On Wednesday night, my friend from college, Nick, invited me out to dinner at Jean Georges’ Nougatine Room, located in the Trump Tower and Hotel by Columbus Circle. We both decided on the tasting menu ($68/person for dinner), which allowed us to sample a little bit of everything. We started out with a treat from the chef, which was a piece of shrimp with a mint pesto on top paired with a mango soup:
And a close up of the mint and shrimp:
The shrimp was cooked JUST right – like it had just been dipped in hot water and then taken out so it wasn’t overcooked. It went really nicely with the mint pesto, which felt like you were cleaning your mouth AND eating food at the same time! The mango soup was tasty, but tasted kind of like juice…a small portion of juice. I’m not quite sure why Jean Georges thought the shrimp and the mango juice paired well together.
Next, we had a champagne mango and goat cheese salad with black olive and micro basil:
This was actually my favorite course of the night. The mangoes were sweet but not too sweet (good thinking of soaking the mangoes in champagne) and the goat cheese was so incredibly creamy it melted in your mouth. The basil was a fresh twist (I swear, I LOVE basil and I’m still working on a lemon basil sorbet) and the olives added the salt that the goat cheese was missing. It was great and also paired really well with the Riesling the waiter recommended.
After our wonderful mango and goat cheese salad, we had a foie gras brulee with muscat grape, tarragon, and ruby grapefruit salad:
One of Nick’s favorite dishes of the night. I, on the other hand, didn’t find the dish to be that special. It was too salty (especially with the burnt crust) and the grapefruit couldn’t balance out the heaviness of the foie gras. Also, the foie gras was placed on a small piece of bread, but the proportion of foie gras to bread was 2:1, which added even more salt to the dish.
The fish we had was a skate fish (it’s closely related to the stingray) with a spinach ravioli and bacon bits on top:
The fish had a nice crust on the outside and was very flaky and had a very similar texture to scallops. The ravioli was a little too plain for my taste (it didn’t need salt or anything, but the actual pasta was either overcooked or just too big compared to the filling inside).
Our final dish (before dessert) was short ribs marinated in various vinaigrettes with 
lima beans and a hint of lime:
The short ribs, another favorite of Nick’s, was a little too salty for me. I didn’t think the lime added a good flavor to the short ribs (the waiter said that the chef recommended we use it) and I think they marinated the short ribs in the vinaigrettes too long. There wasn’t the natural flavor from the short ribs, only a salty taste (in my opinion). Nick really enjoyed it, though.
For dessert, we had another sampling: jean-georges chocolate cake (a chocolate molten cake), vanilla ice cream with cookie crumbs, a strawberry rhubarb soup with vanilla chantilly, and a spongecake with coconut vanilla mousse with a side of passion fruit:
Jean-georges chocolate cake tasted exactly like a lava cake:
The cake was REALLY sweet (lava cakes usually are) and the vanilla ice cream with chocolate crumbs didn’t help. Nick really liked the chocolate cake (he’s a fan of all kinds of chocolate) and he also like the cookie crumbs with the vanilla ice cream (they were very similar to oreo cookies, so it was like cookies and cream ice cream!).
The spongecake with coconut vanilla mousse and passion fruit was slightly less sweet, which I preferred (even though I’m not a huge fan of coconut):
The passion fruit was just the right amount of tang that the mousse needed. I would’ve preferred a lighter spongecake (this cake was similar to spongecake but was actually cheese based). Overall, I think the tasting menu was heavier than the menu from Babbo (the original tasting menu, at least), but not better. The tasting menu was a great way to try out the restaurant’s menu, especially since the regular menu had a lot of choices that were interesting. It was great seeing Nick (I haven’t seen him in over a year!) and catching up with all the changes in Champaign and Chicago – thanks for the wonderful evening! 馃檪
Tuesday night, Chris and I headed to Soho Park for a quick bite to eat. Soho Park is a great place to go after a long day of shopping in Soho (or bargain hunting in Chinatown) – they have an outdoor area and the entire restaurant looks like a garage (or a park):
They have great burgers and fries (Chris’ office orders from there once in a while) – we ordered cheeseburgers:
The cheeseburgers are similar to Shake Shack’s (but not as good, in my opinion). The meat is slightly salty, the bun is soft and buttery, and there’s a special sauce that adds a little kick to the cheeseburger. We also ordered fries:
Crispy, but the pieces weren’t big enough! I guess we got the bottom of the barrel because most of the pieces we had were little baby bites. Overall, it’s a good place to eat for a quick bite – their service isn’t great (it took us forever to flag down the waitress because the restaurant is definitely understaffed) but a great burger that’s very similar to Shake Shack’s. And, in the summer time, you can definitely enjoy a nice beer in their garden area.
