Elmo!

We headed out for our usual Sunday brunch today. I asked my friend, John, a good place to eat (he’s lived in the city for a lot longer than both of us). He recommended Elmo Restaurant, a trendy brunch spot in Chelsea. Chris and I walked over and since I looked at the menu beforehand, we knew exactly what we wanted to order. The restaurant is really open – very 70’s-ish in decor, and has outdoor seating for people watching, which is great since it’s on 7th ave. I ordered the Monte Cristo:

Which is the best combination of sweet and salty in a sandwich (although, you really can’t go wrong with a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and stuffing). At Elmo, they add granny smith apples into the sandwich and put it on brioche bread, which adds a light sweetness to the salty swiss and ham/turkey combo. Look at the gobs of swiss cheese I ate:

The sandwich was definitely stick to your ribs good – the cheese was melted just enough so you could pick up the sandwich without it falling out, but warm enough that it melted to the different meats. I asked for jam since it didn’t come with any, and added gobs of strawberry preserves to the already unhealthy sandwich. 🙂 You only live once, right?

Chris ordered the french toast, which was also made on brioche bread, with caramelized apples on top:

The bread was sliced just thick enough so the egg batter seeped through the entire piece of brioche without making it soggy, making it one great piece of french toast. I’d say Elmo is a place we’d go back to.

Momofuku Ssam Bar and Grom

On Saturday, I went to check out Momofuku Ssam Bar in the East Village, one of David Chang’s restaurants serving delicious Asian-inspired burritos. Chris and I went to Momofuku (the original) on our first date and I wasn’t IMPRESSED, but I thought their grits and BBQ buns were good (although extremely expensive for the BBQ buns – $8 for two -especially because Fei Dai Bakery in Chinatown delivers the same thing for 85 cents). I heard a lot of good things about the Ssam Bar, so we decided to check it out.

The day was really beautiful (a little breezy but very sunny) and we walked into an empty restaurant, which was great since we were both starving (although strange, considering it was around 1PM and the last time we went to Momofuku, it was completely packed to the gills). Anyway, Momofuku Ssam Bar reminded me of an asian Chipotle – you can pick what kind of protein you want (berkshire pork, DUH), the starch (burrito, just rice, nothing at all), and the toppings you want:

I ordered the original ssam, which includes berkshire pork, rice, kimchee sauce, edamame, and shiitake mushrooms all wrapped in a nice burrito:

The burrito (or ssam) was definitely delicious and I felt like it was more healthy than eating at Chipotle (maybe because of the edamame and the shiitake mushrooms?). One downside – berkshire pork is REALLY unhealthy and I picked my burrito out of the reynolds wrap. I was halfway through my burrito when I noticed that a bunch of grease was dripping out of my burrito…mixed with the kimchee sauce. It was not a pretty site, especially because Chris didn’t undo his reynolds wrap and realized he was eating all the grease that wasn’t able to drip out of his burrito. I’d go there again, but I’d definitely watch my intake of the grease and maybe air it out or something before eating it.

After our Momofuku Ssam trip, I headed to the dentist to get my crown (it’s so pretty!) and then we headed to Grom, the new gelato store on the Upper West Side (straight from Italy!). When we walked up from 72nd street, we saw the line out the door and we were prepared for the long wait. It didn’t take that long (only 15 minutes, which isn’t bad for gelato, especially since I read so many great reviews about it). We decided on the luna rossa (the flavor of the month – raspberry with cream) and chocolate. A large was freaking $9 AND it was barely the size of my fist (something I was warned about…but I was also told that good things come in small packages, so I wasn’t too worried). A shot of the gelato:

The luna rossa was okay and the chocolate wasn’t that great. Actually, I thought the chocolate tasted exactly like the hot chocolate from City Bakery – good at first but then you feel like your mouth gets really dry from the chocolatey taste. Another con of Grom – they don’t accept credit cards yet (their machine was broken) and the guy working the cash register didn’t know how to count change (I swear, it took him a good minute to figure out how to give me my change back). Chris said maybe he was straight from Italy (where the gelato is from) and couldn’t figure out the change. Possible, but don’t you think if it’s extremely packed, they would put someone from the US at the register? I don’t think I’m going to go back anytime soon (especially since it’s so out of the way for me). I’ll stick to my Pinkberry and sample at Whole Foods Il Labatorio Gelato 🙂

After Grom, we headed to K-town for sol lung tang and Pinkberry (twice in one weekend!). I’m still deciding on the ice cream maker (wouldn’t it be SO much easier if I could make my own ice cream?!)

