Rubirosa Visited 1/28/2012 4 Forks

Rubirosa 235 Mulberry St., (between Spring St & Prince St), New York, NY 10012

 So Lav and I ended up at Rubirosa totally by accident.  We originally had wanted to go to Parm and somehow I thought getting there at 7pm on a Saturday would be fine.  Big mistake, they told us it was a 2 hour wait!  Now I don't mind waiting, but 2 hours is just not something I am ok with.  So we started to look for other places nearby.  We came across Rubirosa and I remembered that Aarti and Deanna went last year and loved it, plus is was literally right across the street from Parm.  We walked in and there were 2 seats right at the bar, which was perfect.  As I've said before in my blog, I actually like eating at the bar, it's a bit more fun than sitting at a regular table. 


The menu looked great and we kind of went overboard with the ordering.  We got the roasted wild mushroom appetizer ($9), the stuff artichoke ($12), the beet salad ($11) and shared a small vodka sauce with fresh mozzarella pizza ($16).  Originally our waiter told us we should consider the large pizza because it was really thin crusted...um, is he crazy?! After eating our meal, I can't image how we would have finished a large (we didn't even finish a small).  All the appetizers came out first and I was a big fan of the mushroom app.  There were tons of different kinds of mushrooms, button, cremini, enoki, and a bunch of others roasted in olive oil.  The beet salad came with arugula, goat cheese and dressed with a light vinaigrette dressing...I actually have rarely seen white beets, but this salad had white and red beets and they were delicious.  I was a huge fan of the salad and it was big enough to almost be a meal on its own.  Now as for the stuffed artichoke, Lav and I were kind of confused on how to eat it.  It was half an artichoke with breading and stuffing but we weren't sure how to incorporate the leaves with the stuffing (I've never been great with artichokes), so we both just ended up eating the stuffing on its own.  Then the pizza came out and a small had 6 pieces to it!  Granted I will say the crust was super super thin, so I can see how if you don't order anything else, that a large would be the right size.  I'm typically not a huge fan of thin crust pizza but this one was really great.  I can't quite figure out the crust, it almost had a cornmeal type of texture to it but it was super thin but strong enough to hold the sauce and cheese without sagging.  The vodka sauce was a delicious change from your typical tomato base.  Despite having so much food, we both still left room for dessert and we got the tiramisu ($8) - it was tasty and soft and just the right way to end the night. Total bill pp with tip and tax $47. 


Photo Credit: Yelp

Allswell Visited 1/28/2012 4 Forks

Allswell 124 Bedford Ave., (between 11th St & 10th St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

Allswell has got this cute cozy feel to it that made me feel at home as soon as I walked into it.  I was a bit concerned given all the extreme reviews on Yelp, but my experience was a good one.  The menu had a lot of different things I wanted to try which is always a good sign.  I was deciding between the eggs, avocado and sourdough toast, the roast beef with fresh horseradish, and the mushroom ricotta frittata.  Sadly my last frittata experience at The Dutch made me kind of weary of ordering frittata again, so I scratched that off my list.  Usually I need an egg-like product for brunch, but I love a horseradish and roast beef combination.  So I pulled a Mama Huang move and asked which one the waitress liked better.  She said that the avocados were flown in from some organic farm in California, which is pretty rare since it's winter time but that the horseradish was made fresh in-house, so if I really liked horseradish I should pick that.  I opted for the eggs because quite frankly, where the hell are you getting avocados in January for only $11? But of course I had to supplement my meal with a nice breakfast sausage ($4) and Aarti also got the avocado dish and we split the yogurt and granola ($6) to make things a bit healthy for us.

I got my eggs scrambled and they were amazing.  They were wet and flavorful and tasted like it was frankly cooked with a nice healthy heaping of butter.  There was a generous portion of avocado, which weren't 100% ripe but not so hard that they weren't edible.  The sourdough bread was nicely toasted with more pats of butter.  Combined all together they made for an amazing dish.  Throw in the huge portion of homemade sausage and I was definitely a happy camper.  I actually could barely finish the sausage patty myself..it was literally the size of a small burger.  I managed to down a few spoonfuls of the yogurt and it was totally fine and tasted good but I will continue to stand by the fact that I don't get why anyone would order something you can easily make at home for $1 (I mean, I guess you could make the same argument for my eggs and avocado dish too...).  The service was very attentive and they tried hard to accommodate all our dish on our tiny table without stacking everything on top of each other.  Aarti got a coffee that came in a cute french press brewer.  I know they are a dime a dozen these days but I still can't get over how cute they are.  I had a great experience and would definitely come back to try dinner.  Total bill pp without tip $19.

Photo Credit: Yelp

The Breslin Visited 1/27/2012 4 Forks

The Breslin Ace Hotel, 20 W 29th St., New York, NY 10001

I know I'm a bit behind the eight ball when it comes to reviewing The Breslin.  It was the "hot" restaurant a few years back when April Bloomfield was all the rage.  So I finally made my way here on a Friday night and I was actually pleasantly happy with my meal.  I will say that if you are a vegetarian, I would not recommend it here as it is pretty meat focused, although you piece together a meal of a few side dishes if you really wanted to.  But the focus here is really on the more unique meat dishes: pigs feet, bone marrow, blood sausage, headcheese, and they even had peanuts that have been fried in pork fat.

Holly and I both opted to go more safe and we both got the lamb burger (I got it medium rare) which comes with feta, red onions and a cumin mayo ($21) plus a side of fries.  The burger is a pretty hefty size meal and I'm glad we ended up not getting any appetizers.  The meat was incredibly juicy and dare I say mine was cooked much closer to the rare side (it was quite dark in the restaurant but the meat did look pretty pink from what I could tell).  The combination of the lamb, feta and red onion gave it a very Mediterranean feel although usually when I eat Greek food I feel healthy...I only felt like my heart was clogging up (in a good way) here.  The bread was pretty hard and toasted on the outside but the inside was nice and soft and despite there being a lot of juice from the burger, the bread never really got soggy which I appreciate.  There's nothing worse than eating a burger and your bread ends up falling apart in your hands.  The burger also come with thrice cooked fries which I heard was fried in duck fat.  They were crispy, delicious and  surprisingly not greasy but together with the burger I knew I was going to get myself into lots of cholesterol trouble so I only had 3 or 4 of them.

The decor is kind of like this old dark pub with lots of wood finishes.  The waitstaff was nice but they did seem a bit like they wanted to rush us out of our seats.  One of my pet peeves is when you get the check without asking for it.  But in a way I do understand if there is a long wait of people but it would be nice to give people some breathing room.  All in all, the burger was great and different and I would come back to try more adventurous things like the bone marrow and just yummy sounding dishes like curried mussels with cilantro. Total bill with drinks before tip $46/pp.

Photo Credit: Yelp   

Gary Danko Visited 1/18/2012 5 Forks

Gary Danko 800 N Point St., San Francisco, CA 94109

Yes, the elusive 5 Forks.  I'm not giving it 5 Forks because of its reputation but the food was honestly some of the best food I've had a long time.  The quality of the food was simply top notch and prepared perfectly.  Hardly any flaws in my entire experience (except for the one fact that it's almost like a casino in there with the blacked out windows).  I was luckily able to go to dinner because of a work meeting and I was a bit ashamed to say that I had never heard of this place before and when I mentioned it to my business partners they almost passed out.  Now I know why. 

The menu is broken up into a set menu on the left or a la carte on the right hand side (either 3 courses for $71, 4 courses for $89 or 5 courses for $104 - incredibly reasonable pricing considering the quality of food).  The waiter explained that you don't have to order a typical structure of appetizer, entree and dessert.  If you like, you can order 3 appetizers or 2 appetizers and 1 dessert or they can make the entrees smaller size and you can order several of them.  The hardest part of the entire meal was deciding what to get.  I mean it was REALLY hard to decide what to order and even harder once the waiter came around and described some of the dishes.  I finally decided on the Seared Ahi Tuna with Avocado, Nori, Enoki Mushrooms and Lemon Soy Dressing to start, the Roast Maine Lobster with Potato Purée, Chanterelle Mushrooms, Edamame and Tarragon for an entree and finished with Warm Louisiana Butter Cake with Apples, Huckleberry Sauce and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream for dessert.  

