The Friendly Toast

The day after the wedding, Ken and I went for a run around the town and saw a lot of people waiting outside of The Friendly Toastc:

We walked inside because it looked like a good contender for brunch and saw the kitschy decorations:

And decided to put our names down for brunch. It was going to be a 20 minute wait so we decided to cut our run short, head back to the hotel, pack, and meet Adam and Christine for brunch a bit early. By the time we arrived back at The Friendly Toast it was pretty late (and they had already called our names multiple times) but the hostess seated us right away. The menu has so many choices we were really overwhelmed but we all kind of had an idea of what we wanted to eat based on the items we saw being served at nearby tables.

Christine ordered a fish burrito with fries:

Adam ordered a breakfast burrito with hash browns:

And Ken ordered the Ole Miss breakfast combo:

I was so excited with all the large portions of food that I was photographing and I totally forgot to take a photo of my dish, the Sklarmaggeden.

Christine and Adam liked their burritos but Ken and I were less satisfied with our dishes. My omelette was “built to kill”; it contained bacon, sausage, ham, chili-dusted pecans, cheese, and sour cream. A meatopia (probably not a great choice before a long car ride home) but it was decent without the pecans. The pecans were crunchy at all, actually, very soggy and tasted stale. Ken’s dish came with scrambled eggs, sausage, mango sour cream, and sweet potatoes. A little too heart-attack inducing for all of us (although Ken did try his best to eat as much as possible). The dishes we chose were a little too ambitious, especially after eating surf and turf at Kristen’s wedding and filling up at their raw bar (with even more shrimp cocktail, oysters, and lobster cocktail).

On top of mediocre food, the service was absolutely terrible it was almost laughable. The waitress was really unfriendly (and when I asked her about the specials, she didn’t know them and didn’t want to find out what they were because she said it would have just confused us with choices). Also, it took her about five tries to get our water orders correct and went back and forth to the kitchen another four or five times to get a pad to take on order on. Not great service, not great food, but the portions are large and the decorations are interesting.

Neta

My good friend Erika recently came back to New York after a three-month sabbatical. To celebrate, we decided to meet up for dinner at the newly opened Japanese restaurant, Neta. Erika is the one that brought me to Ken’s birthday party almost two years ago, and without her, Ken and I would never have had the opportunity to meet. She was also very excited to hear about our engagement because she had been out of the country when Ken proposed and hadn’t heard the story yet.

We were both really excited to visit the restaurant; it had been open for about a month when we visited and it was started by two chefs from Masa; the former head chef from Bar Masa, Jimmy (our chef during dinner) and Nick, the former head chef of Masa. We had a late reservation on a Monday night at the sushi bar. We were reviewing the a la carte menu options but kept going back to the omakase listed at the beginning of the menu. We decided to order the more expensive omakase menu because everything sounded good and because Erika just told me that she was actually leaving New York for a position back in San Francisco!

The first course of the omakase was the salad of Dungeoness crab:

The salad is a mixture of large chunks of sweet crab, cucumbers and a light dashi vinaigrette that was served room temperature. It was really refreshing and crisp – a very nice way to start our meal.

Our next course was something that was taken from Masa – a very indulgent serving of caviar and tuna belly. Here’s Chef Jimmy preparing the course:

The toast pieces are perfectly warm and the tuna and caviar were fantastic:

Our next course was the grilled scallop with sea urchin:

The scallop was barely touched by the heat and we squeezed the lime on both the sea urchin and scallop to have the acidity cook both. It was sweet, brine-like, and another refreshing course.

Next, a really beautiful course of sushi – Kinuta Maki Ponzu:

There was a layer of shiso leaf that overpowered the taste of the fish but the light taste of ponzu was a good combination with the lightly flavored fluke and tempura leaves. The white on the outside is a thinly sliced piece of daikon that was marinated beforehand.

Next, tempura:

The leaf was lightly fried as well as a small bunch of corn:

Next, uni risotto with shaved flakes of black truffle:

Everyone raves about the uni risotto and for good reason; it’s creamy with a faint taste of the sea and the truffle brings a little decadence to the dish.

After the risotto, we started with the sushi –

Jimmy preparing the abalone liver:

The abalone and abalone liver sushi:

A very interesting preparation of abalone but the type of abalone was a bit too chewy and ruff. I’m used to abalone being smooth and just a little chewy, this was almost the texture of bubble gum. A woman came in around the time we were on this course and she sat down even though the restaurant was closing – it turns out that she’s an investor of the restaurant (along with her boss) and she eats there a lot to make sure the quality remains high. She agreed with the texture of the abalone and was saying that they should try a new vendor.

Can anyone ever have enough sea urchin:

(BTW – the answer is a definite YES. I ate almost an entire tray of sea urchin when my friends came over because they ended up not liking it and I didn’t want it to go to waste!)

Pickled cucumbers:

We struck up a conversation with the investor and she offered us some sake to round out our meal:

And a few more courses of sushi:

A shiso leaf with rice:

And we finished with the peanut butter ice cream:

The dinner was incredibly delicious and we both left extremely satisfied. I love how casual the restaurant can feel but it serves such amazing sushi. I felt much more full after my meal here than when I dined at Masa and a very similar happiness after eating all of that great fish! It reminded me a lot of Soto; a restaurant I could go to for a weeknight dinner or to celebrate a special occasion (and I can’t wait to return!)

