And just because we didn’t have enough food at Gramercy Tavern at lunch, we decided to have some take away from Hill Country Barbecue, arguably the best in all of New York. I’ll do more of a write-up on how it works later because we are actually going to meet Julian and Sandra there for a sit-down dinner in just under a week’s time!
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The barbecue was joined by some of my Uncle’s delcious curried onion rings. Yumm!!
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I’m slowly but surely making my way through the New York food scene and today’s victim was Gramercy Tavern as we took our cousins out for a nice meal. Gramercy Tavern is a very popular “American tavern” as it describes itself and comprises the casual Tavern and the formal Dining Room.
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The Tavern’s menu, today at least, did look a little bit more interesting but it was looking pretty busy (its where they get most of their walk-up customers) and our booking was for the formal Dining Room. The Dining room was a little quieter and though less laid-back than the Tavern still had a quite quaint cosy comfortable feel.
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Okay, so be prepared for a few pictures of our food here with four meals to consider! In clock-wise order from the top left are Kathleen’s, Penny’s, Pat’s and my dishes:
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I can’t speak for the other dishes, but the Cauliflower dish was amazing. You wouldn’t think cauliflower could feature as the main and primary ingredient in a dish but it can – and I think its definitely a vegetable that I’ve seen feature more and more often.
Our mains
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The dishes all looked super lovely and I would have been happy with eating any of them. I was happy, however, that my hangar steak made a nice contrast to my vegetable starter. Steak was cooked pretty much to perfection though perhaps the bourbon sauce could have had slightly more of a bite.
And then of course we finished with dessert.
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Brilliant creations by Pastry Chef Nancy Olson. I went for my dessert mainly because of the black pepper butter cookie (there wasn’t as much pepper as I was expecting) but really loved the cheesecake. Rich without being overly heavy. I think Pat’s peanut butter Sandwich was certainly the most interesting dessert but, like the mains, I would have been happy with any of the other desserts too. I’m so greedy 😉
Petit fours were extremely cute an included a peanut butter truffle, orange and dark choc square and a mini macaroon.
Service overall at Gramercy Tavern was friendly if not particularly excellent (on this occasion at least.) Negatives included the fact they were stingy with the bread for our table (only one bread roll brought at the beginning and we saw another customer basically grab the waiter so he could ask for another), sometimes slow on filling up water, no explanation of food being given and really slow to bring out menus (especially between the end of our mains and delivery of desserts). The attention from waiters started to drop off as we slowly got to the end of our meal, which is always a frustrating thing. Positives included replacement/additional drink – upon making a mistake with one of our drinks (which we didn’t realise they’d even made) they were quick to bring an additional quick replacement, staff being good at directing you to the toilets and they didn’t mind photos being taken.
Overall I would recommend Gramercy Tavern on the strength of its food, even if the service was slightly hit and miss.
From East to West … we thought we’d give the western fried chicken a go to see how it stacked up against its 
Eastern competitor Hill Country Chicken has a pretty simple menu: Fried Chicken, Fresh-Cut Fries and Homemade Pies. It was clearly very popular if the 
queues and crowds inside were any indication.
Your fried chicken choices are between Hill Country Classic or Mama Els’ Recipe (basically skinless and batterless – where’s the fun in that! – but with special seasonings) and then you can get the breast, thigh, drum or wing plus a variety of sides including the fresh-cut fries and cheesy mash etc. Sadly I could see that the chicken was not fried made to order …
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We decided to do a thigh and drum in one each of the Classic and Mama Els’ Recipe. The chicken for sure was juicy (even if not freshly fried up) however I wasn’t too excited about the flavour in either of the two options – neither really came out and grabbed me and I had to make quite copious use of the Honey Mustard dipping sauce we’d ordered to go with it. Perhaps there wasn’t enough seasoning or perhaps I’d been spoiled by the Korean fried chicken experience …
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The staff at Hill Country Chicken are super friendly and I quite liked the atmosphere of the venue. I liked how it was bright and cheery and you definitely can’t hate a place that offers homemade pies which include flavour such as Salted Margarita, Coconut Cream, and Cowboy (with an option to make it a shake too!) 😉
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Still, I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to go there again but if I’m in the area I wouldn’t say no.
