Saturday, April 25, 2009
2 Week Hiatus!
Hello my 1 reader! ChubberBlub will be on hiatus for 2 weeks starting... now! I will return with food pictures and my signature not-so-good food descriptions from my travels to Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. Wheeeeee!!!! I leave you with pix of sweets.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Gazala Place = Happy Place
We chose Gazala Place, the tiniest place on earth, for a dinner for 6 on a Friday night. Yeah, I don't recommend doing that, unless you have the time, patience, and high tolerance for hunger, which I don't, especially the tolerance for hunger thing. Don't do it. Go with 1 maybe 2 or 3 people, but stop there. No more than 4 people on a Friday night. Or else you will pay, in the form of stomach acid eating away your stomach.
We stood outside with our armloads of alcohol, watching our beers get warm and the lucky diners inside chomping on burekas. The burekas were piled in delicious stacks by the window, taunting us. They are kind of the main reason Kim and I go back to Gazala again and again. As soon as we sat down, we ordered two for the table to share. Okay, actually, when we sat down, I cracked open a beer while guzzling my wine (to stave off hunger, I swear). Then we ordered the burekas. Order them as soon as you sit down, they take awhile to warm up in the oven, which is the magic that makes the crust even flakier and the cheese inside hot and fragrant. Also, don't get greedy and order too many. These babies are dense. Just take some to go for breakfast the next day. We got a goat cheese and tomato bureka and another flavor that completely escapes me. Yeah... sorry... both were good, we ate them all.
We ordered a gazillion dishes, but I forgot to take pictures due to my excitement over finally getting nourishment into my body. By the time I remembered to take pics, we pretty much ate all the apps. We got babaganush, various grape leaves (meat and non-meat), the artichoke special. We ate everything. But I, unfortunately, don't remember enough to describe the food sufficiently. sorry... again... But the falafels! I do have a crappy picture of that and do remember it, cuz I LOVE their falafels! They were smaller than usual. Very pretty green, and very flavorful. They were also fried to a crisp with a really crunchy shell. The accompanying tahini sauce was garlicky and yum. Hmm.. okay, I guess my description still sucks.
The chak choka is a bubbling tomato stew with two eggs plopped in it. I think the idea of it is much more interesting than the actual execution. I ate it, but didn't love it. It has all the predictable flavors. I guess my problem with it was that I wasn't quite sure how to eat it - with a spoon? dip a pita? It was too thick for a spoon and too thin to really scoop up with pita. Also, the plopped eggs were cooked through so quickly. So we basically ate two sunny side up eggs in tomato stew.
Our favorite dish by far was the whole fish special. It didn't look like much, but oh man, so delicious. The fish was deep fried in its entirety and garnished with a super duper garlicky lemony sauce. OMG the sauce. I can probably eat candle wax if it were drizzled in that sauce. How can something that simple be so delicious. We literally, no joke, asked for a spoon for the sauce at the end. Yep, got no shame.
Our other entrees were a grilled chicken special. It was flavored well, but kinda dry. Dryness is the reason why if I were to eat chicken at a restaurant, it has to be fried or in a pot pie. We also got the stuffed zucchini special. The zucchinis were hollowed out and stuffed with most rice and a tiiiiny bit of minced meat. It was fine, but so not worthy of room in my tummy. After the dish arrived, I remembered that we had it last time and wasn't impressed. D'oh....
Even though Gazala has gems and un-gems, I still love the place. BYOB, cheap plates, complimentary yummy corn/lettuce salad (oh corn, how I love thee) and grape leaves for almost every entree. I'll probably be back soon, even if it's just to get burekas to go.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Yes, More Brunch. Resto
I should be doing real work, but do I ever do what I should be doing? Or eat what I should be eating? Unless humans are meant to consume fries and deep fried pig ears as their first sustenance of the day, then yes, I do eat what I should be eating.
