Wisefish Poke Visited 1/28/2016 4.5 Forks

Wisefish Poke  263 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011

I usually don't review casual or quick service type restaurants but every now and then when something great and/or unique opens up, I feel like I have to.  It looks like 2016 is shaping up to be the year of the poke in NYC, which is totally a trend that I can get behind.   If you've been reading my blog long enough, you know that there are a few dishes that I am fanatical about and poke is one of them.  The 3 times I've been to Hawaii, I usually bath myself in poke and I could honestly eat it everyday of my life.  At it's core, it's basically raw fish marinated with soy, sesame oil and other  Asian inspired flavors that make this super addictive.  Plus its incredibly healthy for you, so what's not to love about it? 

While poke is extremely prevalent in Hawaii and parts of California, I was always curious why poke never quite made it to NYC.  In addition to Wisefish, there is also Pokeworks in Midtown and you can also go to one of the few Hawaiian restaurants like Onomea or Noreeth to order it but otherwise, there aren't a ton of places that serve poke in the city.   I had just read about Wisefish and I happened to be in the neighborhood so I thought it was worth checking out.  You order at the counter and you can either make your own bowl or they have custom bowls that you can order.  The premise is fairly simple;  order a base + fish (you can get tofu but really why bother coming to a place like this if you're not going to eat fish) + toppings + sauce.  I opted for the large classic Hawaii Style of ahi tuna and scallions on brown rice ($13.95).  Apparently the only difference between a regular and a large is how much fish they put in it.  At first I was a bit skeptical because when they were putting the bowl together it seemed more heavy on the rice vs. the fish but once I started eating it, there was actually plenty of fish and it was a nice ratio of fish to rice.  You can still get other toppings like seaweed salad, cucumber, or add spicy mayo but I wanted to go classic for my first try. 

There is a communal table you can sit at but I took it home and it held up well on the 30 mins commute home.  I was honestly really really happy with this dish.  The fish was bright red and fresh and clean to the taste. It had the right level of seasoning and acidity with the soy sauce, sesame oil, and ginger and it paired well with the slightly crunchy brown rice.  All the meanwhile, I felt like I was eating something really good for me.  While obviously it's still not like the poke you can get in Hawaii, it's pretty close for being so far away from paradise.

I was there on the 3rd day it opened, so the staff was super friendly and the adorable co-owner was also there making sure that operations were running smoothly.  The line was pretty long by the time I walked out with my food around 7pm, so it sounds like the buzz has already gotten out.  Even though I don't live or work anywhere near this, I can definitely see myself going out of my way to come here to get my poke fix at least once a month, if not more.  This had made me incredibly excited for the poke craze to take over the city this year - bring on the fish!  Total bill:  $15 with tax

 Photo Credit:  Yelp

Ellary's Greens Visited 1/27/2016 3.5 Forks

Ellary's Greens  33 Carmine St., New York, NY 10014

You'd think with yet another vegetarian friendly restaurant review that I might have somehow become a vegetarian or vegan by now - but don't worry, that won't ever happen!  But 2 of my good friends, Anuja and Amy, are more pescatarians so when we do go out, we usually lean towards places that are more veggie friendly, or as we call it our Rabbit Habit dinner dates.  We were originally going to go to By Chole - THE hot new vegetarian places in the West Village but the place was super packed so we decided to go nearby Ellary's Greens instead. 

It's a cute unassuming place in the West Village that has a very eco-friendly, healthy and natural menu.  The menu is made out of recycled cardboard for christ sakes.  While the food does lean towards organic and veggie friendly, it does have fish, chicken, and bison meat on the menu.  The menu caters to all kinds of diets - vegan, vegetarian, gluten free and diary free - so no complaining. We started with the avocado toast appetizer and the beet gnocchi appetizer.  For my main I opted to go for the salmon burger ($15) and a side of chickpea fries ($10) for the table.  

