NYC Tastes

After the gut busting dinner that was the Momofuku Bo Ssam you would think I wouldn’t even look at another food item for at least a couple hours. However I have an uncanny ability to shove more food down my throat than most young women, and when it comes to dessert I go all out. So after the pigout, I hauled my full bloated stomach over next door to the Milk bar. I was planning on ordering my usual Chocolate Malt Cake but then I spotted something even better. The banana cake! Oh my goodness! Layers upon layers of wonderfully moist banana cake, rich gianduja fudge, sweet banana cream and a wonderfully crunchy hazelnut center make this cake one of the best desserts I’ve had in a long time. The cake itself probably has about 10 sticks of butter inside but its creamy banana goodness is worth all of the fatty calories. There was something so satisfying about the hazelnut crunch that I literally could not put my fork down. I’m so glad I got this cake. Am I happy I picked this over th...

Ever have a hankering to just sit down and pig out on a big, fatty, salty hunk of pork butt? Come on…who hasn’t? Friday I was able to fulfill my dreams of utter pork deliciousness by getting the Bo Ssam at Momofuku Ssam bar. The Bo Ssam is not for the faint of heart. This truly is one enormous hunk of meat that needs to be ordered well in advance and serves anywhere from 6 to 10 people. We had the minimum six and I think we did pretty well (we ate the shit out of that butt!), but let’s start at the beginning.   We got to Momofuku right around 5:45 and started out with a couple of beers. I went for the Korean classic OB. I’m not gonna lie- this is not a very good beer. It doesn’t have much taste and the carbonation is kind of flat. Hover I didn’t want anything to detract from the glorious porky goodness I was about to inhale so it was just fine with me. Before the butt arrived we had started out with the one dish you must always have at Momofuku the pork buns. Thes...

Is it just me or are the Duane Reade’s taking over this city even more than Starbuck’s did in the late 90’s? I mean there have always been a lot of Duane Reade’s out there but it seems every time I look around there is a newer one that’s even bigger and better than the last. Back in early fall I started noticing a lot of changes at my local DR. One of the biggest changes was the decrease in brand name items and the increase in DR goods with the name deLish. Brownies, chips, trail mix, even sushi started rolling out at some pharmacies with this new label. Each time I’m in a store I think about trying one of these deLish items but up until last week I never had. Now I’m not bold enough (or maybe my stomach is just too scared) to try the DR sushi. However store made cookies I figured would be a good starting point. So I picked up a box of deLish Chocolate Chip cookies for a test run. I also got a box of the factory cookie favorite Chips Ahoy for a flavor comparison. Here’s a...

I was absolutely shocked last week when walking home from work I saw a new bar had opened up in the old Pete’s Saloon space on 3rd avenue. I never even saw them doing work on the building. It was called Exchange bar and looked to have a pretty sleek space and large open windows in the front. So on Sunday Mr. T and I swung by to check out the food and drink. Exchange has a narrow interior with a long bar up front and smaller candlelit tables in the back. Three big flat screen TV’s sit behind the bar giving us prime viewing of the basketball games. I thought the space was nice in every way except for the running red beer prices above the bar. I guess that is supposed to look like the stock exchange maybe? I don’t know- I found it very distracting. They had a decent selection of beers on tap- Blue Moon, Stella, Guinness and Magners were some of the options. I was in a wine mood so I got a glass of Chardonnay instead. Now since they had only been open about 2 weeks I was a little sca...

It’s that time of year again. The time of year where I leave the stresses of work behind so I can stress out on college basketball instead. This year we started off the tournament Thursday at Landsdowne Road in Hell’s Kitchen. Landsdowne is known for a couple of things- lots of televisions, a decent beer selection and Scruffy Duffy wings. Ah yes…Scruffy Duffy wings. Although the bar has long since closed the wings are still around. I believe the owners of Landsdowne used to own Scruffy Duffy’s as well and just brought the recipe over here. They had quite a cult following back in the day so I was excited to see how they compared to my beloved Buffalo wings. I had just eaten lunch so I tried to hold off until dinnertime but it seemed like everyone around me was eating them! The smell of wing sauce was everywhere and like some sick drug I couldn’t get them out of my head. I finally broke down and placed an order. Within minutes my order of 12 medium wings arrived. I was ex...

I wasn’t exactly hungry the other day- just having a serious craving for a spicy tuna roll. I didn’t feel like going out to get any so I looked up on Seamlessweb for sushi places with a minimum delivery below $20. To be honest there aren’t a whole lot but Amber Sushi on 3rd avenue showed up for $10 so I decided to give it a shot. I ordered one spicy tuna roll and a piece of eel. I had never tried Amber before but it got some decent reviews and I was excited they had a brown rice sushi option. My meal was surprisingly quite awesome. The rice to tuna ratio was spot on, the tuna itself was very tasty and the eel was a nice big piece with a little caramelized top. I had low expectations going in and this meal pleasantly surprised me.

It’s restaurant week until March 28th in both Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley. Now being that I work in Brooklyn Heights, live about a 5 minute train ride from Williamsburg and have multiple friends in Park Slope- you would think I’d hit up some restaurants there. But no- I decided to head upstate and try out something new Harvest on Hudson. Harvest on Hudson is a huge restaurant located right on the water in Hastings on Hudson. The interior of the place immediately reminded me of Blue Hill Stone Barns with its large wooden ceilings and black shiny beams. We had a cocktail at the bar and were seated at a table overlooking the beautiful Hudson River.   For my appetizer I ordered the Crisp Calamari Caesar Salad. For some reason I was expecting the calamari to be a fried mess on my greens but they actually executed this dish perfect. The calamari was very lightly breaded with no grease at all and went wonderfully with the creamy anchovy dressing. Along with our appetizer...