Yesterday, Midtown Lunch held the 4food preview event, and lucky for me, I gotten a sneak preview of one of probably the most talked about fast food chain as of the past week.
Initially, I heard of it from my friend Andrew who almost obsessively talked about 4Food weeks before I really read about this on the food blogs. Reading about 4Food on their site, I’m a bit of a skeptic as to how they can make their food “de-junked” and with the plethora of ways you can build your burger (with 6-7 different types of patties, 5 buns, 16 “scoops” which act as the filling to the hole in your patty, etc.), I don’t know how the typical person who has an hour to lunch make up their minds as to what you want to eat. But to get an idea how this good but a bit crazy concept would work, I gave it a try and brought my 4Food fan (Andrew) along.
Entering this large restaurant, it sort of looks like an Apple Store. It’s minimalist with mostly bare walls with only the decals of ingredients of a few burgers adorn the columns near the counter, the huge glowing LCD panels of their offerings above the registers, and on the far left of the store (or closest to the stairway) was the wall glowing with the Foursquare board of people checking into 4Food. There were employees on the floor decked out in black with yellow trimming 4Food tracksuits and paperboy hats. Spiffy.
As I went up to the register, staring at the bright LCD menu screens, I had to figure out what I really want in my burger (as my issue prior to entering, stated earlier). I settled for a burger that has a brioche bun with a pork patty, filled with roasted brussels sprouts, Fontina Fontal cheese, and horseradish cream with sweet chili sauce on the side. I have added their Square Roots, which was essentially, their healthier version of french fries and a white peach sparkler. Continue reading “4Food Lunch Preview” »
To those of you who are really waiting on my Hong Kong/China vacation posts, please do be patient. I’m trying to post up the Restaurant Week stuff before it’s irrelevant to read (like the Gramercy Tavern post I did previously; they’re not participating RW now).
Last Thursday, I’ve arranged lunch with Mary to Alto for Restaurant Week. The two reasons why I want to go to Alto are: 1.) I want to see Mary. It’s been too long since we’ve eaten out. 2.) Curious about their food yet not willing to fork my a large chunk of my money on a non-RW time.
Interior
As we trudged our way over from the Upper East Side to Midtown and walked right through their small outdoor dining space into a similarly narrow lounge area where the maître d’ was located. After checking in, we’ve been escorted down to the dining room – narrow, lined with plushly banquettes and neutral-colored walled, and for the other half of the room, wine bottles are filled from floor to ceiling. Patrons here are mostly business lunchers.
Bread service
The bread served here are pretty good. We have a choice of foccacia, olive roll, and a regular white roll. I chose the olive roll and Mary gotten herself foccacia. The bread was served warm, the texture was good and the flavors were balanced, though my olive roll was a bit more saltier than the one I had in Gramercy Tavern last week. The olive oil provided was fruity and viscous, nice to dip with the bread. Continue reading “Restaurant Week at Alto” »
For something more NYC-oriented for you, I had two lunch excursions during lunch last week – a solo outing to Pampano Taqueria and lunch with Drew at BLT Burger.
For the past week, I had a major craving for guacamole and I can’t explain why. I remembered from NYC Food Guy about his post, claiming that Pampano Taqueria serves the best pork and fish tacos in Midtown. Since it’s not too far from where I work (it’s just two subway stops and walk a few blocks), I dragged my butt over to the unmarked building with what seems like a good food court.
A few Thursdays ago, I planned a dinner with Ariel to Islero, a new tapas restaurant and bar that’s located in Midtown East. I sort of picked this place just because I wanted to try something different.
We originally started small since Ariel’s complaining that he ate a fairly heavy lunch at Adrienne’s Pizza Bar. [...]
The past week, I took one of those luxurious lunch hours and went to Mia Dona. Why would I pick this place? Well, given to the fact that there’s been quite a bit of press from Alan Richman’s GQ blog, Ed Levine written a little post about it, and NY Magazine has a video about the food – all seem very positive and enticing that I thought to myself to go there and try it out.
Since I’ve wrote to Robyn recently via e-mail about my horror of yesterday at the LSAT and wanted me to express the dreadful experience of what happened. So, here it is (if you don’t really care about my babbling about the LSATs, just scroll down ’til you hit a food photo):
The LSAT people emailed me (and all test takers) that I cannot have these items with me at the day of the test: a handbag, purse or backpack; no electronics of any sort (i.e. cellphones, cameras, beepers, iPods, etc.), weapons (that’s a duh), rulers, and other odd stuff. The only thing I can bring is a gallon size Ziploc bag containing my wallet and ID, my keys, the admissions ticket (strangely they want a thumbprint, that’s done at the site), pencils (but mechanical pencils are not allowed), highlighters, a snack, bottled water or beverage, and erasers. In case anyone who didn’t pay attention to the email or the lengthy note when they’ve sent the admission ticket via email or their website, they did have a coat check room that someone did watch over (even though they kept stressing earlier that it’s unsupervised). Continue reading “Smörgåsbord at Aquavit Cafe and Italian food at Frankies Spuntino” »
I haven’t seen Kim for the longest time and really hang out with her. Why? Because of the chaotic meet up that I had back in July for the South Street Seaport concert didn’t suffice as hanging out since we greeted each other, talked for ten minutes and broke up into our own little groups when the concert started and the crush of the crowds left us to our own. That was cruel and I lost my voice that night…
Anyways, I made arrangements to eat lunch with Kim the past Thursday for two reasons, the aforementioned and because I won’t be able to make it to her birthday party due to LSATs (oh the pain!). Since I don’t really eat in the Midtown East area, I let Kim pick a place to eat for lunch, where she led me to Marrakesh since she’s craving falafels and she said they make a good one here.
As promised from my previous post was my lunch at Tia Pol with Ariel. I originally picked out this place for two reasons: I haven’t eaten tapas for lunch before since there are not that many restaurants serve it for lunch. The other reason is because of Yumondo; I need something trendy and ethnic kind of place to write about before I officially sign off from my temporary position there. Since tapas is meant to be shared and I don’t know anyone who would leave work for a good hour or so for the sake of food (and not get fired), Ariel’s my guy.
On Wednesday, I was craving for a burger for lunch. I don’t know why exactly but I just want some juicy ground beef sandwiched in a good, soft hamburger bun. Since it’s almost 12, I know it’s going to be crowded to try Burger Joint since it’s not a huge space to start with. (I know this since I visited the space but didn’t try anything.) What I ended up deciding is to try Burger Heaven. You might be wondering why the heck would I try a small chain burger at all. Well, two of my male friends, Ariel and Dave told me that their burgers are awesome. Actually, to quote Ariel he said, “The burgers are heavenly.”
As those of you who are following my tracks on where I’m going for Restaurant Week, I went to Aquavit Café for lunch. Why? Just because of the fact that my dining companion for the day, Ariel was in the mood for Scandinavian rather than something from August.