It was lovely Michele's last day in NYC, so of course we went to a restaurant who is famous for having just roasted a whole pig for their 2 year anniversary. If you remember from the Wondee Siam outing, my one non-brunch post, Michele does not eat meat matters. It's cool, there was something for everyone.
Resto is a Belgium/pork-centric "gastropub" (god I hate that word). It has a lovely atmosphere - light, bright, and airy. We began with some libations, bloody mary and various Belgium beers. The bloody mary was fine, lighter in texture and tomato flavor than what I usually prefer. The beers were great and came in all different kind of cute glasses. The cutest being the Kwak.
Can't go to a Belgium place without getting fries, right? So we got 2 orders, just to be on the safe side. Each order came with a choice of sauce. We chose lemon w/smoked paprika and gribiche. Both sauces were great. The smoked paprika balanced out the bright acidic flavor of the lemony mayo. Gribiche is kind of similar to tartar sauce, with caper berries and other stuff. My brain stopped listening after "mayo based" and "caper berries". I love both things, all other ingredients are just gravy. My only gripe was that they were damn stingy with the sauces. The fat fries came with maybe 2-3 tablespoons of sauce (don't hold me to that, I suck at measuring stuff by eye). Definitely not enough to generously coat the fries, or even ungenerously coat them.
The fries themselves were good. Crispy on the outside, soft and carby on the inside. They were also very well salted - this is key in making french fries. Salt your fries liberally! If you're eating fries, what's the point worrying about hypertension! I prefer thinner fries cuz I like high crispy to carby ratio. But they were still good and we chomped thru them all. Fast.
I got the chicory salad with crispy pig ears, coco beans, soft egg, and tomato confit. I love pig ears. I love the cartilage-ness and pigginess of them. I'm happy to see non-Chinese chefs start getting in on the act. These pig ears were cut into large pieces and fried to a crisp. They were delicious when hot, but after soaking in the salad dressing for a bit, they got cold, uncrispy, and oily. Eat them fast, grasshoppers, eat. them. fast. The rest of the salad was good. I'll pretty much eat anything drenched in runny yolk. So eat I did.
Kim had the Belgium hangover pasta with vermont ham, gruyere, sunny egg, and black pepper. This is basically a version of carbonara. The pasta was mushy. Enough said. That was enough to kill the entire dish. Sad. It was pretty though! Okay, I guess I won't eat just anything drenched in runny yolk. Not mushy pasta anyway.
Jason got the gruyere burger with fried egg, red onion, pickle, mayo, and fries. This was delicious! The soft buns held up the tasty patty really well. I think every burger should come with a fried egg. It just adds to the overall flavor, or heft, whatever. Also, it kind of tricks you into thinking it's breakfast - hey look! it's an egg dish!
Michele had the greek yogurt with granola and fresh fruit. The fresh fruit was bananas. Lame. At least throw in some berries. It tasted fine, but I was sad about the lack of fresh fruit.
J-me's grilled cheese was yummy but the picture I took was not. So just take my word for it. We also got a dutch baby to share. I thought we were getting the dutch pancake thing, but no. So now I know: dutch baby = a really eggy flat french toast, like crepe flat. Resto's version came with too little powder sugar. But overall, it was yummy, especially with fresh lemon juice squeezed on it.
Would I go back to Resto? Maybe for dinner to try their pig stuff. Brunch was fine, but our service was not. The waitress seemed annoyed and very fake. Like you can tell she's rolling her eyes once she turns her back. Oh well.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
A Non-Brunch Meal at Wondee Siam
Finally! I ate a non-brunch related meal and actually documented it. Whee!
Michele, our lovely vegetarian friend, is visiting from LA for the week. After racking our brains to find somewhere that will satisfy her veggie needs and our omnivorous pigginess, we settled on Wondee Siam in Hells Kitchen. Yay! I heart Thai food.
