You may know ABC Home and Carpet: located near Union Square, buying a pillow in this expensive home furnishing store may cost you a leg. Well, it is on their ground floor that ABC Cocina is located. This innovative Latin restaurant is another step in the success story if Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the French Chef who gave us Vong, Spice Market or Jean-Georges.
In the back of the room is a small display, where a lobster definitely caught my eyes. Yes, I love seafood and particularly lobster and was thrilled to hear that our tasting menu would include a lobster roll. I LOVE lobster rolls and always recommend people coming to visit us from Europe to try one. In France, it would still be considered crazy to serve lobster like that. I can hear my fellow Frenchmen saying: "Quoi? Un sandwich au homard? Ils sont fous ces 'Ricains!" ("What? A lobster sandwich? They are crazy these yankees!").
For our last Restaurant Week experience, we booked a table with OpenTable at Ca Va Todd English, a brasserie located in the Intercontinental Hotel, few steps from Times Squares. There, the American Chef crafted a menu with modernized brasserie dishes, such as the escargots farcies or the steak frites with herb-onion butter.
After our delicious meal at Fishtail by David Burke, we decided to go to DB Kitchen, another restaurant from the famous Chef. Located in the James Hotel, it has two floors: the bar on the second floor and the restaurant on the first one, where you will be "welcomed" by a pig, setting the tone for the theme of the restaurant, a theme emphasized by the barn roof and the multiple photos of people at the farm.
One of the first things I do for Restaurant Week, before looking for the menu, is to look for the cost. Opentable has this $ sign that goes from $ to $$$$, the latter meaning expensive. So I decided to apply a filter and picked Le Périgord, a French restaurant located Midtown East, that has been on my list for a while now.
There is no doubt what Porterhouse, located on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center, is serving: steaks, steaks and steaks. With seafood, but steaks. It has been a while since I went to a steakhouse for restaurant week, as I typically tell people to avoid these types of places during that period, the quality of the meat being often sacrificed.
So, this time I was at Dovetail, located few steps from the Museum of Natural History. I like the place: the decor is simple and elegant. I went with some friends on a Monday night and, to my surprise, the restaurant was packed. Menu wise, they offer seasonal dishes. For dinner, you have a choice between the vegetarian menu and the Chef's menu. I went for the latter.
When Choco-Pain opened downtown Hoboken, it was like bringing a bit of France to the city: delicious bread, pastries and viennoiseries, made traditionally and tasting like it should. I hate when I buy a croissant and it is not buttery! So, we were wondering when they would open Uptown. But no, it did not happen yet. Instead, Verde Vita Toscana, an Italian café opened few month ago.
Smorgasburg: weird name worth knowing. It is the perfect place to indulge, with lots of vendors selling various kinds of food that would make any food lover drool. The last time my nephew came for a visit, we went to the location in Williamsburg. This time, we went to Park Slope to show my cousin Sandrine Brooklyn and one of its flea markets.
One of the things my cousin Sandrine wanted to do was to go to Coney Island, so we hopped on a train on a Saturday morning, our food destination already decided...After 45 minutes of train from Port Authority, here we are, in a place totally different from Manhattan. And outside of the train station, here it is: Nathan's, the hot dog institution.
Yeah, I know: you are probably wondering what the heck I was doing at The Seed, a two day event currently going on in the city. The goal is to have people who embrace a vegan diet, vegan curious and vegan skeptic to meet and discover what being vegan means, either via listening to over 30 speakers or trying some food.
Taka Taka characterizes itself as a Mexican Sushi and Japanese Tacos joint. I guess you understand: this is a Mexican / Japanese fusion restaurant with a very interesting menu, branching out to these two distinct cuisines. It is not our first time there (previous review here) and we were looking for an original place, close to the heart of Tribeca, to celebrate my cousin Sandrine's visit.
We took advantage of Restaurant Week to enjoy a delicious dinner, at a discounted price at David Burke's Fishtail. It was on my list for a while, being a fan of Chef Burke and looking at his mouth watering food photos on Instagram with always a bit of drool. For sure, we had to book quickly and used Opentable as this place was a popular spot for Restaurant Week.
This week, I was invited to a private screening of The 100-Foot Journey, the new movie from director Lasse Hallström, who also directed Chocolat in 2000, that will be released in Theaters on August 8th. I would say that I went there as a moviegoer, food lover and...Frenchman. The food part was not only the movie, that certainly makes you want to eat the dishes cooked in the plot, whether they are classical French, Indian or fusion, like the Boeuf Bourgignon à la Hassan.
Astoria surely has some great gems that should not be ignored, and Don Coqui, a Puerto Rican restaurant is one of them. I discovered it last Sunday when we went for a tasting for dinner. This huge place is a restaurant and lounge with multiple rooms:
A first one, small, at the entrance, with a nicely furnished bar:
