Several weeks ago, I asked my family if they would like to go out eating at Sesonal, the 1* Michelin-rated, Austrian restaurant that’s located in Midtown West. Everyone except my father could attend and we set the date back last Saturday. My reasoning was the fact there aren’t that many restaurants in Manhattan that serves Austrian food (the other place I know of and went to is Cafe Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie located in the Upper East Side) and the menu sounds different and enticing enough that my family is willing to try.
My mother, brother and I perused their lunch menus and settled on the three-course lunch prix fixe since we’re planning to cook a huge dinner at home.
Front interior
Seasonal is handsomely decorated – streamlined and clean lines and curves with several paintings to add some color to the white walls, dark wood tables lined with olive green place mats. The curved bar with a creamy white leather chairs looked comfortable to linger if it was the after-work hours.
Earlier last week, I went to BCD Tofu with my mom for lunch. She craved Korean food and I asked my best friend, Helen for suggestions a few days earlier (she’s Korean, so she knows what’s good), this ended up as the destination of choice. Admittedly, BCD is sort of on the hype end of the Koreatown spectrum besides the soon-to-be-opening Kyochon Chicken but at least I found some respite of not seeing cameras compared to Baohaus.
Interior
When we entered this restaurant, we’re greeted with a hostess in Korean and asked for seating for two. After sitting down at table, I noticed it’s not as bustling as I was thinking for lunch hour. It’s about quarter full and most of the patrons are college kids or around my age. The interior isn’t a huge departure from any other K-town restaurant. It’s cleaner, a bit brighter, and everyone’s seated in banquettes that has its own copper hood with the exception of a few two-tops along one wall of the restaurant.
Banchan
Mom and I looked at the Lunch Special menu and end up choosing what we wanted. After the orders were taken, out came the banchan. Two types of kimchi, one was sweet and spicy (Mom approved) and the smaller plate was salty and spicy, a fried fish (admittedly, a bit on the dry side but still palatable), some pickles, pasta and ham salad, and seaweed. Continue reading “Lunch at BCD Tofu” »
Last Tuesday, I’ve arranged dinner with my parents at The Modern Bar Room. First timers to eat there (and it’s Restaurant Week), I know the Modern would not disappoint me, as I’ve eaten here a few times throughout the years, Restaurant Week or not, and had good to very good experiences.
Crowded, sort of
Despite the fact we did have an early reservation for dinner, the tables were about half full and as expected, the sleek bar were packed with suited businessmen and lawyers hanging around for their Happy Hour.
Promptly seated, we’ve perused through the RW menu and decided upon what we crave. (Note that their RW menu was pretty much a truncated version of their normal menu.)
As of yesterday morning, when I check my morning Twitter feed, I read Midtown Lunch‘s tweet, that Momofuku Midtown (or Má Pêche) was serving lunch! I e-mailed Zach of ML if he’d welcome company to eat with him since I have every intention to try at least half of the Midtown Specials. And thankfully, being the cool guy that he is, he accepted my invitation. Awesome…
Menus; Midtown Specials on left, Mezzanine Menu on right
I went there early before Zach and his adorable kid Harry made it. I checked out the menu and was surprised it’s empty, at least in my experiences with Momofuku restaurants. By the time they arrived, he told me he wanted to try everything on the menu. So, here we go…
I felt compelled for a few years to try The Modern‘s tasting menu, after seeing Ulterior Epicure’s gorgeous photos of his experience and hearing it from a friend who did enjoy his dinner thoroughly for week before I went, I thought it’s about time to give it a whirl and go there.
Taken place on August 13, 2009. Sorry I haven’t been writing, just stuck with work and some stuff in life.
Aureole
The last time I’ve been to Aureole was nearly two years ago for Restaurant Week, in its former location in the Upper East Side. Back then, I used to think the food was ok but nothing extraordinary. I went in to Aureole with not-too-high expectations though its caliber and pricing should not be taken for granted.
Walking up to the desk where all the hostesses were, they all greeted me and walked me over to the dining room, just passing through the casual bar room. Generally speaking, the restaurant seems to be a tad smaller than its former location. It’s one large space that’s divided into two smaller rooms. Both rooms are adorned in lots of wood and marble have that modern, casual, glitz appeal. Technically, when I look over their Aureole Las Vegas site, it does look like they modeled the NYC location after it. Continue reading “Lunch at Aureole” »
I’m putting my HK/China posts on the back burner for now since I’m eating out NYC a bit more since it’s SUMMER here. If you’re anticipating the HK/China posts, just hang on for a bit. Sorry.
Back on June 11th, I had lunch at Marea, after reading positive reviews on this place. I like seafood and thankfully, I’m not allergic to them anymore. (I know weird, right?) So, I hauled my butt over and tried their tasting menu, which is four courses but you pick your own from the menu.
Dishes from Marea
I’m not going into depth since I’m waay behind blogging, I’ll succinctly say Marea is a very good seafood-centric restaurant. You can’t go wrong with pastas since Chef Michael White is great at making tender strands of noodles and it’s oversauced. If you want the break down of each dish, go to my set. It’s not Le Bernardin-level seafood but it’s close to it. Continue reading “Lunches at Marea & Momofuku Ssäm Bar” »
As some of you might know, I’ve done a few things for the upcoming debut of Gotham Digest. No, they’re not ready yet until May. If they’re up and running, I’ll let you know and show some love and support to me and my freelancing employer!
Frozen yogurt was the chosen topic by the assistant editor so I’m out to try out five different places for fro-yo. Since I wasn’t able to stomach all of that. I invited Helen, Ariel, Seungmi, Julie, and Joo He on this fro-yo expedition of finding the best.
On Thursday, I had my last Restaurant Week meal at Anthos with Ariel. This pretty much sums up my international food trek of sorts since I started with Indian, French, and now Greek (all nouveau style). I did have hopes of being captivated by Chef Psilakis’ food since Ariel went to Kefi, Psilakis’ other Greek restaurant, numerous times and been blown away by his food. Did Anthos make me happy or just left me feeling disgusted? If you want to find out, just read on…
