Niwano Hana Japanese Restaurant Visited 5/3/2011 3 Forks

Niwano Hana 887 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852

I came home for a quick business trip this week but since it was also Mother's Day weekend I figured I would treat my mom to dinner out while I was here. She originally was thinking Seasons 52 (I live in the 'burbs obviously) since it just opened by the new Whole Foods down the street but after looking at the menu, it wasn't really speaking to either of us.  It was basically just a lot of "organic" salads and pastas, so nothing really exciting.  We both love sushi and it was getting kind of late, so she picked Niwano since it was 5 minutes from home. 


I've been here before and didn't remember too much from it except that the spicy scallop roll came with hot scallop on top.  The place is not fancy at all, but a level above your local strip mall sushi.  Unfortunately they were out of the special farm fresh scallop roll that I really wanted.  We ordered the Choice of Sashimi ($23), a dynamite roll ($6) and a hot spicy scallop roll ($8).  The meal came with 2 salads, which was basically just some torn iceberg lettuce with tons of the ginger dressing poured on top.  I liked the fact that the sashimi was just tuna, salmon and yellowtail, so that "big 3" so to speak.  These are your traditionally decent types of fish and in especially in a non-fancy place like this I think it's a good bet.  I don't think I would have trusted the other, more fancier types of fish (like the ones we got at Hibino and Blue Ribbon) here.  You could just tell by looking at the fish that the quality was definitely much lower quality higher end places.  It's still completely edible but just the look and taste of the fish is a notch below.  The rolls were just ok too.  I'm just not a fan of the hot fish on top of my roll but it was the closest thing to a spicy scallop roll I could get.  The dynamite roll was a big disappointment.  They said on the menu that it was 4 pieces, so I assumed they would be 4 large wide pieces.  Instead they were 4 small but very tall pieces of sushi and you couldn't really taste the fish inside.  All you could taste was the spicy chili powder they put on top. 


The service was totally fine and the prices were reasonable.  If you're looking for a affordable but not the highest quality (but not deli level sushi) place in Rockville, this totally fits the bill.  Total bill with tip $48.

Hibino Visited 5/1/2011 4 Forks

Hibino 333 Henry St., (between Atlantic Ave & Pacific St), Brooklyn, NY 11201

 I had been craving sushi for the past few days so when we were out in the Boreum Hill area for afternoon drinks and Dan's friend had mentioned that this place was right down the street from the bar we were at, I got really excited.  It is located on a quiet, unassuming street and the inside has a really clean and modern feel to it.  This place seems slightly upscale but yet was very welcoming and comforting at the same time.  I heard that it was a pretty authentic Japanese restaurant and I definitely got that feeling as soon as I walked in the door.  There are tons of sushi places in the city that are run my non-Japanese people but this place, from the hostess to the waitstaff to the sushi chefs, were all Japanese.  I had also heard that the star of the food here is actually the tapas small plates, but by the time we got there at 9:00pm on Sunday they were all out of these dishes.  The rest of the menu is pretty streamlined and simple.  It's not one of those places where they offer a tons of '"fancy" sounding rolls.  They have very simple and basic sounding rolls and sushi or sashimi plates.  


We got to sit at the bar and watch them make all the dishes and so I knew they used all fresh ingredients.  We ordered the sashimi plate ($24), the spicy scallop roll ($6) and the yellow tail jalapeno roll ($5.50).  In retrospect I wish I had ordered the homemade tofu and seaweed salad too, but that's for next time!  As you can see, the prices are extremely reasonably priced for the quality of the food that you are getting.  It was almost a bit shocking to see such a beautiful place have food priced within reason.  My only complaint would be that the sashimi plate didn't come with a soup or salad, which is something you kind of expect these days.  The sashimi had about 15 pieces of fish: salmon, tuna, amberjack, yellowtail, white fish, scallop, and white tuna.  They were all really fresh tasting and the scallop was truly melt in your mouth.  The one slightly weird thing was that there was a small piece of beef? It was a very melt in your mouth small piece of meat but it was just a bit bizarre to see it on a plate full of sashimi. The rolls really hit the spot and were done well (although they were just as good as some other places I've been to).  The jalapeno definitely packed a punch and the spicy mayo on the scallop roll was done with the right amount of kick.  I would have liked just a bit less rice on the rolls but they were definitely not the monster sized rolls that you sometimes get at sushi places these days.  I saw a few other type of rolls that the chefs were making but I didn't see them on the menu, so next time I would definitely ask if there are any specials (and now that I am on their website I do see a few yummy sounding rolls that I didn't know about, damn).