Just by looking at the Ahi Tuna on the plate made my mouth water.  It was the freshest looking piece of tuna I've ever seen in my life (it tasted it literally had come out of the water right then and there) and I also have a huge crush on enoki mushrooms that it made the dish one of the most amazing dishes I've had in a while. The soy dressing was incredibly light yet was the ideal flavor combination to go with the tuna.  Next the lobster dish...even though I have high cholesterol I simply had to order it. It wasn't a huge piece of lobster that required messiness.  Instead they had already cut it open and taken it out of the shell to make eating it a lot easier.  The potato puree was smooth and amazing on its own, but everything together in one bite made my mouth explode.  Meanwhile the dessert was also delicious and the huckleberry sauce was one of the most unique tastes I've had in a long time.  The cake was almost like a rum cake without the rum but that doesn't detract from how great it was.

Meanwhile the waitstaff was almost too attentive. It reminded me of the service at Blue Hill at Stone Barns but it's what expected at a place like this.  As a nice touch, they gave each of the woman a parting gift of a pumpkin cheesecake wrapped in a gold wrapper.  Again, since it was a business dinner, I don't know how much it was but I heard it was somewhere around $800, which wasn't bad given we also got 3 bottles of wine. 

Photo Credit: Yelp

Prospect Visited 1/17/2012 4 Forks

Prospect 300 Spear St., (between Folsom St & Harrison St), San Francisco, CA 94105

One of the nice things about work dinners is that you get to try out places that you would ordinarily never go to. Prospect is one of those places.  The clientele is definitely more on the swankier and formal side.  It seemed like almost everyone who was there was on a corporate account and/or 50 years old.  But that doesn't mean that I didn't have a great meal there.  On the contrary, I actually had a lovely meal there, I just don't think this is the type of place that I would necessarily come back to.  

The table started with the foie gras torchon ($12) which came with toasted banana bread, pineapple, and nuts.  Serving the foie gras with something sweet was an interesting touch and actually worked really well.  It definitely made the foie gras taste less "earthy" and metal-y. For my appetizer, I got the Handpicked Local Dungeness Crab, which was served with Fresh Hawaiian Hearts of Palm, Oro Blanco & Ruby Grapefruit, Brokaw Avocado, Green Goddess Dressing, Arugula  ($14.50).  As I stated in my last post, when I'm in SF, I always want to get seafood and what's more SF than dungeness crab??  The dish was delicious and there was lots of crab to go around, it wasn't just all arugula.  Everything worked well together, the crab, the avocado, the dressing and the arugula.  Those are all ingredients that I love on their own, so together, they were even better.

For my main dish, I got the Storm Hill Beef New York with Mustard Mashed Potatoes, Bloomsdale Spinach, Caramelized Cippolini Onions, Beer Battered King Trumpet & Maitake Mushrooms, Beef Jus  ($31).  I struggled between this dish and the scallops because I normally never get scallops and what better time than when someone else is paying for it?  But in the end what won me over was the fact that the beef came with mashed potatoes and maitake mushrooms.  I asked for it medium rare and it was cooked perfectly - nice and pink on the inside and the outside was a nice brown color.  I put the knife in and it cut straight through without any difficulty.  The potatoes were nice and smooth (clearly with 5 sticks of butter in it) and the spinach and onions gave the dish some nice texture and flavor - even though to be honest this is the first piece of meat I've had in a while that could have totally been served on its own with nothing and have been just as good.  Sadly the one thing I didn't love were the mushrooms because of they were beer battered.  It just didn't need to be battered and fried, it would have been much better on its own in the jus.  The table then ordered almost one of every dessert - the one I really liked was the ice cream sandwich (nice and soft outside but hard ice cream so that it didn't melt too quickly - $8).  Overall, it was a very satisfying meal and although I didn't pay for it, I think the bill was around $600 without tip for 7 people.  Again, even though I really enjoyed my food, the atmosphere was a bit too business/corporate-y for a regular outing.  

Photo Credit: Yelp 

Kiji - Visited 1/16/2012 4 Forks

Kiji Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar 1009 Guerrero St., (between 22nd St & Alvarado St), San Francisco, CA 94110

When I think of San Francisco food, I think fresh seafood and sushi is no exception to that rule.  After a long and fabulous day in Napa Valley, Neera and I went to Kiji Sushi which was right around the corner from her house.  Despite being a quiet long weekend, she was only able to get a 6:45pm reservation on a Monday.  But once I walked in, I noticed that there was probably 10 tables tops (there may have been a back room but I'm not 100% sure), so then I understood why it was hard to get a table. 

