Apartment Dining

Ramsey and I will mark our fifth anniversary in less than two weeks and we want to have a classic New York dining experience. We’re not looking for anything that’s too expensive (less than $40 for an entree is ideal), but we want to be dolled-up and not look out of place. We’re leaning towards Raoul’s in SoHo, but I’m open to suggestions. If you know of any classic New York spots that don’t require reservations months in advance, let me know in the comments.

For my last cop out entry of the week, I need to inform you, dear reader, of this. You’ll know it’s October 26th by the scent of pork wafting from my kitchen

I found myself at a bar in the East Village on Saturday night after dinner and a movie around Union Square. After introductions to friends of friends, we hit on something we all had in common: a love of Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar. It’s not that uncommon in New York, as Momofuku is now an institution with constant buzz and hoards of fans between its four locations (Milk Bar, Ssam Bar, Noodle Bar, and Ko), but for some reason, passion for the Bakery and Milk Bar always seems to surpass the rest.

We started to exchange descriptions of our favorite items. The pies, the cookies. I gasped in horror when they revealed they had never tried the pork buns. This was warranted horror, as the mingling flavors of thin cucumber slices, hoisin sauce, scallions, and pork belly on a soft steamed bun is as close to culinary transcendence as I’ve ever been.

The pork buns are really not the stars of the Milk Bar though. They can be found at all of the other Momofuku restaurants. At the Milk Bar, it’s all about the desserts. Christina Tosi, Momofuku’s pastry chef, has developed a menu that takes all of your childhood dreams of sugary breakfast cereals and prized lunch bag snacks and melds them into ice cream, cookies, cakes, and pies. Their current soft serve ice cream flavors include red licorice and fireball, and you can have them topped with Nerds, Lemondrops, or Twizzlers. The compost cookie™ (yes, trademarked) has almost every kind of cookie variety melded into one. It’s pictured here along with the chocolate-chocolate cookie that (I believe) is a chocolate cookie with chocolate brownie chunks.

There are of course what would be considered “fancier” desserts, such as the chocolate chip cake with lemon curd, chocolate crumbs, and coffee buttercream, or the playful Arnold Palmer cake with iced tea jelly, lemon mascarpone cream, almond tea crunch. However, I always return to the cookies. It’s the perfect polyamorous marriage of convenience, comfort, and taste, with everything you need in one little handheld package.

It was the desire for those cookies that pulled all of us out of the bar at 1 AM on Saturday morning; six twenty-somethings walking through the streets of the East Village recalling Saved by the Bell episodes in search of a taste of childhood. When we finally arrived after a short walk, the store was mostly dark and two workers were wiping down the counters. The door was locked. FYI: They close at midnight.

I’d love to be able to have friends over for dinner, set a beautiful table, and not force people to sit on the floor and wrangle with their plates. Unfortunately, our apartment doesn’t have enough space for proper entertaining, so we almost always go out for dinner when people visit Ramsey and I in Greenpoint. 

Lucky for us, northern Brooklyn boats a fair number of moderately-priced restaurants that let us enjoy good food on a recession budget. Here are four of my favorites where you can get a meal for $15 or less (beverage not included). » Read the rest of this entry «

NY Mag has posted a list of specials at New York City restaurants just in time for the penny-pinching holiday season and that pesky little worldwide financial crisis. There really are some great deals at fabulous restaurants, and the three course lunch specials have the makings of a relaxing afternoon for the unemployed masses that still have some severance pay coming in. Take special note of the .20 (yes, twenty cent) breakfast at Cafe Havana. (via kottke)

In my hometown of Binghamton, NY, there is only one place to go in the area for delicious, heart-stopping soul food. Theo’s Southern Style Cuisine on Main Street is located just over the border in Johnson City and its menu has everything from fried chicken to macaroni and cheese to sweet potato pie. They also cater events and make large quantities of wings to order. Just about every graduation party I attended after high school featured a few dozen of their wings.

On early weekend or summer afternoons during high school or college vacations, my friends and I would meet for lunch around the vinyl red and white checkered tablecloths in Theo’s simple dining room. My meal of choice was always fried chicken fingers with fries and Theo’s signature Sweet and Sassy Sauce on the side. This sauce is easily my favorite sauce in the history of the culinary arts and lucky for me, it comes in a bottle. The bottle pictured above (placed prominently on my bookshelf) was brought to Brooklyn by my friend Vince a few weeks ago and was actually hidden under my pillow so it would be a surprise in a tooth fairy sort of way.

This sauce served as a call to action to find a way to make delicious, sauce-worthy chicken without having to fry it as I don’t have the tools and don’t trust myself with all of that scalding oil on the stove. After doing some searching on the web and a test this evening, I think I reached a happy medium. » Read the rest of this entry «

For no real reason, I started a Flickr photoset of my boyfriend and I making a Jim Halpert-like face at almost every restaurant we’ve eaten at over the past month or so. I occasionally forget, but most of them have been documented here. I will continue this tradition until I’m told to put my grainy iPhone camera away.

I realize having my first two food posts be about barbecue and mac & cheese seems to set a tone of unhealthy eating, but I promise these moments of caloric indulgence are not as often as they appear. I have my share of sensible salads from Olive’s for lunch and home-cooked meals throughout the week. However, this past Saturday, it was time to load up on delicious barbecue at the hippest barbecue spot in the city: Fette Sau.
» Read the rest of this entry «