Price Chopper Lobster Rolls

In Albany, there’s a grocery store called Price Chopper that has ALL KINDS OF AWESOME STUFF (like all grocery stores). Lou and I bought some stuff for our barbeque lunch and seafood dinner and also looked through their weekly circular to see if any fruit was on sale and I saw TWO lobster rolls for $9. Actually, $8.99! We figured we’d take a gamble and buy a pack of lobster rolls for lunch:

The rolls looked meaty and had really large chunks, so we figured it could be that bad, right? Well, they were actually great! Lots of lobster meat, not too much lettuce, all around fresh fresh white bread:

The lobster roll was a really quick and satisfying lunch (although it wasn’t seasoned at all) and now that I’ve tried the lobster roll in Price Chopper, I want to try more things from their prepared foods department!

Mitsuwa

A couple of weeks ago, I was discussing Mitsuwa with a friend and decided it would be a fun field trip. I took Faire and Cantor because I thought they might be interested in Japanese food (Faire is a very adventurous eater; anything I put in front of her, she’ll want to try at least once!) We took the shuttle from the port authority ($3 for all of us because the kids ride for free!) The ride is only about 20 minutes and we passed the time by taking pictures of each other and drawing on Faire’s face:

Faire loves drawing the letters ‘F’ and ‘A’ on her face with lipstick (so cute!)

We arrived and immediately walked through the gift shop across the street, where we picked out some stickers that Faire fell in love with. After purchasing her stickers, we walked across the street to buy some groceries and eat lunch. Mitsuwa seems really sparse, but they have tons of prepared foods (eel, donburi, sushi, etc). We bought some candy, eel, a lunchbox for the kids, and some dried fish for the ride home. After we bought all of our groceries, we decided to get a quick bite to eat before the bus arrived. We settled on Sanuki-Sando-Udon because their shrimp tempura (in plastic form) looked enticing:

There’s something about plastic foods that always draws my attention! The shrimp tempura udon soup comes with two large pieces of shrimp, lots of udon noodles, and a very basic broth. Faire with our soup:

Cantor wanted to test the soup temperature, but decided it was too hot to enjoy any of the noodles:

The shrimp tempura was surprisingly meaty (although a little soggy because we let it sit too long). The udon noodles weren’t anything special, but for a food court in a supermarket, we weren’t complaining. The udon made me want to pick up some packaged udon noodles so I could make some at home, but we had to rush to the bus so we wouldn’t miss our ride home!

How to Make Garden Salsa

I just got back from a relaxing mini vacation in Albany and I’m back with a great recipe for garden salsa. Lou’s family has a small garden where they grow tomatoes (two kinds), Hungarian wax peppers, lots of basil, jalapeño peppers, green beans, and squash:

Lou has a great recipe for salsa, so we picked up some Hungarian wax peppers:

Three basil leaves:

And Lou found one large tomato and two plum tomatoes:

The salsa is really easy to make (especially if someone else is doing all the chopping!) and it’s really delicious with chips or just straight out of the bowl. It tastes great right after you make it (with just a little juice from the tomatoes) but you can make it beforehand if you want all of the flavors to really mix together.

Lou’s Garden Salsa

Ingredients

1 large tomato
3 basil leaves (you can also use cilantro as a substitute)
1/4 onion
1/3 corn on the cob (cooked)
1 Hungarian pepper (you can also add jalapeño peppers for more of a kick)
Freshly cracked pepper
Sea salt

First, dice up your tomato:

Place in a bowl:

Next, dice up your onion:

And place it in the bowl:

Next, chop up the basil and place it in the bowl (are you seeing a pattern here?):

Next, the pepper:

Into the bowl it goes:

Remove the kernels from the cob and place it in the bowl:

Add lots of freshly cracked pepper and a pinch of salt:

Mix, and enjoy:

We ate the salsa with chips and danced around the kitchen enjoying Lou’s awesome creation! I had to make something, too, so I made a pina colada that was equally awesome (recipe next week!)

SHO Shaun Hergatt

Eight months have lapsed since I first started my little side project. To help me knock off some more Michelin-starred restaurants from the list of over 50, my mom flew in from North Carolina to dine with me. We decided to start by having lunch at SHO Shaun Hergatt.

I read a couple reviews of the chef and restaurant before we went, but didn’t want to know too much beforehand. Basically, Chef Hergatt opened his restaurant during the recession but still had a successful year because of his fresh ingredients he procured from anywhere in the world; most chefs focus on good-quality but locally sourced ingredients, Chef Hergatt is willing to fly seafood in from halfway across the world if it’s the best (there was also an egg that was adorned with gold that got a lot of coverage). A lot of the Michelin-starred restaurants have really great deals for lunch ($35 for two courses or something similar) and SHO Shaun Hergatt happened to extend their restaurant week menu until after Labor Day so we decided to take advantage of the opportunity. SHO Shaun Hergatt is on the second floor of the Setai, a luxury condominium building downtown:

The restaurant has a well-stocked bar for after-work drinks and also a very cozy lounge area with a very inviting and plush couch:

There’s also private dining rooms with walls that double as wine storage:

The servers brought two types of bread – whole wheat and white:

And also two types of spreads – butter and a homemade spread:

The homemade spread was a potato-based mix that also had various spices, but was way too runny to put on bread. We were big fans of the butter and warm whole wheat bread, but the homemade spread remained pretty much untouched.

