Dining In New York, May 2015, Part 2

My second day in NY was carefully planned; all activities revolved around a 2pm matinee of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Glee's Darren Criss was playing the lead, and he did a terrific job in what was essentially a one-man show (apart from a backing band).

Before the show, I had lunch at Xi'an Famous Foods, which had just opened a second midtown outpost on 34th Street. I got there early enough to avoid any lines or crowds and was able to spend a few long minutes perusing the menu. I wanted to try everything, especially the spicy and tingly lamb face salad, the spicy cumin lamb burger, and the spicy and sour lamb dumplings. As there was only one of me, I ordered just one dish. The pork "Zha Jiang" hand-ripped noodles were lovely. A simple dish of thick, wide, lightly chewy noodles topped with a spicy mix of ground pork and scallions made for a perfect lunch. The length of the noodles made them heavy and a bit difficult to manipulate with cheap wooden chopsticks, but I soldiered on, polishing off every tasty bite. I washed them down with a cup of cold sweetened chrysanthemum tea and went on my way.

I still had time before the matinee, so hit up Lord & Taylor and Saks for perfume sniffing on my way up 5th Avenue. I didn't smell anything worth paying retail for, which is fine. More money for food.

After the show, I walked over to David Burke Fabrick in the Archer Hotel. Both of my dining spots on this day were chosen because they were in close to places I needed to be: the hotel; the theatre; Penn Station. Fabrick had the added attraction of serving dinner uber early, useful for when one has an early train out of town.

Or, that was the original idea. There was a train accident in Vermont in the morning which delayed my train by several hours. I was panicking during dinner, really wanting to get home before midnight. A conversation with a very nice Amtrak phone rep who helped me book another train scheduled a mere hour after my original eased my mind. This gave me more time to wander about, and I suppose I could have gone somewhere else to eat, but I kept my reservation and ate dinner at the ridiculous hour of 4:30pm.

I wasn't sure at all what to order; I think the menu I had perused online was a bit different than the one I was handed at the restaurant. I ended up with the avocado panna cotta and shrimp tacos, neither of which I wanted, but seemed the best choices at the time.

The avocado dish was a panna cotta in name only. I thought a gelatinized avocado mousse would have been interesting, but it was really just guacamole and salsa layered in a bowl with sour cream and served with a dish of tortilla chips glued together with some melted cheese. It was ok, but definitely not $16 worth of ok.

The "angry" shrimp fajitas continued the unintentional Tex-Mex theme. I suppose they should have been spicy, but the wee shrimp were not at all. I ate several tiny tacos, each with far more tortilla than filling. The chipotle aioli, surprisingly, was the star of the dish. It wasn't bad, just nothing special.

What was special, however, was dessert. I have been Facebook friends with Burke's corporate pastry chef, Zac Young, for years now. (You might remember him from the first season of Top Chef Just Desserts, and from the Food Network's Unique Sweets). Despite not normally going for chocolate desserts because I find them too heavy, I ordered the chocolate hazelnut "handbag," with gianduja mousse, raspberry ganache, and vanilla bean ice cream. The whimsical pink camouflage-patterned creation also included white chocolate filled and coated raspberries, and a bit of coconut brittle, and was by far the most satisfying thing I ate at Fabrick.

On the way to Penn Station, I stopped by Macaron Cafe to pick up half a dozen of the sweet treats. I gotta say these are the best macarons I've ever tried. They're amply sized, with chewy cookies and interesting fillings, from rich ganache to a bitter matcha creme. I'm going to have to make this a regular stop on my trips to NY, although I'll have to pick up some from Ladurée next time too, for comparison.









Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Grace Garden

We've been to Grace Garden countless times. This post was written after our very first trip, on  July 20, 2008
------------------
Grace Garden

I read a lot of local food blogs and occasionally check the Chowhound boards and was intrigued by the effusive praise heaped on a small Chinese restaurant, located in Odenton of all places. I contacted my friend LaRaine, expert on things Chinese (being Hong Kong born herself) and we arranged to meet at Grace Garden to see (and taste) what the hubbub was all about.

After perusing the online menu for a while, we both determined that there were several things we wanted to try. For our first adventure, we ordered two dishes that required advance notice - the tea smoked chicken and a dish billed as "Chinese Sea Treasures." Raine called those in on Thursday. We also determined we needed to try one of the pork belly dishes, plus something noodle-y to round things out. Finally, just in case Mr Minx was unhappy with our choices, we'd try a fifth dish of his choosing, although I strongly urged him to order from the head-on shrimp selections.

Mr Minx and I set off on our journey an hour in advance of our meeting time because we weren't too familiar with the Fort Meade area. A good thing the Web site has this photo of the restaurant, otherwise we wouldn't have spotted the unassuming store front. The inside is just as unassuming as the outside, perhaps more so - a plain room with a handful of mismatched tables, the walls decorated with photographs of the food. And what sounded to be Christian country music playing softly in the background. Am I the only person who likes to hear the appropriate ethnic music in restaurants or none at all?

But hey - one doesn't go to Grace Garden for the ambiance.

One goes for the food.

