On Sunday, Josh and I headed up to the Cloisters and spent the day at the museum and enjoying the amazing weather we were blessed with for labor day. Here are some great pictures from the day:
The museum is really beautiful and wasn’t too crowded:
I loved the different stained glass windows throughout the museum:
The gardens are also really beautiful and one of them even has different types of fruits:
It was became a little chilly but the skies were really blue and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky:
In one of the gardens:
Me and Josh:
After the Cloisters, we quickly booked it to the Metropolitan Museum so we could make the most of our Cloisters admission (if you buy a ticket to the Met or the Cloisters, you can visit the other on the same day.) Getting to the Met wasn’t that difficult – we took the A to the C and then took the M86 crosstown. It was my first time visiting (after living here for four years!) and I definitely plan on returning.
Last Friday, a coworker and I decided to have a lunch meeting at Eataly. We went during the day thinking it wouldn’t be too packed but were definitely wrong; the general wait time for all of the restaurants was over an hour! We finally found the fish restaurant that didn’t have a wait time at all and sat down to catch up.
The restaurant is being led by Dave Pasternack, the chef from Esca, and features an oyster bar, lots of seating, and fresh fish from local waters. There were great specials for the day – we ordered a ton:
Oysters from Maine with an amazing mignonette sauce:
And a whole branzino fish on top of roasted potatoes:
For some reason, my entire portion of the fish was boney (Esther didn’t have any bones on her plate and my plate was FILLED with bones!)
We also ordered a seafood salad:
We ordered razor clams, seafood salad, and oysters as an appetizer and the branzino as a main course, but we received everything at the same time (very frustrating considering the table was tiny and we had to stack plates on top of each other so we could eat). The service is a little spotty but it’s okay considering it’s been open for less than a week! I think the tables need to be a little more separated from the general walking area (people were bumping into us with their shopping carts as we were eating) but I thought the food was really good.
We tried ordering a coffee after lunch but the lines were so ridiculous that we just went back to work. There were lines to get INTO the super store/restaurant/grocery store over the weekend, so I’m sure they’re just going to get better. Next time, I’m going to try their gelato and fresh pasta!
After dining at Seasonal, I met with the chef, who agreed to teach me how to make their wiener schnitzel. Wiener schnitzel is very easy to make in large quantities and it’s actually very easy to make – Eddie shows me just how easy it is to make in this short video:
The best way to eat the wiener schnitzel is definitely to take a bite of the veal, some fresh lignonberry sauce, a little piece of potato from the potato salad, and a couple strings of cucumber from the cucumber salad:
Everything is made fresh in the restaurant – even the lignonberry sauce (the lignonberries are flown in from Europe). The cucumber salad has a beautiful decoration – Chef Eddie uses a madoline to thinly slice cucumbers so it’s almost like an angel hair pasta. He adds sour cream, salt, pepper, and lemon to the cucumbers and carefully rolls them up on a tweezer-like utensil so the cucumbers actually look like pasta. The potato salad is also really delicious on its own but tastes even better with a bite of all of the other sides.
A huge thank you to Seasonal for teaching me how to make wiener schnitzel – now I hope my readers try out the recipe!
At my company meeting last week, we had to introduce ourselves to the team and tell everyone our favorite restaurant in New York. We went around the room and everyone listed their favorite restaurant (I had never heard a lot of them so there are definitely a lot of new places to try!) One of my friends, Loreen, said Seasonal Restaurant & Weinbar was her favorite restaurant, which was funny because I had just made reservations to dine there later that night. I asked Loreen what she liked about the restaurant and she said that she loved everything on the menu, it was a great place to take parents, and the prices were all really reasonable. After the endorsement from my coworker, I was really excited to visit the restaurant:
Ariel and I met up around 8 for dinner and had been exchanging emails earlier in the afternoon about what we were going to order. Originally, we were going to try the tasting menu, but neither of us had enough time to enjoy the menu since we had work early in the morning. We started off with some bread:
And instead of using regular butter, they have a cream cheese-like spread (two different flavors):
The chef sent over an amuse bouche after we placed our order:
The baby octopus was a little on the sweet side for both of us, but since we were both starving, it was definitely appreciated.
For our appetizer, we shared the schweinebauch – pork belly with cauliflower, chanterelle, English peas, and honey vinegar:
We both loved the presentation and the English pea foam added a very light texture to the very delicious pork belly. The honey vinegar was also a tanginess to the pork belly that we both really enjoyed.
European dinners last a lot longer than American dinners and we ended up waiting quite a bit before our main course came out. We were both starving since we hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and I think the servers could tell we were starving because they sent us another appetizer – pochiertes el – soft poached egg, lobster, maitake, and pumpernickel:
We were originally going to order this dish but decided against it because we figured one appetizer between the two of us was enough before our main courses arrived. Since we were both still very hungry after our initial appetizer, we were extremely grateful when the server arrived with the dish. The soft poached egg and lobster together have a very soft texture but the toasted pumpernickel adds a crunchy texture that makes the dish really special.
For our main course, Ariel ordered the wiener schnitzel – veal cutlet, potato, cucumber, and lignonberry:
I absolutely love veal and the wiener schnitzel from Seasonal was very delicious; crisply and lightly breaded with a sweet and savory combination from the cucumber salad, potato salad, and lignonberry.
For my main course, I ordered the tafelspitz – flat iron, oxtail consomme, apple-horseradish, spinach, and rosti:
And the apple-horseradish, spinach, and rosti:
The meat and consomme were both good, but definitely nothing I’d order at a restaurant. The special part of the dish was definitely the sauces (all made in-house) – a combination of the apple-horseradish and oxtail was a winning combination.
We passed on dessert since it was very late and we had work in the morning, but we were given a couple mignardises with the check:
For a Michelin-starred restaurant, Seasonal is definitely one of the best values on the one-star list. The wiener schnitzel was absolutely amazing, especially with their cucumber pasta-like salad (which adds a lightness and freshness to the fried veal). We were really happy with our meal at Seasonal and I’d definitely return, especially for a date; their wine bar is stocked with great wines and a knowledgeable sommelier that will definitely steer you in the right direction.
If you’re ever in Koreatown, you should probably not go to a Chinese restaurant, right? Audrey and I made that mistake a while back and ended up at Shanghai Mong, probably the only Chinese restaurant on 32nd between 5th and Broadway. Okay, so it’s supposed to be “fusion,” but you don’t go to Koreatown to get that kind of food, you know?
We both ordered the noodles with black bean sauce:
Sweet, gloppy, and the noodles all stuck together (what Asian doesn’t add sesame oil to their noodles?!) – definitely SKIP this place and head to one of the MANY awesome Korean restaurants along 32nd.
