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