Thanksgiving Recap

We started our Thanksgiving celebrations the first weekend in November this year. Ken and I hosted my third annual NYC Friendsgiving potluck at our apartment and it turned out to be a huge success. We had a ton of food and great company and it was our first party in our apartment. Photos from our first party:

Our appetizers and sides included mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potates, spinach dumplings, spaghetti squash, bacon and cheese biscuits, chorizo stuffed mushrooms, and mung bean noodles with cucumbers and peanut sauce:

Our desserts included two pumpkin pies, chocolate cake, two pecan pies, floating islands, and homemade cookies that were made lovingly by Stephane:

Kristen made two different types of dip (seafood dip and spinach artichoke dip) and I ordered a cheese platter from Beechers:

We had so many dishes that I ran out of counter space! Hana made delicious baked ziti and Ken made stuffing:

All of us at our potluck:

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Ken and I flew to Chicago to spend time with both of our families. We had so much fun while we were in Chicago; Ken had to go into Chicago to work everyday but I stayed in the suburbs and hung out with his parents, sisters and niece and nephew. After we arrived on Saturday and settled in, we drove into the city to have Friendsgiving #2 with my friends Angie, Nat, John, and Tuesday. We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cheesecake, and pecan pie. It was so much food and I felt like we didn’t make a dent in the turkey because there were so many good sides.

On Sunday night, we celebrated Dr. Chen’s 70th birthday with a huge Chinese banquet in the suburbs. Monday – Wednesday were spent on meals at Portillos, Jimmy Johns, Walker Brothers, and Go Roma. On Thursday night, we went to Flo’s house to have Thanksgiving there – Ken and I helped out by making macaroni and cheese and Ken made the white rice (a huge contribution for an Asian Thanksgiving). We played with all of the little kids – Owen, on the left, just had a little sister on Monday:

On Friday, Ken’s parents invited my mom, David, Laura and her mom to the house to have another Thanksgiving dinner. We had beef tenderloin, salmon, carrots, asparagus, chocolate cake, fruit salad (Filipino style), Asian pears, and played LOTS of ping pong. The kids had a lot of fun playing with my brother and Laura, too. Sammy and Charley tried to balance as many pillows as possible on David’s head:

Me, Ken and the kids before they went to bed:

All of us:

As if all of the food we’d eaten during the week weren’t enough, on Saturday, Laura’s family invited us to their friend’s house to make dumplings and have another Thanksgiving meal:

By the time we arrived all of the dumplings were already boiling, but we made it just in time to sit down and eat all of the amazing food:

Tofu:

Chinese eggplant:

Polish bacon with wood ear mushrooms and leeks:

On Saturday night, Ken had his ten-year reunion – we went out for pizza beforehand (we had four different types of pizza and they were all pretty good). After the reunion, Ken was in the mood for more pizza so we ordered Pizzeria Due, drove home, and watched Breaking Bad while eating pizza and gulping seltzer.

Now we’re back in New York, trying to get back into shape for Mexico, and enjoying New York’s unseasonably warm weather. We can’t believe there are only three weeks until we’re spending Christmas in Mexico!

Needless to say, we are not in the mood for turkey and can definitely go without a huge meal for a while. What did you do for Thanksgiving?

Humphry Slocombe

The night before we headed back to New York, I wanted to try some local San Francisco ice cream. When I was organizing a social event a while back, I ordered ice cream sandwiches from It’s It but I actually wanted to order foie gras ice cream sandwiches from Humphry Slocombe. My friend Cliff told me about it (he’s my food connection on the west coast) but ever since he mentioned them, it’s been on my mind. Luckily, it wasn’t too far from where we were hanging out so I was able to stop in for their ice cream!

I thought the shop was going to be more kitschy, but it’s actually very plain from the outside:

The interior has a double cow head:

And cute seating:

They make ice cream flavors in their shop and the flavors change all the time – sadly, they didn’t have any foie gras ice cream when we were in town but they did have these flavors:

They’re super generous with samples (I ended up trying all of them) and my friend ended up getting coffee and secret breakfast:

And I ordered the oolong tea on a cone:

I loved all of the flavors and really wanted to get a huge ice cream sundae with a ton of scoops but felt really full from dinner so decided against doing the double scoop. The oolong tea was really smooth and creamy and had the great taste of quality oolong tea. The secret breakfast was also really good – it reminded me of the combinations Momofuku Milk Bar does (although to be completely honest, Humphry Slocombe’s was a tad better!) So glad I finally had a chance to visit Humphry Slocombe!

Calafia

Two weekends ago, I made a very quick trip to San Francisco to visit some friends and family. When I arrived in San Francisco, I hopped on the Cal Train, met up with my friend Cliff at the Palo Alto station, and went to Calafia, the restaurant started by the Google Chef. The restaurant is just like the Google cafeteria, except you have to pay for things (Cliff has taken me to Google’s cafeteria many times for lunch in both New York and Mountain View and the food is always very good). The restaurant is located in a shopping center that also has a Trader Joe’s, a cupcake shop, and lots of cute restaurants and stores:

We went for Sunday brunch and it was super busy both outdoors and indoors but were able to get seats by the window. We decided to share the chicken and waffles:

And Calafia’s take on Huevos Rancheros:

They try to use local, fresh organic ingredients (originally they suggested I add avocado to my order but they were actually out because the season is almost over). The chicken and waffles were really delicious – instead of using a heavy batter on the chicken, they dipped it in a fluffy tempura batter to make the chicken lighter. The waffles are also bacon waffles, so you get a good combo of sweet and salty in every bite. My huevos rancheros was also a good pick – light, fresh, and the eggs tasted very good (especially the yolk!)

