It’s been three years since I ate at Del Posto. Back then, it was still considered an ambitious restaurant with its grand space with an enoteca, a sort of bar/lounge space that’s considered the casual portion of the restaurant, co-owned by superstar chefs Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich, and her son, Joseph Bastianich. In winter 2009, Del Posto renovated the space to get rid of the enoteca and make it as luxurious as the dining room itself with a greater ambition to get the coveted 4-star rating from the NY Times.
Since then, I haven’t been to Del Posto as my eyes (and stomach) shifted to other places I haven’t eaten yet. A good friend of mine, Dr. Y has expressed interest to eat here before he leaves New York City back to his home state of sunny California in a few months.
Interior
As we entered the sumptuous lobby, the host greeted us and took us directly to our table. Sitting down on the plush cushioned banquette, I looked at the entire dining room: dark mahogany wood contrasted with lemon yellow walls and touches of marble. Heavy drapes on the windows to hide the bright afternoon sun on a hot July day. Carpeted floors to hush the footsteps of servers and diners as they walk on by.
I have been reading around the Interwebs recently and thought about where I can get lunch, I ended up reserving a seat at SHO Shaun Hergatt on Friday. I know it’s quite a distance from where I work and frankly, I don’t eat around the Financial District since I get lost in that neighborhood and there aren’t that many notable restaurants. But I have read good (and a few mixed) reviews on this restaurant, I thought I might as well try to quench that curiosity and try out their food.
Interior: Corridor to Dining Room, Dining Room, Kitchen View
A few weekends ago, I’ve went to brunch with Robyn, Kåre, Alex, and Kathy at Dumont Burger (that’s their burger on the photo above) a few weekends ago (click here for my photo set) I’m not writing about them since it’s covered by Robyn. (To keep it short and sweet about the burger, the beef patty is tasty but the ciabatta bun ain’t working for me.)
During brunch, Robyn and Kathy has spoken about the awesomeness of Momofuku Ssäm Bar‘s prix fixe lunch. Thinking about it, it’s been about a year since I’ve eaten there and thought it’s about time to haul my butt from the Upper East Side from work and eat there for lunch. Continue reading “Momofuku Ssäm Bar for lunch” »
Notes: In case you haven’t noticed, I’m approximately a week behind what I should be blogging about. Somehow after finishing school, I’m becoming a lazy bum, just procrastinating the inevitable task of writing a post. Anyways, this is a post that’s taken place last Tuesday. If you want to jump to the review of my lunch at Fiamma, click here.
Somehow, I went backwards that I started my afternoon with dessert. A decadent, dense one in fact: a chocolate cheesecake at Birdbath.
On Tuesday, I went to the London Hotel trying to get a taste of what Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen is capable of. Beyond his brash TV personality, he is an accoladed chef in London (the only person to have 3 stars in Guide Michelin, I’m talking about the original French guide, not the controversial New York guide that has a few food writers boiling). I’ve read a lot of good things about the The Maze saying that it has pretty delicious food and the service trumps The Bar Room at the Modern recently from reading the Chowhound boards, I might as well give it a whirl.
Since my lunch was around 2 PM, it’s not really surprising to know that there aren’t that many diners eating there with the exception of business lunch meetings that has been extended with their own conversations, the European tourists who having a ball due to the shrinking American dollar, and the lone diners like me, are trying out the food.
When I ate this particular lunch at Jean Georges on Tuesday, I realized my blog’s birthday is a year and two days old (if you include the time when I was at Blogger and I moved to my current address here)…it’s just beginning to crawl to its infant stage and hopefully progresses to grow to a slightly normal child. I said “slightly normal” because it’s a food obsessed child. Well, I guess it’s my unintentional splurge birthday present to my blog. Even though, I’m actually the one who is physically eating the food. But still “Happy Birthday!” to my blog. You’re officially a year old. And thank you readers for actually make this blog worthwhile to write about besides my insane love for food.
Anyways, back to Jean Georges. I basically made reservations at Jean Georges in the formal dining room, since I went to the casual section, Nougatine, about four years ago with another friend of mine, Seungmi. This time I invited Ariel. He’s more my dining companion for the splurge places these days.
Jean Georges
I arrived earlier than the expected reservation and the hostess walked me to my table, passing the bar/Nougatine dining area to the minimalist, hotel-style room, where everything is done in beige and white, and each table has either a leather banquette or a leather chair. The odd thing I found out was that the table I’m seated is basically a rectangular table where diners sit side-by-side, instead of sitting across from one another. Eventually when Ariel had arrived, I realized that most of our conversations were basically talking out to the void (since we look straightforward unless we turn our head or glance at each other sideways) even though we know we’re speaking to one another. But it’s a small flaw we’ve dealt with.
