The day after the Devi lunch that I had with my three girl friends, I’ve coordinated another lunch with another group of friends, Robyn, Kathy, and Ariel to Cafe Boulud.
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I kicked off Restaurant Week (back on Tuesday, January 22nd) with lunch with my three girl friends: Giulia, Seungmi, and Helen, at Devi. Yep, we’re exploring into realm of haute Indian cuisine since what we’ve encounter in our pasts were heavy, greasy, fire breathing-spicy Indian food. We had high hopes for this place since I’ve heard a lot about it on Chowhound. And yes, I do acknowledge the fact that they do serve a prix fixe lunch on a normal basis but we craved Indian food.
Continue reading “A Ladies’ Lunch at Devi (Winter Restaurant Week 2008) & Espresso” » As most of you who are familiar with my blog, I tend to eat…well. Ok, more than well I eat freakin’ extravagant. Like any normal human being, I need a break from all this luxurious, fatty foods and need some simple yet tasty grub that isn’t from my kitchen (just because I feel lazy from cooking my own food). Since I made an old promise to one of my friends, Julie that we would drink Mud’s coffee (nearly a year ago) and I have time during the morning before an afternoon concert, we set the date and meet up late morning. With Ariel of course. When isn’t he in the picture? I’ve heard that Mud‘s coffee is strong and dark like “mud.” Since I do like my coffee strong, and I do drink espresso straight (and yes, no sugar), I had somewhat of a high expectation of getting a good cup o’ joe. 
The most unimaginable thing happened to me for on Thursday: eating lunch with two executive chefs at Jean Georges. Just to give you the gist on how this event to ever occur, Marc Collins of Circa 1886 in Charleston, SC, emailed me for a bunch of recommendations to eat out around Manhattan since he’s cooking at the James Beard Foundation for the Tastes of Charleston event. We emailed each other for a good number of times and in the end, he asked me to join him for lunch at JG with his best friend, Kyle Ketchum of the Spiced Pear in Newport, RI. When I got this invitation I was thinking, “Huh?! Me, an insignificant food blogger having lunch with executive chefs? Have they gone mad?!” No, I don’t think they’re crazy; only me. (I should clarify this now that I paid my own lunch). We’ve met outside at Jean Georges and went in to check our stuff. We waited several minutes at the desk for our table to be ready. During our wait, we chatted about their dinner at Momofuku Ssäm and a briefly about myself. When our table was ready and walked through Nougatine, the casual portion of JG, we all saw Jean Georges himself in the kitchen. This particular moment was poignant since anyone who have ever heard of Jean Georges, he has sixteen restaurants internationally. Obviously, it’s a rare sight to see him in the kitchen. When all three of us got seated, Marc and Kyle started to debate whether or not they should ask for a tour of the kitchen. But the subject got dropped once our waitress started to ask what we like to order.
It’s just one of those mornings when I have to get up at 4:30 AM and start cranking out breakfast. I know it’s an insane time for most of you to get up that early but if you have a demanding mother who requests you to bake this as the last home baked breakfast for your younger brother before he goes back to college, you have to do it. Trust me. Living with a mom who can start World War III for the smallest things isn’t worth the fight.
So, I started prepping my usual go-to bread, my variation of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s cinnamon raisin loaf, the night before. (What I’ve altered from her recipe was replacing the cinnamon spiral with sweetened, flaked coconut, soaked the raisins, and made the dough a bit sweeter). I shaped it, proofed it, and placed the loaves in the refrigerator overnight. Thankfully, my mom’s willing to take out the loaves from the fridge around 3 AM since she’s usually having her early morning food cravings. I popped these babies in the oven around 5. When the loaves are about three-fourths baked through, the entire house smells like toasted coconut. Besides the fact that it made me hungry, it woke up my sleepy-headed father who wouldn’t normally wake up until 7:30.
At least my efforts weren’t wasted: my mom’s happy about this loaf since she likes soft bread; my dad’s happy just to eat fresh baked bread and my brother liked it because it’s tasty. I’m just happy because everyone’s happy with the food (I also baked a batch of cranberry orange muffins), have my morning cup of coffee, and GO TO SLEEP. The bread recipe is right after the jump.
Ah, Restaurant Week…so many choices (about 240, give or take) and within a time span of ten days. Lunch is $24.07 and dinner’s $35, which is relatively inexpensive for the high end restaurants, especially in Manhattan. Since it’s less than 1 1/2 weeks away, many ask readers ask me, “Where should I eat?” That’s a good question. So here’s my suggestions and expectations for the (in)famous Restaurant Week. Continue reading “My Restaurant Week Guide” » UPDATE (1/9/08): Ok, I haven’t been to the supposed awesome restaurant (that’s Babbo, btw) last weekend due to family reasons. Everything is fine. I’m ok. My family’s ok. It’s just one of my uncles had broken his arm and my relatives freaked out over the phone and it snowballed as it went on. So, I had [...] Improve the web with Nofollow Reciprocity. |
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