Egg Shop Visited 3/26/2016 3.5 Forks

Egg Shop  151 Elizabeth St., New York, NY 10012

The Egg Shop is the epitome of hipster cuteness.  It's located at the cross section of Soho/Nolita/Chinatown so it brings in the artists, models and for some reason a lot of Asians.  The wait at on Saturday morning was 45 mins so be prepared to wait.  The place is pretty small with tight counter space and a handful of small tables.  As you can imagine, the menu is egg focused - so if you are a vegan, you're shit out of luck. The concept is pure marketing genius - who doesn't love an egg on everything or want an egg sandwich for breakfast (if you're more health conscious they have egg bowls).  They are super creative with their egg creations and everything sounded amazing.  You can also make your own sandwich as well as order fried chicken as a side dish - amazing!! I was trying to be healthy, so I went for a bowl instead but of course I picked the one that had pulled pork in it, so there goes that.  If I were to go full hog, I probably would have made my own sandwich with soft scramble eggs, cheddar cheese on a buttermilk biscuit with maple sausage and an avocado and maybe even throw in some heirloom tomatoes in there.  Ugh - I'm drooling just thinking about this.  Instead I got the El Camino ($13) which was a bowl with 1 poached egg, avocado, pulled pork, tomato, and cilantro topped with tortilla strips.  The food came out super fast but I guess the cooks literally do nothing all morning but have poached eggs ready and throwing the other ingredients in a bowl doesn't take much time.  I was a bit bummed that it was only 1 egg but they did compensate by putting a lot of pork in there but when you're called the Egg Shop, I would assume that the focus would be on the egg instead.  The egg was poached well enough although it could have been a bit runnier for me.  It was totally a fine dish but it didn't really scream breakfast to me with such little egg.  

In retrospect, I should have stuck with going balls the the wall and gotten a yummy sandwich on buttermilk biscuits as well as gotten a side of fried chicken - everyone who got it, looked very happy. While I was full, I left feeling like I waited way too long for a meal that lasted less than 35 mins that I ultimately could have made at home that cost less than <$10 to make.  Total bill:  $23/pp with tax, tip and juice

Photo Credit:  Yelp

High Street on Hudseon Visited 3/20/2016 4 Forks

High Street on Hudson  637 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014

This place has been buzzing primarily due to the popularity of their breads, pastries and breakfast sandwiches.   Those are all things that I love but Aarti and I ended up going for dinner instead and I wasn't really sure what to expect as I normally don't equate a place that's good with pastries to have a good dinner menu.  Luckily, I was wrong and the dinner there was wonderful. 

We walked-in on a Sunday and the place was packed.  We were offered seats at the "Chef's Table", which was basically just the end of the counter facing into the open kitchen.  It was totally fine but it is by the bathroom and you are a bit removed from the rest of the restaurant, so don't be fooled into thinking that you're getting some special seating next to the chef.  The menu is charming and rustic. They did have a delicious sounding line-up from their hearth but Aarti both refrained from carbo loading.  Instead, we shared the crispy broccoli ($9) and the grilled mushrooms ($15) to start and I got the Long Island Duck ($28) and Aarti got the Sunflower Seed Risotto ($14).   The crispy broccoli was fantastic - it had a tempura like batter on the outside and served with wood ear mushrooms, chow chow and scallions.  The batter was light yet flavorful and the broccoli underneath still had a nice crisp to it.  The chow chow was tangy with a slight hint of heat to it, which made it a nice combo with the mild batter.  The grilled mushrooms came with wild rice, sunchokes and mustard apples.  It was a perfectly nice dish and very farm-to-table but it didn't necessarily wow me over. 

What did wow me over was the duck.  Duck can go so many ways and if done incorrectly it can be dry and terrible.  But this one here was absolutely perfect.  Incredibly tender, moist and perfectly medium rare.  It reminded me of how much I love a really solid duck dish.  There were 4 nice medallions and even though it was a bit pricey at almost $30, it was the right amount of food combined with the charred leeks and turnips. 