Surf Seafood

After Kristen’s beautiful ceremony, Christine, Adam, Ken and I had a couple of free hours before heading to the reception. Ken looked up some restaurants and we settled on some seafood at a local restaurant, Surf. We were about to eat a lot of seafood at Kristen and Waising’s wedding but decided to eat a little more for a snack.

We started with oyster shooters – bloody mary mixed with a shot of vodka and an oyster at the bottom:

Definitely hard to swallow, especially with so much vodka! Ken and I shared more oysters:

And the mussels with tomatoes:

Adam ordered the jumbo shrimp:

And Christine ordered the lobster cocktail:

Everything was decent, although I think we all got more than tipsy from the oyster shooter (and the dirty martini didn’t help, either!) The food was ok – nothing amazing – but the views were nice and it was a nice place to stop before heading to the wedding reception.

Diner

On Sunday, Ken and I went to dinner with Hana and Hughie in Brooklyn at Diner. I was really excited to try Diner because I am a huge fan of Marlow and Sons – we were either going to Diner or Fish but since it was really hot and Fish doesn’t have great air conditioning, we decided to drive to Brooklyn and eat at Diner!

The exterior is less than impressive but the inside is actually really beautiful with candles and nice tiling along the wall. Everyone was very hipster-like and they don’t even have menus – they write everything on the table:

The menu is based on what’s available in season (except the burger – that is always available). We decided to order a bit of everything and share. We started with the succotash:

The succotash had fresh corn, bacon, and okra and was sauteed together to make a really delicious starter. It was really light, even with the large pieces of bacon in the dish!

We also had smoked salmon:

Also delicious – another light preparation of salmon, even though it was cured, it was mixed with fruit and cubes of beets.

Next, we did a pasta dish – handmade fettuccine – with lamb meatballs and zucchini:

For our main courses, we had the pork chop with heirloom tomatoes:

The braised short ribs:

The NY Strip steak with fried corn on the cob:

The main courses were all so amazing, especially the short ribs that were served with a light short rib jus and watercress. The NY Strip was very flavorful (and cooked to a beautiful merdium rare) and the pork chop was very light, especially with the heirloom tomatoes and eggplant.

For dessert, we decided to order all three desserts they had that night! First, the blueberry tart with creme fraiche:

Next, the basil panna cotta with cherries:

And finally, the beautiful and absolutely amazing flourless chocolate cake:

The desserts were all really well done (although I was not a huge fan of the blueberry tart). The basil panna cotta was light and a little underset but had a nice fresh flavor and tasted good with the cherries and shortbread cookies. My favorite dessert was the flourless chocolate cake. I usually associate flourless chocolate cakes with a really heavy cake with just butter, cream and chocolate, but this cake was light, airy, and had an amazingly deep chocolate flavor. I hope they always have this cake because EVERYONE needs to try it. IMMEDIATELY!

Me and Ken after dinner:

Run, don’t walk, to Diner – the food is absolutely amazing!

Harry’s Bishop’s Corner

Last week, Christine, Adam, Ken and I took a roadtrip to New Hampshire for Kristen and Waising’s wedding. The wedding was in Maine and absolutely beautiful (Kristen and Waising both looked incredibly happy the entire night and the food was in the top three of all wedding food we’ve had). We left New York on Friday night around 7:30 and none of us even had a chance to get dinner so we stopped off in West Hartford for a bite to eat. We looked up places to go and Adam remembered a good pizza place so we looked it up and found Harry’s Bishop’s Corner. It was a slight detour from our path to the hotel but we were all starving so we decided to make the trip. Plus, when are we all going to be in West Hartford again? Harry’s Bishop’s Corner is only open until 10 PM so we were cutting it pretty close because we arrived around 9:40!

The restaurant is located in a shopping center:

As we were getting out of the car, Christine and Ken asked if we were sure this place was the restaurant we wanted to go to. Too late to get back in the car and find another restaurant…everything in West Hartford closes too early!

We started off with the baby spinach salad with bacon and mushrooms:

The pizzas all sounded really good but I read a review saying we should definitely get the seasonal pies. We liked the sound of two of the three specialty pies so we asked if we could get both specialty pies –

Pollo Al Rosmarino – White pie with herb roasted chicken, provolone, crimini mushroom, and a roasted garlic and rosemary puree and the other half, Polpettina – Red pie with smoked mozzarella, handmade meatball, roasted red pepper, and fresh basil:

Adam was very excited to take his first slice:

And I started with both:

Both were very good; crispy crust (they have at least six ovens back there!) and very interesting toppings. The rosemary puree added a lot of flavor to the chicken pizza, my preferred half of the pie. Both were very good but the chicken was just slightly better (a little fresher flavor). I liked the roasted red peppers on the red side of the pie but the meatballs didn’t have enough flavor.

If you dine in, you get free Italian ice for dessert:

Yum! At the wedding, we ran into Kristen’s friends that grew up in West Hartford – their parents get pizza from Harry’s Bishops’ Corner all the time! A good place for pizza if you’re in West Hartford but not worth a special trip out there. Luckily, it was on our way to Maine!