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” »
[I know I'm supposed to write about the tea outing with Patrick but I need to do this first. I promise things would go back to normal.]
I used to think Grand Central Terminal’s Market has nothing fit for me, in regards to food. It’s just a transfer hub to get to work with the occasional need of caffeine from my beloved Joe that opened ever since the past fall. Arguably, it’s the best thing that happened to this station for me. I depend on my life for good coffee. But I needed more than just coffee and willing to open my mind a bit when I was invited by Susan to try a few things from this vast area.
My good friend, Mitzy Budiono, the woman behind Itzy Bitzy Patisserie, has given me a batch of February’s featured French-style macarons flavors to sample this past weekend. Yes, she’s the one who I would deem as the Pierre Hermé on this side of the Atlantic or at least New York City.
The last two days of the official Restaurant Week, I’ve had lunch with my co-workers at Aquavit on Thursday and on Friday, I did a double-header of lunch (with Ariel at Town) and dinner (with Ariel and Helen). The first one is very familiar since I went there last year and the latter two were new places just to expand our horizons of what the city can offer.
Aquavit Dining Room Interior
At Aquavit, the menu was very similar to last year’s except the fact that I’m eating in the Dining Room and the small tweaks in the menu. Instead of the avocado soup, they served the chilled corn soup for the appetizer; replacing the grilled salmon, they had the hot smoked salmon, and finally for dessert, they substituted the chocolate peanut butter cake with a chocolate custard cake. Continue reading “Wrapping Up The Rest of Restaurant Week – Aquavit, Town, and Blue Water Grill” »
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” »