It's really easy to walk past this place and think it's just another cute West Village restaurant.  And while it is a cute West Village joint, the food is really legit and solid.  Based on all the reviews about their breakfast/lunch/brunch situation, I will definitely come back in the day time so see what all the fuss is about bread-wise, but I would say that you shouldn't overlook it as a great dinner spot too. Total bill:  $43/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Rue 57 Visited 3/20/2016 3 Forks

Rue 57  60 W 57th St., New York, NY 10019

In all my years of living in NYC, I have actually never been to Carnegie Hall.  So when my friend Amy invited me to a show (never mind what the actual show was - it wasn't that good but that's not the point) I thought it would be a fun thing to cross off my NYC bucket list.  Unfortunately, Carnegie Hall is located right smack in the middle of Midtown and tourist land.  I don't know of any good places to eat around there and luckily Amy had thought before hand and made a reservation at Rue 57 which was right around the corner. 

The place is hopping with tourists (it is near Central Park) and locals trying to get a meal in before a show.  The space is pretty large and it's got a very classic French bistro feel to it.  They do a really good job of creating a cozy feel in the middle of a bustling city.  Even though we had accidentally canceled our reservation (we thought we were going to eat elsewhere), they were kind enough to still squeeze us in when we came crawling back.  The menu here is what you would expect of a French Bistro at brunch - lots of brunchy options as well as sandwiches, salads and steak frites.  They also strangely had a full sushi menu too - not sure why.  I decided to stick to egg options and got the Country Omelette ($16.25).  I wasn't sure if the dish came with anything on the side but when I read that it came with roasted fingerling potatoes, bacon and gruyere, I figured it would be a lot of food. So I guess I just read the menu wrong because instead of the potatoes and bacon coming on the side, the actual omelette was stuffed with these ingredients which was totally unexpected (even though as I re-read the menu now, that's clearly what it meant).  The portion size was HUGE - enough for 2 people and to be honest, stuffing an omelette with potatoes isn't really all that great.  Plus there was waaay to much bacon (gasp, I can't believe I'm saying that) and it tasted more like bacon bits rather than fresh cut bacon.  While I was very full at the end, I definitely felt like I forced myself to eat more than I should of a mediocre dish.  

The location and speed of service makes this place a logical choice if you are going to catch a show at Carnegie Hall or anything in the area.  It's definitely not a place I would voluntarily go to on my own but it did get the job done.  Just expect tons of tourists and basic brunch food.  Total bill:  $25/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp   

Llama Inn Visited 3/19/2016 4 Forks

Llama Inn  50 Withers St. Williamsburg, NY 11211

While I have never been to Peru before, I have been a fan of their food for a while, starting with ceviche and obviously their roast chicken.  But you actually don't see a lot of Peruvian restaurants around town - so I was intrigued when I read about this place which was a  <10 -="" and="" apt.="" decor="" from="" gorgeous="" huge="" in.="" is="" light="" lots="" min="" modern="" my="" nbsp="" of="" pouring="" space="" span="" the="" very="" walk="" windows="" with="">

It is one of the hotter restaurants on the scene now, so it took me over 2 weeks to get a reservation on a weekend that was at a decent time - ok, it was 6pm on a Saturday but that's better than 10pm or 5pm.   Even though I knew it was hard to get a reservation, I was still shocked by how incredibly crowded it was at 6pm - almost every table was taken already.   The menu is all shareable and is broken out veggies, fish, meat and large format dishes (there were only 2 options, either the whole roasted chicken or the beef tenderloin) as well as some anticucho which are basically skewers.  Paige and I opted to get the pork belly anticucho ($5), the ceviche ($18) and the large format beef tenderloin ($48).  As you can see from the prices, they are a wee bit high for what they are.  The pork belly skewers were as what you would expect - fatty, meaty and juicy.  There were 3 skewers that came with pickled chilis and spicy mayo.  They were a nice start to the meal.  The ceviche was a corvina fish (similar to a croaker or mild white fish) served thin with plantains, habanero, red onion and cilantro.  There was tons of acid and sourness to this dish, which I actually don't mind but it was very prominent.  I usually like my ceviche with cubes of fish - these were sliced very thin and was more like a carpaccio dish then ceviche but not a real deal breaker to the overall dish.  

As for the star attraction - the beef tenderloin dish came out and Paige and I were both like WTF did we just order?  I had read about it on The Infatuation, so I was prepared that it would be this crazy dish but it didn't really prepare me for it when I saw it in person.  It is basically a heaping sizzling plate full of cuts of beef tenderloin marinated in soy sauce topped with freakin FRENCH FRIES and covered in a spicy mayo type sauce and then served with scallion pancakes on the side so that you can wrap them all into a mini taco of sorts.  They they also serve fresh sliced avocado and pickled chilis for you to garnish the dish with.  It was all sorts of crazy - who tops a dish with french fries?  But you know what? It was heart stoppingly deliciousness and apparently it's some kind of national dish in Peru.  I mean, you feel terrible afterwards when you've realized what you've eaten but the combination of sizzling beef, french fries with spicy sauce wrapped in a scallion pancake is kind genius.  I was really pushing it at the end, but you can get 3 tacos each per person out of this and you'll still be left with french fries on the plate. 