My mom ordered some warm water and I noticed that all of the plates and cups looked familiar – lo and behold, it’s because they have the same plates as The French Laundry and per se:

I wonder if you can purchase their plates for home use. I really love the clean lines of Thomas Keller’s plates (although I don’t think I’d ever prepare a meal that would be presented in a way that warrants such special plates)

The restaurant week menu features items that are available from their regular lunch menu, and for our appetizers, I ordered the Chilled Heirloom Tomato Soup with tomato gelee, basil espuma:

And my mom ordered the carpaccio of black Angus beef with fried capers, Parmesan, Ginger vinaigrette:

The tomato soup was very creamy, but didn’t have a clean and refreshing taste like biting into a perfectly vine-ripened tomato. The tomato halves tasted like a combination of tart of sweet, but the puree was muted. I let my mom try the soup and she said that the soup was definitely mixed with miso, which would mute the tomato flavor. The carpaccio was seasoned the way my mom makes Asian-style cold cuts (star-anise is a major spice in their cold cuts), but the combination of star anise with Parmesan and crunchy capers didn’t taste right.

For my main course, I ordered the Crispy skin Amadai with edamame puree, pickled daikon:

The fish was absolutely delicious; very meaty, perfectly crisped skin, and the pea puree and cilantro added freshness to the slightly decadent fish. There was also a tapioca sauce that added an interesting texture to the flaky fish and crispy skin, but the combination was like a texture party in my mouth. My mom also enjoyed the fish a lot, especially the very crispy skin.

For my mom’s main course, she ordered the char siu braised pork belly with green scallion and pickled apples:

My mom’s initial reaction to the pork belly was that it was way too fatty; when my mom buys pork belly, she tries to buy something with a pretty good distribution of fat and meat. The pork belly did seem abnormally fatty, but I persuaded her to try it anyway and to try to eat around the abundant amount of fat. The pork belly tasted very similar to something my mom would make for a party, but the presentation was really beautiful. After getting over the fact that the belly was less lean than something she’d purchase, she did enjoy the pork and potatoes.

For dessert, I ordered the milk chocolate palet, yuzu chantilly, raspberries:

And my mom ordered the peach tarte tatin, mascarpone ice cream, pistachio crumble:

My dessert had a decoration of chocolate that was painted on earlier in the day and couldn’t be eaten (or it wasn’t chocolate and I was attempting to scrape off some kind of paint). The chocolate was very smooth and creamy and tasted like a decadent mousse I could definitely see myself overeating. My mom’s dessert featured a lot of burnt sugar and made it too sweet for me, but she really enjoyed it (especially the ice cream.) The servers also brought along some mignardises:

The jelly was blueberry flavored and very sweet and grainy (the coating is sugar) and the pistachio financier was too soggy to be enjoyable.

I really enjoyed lunch at SHO, especially my main course, but we had a couple problems with the service (the servers had to be reminded a couple times to refill our water glasses and the main server was a little short with us when we first arrived). I’d definitely return for dinner or even drinks; SHO’s Asian flavors with French execution made for a great meal!

Michelin Starred Restaurants

Now that the year is practically over (how did August creep up on me like that?) it’s time to assess the damage on my goal of dining at every Michelin-starred restaurant in New York. Luckily, I’ve been to a bunch of them previous to this year (and I decided I wasn’t going to repeat a restaurant if I’d been before), but I just counted and I still have 30 restaurants. THIRTY RESTAURANTS BEFORE DECEMBER 31st! It didn’t seem like a lot when I first finished counting, but in reality, it is a LOT of restaurants to cover before the end of the year.

My mom is here for the rest of the week and we’re knocking out as many as we can, but eating at these Michelin starred restaurants is definitely starting to make me feel AND LOOK like the Michelin man! I’m going to try to space out the dinners more, but would any of you lovely readers like to join me for dinner? We can discuss pop culture, our favorite restaurants, your pretty hair…anything! Here are the restaurants I haven’t visited yet:

Three Stars:
Daniel*
Masa

Two Stars:
Alto*
Corton*
Gilt
Gordon Ramsay at the London
Picholine

One Star:
Adour
Annisa
Anthos
A Voce*
Cafe Boulud
Convivio*
Dressler
Eleven Madison Park*
Insieme
Kajitsu*
Kyo Ya
L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon
Oceana
Perry Street
River Cafe*
Rouge Tomate*
Saul
Seasonal*
Shalizar*
Soto*
Sushi Azabu*
Sushi of Gari
Veritas
WD-50

*— a new addition

In case you were wondering, SHO Shaun Hargett is going to be posted next Monday – my mom and I had lunch there earlier this week and we had a great time! A preview:

Okay, now that I’m reviewing the list again, it does seem like a lot of restaurants, but I’m ready for the challenge! Send me an e-mail (gracenotesnyc@gmail.com) if you think you want to spend two hours with me…IT WILL BE FUN, I SWEAR!