The restaurant is small and super cute and the type of higher end but not super fancy neighborhood sushi joint that I wish I had in my neighborhood. I was still a bit full from lunch so I opted to not get anything with rice and got the sashimi platter ($26) which came with 3 pieces of albacore, tuna, yellowtail and salmon and then your choice of the 5th kind, either surf clam, octopus or white fish.  Clearly I was going for whitefish since I'm not a huge fan of either surf clam or octopus - I think they're both too chewy.  Neera got 2 different kinds of rolls - I can't remember which ones they were but they were both pretty different since one was topped with a bed of seaweed and the other was topped with lemon slices - you don't see that too often.  I was a bit bummed that my sashimi didn't come with soup or salad, especially at that price point, but luckily in the end, I didn't really need either of them.  I really loved my sashimi platter.  Not only because there was such a great variety of the types of fish but they were cut just right (not too big like Yama where you can barely eat 1 piece in a bite and not too small where you are done with the entire platter in 5 minutes).  The quality of all the pieces of fish were top notch (literally melt in your mouth) and I just felt super healthy eating my meal.  I am still thinking about how I haven't had a great platter like that in a long time.  I didn't try either of Neera's rolls but she did mention that the lemon slices were a bit too thick and could have been a bit thinner.   It's sushi places like this (not super fancy like a Masa but not so cheap that you you're better off eating deli sushi) that make me wish I could have sushi everyday.

Total bill per person: $32

Photo credit: Yelp

Flour+ Water Visited 1/16/2012 3.5 Forks

Flour + Water 2401 Harrison St., (between 20th St & 21st St), San Francisco, CA 94110

You know what you get when you add Flour and Water? An hour and 30 minute wait, at 6:30pm during the long weekend.  To be totally fair and honest, Neera, Levi and I  knew it would be a long wait and we totally made the best of it by downing 2 bottles of red wine.  By the time we were seated, we were all ready to eat the napkins. 

Usually I don't ask the waitstaff on their recommendations, but this time we did and funnily enough, everything our waitress recommended was not on our preliminary list of ordering.  In the end, we opted for the funghi pizza ($18), the prosciutto pizza ($16), the squid ink pasta ($16), and the rabbit ragu pasta ($17) - this was the one waitress recommended dish we ordered.  I'm not sure if it was because we were starving or what, but the wheat bread basket was amazing..nice and soft but think and pillowy in the middle.  The funghi pizza came out first and I was originally excited about it because I love mushrooms.  But the mushrooms weren't really that much of a focus here.  Instead there was tons of this leafy green called nettles.  Even after eating them I still have no idea what a nettle is, but it seemed more plant like than a vegetable.  As someone who is not really a huge fan of thin brick oven pizza, this pizza didn't really make me love this type of pizza anymore.  Don't get me wrong, it  was totally fine and better than your typical greasy New York style pizza, but I wasn't dying of excitement about it.  Next came the 2 pastas and this is really where Flour + Water shines.  Both pastas were totally amazing and very fresh tasting.  We were all in agreement that the rabbit ragu was definitely the best.  The sauce alone made us want to get more bread and sop it all up.  It was a creamy almost tomato like sauce and the pasta were these cute "witch hat shaped pasta".  The rabbit meat was perfectly seasoned with just a bit of heat but not one that's overwhelming or distracting.  The squid ink pasta was also super fresh and the watermelon relish was a really refreshing touch to the dish.  Next came the prosciutto pizza and I actually liked it better than the funghi.  It was a nice mix of thinly shaved ham, potato slices, cabbage and red onion.   I know it sounds like a lot but the salty flavors all really went well with each other. 

For dessert we decided to go with the waitresses recommendation since it worked so well with the pasta and got with the candy mushroom cap bonet with almond ($8).  To be honest, it just tasted like a flan with almonds and there was no hint of mushroom, although I'm not sure if we were really supposed to.  Again, it was good but nothing earth shattering. 

All in all, I did like my meal and thank god for the wine.  The service was great there (apparently go with the waitress recommendations!) so at least they try to make the wait as painless as possible.  The review might be slight different had we not have to wait almost 2 hours for a table.  I wouldn't recommend it if the wait is that long, but I would recommend it if the wait is less than an hour. Total bill $58/pp without tip. 

Photo Credit: Yelp