We went to Time Out’s 2007 pick for best brunch for our weekly brunch date: Clinton St. Baking Company. I read a bunch of reviews saying that this place is absolutely amazing….and it IS. Clinton St. Baking Company is on the Lower East Side where patrons line up BEFORE they open, just so they don’t have to wait around for a table. Since I usually wake up pretty late on the weekends – don’t even think about calling me before 12 on Sundays – we had to wait. When I put our name down, I was thinking, okay, maybe 45 minutes…but no, we were told an hour and a half! Seriously?…we questioned if it was worth it. I put our name down and went outside to wait and to discuss whether or not it was worth it for food. While we were waiting, the hostess came out…with little pancakes and maple butter:
NO JOKE! She came out and offered samples for all the people waiting (how nice is that?! And look at how many people were willing to wait at least an hour for food!). One bite of the fluffy pancakes and we sat down and started reading our magazines to pass the time…it was DEFINITELY worth it and we were willing to wait. One little pancake the size of a quarter convinced us to wait an hour and a half for food…but then it got better because another waitress came out with THIS:
A waffle with fresh strawberries, lemon marscapone, graham cracker crumbles, and chocolate drizzled on top. Oh.my.god. It was SO incredibly good AND they only had ONE waffle, so there weren’t that many samples, but Chris and I EACH got our own piece! The waffles were so crispy and browned on the outside and yet so warm and fluffy on the inside….have you ever had waffles so good?
We were seated an hour and a half later and luckily, got a seat right by the window – perfect for a sunny afternoon to people watch. Clinton St. Baking Company is probably most famous for their blueberry pancakes – they’re warm, fluffy, and the syrup that comes with the pancakes is so buttery-and-bad-for-you-but-you-eat-it-anyway-because-it’s-so-tasty. A full menu in case you wanted to check it out for yourself. We ordered blueberry pancakes:
How delicious do those look? The secret, apparently, is to add egg whites RIGHT before you put the waffles on the griddle. Also, you have to make sure the temperature is just right (just right being hot but not too hot…how can you tell?!). The maple butter is out of this world and I usually don’t like too much syrup on pancakes because it’s too sweet, but I doused my pancakes with syrup because I seriously couldn’t get enough of it – sweet and buttery – the worst combination for your health! Another shot of the pancakes:
Chris ordered the southern breakfast (since we always switch plates halfway through the meal, we try to get something we’d both like to eat). The southern breakfast includes two eggs (we chose scrambled), grits (yum-oh!), four pieces of honey cured bacon, and fried-green tomatoes:
The eggs were slightly runny (in a good way…maybe they were just moist?) and so fluffy (how do they do it?!), the honey cured bacon was probably the fattest thing I’ve ever eaten but so delicious I ate all of it, the grits were cheesy and stick to your ribs/thighs good, and the fried green tomatoes were ok. You can’t be perfect, right? I think the fried green tomatoes could’ve used a little kick – maybe a little Tabasco sauce to make them spicier.
We also shared a biscuit, warm and fresh out of the oven:
Chris thought the biscuits at The Waverly Inn were better and I thought the biscuit needed more honey or sugar in their recipe. The biscuit was good, but not memorable. I think it was a little too crumbly and if they used more butter, it would’ve stayed together better (but I’m glad they didn’t because I consumed so much fatty food that as I write this, I still cannot force myself to eat anything). It also came with raspberry jam, which was delicious and homemade:
Brunch was definitely worth the hour and a half (but only once in a while) and afterwards, Chris and I walked around the lower east side and enjoyed the wonderful Sunday afternoon. This Thursday night is our birthday celebration and then we’re headed to Martha’s Vineyard to celebrate our birthday’s! I can’t wait!!!!!
By
grace.g.yang
路 May 22, 2007
Under:
My Life One of my roommates from senior year, Joe, sent THIS to my office today:
Isn’t that sweet? Strawberries, cantaloupes, grapes, pineapple, and chocolate covered bananas! What a sweet way to say happy birthday. 馃檪 Thank you, Joey!
Edit:
Look at what happened after me and my officemates devoured the fruit arrangement:
Pointy safety hazard!!…but so delicious!
On Saturday night, since it was raining and cold, Chris and I decided to cook dinner instead of going out for pizza (our original plan). We picked up some groceries at Whole Foods and then headed back to make our pasta dinner. In the past, I’ve had a really bad experience with whole wheat (need I remind readers of the gnocchi incident?). This time, we tried fusilli pasta and it turned out to be a huge success. We picked up some organic sausage (mild Italian), bell peppers (red, green, yellow, and orange), a yellow union, mushrooms, organic marinara sauce, and Lorina’s sparkling raspberry lemonade. We added the bell peppers, onions, and mushroom to the marinara sauce, cooked the pasta, and then mixed everything together (adding in the sausage after the marinara was done). The result:
A really simple and easy dinner to make, but it was SO tasty that Chris went back for THIRDS! Our table:
I think the best marinara to use is Whole Foods’ store brand (it’s cheap – under $2 – and very delicious). The marinara from Whole Foods is also really easy to experiment with – we made a cream sauce using the marinara when we made gnocchi that was really delicious as well. After dinner, we watched the season finale of SNL (did they forget how to be funny?) and then watched the finale of The Office again (I LOVED the ending and cannot wait until next season!).