We were all set to head out to Daniel for dinner tonight. Daniel is chef Daniel Boulud’s first and flagship restaurant, recipient of 3-Michelin stars, currently New York’s number 1 restaurant according to the 2010 S.Pellegrino Best Restaurant in the World awards, etc. etc. (I could go on forever.) But then, the snows came. What started with small flurries yesterday afternoon:
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ended up being a pretty serious snow dump and by the time we got up this morning (we had been planning on heading into to town to do a tour of Brooklyn) we weren’t even sure we’d be able to leave the house to get into the Big City at all.
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Constantly checking the metro and the roads outside (we had to rely on houses clearing their front paths) we knew we’d be stuck indoors for the day but still held out hope for making our dinner plans. Dinner plans which changed slightly … Daniel, though open, had not been able to receive their latest food delivery and therefore were operating a very limited menu. So we decided instead to head to Wylie Dufresne’s WD-50. Manhattan streets had at least been kind of cleared of some snow but it was still pretty hard work getting around:
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WD-50, a slightly different kettle of fish to Daniel’s contemporary French, it’s no slouch in the awards department either with a Michelin-star and currently number #45 on the S.Pellegrino Best Restaurant in the World list. WD-50 serves “New American” food and I was looking forward to see how much of owner Wylie Dufresne’s molecular gastronomy was present in the menu.
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The restaurant has a very cool feel to it with cool lights, disco balls, wood mixed in with funky art, Japanese kind of style tatami mat place sets, dark but moving colours on the walls and this kind of sets the mood for the very forward-thinking and innovative menu.
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There were so many things I wanted to try that I convinced Pat we should indulge in the 9-course tasting menu. Our amuse-bouche was a Striped bass, gingerbread, plum, and pickled ramp (a kind of wild leek). The freshness of the bass was well offset by the gingerbread (interesting!) and plum. I was liking the colours of our dishes already.
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Next up was a very unusual bagel – yes it sounds fairly traditional: “Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese” but the unusual twist comes in the fact that the bagel part was basically like an ice cream. Different!
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Foie gras, passionfruit, chinese celery looked again fairly simple, fairly standard but then you cut open the foie gras and find the passionfruit liquid oozing out from inside. Gorgeous. The passionfruit was a fantastic way to cut through the richness of the foie gras.
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Our Scrambled eggs ravioli, charred avocado, kindai kampachi was a really nice an interesting idea but I felt that perhaps the ravioli was slightly under seasoned so it didn’t really convince me.
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Some dishes are best served cold but I would have preferred the next one wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, even with being served cold, the Cold fried chicken, buttermilk-ricotta, tabasco, caviar was actually quite divine but there is just something about eating cold fried chicken that kind of creeps me out. Incredible flavour in this dish though.
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Bone marrow has a very strong flavour and having it shaved over our next dish of Bay scallops, parsnip, and black sesame surprisingly worked for the dish. Okay it wasn’t the prettiest dish we had this evening but it was nom nom.
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In a total twist on Beef and béarnaise this is what we were served next:
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Where is the beef you ask? Where is the béarnaise? The beef was represented by the intense broth and the béarnaise were in the dumpling!
Then our final savoury dish of the night – squab breast, cheese pumpkin, corn bread, pickled cranberries.
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For a girl that doesn’t really like beer I really liked our first dessert which was a White beer ice cream, quince, caramel, and caraway mix. It was very refreshing after the richness of the savoury part of our meal.
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This was followed by two very pretty dessert plates: Grapefruit curd, camparai, and hisbicus-sorrel
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And soft chocolate, beets, long pepper, ricotta ice cream. Really interesting how this last dish used what are traditionally savoury ingredients.
Petit fours to finish our meal – Cocoa packets and a Chocolate shortbread filled with milk ice cream.
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Our evening in WD-50 was an experience. I very much enjoyed the restaurant’s take on more traditional dishes. Plating, except for the messy bone marrow dish, was very pretty and delicate. It was clear that great attention and thought had been given to and into each of the dishes. Service was very friendly and attentive, which I would expect in a restaurant in America, and our servers were very knowledgeable about the food. I’m not sure if some of the time we were actually being served by chefs from the kitchen?
