Apparently, the Upper West Side’s beloved brunching establishment Good Enough to Eat has been temporarily shut down due to excessive gas levels in the building. Let’s hope they can reopen soon. After all its the NYC Marathon Weekend! New York Magazine’s Grub Street has more:
http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2009/10/good_enough_to_eat_is_shuttere.html
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Good Enough to Eat
483 Amsterdam Ave
At 83rd St.
New York, NY 10024
Tel.: 212.496.0163
Website: http://www.goodenoughtoeat.com/
Recently, my mom came to visit me and see my new digs in Midtown West. Here she is at Hotel 414, which is this adorable boutique hotel that just got remodelled this past year. It now has a sort of urban rustic kinda them going on in the lobby – there’s wide farmboard wood planks forming the fireplace surround, all black chandeliers, dark grey slate floor tiles and a parallelagram shaped white marble reception counter with the same farm wood planks below. The front and rear doors they’ve painted a bright red and they put in a more cohesive front patio space that include upgrades to rectangular flower box arrangements with (albeit fake) boxwood bushes in them, slate tiles for the seating area and several bright red cafe tables and chairs. I have to say this makes my morning comute – I now walk to work – yay! – a lot more pleasant as I don’t have to navigate sharp corners around the hotel patrons on the street – most of them now gather in front seated at the chairs and therefore out of the sidewalk – which is great.
Hotel 414, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
This is a shot of their back patio where they have several mosaic topped tables and chairs where you can have your breakfast outside. (I partook of the frosted flakes frequently!) My mom grabbed one of their croisants and some coffee.
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Hotel 414
414 W. 46th Street
NY, NY 10036
Tel.: 212. 399.0006
Website: http://www.414hotel.com/
Fig & Olive could be called a New York “chain” in the way that Nobu is a (mostly) New York “chain”. Legally, once the number of restaurants nationally hits 15 restaurants nationwide, the NY branches must then display their calorie count information. So, for example, you can know that that Shake Shack cheeseburger with cheese fries and a milkshake is gonna be fattening, but… you aren’t going to see it in caloric numbers. What you can’t see, can’t hurt you right? Right. No.
We went here for Restaurant Week, so yes, possibly not the best representation of what they prepare normally – portion size, quality ingredients etc. – but still a good preview. I got the salmon tartar that came with avocado on lettuce. While I thought this appetizer was good in terms of taste, it did lose a little in terms of presentation. Once you finish, you are left with an empty bar glass on your plate filled with sticky pink and green bits. Not exactly enticing you toward the next course.
Fig & Olive, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
My mom got the tuna tartar appetizer. Which, with the addition of the avocado to the tartar, was tastier than my salmon tartar.
Fig & Olive, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Both good though. Hers was the (weakly) better of the too in terms of presentation…. but of course, if I wanted to, I could throw some raw tuna and avocado in a .50 cent Ikea bowl and call that a restaurant worthy presentation. But. I. Don’t.
Fig & Olive, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos
This dish was three types of seafood: a scallop over arugola with pine nuts, olive oil and (I think) blue cheese; then artic char; then (I think) was the trout with a different type of olive oil. While I get that figs and… olives are the restaurants main schtick, I’m just not convinced that (at least on our visit) they are using these ingredients to their best potential. Yes, the dishes are great on paper… but the execution is definitely laking. Chef’s day off?
Fig & Olive, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
This was the lamb tenderloin with couscous. Naturally, it came with figs. While the tenderloin was very well cooked and seasoned, the couscous just didn’t seem to mingle well with the lamb. The couscous was really dry and had none of the flavors of the lamb present in it. I guess they were going for the juices from the lamb combined with the sweet fig taste but it just wasn’t there. The execution hopefully was the main problem.
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Fig & Olive
420 West 13th Street (Btwn. 9th & Washington St.)
New York, NY 10014
Tel: (212) 924-1200
Website: http://www.figandolive.com/
On the Upper West Side in the middle of the block between W. 96th and W. 95th on Amsterdam, there is a cute little thai restaurant called Charmed. I had been meaning to try it for a while as it was within easy walking distance of A’s old apt. Last night we decided to go.
The place is fairly small (maybe 25 or so cafe size tables) but we were seated as soon as we walked in the door. It has a cozy feeling with an exposed brick wall with decorative bowls attached to it behind a wall length padded bench.
What you see below is the shrimp shumai appetizer:
Charm Restaurant-UWS, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
The sauce and the shumai were both very good. Its a pretty tipical dish to get so no real surprises here. But def. good stuff.
Next, I order the pad see you (ok, that’s not how its spelled….but still funnier)… The dish arrived in a metal wok and still piping hot from the kitchen. All the flavors mixed together very nicely and the broccoli was well cooked – not too crunchy and not soggy either. Plus marks also for the presentation.
Pad see-ew, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Aimee got the lemongrass chicken. Also delicious. A little too much sauce though she said.