The service was what you would expect from a well run Japanese restaurant.  Very nice and efficient.  Overall, it was a great meal but next time we go, I want to go early so that we can at least try some of their specials of the day.  Total bill with tip $52.

Trix Visited 4/30/2011 2 Forks

Trix 145 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Dan and I had originally planned on going to the new Mole outpost in Williamsburg but as we were walking there we noticed that this place was open.  Now, the only reason why we even bothered entertaining the idea of eating here was because his friend Greg used to live right next door and for years we would watch as they took forever to build and open this restaurant.  I mean, seriously, we had watched for at least 5 years as they started construction, stopped construction and then started up again.  So we felt like it was almost our duty to check it out.

Given how long it has taken them to open this place, I should have known that it would be a bad experience.  Now, I understand that there will be bumps in the road when you first open a restaurant, but this place seemed like it could have really waited until they got their act together.  The decor was just weird.  The outside was covered in this "fake" metal ivy and then inside there are the metal "paintings" of strippers, which apparently is an homage to what this space used to be (a go-go bar).  They don't make good use of the space as there were no tables (the picture above is a bit mis-leading) in the middle of the restaurant, so it just seemed really empty.  Their menus were printed on resume paper and then stapled together which just seemed low brow. I mean you couldn't really have bought menu holders or something?

I couldn't quite grasp the theme of the menu...I think it was American bistro food? But then again there was edamame on the menu which was weird.  They had a beetroot salad, mussels, scallops, mushroom ragout, brick chicken and hanger steak.  Dan got the sea scallops ($19) with fennel salad and oranges and I got the brick chicken ($21).  We also each got a cocktail; I got the peach smash and he got the billionaire cocktail ($12).  It kind of bothered me that there were no prices for the cocktails (although I had guessed them to be around $10) and $12 is a bit steep for this place.  Plus they clearly had beer but it was not listed on the cocktail menu which annoyed me as well.  I will say that you could tell that the owners/chefs were nervous about opening because they kept walking around and talking to people.  They were really nice and I didn't really have the heart to say anything bad.  While we waited for our food that gave us a plate of raw chinese radishes and butter. Um, weird and not tasty.  I would have rather of just had bread and butter.

Our food came out and the presentation was just eh.  It didn't really feel like they put much time into making the food look nice.  Dan's dish only had 3 scallops and then a ton of fennel in the middle and literally 4 orange slices on the side.  I had 2 fairly medium sized chicken pieces (thigh and breast) and it was supposed to have come with spetzle but I couldn't really see it and it was mixed in with a tons of sauteed onions and grapes (also weird).  As I cut into the chicken I noticed that it was a bit undercooked but I could handle it, although I could definitely see some people not being able to handle it.  Dan's scallops were also undercooked, much more so than mine.  At one point it almost seemed like he was eating scallops sashimi-style.  I will say that the other piece of my chicken was juicy and tasted fine but there was nothing amazing about it and the spetzle was pretty much non-existent.  The best part of the meal was the cocktails.  They were actually pretty good and decent sized.  They would be better off getting rid of the food and just being a cocktail bar.  All in all, we ended up spending $81 which was completely un-justified for what we got.  I wished we had stuck with going to Mole instead.  But alas, after years of seeing it come together we just had to try.  Sorry guys, but Trix are not for kids or really even adults.    

Grill Room Visited 4/27/2011 2.75 Forks

Grill Room World Financial Ctr, 225 Liberty St., New York, NY 10281

If you happen to work in the World Financial Center, you know that there is a serious dearth of good food.  Hopefully that will all change soon as the weather gets nicer, there are more food carts moving in outside and there are rumors of a Shake Shack and Blue Smoke opening across the street.  But in the meantime, if you want to have a "nice" sit down meal your choices are limited to the Grill Room or PJ Clarke's.  Strangely enough, I've never eaten at the Grill Room before.

I will give high scores of the setting and ambiance.  It has almost floor to ceiling windows that over look the river and on a nice day it's really a gorgeous view.  I went there for a client lunch, so I was excited to not feel restricted budget wise.  The menu is your usual American style food but that's slightly higher end.  They have soups, burgers, and sandwiches but then they also have pork chops, steak, fish fillets and fancy pastas. A friend of mine had told me that the fish was good (and in the end I probably should have listened to her) but I'm always a sucker for a good sandwich during lunch so I opted for the salmon sandwich ($16).  They didn't ask me how I liked my fish but I had assumed that any good restaurant would serve it medium rare.  I usually love fish sandwiches and the best ones I've had involve thick cuts of fish (almost steak-like).  So when this sandwich came out I was disappointed.  The actual piece of salmon was extremely thin and overcooked.  It came on a focaccia bread that was nice and soft but it was way too big for the piece of fish.  I felt like I barely had any fish and in the end was eating something that was closer to a tomato and lettuce sandwich.  There was a nice basil spread inside the bread and I would have liked more of it.  Given that the fillet of fish was pretty thin, there was no need to put 2 giant leaves of lettuce the size of my head on top of the fish.  The fries were just ok, they were cooked with the skin on it and had that overcooked style to it that I'm not a huge fan of.  The girl next to me had gotten the tuna steak and it was definitely thick cut and looked pretty decent.  All in all, I wasn't thrilled with my food but when you consider what the other dining options are in the WFC it's not that terrible of a place.  But if it wasn't for the business they get from the employees in the building I'm not sure that they would last very long.