I definitely would recommend WD-50 for something a little different (look out too for their Dessert Tasting menu!)
Once you visit a place so much that it practically becomes your third home, you start to exhibit the same 
behaviours that you would at home like: trying out restaurants, mooching around the house, visiting the fam, and just general chillin’ etc. and so we come to our annual visit to New York. Crazily enough the number of eating places which we have planned into our itinerary has actually outnumbered the amount of sight-seeing we have planned!
For our first meal out in New York we decided to keep it local and stay close to home and family, it is Christmas (kind of) after all!
Korean fried chicken (or the other KFC) is an absolute institution in New York, if not in the United States. Sure I’ve seen and sampled attempts at it in Korean restaurants in London before but I have to say no one does it like they do in New York. Well … maybe in Korea they do it better and hopefully one day I’ll find out! Sadly Bonchon Chicken (the leading KFC franchise) that we’d visited fondly a couple of years ago had closed its Flushing branch but we still had quite a few options to choose from including Mad For Chicken. As are most things asian Mad For Chicken has the cutest little logo .. but you can’t eat a logo so I guess I better get on with it!
We were, as usual, just a wee bit greedy when we were ordering. Who thought it would be a good idea to get Calamari and French fries combo (both topped with parmesan cheese and chef’s seasonings), Seafood Pancake AND our chicken!
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The side acts (the calamari, fries and seafood pancake) were nice without being distracting to the main attraction of the gorgeous chicken. I would always advise with the chicken that you go for a half and half – one half being sweet (Soy Garlic Sauce) and one half being blow-your-mind-spicy (Hot & Spicy) unless you really really like your food spicy. Its nice to switch between the two when the heat gets too intense.
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I wouldn’t say that the chicken was quite as tasty as I remember the Bonchon chicken being however it still tasted pretty darn good going down. The sweet chicken being just a the right side of sweet and the spicy, oh boy! I sure made good use of the radish they supply with the chicken to cool your mouth! True to the style of decent Korean fried chicken we weren’t left with any of that oily residue after effects that you get from most other fried chicken. What’s the secret I wonder? Mad For Chicken says its because the chicken is twice fried, on another site I read it was something about removing the fat from under the skin so what you get is this delicate thin crispy outer. However its derived I absolutely approve and some form of KFC will definitely be on my to eat list when I return to New York.
Vietnamese and Japanese fusion. Hmmm .. .an interesting concept. I can’t quite remember how the restaurant caught my eye, oh that’s right it was on offer on top table to have 50% off their a la carte food. The restaurant is one of those modern funky interior design restaurants which you hope don’t look better than the food tastes. Just a note that lights are very practical and hang very low over your table … anyway, thanks to the lighting all the photos look much pinker than in reality (though not by much!)
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Due to the 50% off I think Sandra and I got slightly carried away with our ordering. For starters we ordered Yuzu Squid (Spicy crispy squid served with yuzu sauce), Chicken yaki tori, and Prawn Tempura. Starters were good without being too memorable.
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We also had a Dynamite Roll (sushi roll with Soft shell crab, cucumber, spicy pickled cabbage.) The roll didn’t seem as fresh as it could have been and lacked any real conviction.
We were starting to get real full by this stage but we still had our main courses to go! Char-Grilled duck (Duck breast with in a mysterious creamy sauce) and Grilled Teriyaki Beef. Both were reasonably tasty but served a little on the lukewarm side.
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Service was fairly friendly with the manager being particular on the ball. I suspect that it was because they were trying to encourage repeat customers …
On the balance NuocMam was an okay venue. I wouldn’t say anything really came out and grabbed me but I like that they’re trying to offer something a little different. Even though we were very very full from our greedy ordering portions weren’t all that huge so it could be a touch on the expensive side – even with our discount and drinks of tap water, our meal still came to over £50.
My final Christmas party for the year, in London at least, was hosted by Laney and assisted by Gerard and Jess. They’d gone to a lot of effort to throw the party including buying this massive turkey (at least 8kgs I think?) and roasting it for nearly that long. Ha ha.
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It was gigantic, but in addition to that we also had about ten different sides …. not to mention all the treats they had put out before had for “nibbles”.
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Soo much food … even with all of us eating at least three serves we still had a ton of leftovers!