The avocado toast wasn't super innovative or different - it was essentially guacamole spread over multigrain toast and topped with tomato - but the ingredients were very fresh and tasty.  I felt very healthy eating it.  It's definitely something I could have made at home myself but it was still done well so no complaints here.  Next, we had the beet gnocchi which had arugula, shaved parm and balsamic vinegar on it.  I liked the idea of mixing beet with the gnocchi but the flavor of the beet seemed a bit lost in the gnocchi.  Innovative but not sure how much value the beet added besides a pop of color. 

I got the salmon burger because it came with alpha sprouts and tzatziki, two of my favorite healthy ingredients.  I was afraid the burger wouldn't really fill me up but it was actually incredibly hearty and very filling.  It was a nice reminder that you can still eat something in a burger form that doesn't have to be a big juicy meat burger.   Given how filling it was, I regret ordering the chickpea fries because they were totally not needed and they were also kind of the dud of the night.  I appreciate what they were trying to do but ground up chickpeas don't really taste like much. 

While I was bummed that we didn't get to try By Choe, this was a pleasant substitution.  It's definitely not a destination dining choice but it is a cute homey local option if you happen to live nearby or are strolling through the neighborhood and want something on the healthier side.  Total bill:  $32/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp  

Peacefood Cafe Visited 1/17/2016 3.5 Forks

Peacefood Cafe  41 E 11th St., New York, NY 10003

As most of my friends are vegetarians or vegans, I'm pretty used to and happy to eat at restaurants that cater to their dietary restrictions.  Although where I normally draw the line is with fake vegetarian meat - I'll eat any and all vegetables but fake meat just doesn't do it for me.  So it's kind of funny that I somehow got convinced to try fake meat here and actually enjoyed my dinner. 

The menu here is strictly vegan and definitely has that hippie dippie vibe that I generally find annoying.  But none the less, I was open to being more healthy, especially in this new year.  Mabel, Aarti and I split the fluffy quinoa salad ($12) and I got a un-chicken filet on a bed of mashed fava beans and a huge bed of roasted kale ($15).  The fluffy quinoa salad was served with baby greens, avocado, red peppers, raw corn, onions and obviously quinoa and then tossed with this delicious lime mustard vinaigrette.  It was quite a tasty and a really fantastic salad I must say.  It's a fairly large portion, so it's easily sharable with a few people but I could see myself ordering that on my own for a hearty lunch.  The salad was definitely the highlight of the meal, although the un-chicken wasn't too bad.  I don't really know what's in the un-chicken except that it's probably some kind of soy/plant based protein.  If you've ever eaten chicken before, you know that this doesn't look or taste like chicken very much.  It's not bad but it's definitely not an adequate meat substitute in my book.  But if you've never had meat or if it's been a really long time, I could see how it would be an acceptable substitution.  It was 2 fairly large and thinly pounded filets, so again, very large portions here.  The mashed fava beans had a sweetness to it and was very filling.  As for the boiled/roasted kale on top, it was just ok, I felt like they included it in there because it needed something green to the dish.  They could have chopped it up a bit because it was just a pile of large leafy greens that was hard to eat on it's own. 

While I'm an unbashed meat lover, I believe it is important to try to be healthy and have meals that have a plant based focus.  So I'm always open to trying new vegetarian and vegan places and for the most part they usually surprise me in how satisfying and filling they can be.  While there has been a trend these days of really high end vegetarian places like Semilla and Dirt Candy, I appreciate that you can get a fairly decently priced casual meal at a place like Peacefood where you're not just eating roasted carrots or a bed of lettuce.  Total bill:  $25/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Oiji Visited 1/15/2016 4.5 Forks