Brooklyn Star (Re-visited) Visited 4/22/2011 4 Forks

Brooklyn Star 593 Lorimer St., (between Metropolitan Ave & Conselyea St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

 I went to the original Brooklyn Star a few years ago at the location on Havemeyer Street and thought it was fine, nothing earth shattering.  But that might have been because it was 10pm on New Years Eve and Dan had worked all day and we were both in a shitty mood and just wanted to have dinner and go to bed.  Unfortunately, that place burned down and it took a while for them to get back on their feet.  It has since re-opened a 5 minute walk from my place and while it has a pretty different vibe, the menu is fairly similar (although not exactly the same). The front bar section is packed and claustrophobic feeling but after you walk through the bar, you get to the actual restaurant.  It's pretty different from the original restaurant in that it's very open and airy and the structure lends itself to being super noisy. All you can hear is the tin of background noise all through dinner.


Luckily, Dan and I were able to get a table right away at 8:30pm on a Friday night but shortly there after, the place became totally packed.  The menu hasn't really changed too much from the original menu. It's mostly Southern fare food: corn bread, country fried steak, mac and cheese, rib eye steak and shrimp and grits type dishes.  Dan and I thought it would be a good idea to split the mac and cheese ($9), the hot meat loaf sandwich, and the country fried steak ($15).  The mac and cheese came out first and it was delicious! It was the size of a small skillet and you could tell it was made with a nice combo of cheese (and not the veleeta kind, although there is definitely a time and place for that).  It wasn't super gooey but you could definitely taste the fresh, non-processed cheese in it.  It came with big shell pasta instead of elbow macaroni which was kind of a nice change.  But the BEST part of the meal was the bacon. So freakin good and salty.  They should make it as a big entree option.  Shortly after wards, the hot meat loaf sandwich came out.  It was on a white bread and came with chips and pickle.  I am generally not a huge fan of meat loaf, but I thought it was pretty decent, although I wasn't a huge fan of the white bread because it was kind of thin and you could feel the meat loaf soaking through.  But how I feel about crab cakes is how Dan feels about meat loaf (meaning very seriously).  He thought that there was a bit too much filler (either chickpeas or mashed potato) and not enough meat, but none the less, we both thought it was pretty good.  We should have just stopped our meal there and let our veins deal with all the oil and fat flowing through. 


But no, we had to go one step further and order the country fried steak.  When it came out, the couple next to me was like "uh, omg, is that the country fried steak? That looks amazing!"  And they were totally right.  The country fried steak was the size of Dan's foot (so huge) and covered in a white gravy.  The breading was nicely crisp and not overly fried.  Although after a while, we had started to pick off the breading because it was just too much fried-ness.  When you do that, you get to the base of the steak,which in all honestly wasn't amazing.  You have to eat it with the fried breading and gravy or else it just doesn't taste the same.  I actually love the mashed potato (probably because it had about 5 sticks of butter) and the hot slaw was strangely addicting.  I would have totally just had a dish of mashed potato and cabbage.  I actually had the country fried steak last time at the original place and don't remember it being this good.  It was totally a bad idea to have ordered 3 dishes.  Even if you're hungry, if you're just 2 people, 1 small dish and 1 big dish is more than enough.  I feel like I need to have be fat drained out of my body now.  Total bill with tip: $63 total.

Kellari's Parea Greek Bistro Visited 4/15/2011 4 Forks

Kellari's Parea 36 E 20th St., (between Broadway & S Park Ave), New York, NY 10003

 Sometimes when you live in New York you get sucked into the latest, hottest, and most blogged about restaurants that you forget that there are thousands of great unwritten about places.  Kellari's is one of them.  Lav had stumbled across this place online and since it was only 3 blocks from her apt we thought we'd give it a go. 