I can conclude this post now because this place had me at BYOB. But nah, I'll continue on and use my feeble memory to recall our procession of food items. First up, a shredded pork salad special that was more lettuce wrap than salad, although I use the term "lettuce" loosely since it's pretty apparent to anyone with eyeballs that the dark green collard green twin was not lettuce, but a um, collard green twin. Sorry, I have no idea what the vegetation is. I expected fibers and aching jaws from chewing the greens, but it was surprisingly tender and had a nice deep flavor. Veggie flavor, that is. The shredded pork was awesome. Very ginger-y and lime-y. The lime-ness came from diced whole lime, skin and all. Brilliant. I love the peanuts and onions too. Both provided mucho flavor and great texture.
Then we had more apps, in the form of taro spring rolls and scallion pancake. The spring rolls were fine, just like any other spring roll I've had at Thai places. Not too much to discuss there. The scallion pancakes were bleh and totally not what we expected... I mean, when you hear pancake, don't you imagine a large flat round thing? Instead, we got hockey puck shaped fried things with scallion inside. The outside was too doughy, so the whole thing just tasted fried. No matter, the rest of the food to come was awesome.
One of my fav dishes of the night was the catfish salad. The catfish was some how fried into a fluffy crisp. You ask, how can fish be fluffy?! I dunno! Ask the chefs! But it was fluffy, so very fried and fluffy. On top of the fluff, you got the normal papaya salad stuff - green papaya, cilantro, peanuts, onions, and lots of lime juice and spiciness. Yum. I love how the papaya salad offset the heaviness of fried fish (even though it was fluffy). I couldn't stop eating this.
The crispy duck was yummy as well. The duck was dusted in some sort of light coating and fried to a crisp. Super duper crisp. That was some crispy duck, they weren't kidding. I loved it. Spicy and crispy and ducky, what was there not to like?
The avocado curry confused me. As in, I didn't get what the avocado is for. It was a typical and delicious Thai curry with coconut milk (my fav!)... and then they throw in a chunk of avocado. Huh? Why didn't they blend it with the curry? That would be so interesting and yum. I could have just brought a whole avocado, throw it into the bowl, and replicated this dish. It was good, but not what I wanted from ""avocado curry".
Our other meat dish was minced chicken with basil (or something). I'm a huge fan of anything Thai + minced chicken. Oh man, do Thai people know how to mince that chicken. It was moist, spicy, and so good with rice. Ahhh... rice - I love how they served the rice. In ball shape, that is. Rice balls! Rock!
Can't go to a Thai place without getting some sort of noodles. Pad thai, veggie style, was our choice. It was really good. I especially love all that fried tofu. and peanuts. and rice noodles. and scallions. aw man, pad thai is the perfect dish. I can eat it forever and ever and ever.
I really liked Wondee Siam. The place was tiny and the pacing of the food was all bizarre (apps came really fast and then we waited and waited and waited for entrees). But it is BYOB and the food was delicious. Delicious food + cheap booze = keeper
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Another Brunch Post
Hmmm... I should probably change my blog to The Brunch Blog. Seems like that's all I ever take pictures of. J-me and I met up with Cheryl and Rich for brunch at Perilla on a rainy and cold NYC afternoon for brunch. Yes, it was 45 degrees in the middle of April. I'm so over it. I just want to throw away my coat and burn my scarves already. I want sun! I want heat! I want to be un-cold! End rant. Now, back to our regular programming.
We started with some smoky bloody mary. The drink was fine - not bad, but not memorable, and definitely was not smoky. It just tasted like a normal bloody mary, maybe a little lighter side. I was expecting something like smoked pepper taste cuz I had made that connection of bloody mary = spicy. Spicy = peppers as in jalapeno. Jalapeno = can be dried/smoked. Therefore, smoky bloody mary = smoked peppers. You see, it was all very logical. But nope, no smoke, no pepper. My logic failed.