On a side note, congrats to Ariel, Josh, Elizabeth, Pam, and everyone else that graduated from school over the weekend!

Pop Burger

It’s been a full 10 days since I’ve updated! Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated, but I’ve been super busy with life. The 5K with Leo was amazing – we saw Mandy Moore, Jesse White (the detective from Law and Order), Trey from Sex and the City (sorry, I didn’t bother looking up his real name), Meredith Viera from the Today Show on NBC, and Chaka Khan! We had to walk the first part since the start time for the walkers/runners wasn’t staggered, but we ran most of the time. I’m getting ready for my 10K this weekend (I didn’t really run after the 5K as a reward to myself and then I realized I had a 10K coming up this weekend!!).

On Friday night, Chris and I headed to Pop Burger for some burgers and fries. Pop Burger serves miniature burgers in a little cardboard box (it reminded me of White Castle initially) and one order comes with two little bite-sized burgers. The decor of the place is really trendy and cute (and in the back, there’s even a bar where you can also order food):

The burgers come with American cheese and “pop sauce,” which, in my opinion, didn’t add too much to the burger. There was some spice in the burger to make it extra tasty, but the bun was a little too tough for me. I’d still say that Shake Shack is the best of all the burger places we’ve visited in the city. Afterwards, we headed to Pinkberry for shaved ice (it was the perfect night for the treat) and definitely got our money’s worth with the amount of frozen yogurt they put on the shaved ice :). It was probably the first time in all my visits to Pinkberry that I left without feeling like I paid too much to eat yogurt mixed with ice. I’m really tempted to buy an ice cream maker (partially for my birthday since it’s coming up), but that might be the most eccentric collection of kitchen appliances – a rice cooker, a pot, two cups, and an ice cream machine. I’m tempted though…I’ll let you know how it plays out.

Babbo NYC

On Tuesday night, I was lucky enough to get a reservation for Babbo for me and Chris. I just randomly called, got through (FINALLY), and they had a last minute cancellation. Babbo is the restaurant owned by Mario Batali, and the restaurant that basically put him on the map. (He’s the chef that always wears orange crocs. The restaurant is located in the west village on Waverly Place:

We decided to go with the traditional tasting menu ($75), even though we wanted to do one traditional tasting menu and one pasta tasting menu (they require full participation from the table, so we had to pick one or the other and the desserts on the traditional tasting menu sounded better. Plus, if we ordered the pasta tasting menu, we’d have to eat 6 different types of pasta, which would’ve been too many carbs, even for me). Before we even ordered, a waiter brought by some of their chickpea bruschetta:

It was an interesting take on bruschetta. I think it tasted more like tapenade mixed with chickpeas and balsamic vinegar, but the olives were definitely pureed, not chunky (if there were olives in it).

For our appetizer, we had bresaola with fiddleheads and pecorino:

I’ve never even SEEN fiddleheads before, but apparently, they’re the top parts of the fern that hasn’t fully matured (and that’s why they appear curled). The bresaola is the air dried salted beef and the pecorino is the little pieces of cheese made with sheep’s milk. At first, I was kind of scared to try the fiddleheads – they actually looked more like snails than anything else. I wrapped the fiddlehead and the pecorino in a piece of the bresaola and took a chance…it actually tasted great! The fiddlehead was REALLY crunchy and paired well with the meat and cheese (you couldn’t really taste the fiddlehead, but when I tasted it individually, I thought it tasted very…fern like).

Next, we had pappardelle with Chanterelles and Thyme. Chris’ comment: I know what Thyme is! (It was actually Chris’ favorite dish from the night):

Pappardelle actually means “large fettuccine” and Chanterelles is a type of mushroom that tastes super meaty. At first, I thought it might be meat (when you first bite into it, it tastes like…pot roast) but then there’s the definite chewiness that you would expect from a mushroom. The pappardelle was perfect (not overcooked – made al dente without being undercooked, either) and paired well with the mushroom, thyme, and Parmesan.