This is the Braised Pork Belly with Mui Choy - Thick Slices of Seasoned Pork Belly, Slow-Cooked with Preserved Mustard Cabbage. This was the most tender and succulent pork belly I have ever eaten. It was arranged over a dish of mui choy, a dried salted mustard cabbage that has been reconstituted and braised along with the meat in a thin, sweetish sauce. Delicious.

Cantonese Sea Treasures - Shrimp, Scallop & Sharks Fin Stuffed in Cucumber, Steamed and Glazed with Light Sauce. These were more interesting looking than tasting. The filling was extremely mild, with more shrimp than scallop and I detected no shark's fin at all. Of course, the price of that stuff is so high, it's likely very little was used. The cucumbers were hollowed out and lightly steamed so they still retained some texture. The taste was fine, but it reminded me more of a fancy dim sum dish (the cucumbers were cut into segments; you really can't tell that from the photo). It was difficult to eat, as the filling slid right out of the cucumber, and together it was nearly impossible to pick up with chopsticks. (I liked that the restaurant gave us chopsticks right away, and didn't offer Western utensils to us at all.)

Smoke Tea Duck - Whole Duck Steamed in Smoky Tea Flavored Sauce. So I mentioned above that we ordered the tea smoked chicken. Apparently whomever took the order heard "duck" so that's what they prepared. Not a problem for us duck-lovers! And I'm kinda glad they made the mistake. The duck was absolutely amazing! It was perfectly smoky, like the duck accidentally flew through a campfire before ending up on our table. The meat was tender and juicy, and the skin was imbued with smoke. Mr Minx remarked that he had never tasted anything like it. And lucky us - we have more than half the duck left in our fridge right now to eat during the week.

Cantonese Soy Sauce Noodles - Thin Egg Noodles Stir Fried with Ginger, Scallion and Soy Sauce. I thought this would be a good bland dish to order. LaRaine was expecting something more like the thin noodles we ordinarily get at dim sum at Jesse Wong's, the flavor of which comes primarily from wok hei. Those noodles are also fried to a nice crunch. Grace Garden's version were soft and redolent of sesame oil, a flavor, opined Raine, that should not have existed in the dish at all. As for Mr Minx and I - we liked it, and it was pretty much what I expected.

Golden Shrimp - Crispy Fried Head-On Shrimp Coated with Golden Salted Egg Yolk & Crisp Garlic. This dish was Mr Minx's choice. It looked terrific, and tasted pretty good too. My one issue with it was that the shrimp were perhaps too big, so the shells were a bit on the tough side. And one must eat the shells because that's where the flavor is. And if you like to eat the heads, as Mr Minx does, perhaps it's best to refrain from eating all of them, as that causes some mighty painful indigestion within a very short amount of time.

Ok - I actually have two issues with this dish. The shrimp didn't have the lovely iodine flavor that I pretty much only get at Chinese restaurants. But the semi-caramelized crisp garlic and egg yolk topping, particularly mixed with plain rice or the noodles, almost made up for it.

Overall, I enjoyed the food at Grace Gardens and wish it was more conveniently located to Towson. It wasn't the paradise of perfection that I was convinced it must be from all the accolades, but it was home to some great Chinese cooking. We'll certainly go back again to try more, particularly the Sichuan selections.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Dining In New York, May 2015, Part 1

It had been a year since I'd sniffed and eaten my way around New York, and high time I did it again. So I made arrangements to go up one Friday morning to check out as many restaurants and perfume counters I could squeeze into a quick 30 hours.

I planned to begin my scented tour in upper midtown, so I wanted to eat lunch in that neighborhood. Quality Meats is on 58th Street, just down the street from Bergdorf's. Despite being primarily a steakhouse, they had a number of interesting chopped salads on their luncheon menu. The salad varieties included classic, green goddess, roasted beet, Mediterranean, and Eastern (pan-Asian), all of which could be topped with one's choice from a list of proteins. I went with the roasted beet salad (baby beets, radicchio, frisee, arugula, and toasted walnut vinaigrette) with seared yellowfin tuna.

Arrestingly plated, the large portion of bitter greens and beets was topped with perfectly cooked tuna. While the salad itself could have used both more dressing and more seasoning (thankfully there was a tiny salt cellar on the table), I thought the tuna was nicely seasoned and appreciated the subtle hint of cumin.

I also tried a side of the restaurant's signature corn creme brulee. I had originally also planned to order ice cream for dessert, but the brulee was sweet enough to stand in for that course. Extremely rich and creamy, the generously-portioned custard was more cream than egg, and the burnt sugar topping added a pleasant bitterness.

Much later that evening, I found myself wandering through the West Village. Not having made a dinner reservation left my choices wide open...or as wide open as they can be at 7pm on a bustling Friday night. I remembered enjoying Harold Dieterle's Kin Shop on my last trip to NY; at that time Mr Minx and I sampled several outstanding items. A quick check of my OpenTable app revealed that the next available reservation wasn't until 10:30pm. Undeterred, I walked up 6th Avenue anyway to try my luck. I scored a seat at the bar where I enjoyed a fragrant Siamese Smash (Heaven Hill bourbon, calamansi, yuzu, lemon bitters, & thai basil) while perusing the menu.