Despite this monstrosity of food, Paige and I still managed to order bread pudding for dessert and it was a very solid moist bread pudding.   The only reason why I didn't give this place a higher review is that the service was super super slow.  We waited forever on every aspect of our meal - getting our drinks ordered, ordering our main meal, to getting more drinks and getting the bill.  The waiter was very nice but the meal just took way longer than it needed to.  It's definitely a lovely addition to the Williamsburg neighborhood, hopefully they can get their service in check a bit!  Total bill: $100/pp with tax, tip and lots of wine

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Akiko's Restaurant 3/16/2016 5 Forks

Akiko's Restaurant  431 Bush St., San Francisco, CA 94108

Fuck me.  This place is seared in my brain as one of the best sushi experiences I've had in a while.  It might be because I went on a super casual Wednesday for lunch, so it wasn't crowded at all and the weather in SF was absolutely perfect, so I was in an unusually good mood.  I had read about this place based on the review in The Infatuation (they almost never steer me wrong) and it was luckily a 7 min walk from my hotel.  Perfect!  The place is a bit hard to find - it has literally no sign on the outside.  It's right on the corner of Bush Street and this cute alley way that has an Irish pub in it.  I got there right when it opened and got an excellent seat at the sushi bar.  The decor was simple but still upscale with full floor to ceiling windows and the sun shining right through. 

I was a bit nervous at first when I noticed that all the sushi chefs were not Japanese but as soon as they started talking to me about sushi, I knew they were legit.  Soon this guy sits next to me at the bar and he clearly knew the chef and I found out he was a sushi chef at another restaurant and it was just his off day.  He started shooting the shit with the chef here and it was like nothing I had ever heard before.  The intense passion they had for the culture and food was very inspiring and it was literally all they talked about for 1 1/2 hours.  Their knowledge and love for sushi had me very enamored with both of them and made me kind of sad to not have a job that I felt that strongly about (although they both claimed to be making no money).  The chef here told me that making salmon avocado roll is his worst nightmare, so you can imagine the level of food here.  It's all stripped down, basic, authentic sushi.  No California rolls or Philly rolls in sight.  I was dying to get the omakase but I restrained myself.  Instead I got uni sushi to start ($12 for 2 pieces) and the sashimi/tempura lunch ($19).  I saw the uni come out of the box and the chef told me it was Santa Barbara uni - amazing!!  This is the kind of stuff I live for and since it was from right down the coast, it just seemed fresher than ever.   The sashimi/tempura lunch comes with a very small but elegant sashimi starter - basic cuts of yellowtail, salmon, tuna, and white tuna. They were all melt in your mouth high quality fish. Incredible.  

The tempura came out next and it's a VERY large serving of veggies and shrimp.  The tempura batter was a bit on the thick side but nothing too terrible.  While it was a very good and filling tempura meal, I couldn't help but wish that I had stuck to just fish instead.  Everything the chef was making for other people looked mind blowing.  I watched him serve up all sorts of unique types of fish to his friend, using the blow torch and other tools to really do it up.  I ended up striking up a nice conversation with the guy sitting next to me and asked what he liked best (he had about 10 pieces of sushi).  He had said that the monkfish liver was really good and I was a bit skeptical, so the chef kindly gave me a free tasting.  It was creamy and quite smooth - I can absolutely see why they call it froie gras of the sea  - totally spot on description of what it was.  I was torn between getting scallop or sweet shrimp sushi but the chef swayed me on to barracuda.  I couldn't remember if I had it or not before but it was a really lovely smooth mild fish.  It was gorgeous in presentation and I loved that I tried a few different things that I normally wouldn't get.  I could have literally sat there for 3 more hours talking to that guy and trying different types of fish and been happy as a clam. 