Oiji  119 1st Ave., New York, NY 10003

Oiji has been written up in several "Best of" lists for 2015, so it has been on my radar screen to try in 2016.  So when Neel reached out to me about it, I was definitely down to try it asap.  Now that it's gotten so much buzz, it's become one of those restaurants that only has absurdly early or late openings on Opentable (or no openings at all) but we were lucky to get a resie on a Friday for 6pm (or so we thought).  I got there exactly at 6pm but turns out our reservation was for the following week!  Opps.  But luckily, the bar has open seating and I've always preferred sitting at the bar anyways, so it was a win-win.  The bar is cozy with 6 seats but it's great because you can actually chat with the adorable bartender/waiter about the menu and not feel overwhelmed.   The menu is sharable plates and he recommended anywhere between 4-6 dishes - we ended up with 5, so he was pretty spot on.  We started with the honey butter chips ($6) which is a small side of potato chips drenched in honey butter.  It's sticky, sweet and has that very addictive salty and sweet combination. The bartender actually told us this is their only dessert item on the menu, but I wouldn't characterize this as dessert at all.  If you want true dessert, you're not going to get it here.   For our entrees,  we got the beef tartare ($18), fried chicken ($15), pork belly ($18) and the mackerel ($14).  

Neel and I have started this trend of trying places with beef tartare because we're both obsessed with it (or at least the one at Wildair).  This one was also pretty damn good too - really simple raw beef cubes with ramp aioli, pickled mustard seeds, and a sous vide egg yolk.  Clean and simple tasting dish that doesn't even make you realize you're eating raw meat.  Next, was my favorite dish of the night, the fried chicken.   Holy shit - this is the kind of dish that makes me want to come back here by myself, sit at the bar and order 3 of theses to shove in my face.  It's not like your typical Korean fried chicken, it's thinly sliced chicken with a very lightly battered outside.  If you've ever had sliced drunk white wine chicken from a Chinese grocery store, it's like this but with a fried skin.  It's served with a delicious spicy soy vinaigrette that I was dunking my chicken into but you could honestly eat it without it because it's that delicious.  This dish is what put me over the 4 forks rating - Do yourself a favor and order more than 1.  Next we had the pork belly with kimchi - also a very enjoyable dish. I was very very similar to the dish I had a Her Name is Han - just on a smaller level and it had more of a slow cooked/stew feel to it.  As for the mackerel - I'm usually not a huge mackerel fan unless it's at a very fancy Japanese place because it can have a very strong fishy taste that even I don't always like.  But I was surprised at how much I liked the one here.  It's a very large and tender yet firm piece of mackerel smoked and served with a cute pine needle brush for you to layer on a citrus soy dressing.  It was really quite unique and if mackerel was always this good, I would order it more frequently.   At this point, we wanted to split 1 more dish and landed on the dumplings.  I mean, how can you go to a Korean place and not get dumplings?  These were steamed and then sitting in a broth - there were 4 fairly large sized dumplings in there and it was the right way to end the night.

While I do love a good K-town outing, coming to Oiji for Korean food was a more calming experience for me.  There's no Korean BBQ or crazy grills but the essence and core of all the food is still traditional Korean with a modern twist to it.   If you're looking for a slightly more refined experience without the crazy K-town feel, definitely head down to the East Village.  Total bill:  $87/pp with tax, tip and drinks

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Quality Meats Visited 1/14/2016 4.5 Forks

Quality Meats  57 W 58th St., New York, NY 10019

YESSSS!  Finally, my streak of terribly cooked steak has been redeemed.  After a disastrous outing at The Clocktower and a so-so experience at Quality Eats, I was starting to feel like my steak eating days in NYC were numbered.  But Vince was determined to prove me wrong.  Quality Meats has been on my list of a while but since it's in Midtown, I rarely find a reason to be up there.  But this is definitely worth the trek up there - plus with the Midtown Tunnel not too far away, it's pretty easy to get back to Williamsburg quickly. 