Chicken and broccoli, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Overall, a very filling meal. One pet peave: I wish they had provided us with Metal chopsticks instead of the cheapo wooden snap-off kind.
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Charm Thai
722 Amsterdam Ave. (btwn. 95th & 96th)
NY, NY 10025
Tel.: (212) 866-9800
Website: www.charmthainyc.com
Scottish Rasberry Scones, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Scottish Rasberry Scones, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Kilroy Justin – Aunt Suzie’s, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Aunt Suzie’s, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Aunt Suzie’s, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Aunt Suzie’s, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Tartine is a cozy little place on west 11th Street that serves up French fare including a good selection of crepes for each meal of the day. Arriving for dinner, I settled on the chicken pesto crepe. It was filling and very affordable. On the warm summer nights, the best thing is to do is to opt for a table in the back garden if one’s available. Its a small angular space that comes to a point in the back but the neighborhood sounds and the fresh air are worth it.
Chicken Pesto crepe, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
Quisical about the Tecate beer…:
Parisian crepe restaurant in Greenwich Village, originally uploaded by Brockenbrough Photos.
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Tartine
253 W. 11th St. (at 4th St.)
West Village, New York, NY 10014
Tel.: 212.229.2611
This place is terrible. Frankly, I think I haven’t been served a worse meal in the past year or more! Here’s the background story.
Last night, Aimee & I went to see Catherine Opie give a lecture at the Center on her body of work as it ties into her current retrospective on view at the Guggenheim. The lecture was great and totally satisfying. I had never seen Catherine speak before (nor seen her in person) and the room the lecture was held in was the perfect size. A number of people asked questions after her lecture and she was excited to answer them. Also, she was both and articulate lecturer (she’s a professor at UCLA) and very approachable.
After the lecture however was a different story. Our bellies empty from jaunting straight from work to Catherine’s lecture, we were on the hunt for satiating food. One thought was Two Boots (pizza) which I poo-pooed as I wasn’t exactly feeling like American pizza and as Two Boots was overly casual for what I wanted. Strolling down the streets near 14th, we eyed Good Restaurant, A Salt & Battered, Tea & Sympathy, Soy Luck Club and a couple others. While some of these were tempting, Artepasta seemed the best because of (1) their prices were low and (2) they seemed to offer something that both I and Aimee would like to have. I saw the caprese pizza with “burrata mozzarella”, basil, extra virgin olive oil and fresh tomato. Aimee saw the insalata mixta with soppresata (“sopresto”) and “focaccia croutons”. We entered.
First minor foul note, we were seated in the drafty center section right by the door. No one else was seated in this section. And the interior door was propped open in such a way that when a group entered, the draft hit us for a good duration. Originally we were seated on the end of a long row of empty tables but asked to move over one as we kept getting hit by the waiters as they walked by to the service station right next to our table. After ordering, we sat there for a good 20 to 30 minutes, the first half of which Aimee spent shivering and eventually put her coat on. Eventually we had to ask one of the waiters (not ours who was standing idly right by us but not paying attention) to close the interior door. He complied which was good.
Then, our food arrived. Now, I had ordered the caprese pizza. I asked the waiter if it was like the pizza margharita to which he said it was. I order the pizza in an Italian restaurant. What arrived was a spongy mess of a “pizza” that layered tomatoes that tasted like they had been frozen, with mounds of generic pre-grated mozzarella cheese (not the fresh Italian bufalo mozzarella). It was essentially (if not in reality) a frozen microwaved pizza plopped down on my plate! It was awful!
During the course of the mention (and after we finished…not that our waiters noticed we were finished) our waiter kept sneaking up and spooking Aimee! Seriously! He would come up behind her really quickly, wrap the water pitcher around her to her glass and whisper “Is everything ok”. Ugh. He even did this (and refilled our water glasses) when we had put our napkins on the table in order to signal we wanted the check. ergh. We’re done. Take our plates away.
At the end of the (long) meal, the (inattentive) waiter brought our change back in such a way that we could only leave him a 21% tip or higher with the change he gave us. (He left a 1, a 5 and a 10.) After ultimately flagging down his co-worker (the same co-waiter who closed the interior door for us), we received change for the 5 in order to leave the tip. Now, I say “flagging down” but that really is a liberal use of the word…. the pack of waiters and the female bartender were all just standing there the whole time in a clump by the waitstation chatting.
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ArtePasta
81 Greenwich Ave (btwn. Bank St & 7th Ave. South)
New York, NY 10021
Tel.: 212-229-0234
Website: http://www.artepastanyc.com/
Can’t get away this Thanksgiving to your relatives gathering? Try roasting your own turkey this year in the oven.
…and if you don’t have an oven….don’t worry. You can still prepare a turkey! Just do it virtually:
http://www.thisisgrow.com/archive/officemax/roastaturkey/#c536facf
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