Our next dish was my least favorite out of all of the dishes we tried: duck tortelli with “sugo finto”:

I couldn’t find any definitions online (not even at epicurious.com), but it was a tortelli pasta with duck on the inside and a tomato sauce. Don’t get me wrong – I am a HUGE fan of duck…but this definitely did not taste anything like duck. The duck was pureed too fine and the texture wasn’t very appealing:

Why is it so grey?! Also, the tomato sauce, in my opinion, was a little too sweet/tart. I feel like they made the tomato sauce with grape tomatoes or something. Chris enjoyed the dish more than me…it’s not that I DIDN’T like it, I just wouldn’t be placing it on a tasting menu, where you’re supposed to be showcasing your restaurant’s specialties.

The main course was the grilled lamb loin with favetta and mint pesto, my personal favorite of the night:

The lamb was really tender (look how medium rare that is), the mint pesto added a kick, and the favetta (I’m guessing that’s some sort of legume) added a crunchy texture to the dish. I thought the mint pesto was really great and would’ve been a good addition to a pasta of some sort.

After the lamb, we basically moved onto dessert…weird, right? I thought there would be more substantial dishes (only one meat dish?). We had coach farm’s finest with fennel honey next:

We were both wondering what would come out (since we didn’t know what coach farm sold to begin with). The cheese was a goat cheese with peppercorns and fennel honey, which they dished out at the table. They also brought out little baguette’s to place the cheese on (only four pieces – you had to strategically place enough honey/cheese on each piece for maximum enjoyment…something Chris didn’t know. The cheese tasted like cheese from any grocery store and didn’t seem that special (sorry, Mario).

Our next dessert was vanilla bavarese with brown butter and laurel:

(Sorry about the picture quality – it got dark and I didn’t feel like using flash so I had to fill in the light myself). Bavarese is Italian for bavarian cream – look at the vanilla beans!! I thought this dessert was really light and could have used a crust of some sort to balance it out.

The next dessert was my favorite of the night: cioccolato e aceto (what?):

The chocolate had a great sauce on it and I couldn’t figure out what it was (a tart cherry sauce mixed with dark chocolate was my best guess). I looked it up online and cioccolato e aceto translates directly to chocolate with vinegar. Genius! The tartness from the vinegar paired really well with the chocolate and the white stuff on top was a light cream that was really delicious as well.

We thought our last dessert was going to be the warm apple and walnut budino with cinnamon gelato:

but we also got this:

The warm apple and walnut budino with cinnamon gelato was a type of dessert that’s really heavy (the budino was too nutty but the cinnamon gelato was surprisingly light…even though it was really creamy). The final dessert was like an almond pudding with almond gelato and candied apricots. I didn’t care for the almond pudding (or whatever it was) but the almond gelato reminded me of the Pistachio Pistachio ice cream from Ben and Jerry’s (minus the pistachios).

The dinner took two and a half hours total (they took a long time to bring out the last dessert). We thought the dinner was good, but nothing to write home about. I guess it’s something that you need to try out once (if I went back, I wouldn’t get the pasta tasting menu – I would probably order an appetizer and then a main course, instead). The service was great, our seats were great (we sat upstairs right below the skylight), and the energy at the restaurant is very positive (if that matters at all). Afterwards, Chris was still a little hungry, so we headed to Yolato for frozen yogurt (we couldn’t help ourselves!). I didn’t think it was that great the second time around and definitely prefer Pinkberry or Forty Carrots now.

This weekend, I’m running in my first 5K! I’m doing the Revlon Run/Walk with my friend, Leo, through Central Park. I’ve never really run in my life (and I still think I’m more of a fast walker than anything), so I’m really excited about doing the 5K (even though most people can do those without training at all). After this 5K, I’m doing a 10K in mid-May (for Kidney health, I think), and then another 10K in June (for women only). I love running in central park after work (especially around the reservoir because it’s really beautiful right around 6PM). I’m also going to try to play frisbee in central park after the 5K, see spiderman, and have brunch on Sunday. I’ll be back with updates this weekend!

The Brooklyn Cherry Blossom Festival

On Sunday afternoon, Chris and I headed to Brooklyn to attend the 26th Annual Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden:

I thought it was a perfect day to go (and so did 20,000 other people – it was so packed!). It’s a very short ride from Manhattan (take the 2,3) and it’s definitely worth it.

Pictures from our Brooklyn adventure:

The cherry blossoms haven’t FULLY blossomed since spring was so late this year, so I’d definitely be up for going again another weekend (and hopefully it won’t be as crowded!). I think anytime this week is perfect to go (as long as it doesn’t rain):