It's on 20th street which is totally not a street when you think of places to eat, but as we were walking down I realized there were several good places there: Rhom Thai, Mizu Sushi and there was another sushi place next door that looked good. We walked into Kellari at 8:30 on a Friday night and while it wasn't packed, it was definitely full of what looked like locals.  At first glance, the menu is a bit more upscale Greek food as they don't have any pita pockets, gyros, or souvlaki type dishes.  They did have a lot of whole fish and lamb chop type dishes.  

They start off by giving you soft sliced multi-grain bread and a pretty good hummus spread.  One of my downfalls was that I ate a lot of it, so by the time our food came, I was kind of full.  We started with Saganaki ($10) and the feta cheese spread ($8).  The saganaki was lit table side, which was pretty dramatic.  But unfortunately the taste was not dramatic at all.  It kind of tasted like over-cooked, dried out cheese.  I haven't had saganaki in a long time, but I think any kind of hot cheese based dish should be soft and gooey? Luckily, the feta spread more than made up for it. Ok, I know that it's just a cheese spread, but for some reason it was just really really tasty.  The soft pita that came with it was super addictive as well.  It was a good thing we had that to nosh on because the wait time between the appetizers and main entrees was a loooooong time.  This definitely knocked them down 1/2 a fork...the service in general was just not great, so they were lucky that Lav and I really liked our food.  I don't even think our dishes were that complicated but for some reason it took a really long time for them to come out.  I had gotten the Maryland crab burger with fries ($18) and Lav got the zucchini fritters ($11) and a spinach and orzo side dish ($8).  As you all know, as someone from Maryland I am super picky about my crab cakes and a crab cake isn't really a Greek dish but for some reason it just called out to me.  I must say, it was a pretty good crab burger.  It was huge and you could see and taste real chunks of blue crab meat.  There was very little filler in it, so I was really pleased with how it turned out.  It was served on a brioche bun but after having had almost an entire bag of pita I ended up just eating the crab burger without the bun.  The fries were nicely done and tossed with oregano to give it a Mediterranean flare.  Lav's zucchini fritters were also excellent.  They were little balls of fried zucchini and cheese and served on a mint yogurt dipping sauce.  Delish.  Another service mistake they made was that they brought out grilled asparagus instead of the spinach orzo (I will say the asparagus looked really tasty), so they had to send it back and then we had a wait a bit for the right dish to come out.  I only had a small bite of it, but it was a nice blend of flavors and I could see it going well with a lamb dish.  All in all, I was pleasantly surprised at Kellari's given it's obscurity.  I do wish the service was a bit better, otherwise I might have even bumped this up to a 4.5 forks.  Total bill was $50/pp.       

Grand Central Oyster Bar Visited 4/15/2011 3 Forks

Grand Central Oyster Bar Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10017

My friend Jenn had forwarded me this article from NY Mag that said that the Oyster Pan Roast from the Grand Central Oyster bar was New York's Greatest Dish.  So of course we had to try it.  I had been to the Oyster Bar many years go when I first moved to New York City.  It's your classic, quintessential New York restaurant.  It's a big spacious restaurant inside Grand Central Terminal with classic subway tiles on the walls with lots of noise and commotion going on.  The restaurant is split up into two sections: to the left is the main dining room and to the right is the bar/counter area.

We each ordered the oyster pan roast ($12) and then we split the fried oysters with fries ($22).  Unfortunately I have to say that this is most definitely NOT New York's greatest dish.  It actually wasn't at all what I (or Jenn) had imagined.  Although I had seen a picture of it before, I envisioned it to be much heartier and thicker like a chowder.  The soup that came out was water-y and thin.  It tasted very similar to a light tomato soup sprinkled with paprika.  Although I knew it had cream and butter in it, it didn't really taste very creamy and there was a hit of some sour taste to it.  The bread that was soaking it in was completely mushy and the presentation was a mess.  They brought it out with a giant silver platter over it and "unveiled' it but the soup had sloshed all over the edges, so it just looked messy.  But the good part of it was the oysters.  They were extremely plump (I have no idea what kind they used but they were giant) and juicy.  I wish I just had a huge bowl of oysters instead.  I was able to finish most of it but Jenn couldn't get over the sour taste and barely finished.  We also split the fried oysters and fries, which were fine.  The breading was a bit thick for me and I wish they could have been a bit more creative than to dump a huge bowl of tartar sauce on the side, but all in all they were fine....just nothing amazing.  Strangely, the fries were pretty good.  They were thin but crispy and salted well.

 While I'm definitely glad I tried these dishes and thought it was unique, I was a bit disappointed at the overall quality.  Plus I was a bit annoyed that they only offered seafood sandwiches in the bar/counter area because I think that could have been a decent soup and sandwich combo.  The couple next to us got raw oysters and they looked pretty good, so I guess if I were ever to come back, I may stick to just the raw bar.