Calafia also has a little deli/store connected to the restaurant where they sell salad by the pound (Cliff said it looked exactly like the Google cafeteria) and you can eat there as well if you’re by yourself. Super cute – I definitely want to return!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today Ken and I are celebrating our third Thanksgiving meal together (our first was our potluck, which I will write about eventually and our second was last weekend in Chicago with my friends Angie, Nat, Tuesday and John). I am so grateful to have a wonderful group of friends and family! We are having a huge dinner tonight with Ken’s family and another huge dinner tomorrow with both of our families. I will definitely post photos after I get back to the city. For now, photos from our potluck from early November:

And all of our friends in New York:

We are spending the weekend in Chicago and hanging out with our friends and family. Happy thanksgiving!

Le Bernardin

For Ken’s birthday, we were lucky enough to have both parents visiting us in New York. We wanted to go somewhere special (it was our parents’ last night in the city) so I was lucky enough to score a reservation from Le Bernardin’s wonderful PR department. We were very excited to see the redesigned space and Ken was really excited to eat lots of lobster. The last time I visited Le Bernardin was in 2007; I had a wonderful meal there and thought the tasting menu was absolutely amazing, especially since it was so focused on seafood and not many other different types of proteins. This time was even better; the decor was updated and much more airy and open, the food remains consistently delicious and beautifully presented and the service is one of the best and most accommodating out of high-end restaurants.

The family decided to do a four course tasting instead of the seven course; we had lunch at The Modern earlier that afternoon and none of us were prepared for a larger meal. The menu is separated into four different sections: almost raw, barely touched, lightly cooked and then dessert. We started with a celebratory toast of champagne and then were presented with lots of different bread options. My favorite was definitely the rosemary olive baguette (same as last time!) but the raisin bread was also very fantastic:

The bread is brought to your table, still warm from the oven, and is accompanied with salted butter:

As an amuse bouche, we were served house cured salmon with pumpernickel bread, chanterelle mushrooms with herbs and lobster bisque:

The chanterelle mushrooms were so meaty and flavorful that my mom actually asked if it was on the menu! Sadly, it wasn’t, but I assured everyone that the best was yet to come. The lobster bisque was the best lobster bisque Ken’s ever had; rich and the small shot of soup had large chunks of lobster claw, the most tender portion of the lobster!

It’s really difficult choosing what to order at a restaurant where everything is great, however, I was really pleased with all of our choices. For the almost raw portion, Ken’s parents started with the mesclun salad, a salad with market herbs and vegetables with Balsamic-shallot vinaigrette:

Ken ordered the cured wild salmon with pickled sunchoke and heart of palm and a cardamom-ginger vinaigrette:

My mom ordered the wild striped bass tartare with baby fennel, crispy artichoke, black olive oil and lemon:

And I ordered the fluke sashimi with micro watercress, avocado and Jalapeno lime broth:

For our next course, we all ordered something different – Ken had the ultra-rare tuna:

Ken’s mom ordered the peekytoe crab with tequila guacamole and potato crisps and an Aji pepper-lime emulsion:

I ordered the Octopus with purple basil, fermented black bean, peach sauce vierge, and ink-miso vinaigrette:

I don’t remember the name of the dish Ken’s dad ordered, but the presentation was beautiful:

I think it might have been a butter poached lobster tail with purple potatoes:

For our main course, my mom started with the crispy black bass with pickled cucumbers and black garlic-Persian lime sauce:

Pickled cucumbers:

Ken and his mom both ordered baked Maine lobster with a eggplant terrine and whiskey-black peppercorn sauce:

Pouring the peppercorn sauce:

And Ken’s dad and I both ordered the barely cooked wild salmon in a yuzu emulsion:

Me with the birthday boy:

And a photo of all of us before we started our main courses:

My wild salmon was tender like tofu (it really was barely cooked) and it was seasoned with just a little sea salt and yuzu. The servers even brought more yuzu sauce because I had already used all of it before I could finish all of the salmon! I left a couple bites of the salmon because it was just too much food (especially with the multiple servings of raisin bread that I ended up having) but I think everyone was full (but not stuffed).

As we transitioned to dessert, we were presented with an egg shell filled with milk chocolate pot de creme, caramel foam maple syrup and a grain of salt, appropriately called “The Egg”:

I ordered the chocolate olive oil cake with marcona almond and toasted bread:

Ken’s mom ordered the banana praline pate fueilletee with caramelized banana and hazelnut praline cream:

Ken ordered the peanut; salted peanut caramel with maralumi milk chocolate and malted milk crunch:

My mom ordered the concord grape; light citrus cheese cake, concord grape sphere and pine nut sable:

And Ken’s dad ordered the yuzu parfait with crispy sesame rice, ginger and green tea ice cream:

We passed all of the desserts around, including Ken’s birthday cake, and really enjoyed all of them. My favorite was the concord grape because it has interesting concord grape spheres that popped when you lightly punctured it. The other desserts were good (but not as good as I remembered – the taste of the rich chocolate dessert I had back in 2007 is still on my mind!). We were presented with four small desserts to end our night:

A caramel filled chocolate, a cannelle, an Earl Grey macaron and a pate a choux filled with pastry cream. My favorite was definitely the cannelle – those are difficult to find really good ones and Le Bernardin’s were excellent (and very cute!)

We had a really amazing time at Le Bernardin and now it’s another restaurant we can put into our ‘special restaurant’ repertoire. We saw Eric Ripert walking around the dining room, greeting regulars and first time guests. It’s always nice to see restaurant owners/chefs putting time and effort into their restaurant, especially after they become famous (Chef Ripert has his own show on PBS, is on the Today show all the time and he used to guest judge on Top Chef!)