I ended up ordering two appetizers. The first was a steamed peekytoe crab & spicy pork crepe in a coconut broth with chili oil and fresh herbs. The light rice flour crepe was wrapped around a sausage-like cylinder of pork and crab and set atop a gorgeous broth redolent of coconut and fish sauce. A side order of sticky rice was employed to soak up all of the delicious juices.

A special of crispy lamb ribs with a crab dipping sauce served as my entree. The four ribs were small but meaty, lightly crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. They were lightly seasoned, but when eaten with a bit of everything else on the plate--sauce, herbs, pickled onions--the flavor shone.

I find that eating alone at a bar can often be amusing. First I got a laugh from a guy showing off his brand new Apple watch...which refused to work in the restaurant. Money well spent. When he left, he was replaced by a Latino man with a very heavy accent. He seemed to think that Kin Shop was a garden variety Thai restaurant and that he could get pad Thai with chicken. If he couldn't get pad Thai with chicken, could he get something else with chicken? If he had examined the menu at all, rather than playing with his phone, he would have seen there was not a single chicken dish on the menu. Equally amusing was that the bartender, who doubled as our waiter, insisted that not only could he not get pad Thai with chicken, he could not get pad Thai. But pad Thai (with shrimp) was clearly available. (Perhaps not so clearly, as it was spelled "phat" Thai on the menu.)

After dinner, I walked in search of gelato. There are actually many places to get gelato in the neighborhood, but all of them had a line out to there. I stepped into Cones, on Bleecker Street, and opted for Argentine-style ice cream--helado--instead. Similar to gelato in that it has a lower fat and calorie count than American ice cream, helado is still decadently creamy. I enjoyed two flavors, sweet potato studded with bits of brie cheese, and corn, both richly sweet.

For sure, my sniffing adventures weren't nearly as satisfying as my eating adventures on this particular day.









Posted on Minxeats.com.

Hard Rock Cafe Showcases World Burger Tour

The Hard Rock Cafe in the Inner Harbor has been offering comfort food, libations, rock videos, and a gallery of rare rock memorabilia for years. Now they are presenting a selection of burgers created by Hard Rock chefs from their restaurants around the world. Until June 30th, diners can experience a world tour of burgers. The Minx and I were recently invited to sample these sandwiches designed to put one in the mood of lands far away. 

Hard Rock has given chefs at their cafes the freedom to create a unique Legendary Burger that captures the local flavors of their city and is only available at that cafe location. More than 150 local burgers were evaluated by Hard Rock’s culinary team, with fan favorites selected to star on a limited-time World Burger Tour menu.  These four burgers will be featured at Hard Rock Cafe Baltimore in addition to its unique Local Original Legendary Burger topped with smoked bacon, cheddar cheese, golden fried onion rings, crisp lettuce and vine ripened tomato.

Before we tucked into the burgers, we were offered a selection of specialty cocktails to choose from. I went with their most popular: the Mai Tai One On. Light and sweet with strong citrus flavors, one might forget that there is Mount Gay Eclipse rum in it, so drink responsibly. The Minx tried the Mezcarita, which while full of the flavors of coconut , strawberry, and orange, the smoky Del Maquat mezcal is ever present. We also tasted the Pomegranate Mule and the Pineapple Ginger Caipirinha, so we were eager to try out some food to soak up the booze.

Specialty drinks: Pomogranite Mule, Mai Tai One On, Maple Old Fashioned, Pineapple Ginger Caipirinha, and Mezcarita.

The Sweet and Sour Burger is a "certified Angus Beef patty topped with a fried onion ring, bell peppers and grilled pineapple drizzled with house-made sweet and sour sauce." The sweet and sour sauce will remind you of a dish from your favorite neighborhood Chinese restaurant and the onion ring provides a deep fried crunch that simulates a happy nugget like you would find in General Tso's chicken. The pineapple is a nice touch as well.

Hong Kong - Sweet and Sour Burger

For me, the Tandoori Burger was the real surprise of the bunch. This moist, juicy chicken patty is topped with mint mayonnaise and cucumber which does a nice job of tempering the spicy seasonings. The flavors are spot on for its Indian inspiration.

India - Tandoori Burger

The Bosphorus Burger combines elements that bring to mind all the delights of Turkish cuisine (except Turkish Delight, of course, which would be weird). This angus beef patty is topped with homemade eggplant salad, haydari sauce (which is yogurt-based), and cucumber slices. I'm not a fan of eggplant, but it works well in this preparation.

Turkey - Bosphorus Burger

We also tried the Banh Mi Burger. Banh mi is a Vietnamese sandwich with a strong French influence, using a baguette to hold pork pâté and pickled vegetables. A hamburger bun replaces the baguette and there's no pâté, but the fresh flavors of cilantro, cucumber, and carrot are present.

Vietnam - Banh Mi Burger

The Hard Rock Cafe World Burger Tour goes on until the end of June, so if you are interested in trying out some burgers with an international flair, head on down to the Inner Harbor. As a bonus, you can gaze at Madonna's underpants while you dine.



Posted on Minxeats.com.