First, the decor is beautiful and elegant.  Unlike Quality Eats, which is more funky and casual, this is a bit more upscale and dare I say stuffy?  It's not white table cloth stuffy but you can tell it takes itself more seriously than its sister restaurant downtown.  It's a fairly cavernous space with two levels which is pretty unheard of in NYC.  The menu is what you would expect of a solid steakhouse: meat, meat and more meat with a raw bar and tasty side dishes.   Since we were trying to redeem ourselves from our last steak meal, we just went all out with our ordering:  shrimp cocktail ($17), lump crabmeat cocktail ($22), tomato salad ($18), porterhouse for two ($49/pp), the quality potato ($11) and the creamed spinach ($12).  Yes, this was enough food for probably 4 people but it was worth every freaking calorie. 

They start you off with a cute amuse bouche of a block of cheddar cheese and a small ritz cracker on top and then they give you this amazing looking bread.  Knowing that I was eating enough food to keep me warm for the entire winter, I opted out of the bread but it looked delicious.  The shrimp cocktail and lump crab meat were out of this world.  The shrimp was very plumb and large in size - the way a proper shrimp cocktail should be.  The crab, this is where I am very discerning, was fantastic.  100% pure crab heaven that tasted freshly picked - it's totally overpriced at $22 but also totally worth it. Next came the tomato "salad" - I use quotation marks here because it's not really a salad and it's actually quite unhealthy.  It's 4 red juicy thick slices of beefsteak tomatoes covered in bacon bites and blue cheese and served with onion rings.  The combination of blue cheese, tomato and bacon is heavenly.  The dish totally didn't need the onion rings but hey, why not throw that in there when you're already eating an unhealthy "salad"?  

Next came the star of the show - the porterhouse steak.  When we were at The Clocktower, the steak came out beyond charred.  Probably one of the most massively overcooked pieces of meat I've had in a while and then they compensated with one of the most rare pieces of meat ever.  This one, however, was just right.  Pink and bloody on the inside and seared brown to keep the juices in on the outside. They slice is up before you get to the table (as they should) so that you can see each delicious slice. Melt in your mouth and it cut through the knife with ease.  The only "bad" thing I can say is that there were 1-2 bites that were a bit tough but those were the end pieces - if you stick to the pieces sliced in the middle, they were perfect.  The creamed spinach was a classic and must whenever you have steak - they really pureed the hell out of it because it was one of the smoothest creamed spinaches I've ever had.  The quality potato is basically a baked potato + mashed potato with cheese and potato chips smothered on top of it - amazing but so unnecessary.  We pretty much housed the entire steak with only one small end piece left and I thought I was going to explode. But then, of course, the manager recognizes Vince and sends us a free dessert - which we were originally going to pass on because we were both about to keel over and pass out.  But oh my - if you have room for dessert, go for it.  They sent us a sticky toffee cake with fig ice cream and it was fantastic.  I'm generally not a sticky toffee gal but this one was moist and delicious with the right amount of sweetness.  The fig ice cream was unique and definitely figgy but not in an overpowering way.  I'm very appreciatively that we got to try a dessert although I'm not sure my stomach or heart was. 

I'm happy to say the bad steak streak has ended in a wonderful way.  The service here was also excellent - very attentive but not in an overbearing way.  I know I usually poo-poo Midtown as a culinary wasteland but honestly there are some great places, especially if you are looking for something more formal or classy.  While I was disappointed that their more casual sister restaurant didn't live up to the hype, I'm glad the original one still stands the test of time.

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Her Name is Han Visited 1/9/2016 4 Forks

Her Name is Han  17 E 31st St., New York, NY 10016

It's been a while since I have been to K-town so when I read about the rave reviews about this place in The Infatuation I immediately put it on my list.  Lily and I decided to check this place out on a Saturday night and the street was spilling over with tons of people (almost 100% Korean) waiting for a table.   It was about a 30 minute wait - which wasn't too bad but don't get it confused with the place next door, which also looked to be pretty popular and brimming with people waiting around. 