Rich had the duck burger (spicy duck burger, jack cheese, avocado, and spiced fries) which was very good. I think this was my first time having a duck burger, don't even think I've seen it on other menus. The burger was very juicy and tender. The meat was of the loose variety, as in, the ground duck meat was not patted into a dense meat puck, just ever so lightly, patted that is. I think the bread was fine but can't remember details on why it was fine cuz I only took one bite. It was an enjoyable bite, I tell you. The fries were pretty good. They are fatter than the kind I usually like. I tend to go for the McDonald fries family - thin with crispy outside protecting the helpless soft carby inside, with salt, lots and lots of the white stuff. But I liked the Perilla fries. They were crispier than I thought they'd be and flavored perfectly.
Cheryl had the best dish in my opinion, too bad the pictures I took of her food were also the blurriest. Grrr.... Creamy white grits with fried poached egg, rock shrimp, peppers and tasso ham. Oh shrimp and grits, you've never done me wrong. The grits were cooked just how I like them - not gummy, light and swimming in a flavorful broth made possible by tasso ham and peppers. The runny yolk from the fried egg added another dimension that thickened the grits.
Yay for J-me for ordering something sweet so to round out my meal. His blueberry and buckwheat pancakes with mascarpone and bourbon maple syrup = oh man, sooo good. I'm not usually a huge fan of pancakes, more of a waffle or french toast kind of gal. But dang it, these were some fluffy pancakes with some plump blueberries. I'm kind of in love with them. Or maybe, I'm kind of in love with any bourbon flavored sweet stuff. Bourbon, who knew you are a dessert sauce's bff. Who knew.
I got the most unhealthy sounding thing on the menu. I had to, they made me. Not sure who they are, but I assure you, they are out there. My dish started innocent enough - poached organic eggs. But nah, who wants to just eat that. We must have the eggs sit on some garlic buttermilk biscuits! Oh wait, let's also throw in 1 lb of pork sausages! Hmmm... I think it's missing something, oh yes, more fat! In the form of sausage gravy! Ahh... brunch. My dish was really good. I will pretty much eat anything drowning in gravy and runny egg yolk, so down the gullet it went. I also really liked the kind of sausage, kind of homemade-like, mildly spicy.
Overall, I thought Perilla was a good place for brunch. The entrees were completely reasonably priced for the level of yumminess. The service was kind of bleh, but at least they weren't un-attentative. Since it's pretty close to my apt, I can see myself going back. I need to try the corn beef hash.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
DC Trip Eats - Part 2
I guess if I titled an entry as "part 1", I need to supply a second part. doh! So yes, here is part 2 - two of my other meals in DC. Note - on Saturday in DC, we bar/restaurant hopped and went to 3 different places for fried food + drinks instead of a proper dinner. Then we wrapped up the night with a run to CVS for various chips, cookies, and chex mix. Yes. We came, we ate (fried stuff), we conquered. No fried food is safe from our greedy grasp. Unfortunately, my pics from 2 of the fried food places didn't come out so good so we will use 1 fried place and our Sunday brunch place (gosh I talk about brunch way too much. I really don't eat brunch all that much, just happen to have my camera at brunch a lot) to conclude the DC food escapades.
My favorite of the fried food bar/restaurant hopping places was The Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan. We picked the place for no valid reason except the big bright yellow sign and that squirrel graphic. We are easily influenced. ooh look, pretty lights!
We got the hand-cut french fries tossed in Old Bay with malt vinegar and ketchup. Love fries, so getting that was a no brainer. I couldn't really taste any Old Bay, but the vinegar was yummy. I wish it came with mayo too, but you can't have it all. The fries were not as crispy as I would liked it to be, but it was still tasty.
Besides the copious amt of beer and fries, we also got the calamari rings and sugar snap peas. Sugar snap peas! I heart! The flavors were good, though both the calamari rings and sugar snap peas could have been fried better. They were both kind of soggy (and the calamari rings were chewy). It felt like they were either a. fried too long, or b. fried in old oil at low temperature. Still, we ate them all cuz they were fine.
On Sunday, after a hard night of research and endless frustration with my failed blackberry (and a few calls to friends with internet), we settled on Leopold's Kafe for brunch. The restaurant itself was super cute, nestled in a little side street with beautiful decor. The drinks came first, my blueberry mojito was delicious (and pretty!).