By the time I left, I was full and happy.  I don't know if it was the sun or the intense passion that the 2 chefs (ok, it can border on being a bit snobby but I was ok with it) had but it was all around such a joyful meal for me.  My only big regret is not going full on sushi/sashimi and not splurging more (even if it meant paying out of pocket for it).  This will definitely be my go-to sushi place whenever I am in town again.  Trust me, sit at the bar and do the omakase.  Your mouth and soul will thank you for it.  Tip:  Don't mix this up with Akiko Sushi which is around the corner from it.  I don't know what it's like there but definitely make sure to make a reservation at the right place.  Total bill:  $50 with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Hog Island Oyster Co Visited 3/15/2016 4.5 Forks

Hog Island Oyster Co  1 Ferry Bldg, San Francisco, CA 94111

Oh, Hog Island, how I love thee.  I've been here a few times before and I'm not sure why I've never blogged about it before.  While I know the Ferry Building is a bit touristy, it's still very popular with locals and it's still one of my go-to spots when I'm in SF.  It's just such a calming place for me and it's right by the water with gorgeous views of the Bay.  Hog Island might be my 2nd favorite oyster place behind Maison Premiere and it's a very close second.  

I stopped by the restaurant after the conference was over on Tuesday and got there right before the crowds really started to settle in.  I got a nice seat at the bar and was immediately torn about what to order.  I wasn't super hungry even though I could have easily eaten everything on the menu.  Even though I was on a corporate card, I couldn't really bring myself to go too crazy with the ordering.  I settled on 1/2 dozen bar mix of oysters ($20) and the steamers ($15).  I've always preferred West Coast oysters over East Coast oysters and this definitely confirmed my love for them.  I don't remember the exact types but they were all amazing - hearty, briny and delicious.  If they weren't so expensive here, I would have ordered another 2 dozen of them.  I was a bit surprised that they didn't have a Happy Hour special but I guess they get such great business that they don't really need it to bring in a crowd.  If you are in to oysters, definitely get the bar mix so that you can try a little bit of everything.  The steamers were also great - piled high with Manila clams, corona beans, fennel sausage, and leeks in a buttery white wine broth.   I was pleased with the amount of food in it given that I had opted not to get it with pasta.  The broth was such buttery goodness that I was sopping it all up with the crusty delicious bread that I was trying to stay away from but couldn't (it comes from next door - Acme Bread). 

Overall, this is the kind of place that has a spot place in my heart because it's super casual but serves amazingly fresh seafood at a price that isn't too hard to swallow.  Everyone there was super friendly and tourist place, be damned, it's totally worth it no matter if you are a local or a visitor.  Total bill:  $45 with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp 

Sushiritto Visited 3/15/2016 3 Forks

Sushiritto  388 Market St., Ste 107, San Francisco, CA 94111

I stumbled upon Sushiritto totally by accident.  I was walking around downtown SF on my way to another poke stand when I noticed a long line of people on Market Street.  Now I am a total sucker for long lines and peered around the line to see what everyone was waiting for and the sign said Sushiritto.  I had vague recollections of reading about this place and I thought to myself "Why Not?" - I'm only in SF for a limited amount of time and I had already had delicious poke the day before at Bowl'd Acai, so why not try something unexpected.  I had gathered from the name of the place that it was a sushi + burrito.  Honestly, it did sound kind of gross but a long line 10 people deep couldn't be wrong right? 

The menu is actually mostly cooked fish burritos with the exception of the Satori and the Geisha's Kiss.  All the other burritos had either cooked fish, tempura or some other kind of warm food in it, so it's actually not all a combination of sushi and burrito. I had wanted to try the Santori because it was yellowtail focused but by the time I got up to the counter around 12:30, they were already sold out of it!  Bummer.  So I opted for the Geisha's Kiss which was made with raw tuna, tamago (Japanese omelette), piquillo peppers, lotus chips, cucumber, lettuce, ginger guac, yuzu tobkiko and sesame white soya all wrapped in rice and seaweed.  

At first glance, I was relieved that it wasn't full of rice.  I was afraid that it would be super rice heavy with not much else.  But I was bummed that it wasn't also big on the tuna but instead full of the other ingredients.  It was definitely not as weird of a dish as it sounded - in fact, it tasted exactly like what you would think - a giant tuna hand roll.  The seaweed needed a bit of re-enforcement since as soon as I took a bite of it, it completely fell apart in my hands.  I will say that it was a pretty filling meal and was probably not all that terrible for you since it was light on the white rice.  It was definitely a fun SF novelty (although I heard there is a place in NYC that has it now too) which I'm glad to cross off my list but I'm not sure if it's something I really need to do again.  Total bill:  $15 with tax and drink