 

The menu is extensive with all types of big salads, pastas and main entrees.  Seriously, they have 15 different kinds of pasta from penne vodka to carbonara to pesto.  It was pretty overwhelming and it didn't help that we were all starving and our stomachs were bigger than our eyes.  We started the meal with meatball sliders ($8), mozz chips ($11), tegamino ($12) and a caesar salad ($10).  For entrees, I opted for the steak and fries ($20) since there we were having so many tomato based dishes already.  Most of the appetizers came out first and fairly quickly.  The meatball sliders were essentially little meatball parm bites on a slider bun.  It was good but I would have preferred it as just a meatball, it didn't really need the bread on top of it but I appreciated the sentiment.  The mozz chips turned out to be essentially mozzarella sticks but in square form instead of stick form.  Again, it's hard to get fried cheese wrong but nothing that was necessarily any better than other forms of fried mozzarella I've had before.  The tegamino is their version of a baked eggplant parm style.  The eggplant was a bit overdone and it was hard to really get the taste of the eggplant as it was just drowning in sauce - again, not an awful dish but very standard.  I, personally, am not a huge caesar salad fan and for me the salad was dressed all too heavily (although that is clearly the best, but most fattening part of any salad).   I will say that all the apps were hitting the spot because of how hungry I was when I got there so when my steak and fries came out, I was already seriously stuffed.  The steak was a skirt steak and I had asked for it to be medium rare.  The cut of meat was a bit too thin for me (and yes, I know skirt steak is a thin cut of meat) but typically in an Italian place I'm used to a hanger steak or maybe even a flank steak cut, just something heartier.  Since it was a thinner cut of meat, it was cooked through more than I would like.  I will say that it was marinated very well and was very flavorful - I just wish it was a thicker, rarer piece of meat. I was so stuffed that I didn't even get to the fries but they looked good.  I also didn't try either of Cicily or Betsy's pastas but they were really big bowls of pasta - unlike some of the smaller sized ones you'd find at some more higher end Italian places in the city. 

The service was super friendly and flirty albeit a bit slow.  But it was nice that they didn't bother us too much because it was great catching up and drinking.  We felt a bit bad that we were occupying a table when there seemed to be so many people in the bar area waiting for a table but it was refreshing to not have to be shooed out of a table even if they needed it.  Total bill:  $250 for 3 people including tax, tip and 3 rounds of drinks. 

Photo Credit:  yelp

Lo Nuestro Cafe Visited 1/26/2014 4.5 Forks

Lo Nuestro Cafe Av. Estrada 903 | Higueras, Guayaquil 00000, Ecuador

Even though everyone on our tour told us to be careful and to not really leave the hotel, I was determined to have my last dinner in Ecuador at a local restaurant instead of at the hotel bar again.  To be honest, I never felt in danger or not safe - as long as you catch a cab from the hotel and tell them to either wait for you or come back to pick you up, you'll be fine.  Everyone we had talked mentioned that the best place in the city was Lo Nuestro and Allison had actually been there on her last trip to the Galapagos, so off we went!  I was in love with from the moment I saw it.  The outside exterior had this beautiful old school South American feel with a lovely running fountain.  Even though I was there with Allison, it had this cute romantic feel. 

The inside is just as adorable.  I've never been to Cuba but this is exactly how I envision Cuba to be - a bit stuck in time but with a lot of old school character.  The menu here is very authentic and local and extremely seafood centric - love it!  Even though they had an English menu, it didn't really help too much in describing the dishes so we just winged it.  We split the ceviche lo nesutro ($11.88) and the parrillada de marisco ($29.17) with a vague idea of what each one was. 

The ceviche lo neustro turned out to essentially be a mixed seafood ceviche.   It was gorgeously presented - split into two portions on these huge sea/clam shells and then filled with a variety of yummy seafood.  It was super acidic and filled with red onion and cilantro.  Amazing.  There were chunks of shrimp, squid, octopus and fish fish.  Everything was incredibly fresh and clean tasting.  It's amazing that something as simple as cooking seafood in lime juice could taste so good.  This was a total steal at less than $12. 

Next we got the parrillada de marisco which essentially translates into grilled mixed seafood - so basically exactly what we had in the ceviche but in grilled form. 

There was about every form of seafood you could imagine on this plate.  There was jumbo shrimp, regular sized shrimp, grilled clams, squid, octopus, salmon and white fish and there was TONS of it.  It could easily feed 3 people.  All the seafood was grilled and charred nicely - it had this almost burned, smokey flavor to it but it wasn't burned at all.  I tried my best to clean the plate since it was so good but even with my monster appetite couldn't finish it.  Even though it's hard to get super full on seafood, I was uncomfortably full by the end of it. 

I left the restaurant devastated knowing that it was the end of a life-changing vacation but I was so happy and grateful to had this experience.  I am now totally having a massive love affair with South America.  The restaurant was the perfect cap to the end of my trip and I'm so glad that I took the "risk" of leaving the hotel to explore some place local and delicious.  Until next time Ecuador.  Total bill:  $55 for 2 with tax and tip

Cafe Colon Visited 1/17/2014 3.5 Forks

Cafe Colon Francisco de Orellana | Hotel Hilton Colón, Guayaquil, Ecuador

I wasn't sure if I was going to review this place since it's just the restaurant inside the Hilton but I figured what the heck, it was pretty decent.  This is a bit of a mis-mosh of a review since Allison and I ate there as a pool side snack, dinner and for breakfast.  Of all of those meals, breakfast on Sunday was the best - mostly because they have a huge unlimited vat of delicious, sour and tart ceviches.  I know, eating fish for breakfast sounds kind of gross but I really enjoyed their ceviche and couldn't get enough of it - it had a lot of acid and they give you tons of lime on the side for you to really amp up the acidity if you want.  I pretty much ate my weight in ceviche and enjoyed every minute of it.  The rest of the breakfast was actually pretty good with a variety of smoked fishes, fresh fruit, eggs, bacon and carving station.  You can really fill up for the day there.  I'm not sure how much it cost since it was included in our hotel package but I think I read somewhere that it was $25 - which is definitely steep but if you want good quality food and have a huge appetite, you can probably cram in 2 meals into one here. 

Dinner was a similar menu (although they do also have a non-buffet menu you can order from) but definitely leans more toward your standard hotel food with some Ecuadorian local dishes.  I had a local chicken stew with yellow rice and fried plantains.  There was a LOT of chicken in it which was nice but many pieces were over cooked and more on the dry side, even though the meat was served on the bone which usually lends to more moist meat.  The stew was a fantastic red tomato base that was paired well with the yellow rice.  What I love about the food in Ecuador was that everything was served with tons of avocado and it was no exception here.  The avocado was a great addition to the stew and added a nice creamy texture.   

All in all, given the lack of nearby walkable options, if you find yourself here for just the night before heading to the Galapagos Island, the hotel restaurant really isn't a terrible option - especially if you like ceviche.  

Photo Credit: Hilton.com