While I still love NYC, every now and then it's nice to get out of the city and visit the 'burbs. Two of Aarti and Will's friends, who later became my friends too, moved to New Rochelle a few years ago and we try to have get togethers out there every one in a while.
We stopped by North End Tavern for lunch on a nice Saturday afternoon - the inside was closed for a private party and they said we had to wait for a table outside even though there was a free table. After a bit of back and forth, we finally got seated but it really didn't have to be so difficult. The menu is your standard bar/pub food. Lots of sandwiches, salads, and bar appetizers. After a bunch of hemming and hawing if I should be healthy and get a kale salad or say fuck it, I opted to get the French dip ($12) with a side of sweet potato fries. The sandwich was pretty huge sandwich - it came with a hefty serving of thinly sliced roast beef on soft but toasted french bread, onion rings, melted gouda and served with a side of au jus. I gotta say it was a pretty decent sandwich and the sweet potato fries were nice and crispy. I was incredibly full and happy afterwards - I can see why people in the area come here if they are looking for solid casual bar food. I wouldn't go as far to say it's was an amazing meal but it hit the spot and prevented me from being extremely hangry which was key. Total bill: $21/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
Kumo Japanese Restaurant 77 White Plains Rd., Scarsdale, NY 10583 3 Forks
One of my biggest food pet peeves is the invention of Asian fusion food - especially places that serve you every since Asian cuisine under the sun. I mean a place can't be that good if they are serving you Japanese, Chinese and Thai food all at the same time. That is a luxury you have in NYC, where you have 100's of great options for each of those categories - there is no need for 1 place to jam them all together. But I guess when you live in the 'burbs and there aren't many choices, they best to kind of lump them all together. I'm also weary of places that have a 100 page menu a la the Cheesecake Factory. So when Nat and Kinney suggested we go here, I was a bit skeptical. I'll say it wasn't all that bad and I probably could have ordered better as some of the stuff on the menu did look/sound better good.
While the menu isn't 100 pages, it is legitimately 20 pages long. It has a mix of sushi, ramen, hibachi, stir fry, and anything else you can think of - you name it, they probably have it. The prices of the sushi platters were surprisingly expensive - a sushi/sashimi combo was $32. Instead of doing that, I decided to go with a sashimi bento dinner box which came with shrimp shumai, shrimp and veggie tempura, california roll, rice, and miso soup for $28. The Asian in me thought it seemed like a more economical option. In the end I should have stuck with my initial choice of something more sushi focused as the majority of the bento box was just ok. There wasn't anything really creative or exciting about this dish. While I wouldn't say that it missed the mark completely, it was just meh. The sashimi itself was cut super thin so the point where I didn't really feel like I was eating sushi. The same meh-ness can be said of our Yummy Asparagus appetizer ($6) - it was literally steamed asparagus with some kind of mustard sauce on it, how is that creative at all?
I will say that while I dislike places that mix and match ethnic cuisines, it does help when you have a large party of people with differing tastes. While I got sushi, Aarti got stir fry, Kinney got ramen, Nat got some kind of teriyaki and unfortunately I can't remember what Will got but it was also something different from the rest of us. I don't mean to crap all over this place as I could see that if I lived in the area coming here if there aren't any other good Asian places around - next time I'm here I would probably stick to a bunch of rolls or a sushi platter instead of trying to be cheap. Total bill: $34 with tax and tip (clearly we split the bill unevenly but I'm not really sure why!)
Photo Credit: Yelp