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We had a fun secret santa round where we used Laney’s giant playing cards to determine who went first. We played the game that you could swap for any other Secret Santa gift but you could only swap once and only when you first opened your present – so it paid to draw a high card. Hilariously we were all too polite to swap our gifts … except for Cass but he felt so bad that he changed his mind and swapped his present back anyway.
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Well, what can I say that I haven’t already said before. We started the year with pie and we are now ending the year with pie – I couldn’t think of any better way to spend cold wintery days/evenings!
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Caro, you’ve outdone yourself .. again. Delish! Such melt-in-your-mouth delight.
People ask me what exactly is Filipino food and I always have a hard time describing it. Its best described I think as a fusion of Asian, South American and Western cooking. Seriously. One of my favourite memories from when I was a kid was chowing down on gorgeous sizzling Filipino barbecue off the street vendors. My mouth is watering now just thinking about it – I’ve never tasted anything like it anywhere else. So, when I saw that a restaurant called Ihaw Ihaw, literally translated as Barbecue Grill, was opening right next to my work place I got just a bit excited.
Well, I knew I shouldn’t have had such high expectations. All the Filipino dishes that I would have expected were on the menu including Adobo, Kare Kare, Bihon, Palabok, Sinigang were on there plus the items from the grill (you could have Pork, Chicken, Beef, Bangus and Tilipia) but we were there to try to the grill which, although not bad tasting, it just wasn’t what I was remembering and hoping for. It actually reminded me a little of grilled dishes from a Vietnamese restaurant. Our starters of Shanghai Lumpia (mini pork spring rolls) and Lumpia (vege spring rolls) were pretty on par though.
I wanted to try some dessert which included Ube and Cassava and the kitchen was nice enough to give me a sample of both.
Rather randomly there was a non-Filipino, I suspect he was Eastern European or something, guy who kept coming in and out of the restaurant whichseemed a bit odd. I think he might have been the owner. Interestingly too, when I’d been in earlier in the day to check they were open I ran into one of the guys who’d been serving me for the last year or more at the Filipino stall that is at the market on Thursdays – he must have changed allegiances! Which reminds me – I should visit that other Filipino restaurant too!
I really really wanted to like the restaurant but I just don’t think its going to get the turnover it needs to keep it running. Everyone is very friendly inside but I think the restaurant hasn’t done much to catch the interest of the locals, let alone anyone away from its location. Time will tell whether it survives …
Update: Now called the Loving Hut! So touchy feely!
I was first introduced to the delights of “faux” meat by my family in New York. It was absolutely fascinating that I could be eating what looked, tasted and felt like meat when in fact it was some sort of vegetable or tofu. I was excited to see if Peking Palace could deliver the same sort of experience.
You can tell that the restaurant owners totally embrace the philosophy of encouraging everyone to have a meat free diet – from pamphlets, the décor, the videos on the television with the anti-killing animals etc. The waitresses are very friendly though it was hard to judge how the service level would have changed had it been much busier but they seemed responsive enough.
Prices weren’t too unreasonable so I think we got a bit carried away when we were ordering our food. We started with Mixed Hors D’oeuvres which included Veggie Spare Ribs, Spring rolls, Crispy Seaweed, Sesame Seeds On Toasts, and Samosa. Okay so the spring rolls and seaweed are normally veggie anyway but we were surprised by the spare ribs. Very meat like. The Sesame Seeds On Toasts were also a pretty good imitation of prawn toast though it was probably slightly mushier than normal.
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Next up was another starter – Crispy Aromatic Veggie Duck with Pancakes. Hilarious. This dish was the least like a meat dish of what we ate tonight but it still tasted pretty good. I did like the sentiment behind it and it did try – crispy outer, .tender inner.
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Then we were on our mains which included Veggie King Prawn Fried Rice (how cute are the prawns), Crispy Shredded Veggie Beef (very delicious), Yin Pan Veggie Meat Balls (a specialty but the disappointing dish of the night – balls were tough and the sauce very similar to our final dish), Fragrant Braised Aubergine (another specialty.)
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As if we weren’t full enough we also had dessert!
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This is a fab restaurant for vegans, vegetarians and meat-lovers, great value for money, and definitely something worth trying at least once.