Too bad the food was eh. My smoked trout salad with creamy horseradish, boston lettuce, and pickled onions was my favorite dish out of the 4 we ordered. It was simple and fresh, but too bad it was not that memorable - as in, it was fine, but I don't really care to eat it again.
Kim's smoked trout hash with poached eggs was disappointing. The eggs were overcooked so didn't have that beautiful sunny runniness of poached eggs. Who wants to eat hard boiled eggs with hash?! Julia's croque madam had good flavors but her poached eggs were undercooked. The whites were still runny. Ewwww... runny whites... Marian's kale salad was fine, but again, not memorable.
I'm definitely planning to visit DC again soon and sample other fares. I know that the city has a lot more to offer (like Hank's Oyster Bar! Yum...) So, I'll be back. For Sure.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Brunch at Garage
It was a glorious, beautiful, sneak-peak-of-spring day in NYC. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping. So of course, J-me and I decided to test out another AYCD brunch spot. This time, we headed to Garage, a place I passed by 1,000,000 times and went in 0 times. For some reason, it was just not memorable - a cross between tourist trap and um, another tourist trap. All was changed when I found out that they have all you can drink bloody marys, mimosas, and screwdrivers for $6. Yes, I can be bribed with copious amt of alcohol. I can be bribed with alcohol. Period. Alcohol and money. And Food. Yes.
Garage has outdoor seating, which was of course completely packed because every single person and her mother had the same idea as we did on this first real nice day of the season. Dying of starvation as I always am when it's 5 min past my normal feeding time, we agreed to sit inside. The host, after throwing us an incredulous look for not having a reservation (really? a reservation at this giant warehouse of a place?) grabbed 2 menus and seated us. Wait time - 0 min. Spare me the incredulous look if you have availability please.
We both opted for the mimosa AYCD because it's pretty hard to screw that up. I wish you can switch between drinks, but nope. You can't. So it was mimosas over my usual bloodies, cuz I hate drinking bad ones and wasn't in the mood to risk drinking bad ones for the next hour or so.
J-me got the stuffed french toast with blueberries and cream cheese. It was fine. Kind of hard to not like eggy bread stuffed with cream cheese and syrupy fruit. I wish they used fresh blueberries instead of the sad little purple things that came out of a canned syrup fruit thing (or where ever fake-ish syrupy blueberries come from), especially since the menu said fresh blueberries. The menu lied, bad menu, bad. The french toast could have been a lot more custard-ier. But I guess the cream cheese made the lack of custard less glaringly sad. I think everything tastes better with cream cheese. Cheese tastes better with cream cheese. It's magic.
I got the farmer's market omelet, which was supposed come with all sorts of roasted veggie goodness, including but not limited to - asparagus, tomatoes, eggplant, yellow squash, all that with goat cheese. Now, doesn't that sound yum? But the menu lied again. My omelet did not come with any of the stuff above, except goat cheese and maybe some yellow squash. I certainly did not see any tomatoes or asparagus. It came with carrots. Argh! I hate cooked carrots unless they are soft like those in curries, stews, or soups. I don't think my veggies were roasted nor from the farmer's market, whatevs. The omelet isn't the fluffy french kind, but I can deal with that. I wish the goat cheese was spread out more evenly in the omelet, instead of plopped on one side of it, causing me to destroy my omelet in panic looking for it during the first 3o seconds of receiving it.
I'm not a huge roasted potato person, so I barely ate my side of potatoes. I think it was crusted in corn meal or something. It had that unoriginal roasted potato flavor and no moisture. Yep, it was one dry roasted potato ball.
The service was not super attentive, but at least we never had to wait more than 1 min for a refill of mimosa. Oh yeah, they have live jazz during brunch. It was interesting but I felt like I was in the cross section of tourist trap and tourist trap.
Where will I hit up for my next boozy brunch? Stay tuned.
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