Once you get inside, it's a pretty cozy space.  Your eyes really start to get big when you pass by all these tables with huge boiling hot pots of food.  The menu, while visually stunning, is a bit confusing to read.  They break it up into sections: small plate, main, pot, BBQ, rice, noodle, and dessert but it has summaries of all the different dishes in each section and then lists the dishes out again in both English and Korean.   It took us a while to figure out the menu and sadly since there were only 2 of us, we couldn't really order too many dishes.  We started with the dumplings ($7) and stir fried clams ($10) and then split the pork belly entree ($23).  We were going to also get a hot pot but when we saw the size of the pork belly at the table next to us, there was no way we could finish all of it.   Definitely come here with lots of people so that you can try everything!

The dumplings were boiled and filled with pork and napa cabbage.  The skin was thin and delicate but still held all the filling in.  It was a very satisfying and well made dumpling.   Next was the clam with potato noodle and a spicy black bean sauce.  Amazing.  I didn't realize a potato noodle was a thick clear see through noodle which is one of my favorite kind of noodle.  There was definitely heat to the sauce and the clams were plentiful, all of which made for a great combination.  But the star of the show was the pork belly.  It was an enormous plate, way bigger than I ever imagined.  There was probably 10-12 pieces of beautifully slice pork belly served with kimchi, berry wine sauce,  honey garlic sauce, pickled bean sprouts, and okra.  As for the taste, it was equal parts meat and fat but it's not the kind of pork belly that you find in BBQ joints where it's super fatty and moist.  Instead, it's the bo ssam version where the meat looks like it's been boiled instead of grilled but when mixed with the kimchi and sauces, it's just as good just a bit different.

With all the buzz this place has gotten lately, it can be a bit of wait but it's worth it.  The service was a bit confusing as it took a while for someone to take our order and even after someone did, someone else came up 5 minutes later to ask if we would like to order.  Definitely come with a group and an empty stomach to really fully in enjoy yourself here.  It's got a more homey and intimate vibe than the traditional huge Korean BBQ place in K-town but the food is just as great. Total bill:  $29/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

The Little Beet Table Visited 1/9/2016 2.5 Forks

The Little Beet Table  333 Park Ave S.,  New York, NY 10010

I wanted to start the New Year off to a healthy start, so thought it would be good to try out this "veggie friendly" place that I had heard about from a few friends.  Any sensible person who comes to a place that focuses on vegetables would probably stick to vegetables on the menu, but of course I have no will power and ended up ordering items that had both fish and bacon in it,  neither of which were really great dishes. 

The brunch menu itself sounds nice and healthy although it's really more lunch focused than brunch.  Lav and I split the basket of breads ($14) to start which came with banana bread, multigrain toast and corn bread.  Of the 3, the banana bread was my favorite - soft, moist and full of banana flavor. The corn bread was a bit too try and crumbly for me and the multigrain toast, while good, was just basic toast to me (but I did like that it was very heavy on the grains).  It came with this delicious set of butter and jam that really added some sweetness to the breads.  For my main, I ordered the smoked salmon scramble ($18) and a side of bacon ($6) while Lav got the grits ($16).   While I know my scramble had salmon in it, $18 for a fairly small size of egg with no sides seemed overpriced to me.  I generally don't think salmon has a fishy smell but when this scramble came out, the smell of fish immediately hit my face.  I felt so bad eating in front of someone else, it's the worst smell to subject someone to (especially if they don't eat it).  Taste-wise, it didn't really hit the spot either.  In fact, I only ate half of it and stopped because it just wasn't doing it for me.  Meanwhile, the bacon was super super salty.  So salty that I could only eat 1 slice out of 5.  What a sad showing!  Lav mentioned that she wasn't super jazzed about her grits because it came with a helping for exotic mushrooms, which she wasn't a big fan of. 

I guess when you come to a veggie place, it's probably best to stick with the veggie dishes and not the ones that have fish and meat in it.  If the best dish you had is the bread basket, then something is not quite right.  I appreciate what they are trying to do and a lot of the nicer vegetarian places are very expensive (a la Dirt Candy and Semilla), so I like the idea of a more casual veggie friend place but The Beet Table still is slightly overpriced for what it's offering.  Total bill:  $42/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp