We celebrated my boss’ birthday at Tarallucci E Vino, a restaurant that I’ve walked past a million times but have never bothered to go into because I thought it was run down and ghetto (probably because when I walked past it, there was a ton of contruction going on in the area so the restaurant was hidden behind scaffolding). To my surprise, the interior is very rustic and it’s a really nice restaurant – we sat at a large farm table and I ordered the octopus with potatos and celery:
The plates for lunch are pretty simple and use fresh ingredients (other people ordered a beet salad, sandwiches, or pasta) and there is also a large coffee bar in the front with lots of fresh pastries. The restaurant was very busy for lunch when we went on a weekday afternoon and I’ve read that it’s a popular spot for VCs for their morning meetings and coffee. I definitely wish I knew about this place when I lived down the street but luckily my office isn’t too far from this wonderful little spot so I plan on visiting again soon.
When Nespresso contacted me asking if I wanted to review their red CitiZ machine, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I started dabbling in coffee late last year (starting with a coffee press and beans from illy and Trader Joes) but I’ve never made cappuccinos or espressos at home because I don’t have the right equipment. Making coffee at home is a struggle, anyway, because 1. the clean up is a hassle with a coffee press (coffee grounds that don’t go down the sink), 2. it takes too much time for the coffee to get ready (I read that it takes seven minutes before the coffee is ready for stirring so that’s what I do) and 3. I usually can’t finish the entire container of coffee before it gets stale (or loses its aroma). Well, this Nespresso solves basically all of my problems:
I love the color because it matches my other appliances (my KitchenAid mixer and my Sodastream) and because it’s so easy to use. The Nespresso came with a ton of pods that contain the coffee so there’s no mess and practically no clean up involved, either. The machine has a handy water container that you fill up so you don’t have to fill it everyday:
The espresso is finished in about a minute and this is all you have to clean up:
The pods all have different flavors with varying levels of caffeine (there are decaffeinated pods, too!) The regular flavors are about 55 cents each and the specialty flavors are around 62 cents per pod. I’ve read some complaints that the pods are expensive, but if you think about how much you spend at Starbucks each day, the pods are super cheap. I go through a pod a day and I keep the machine at Ken’s place because he loves using it as well.
Pros:
– Easy to use; we didn’t even read the instructions before starting to play with it
– Very fast; we usually don’t have that much time in the mornings and this machine takes less than two minutes from start to finish
– No clean up; the pods are clean and we never have to deal with coffee grounds
– Small; it doesn’t take up that much coveted counter space!
Cons:
– Loud; the first time Ken ran the machine, it woke me up from the other room (I’m used to the noise now)
– Temperature; the espresso comes out at the perfect temperature so if you put milk in it, the espresso becomes a little warm. The model we have at our office comes with a milk frother (which solves the temperature problem at work) but at home, we have to heat up the milk.
The things I dislike about the machine are very minor and I really think the machine is great. Some other people complained that the pods aren’t customizable but I think the flavors are so great that Ken and I are huge fans of the machine and have been using it everyday since I received it from Nespresso!
By
grace.g.yang
· February 28, 2011
Under:
Weekend Diet On Friday, Ken and I had a pretty laid back night because we were both tired from our long week of work. We decided to do a no fuss dinner and ended up ordering sushi from Nomado 33, one of our favorite take out places these days. We ordered an eel and avocado roll, spicy tuna roll, a pizza roll that came with spicy tuna, eel, avocado, snow crab with eel sauce, 3 color tobiko and spicy mayo eel sauce, and another crazy roll that filled us up while we watched a marathon of DC Cupcakes at Ken’s place.
On Saturday, we woke up at the crack of dawn (or 5:30) to get ready for our ski trip to Hunter with Laura and David. Laura picked up bagels on Friday night so we had bagels with lox and green onion spread and then the organizers of the ski trip picked up bagels as well. The trip up to Hunter ended up being a carb fest and I think I hate 2 and a half bagels, a lot of cream cheese, and a couple strips of lox. It was a perfect day for skiing and when we went in for lunch, we ordered a ton of bad food – macaroni and cheese, clam chowder, tacos, and a large turkey sandwich on foccacia. The sandwich and mac and cheese were really bad (overcooked noodles and the sandwich was just…not good). We ended up having a lot of fun skiing in the afternoon and then took the longest bus ride home ever (four hours because the bus driver had no idea where he was going). When we got dropped off, Ken and I decided to grab a pizza at John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker – we ordered a pitcher of diet coke and drank it all, a pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and peppers, and a salad for good measure.
On Sunday, we spent the morning at Per Se, one of my favorite restaurants in the world. So the background story: when Ken and I first met, he asked me about my favorite restaurants. I listed Per Se, Le Bernardin, and Marea (hey, they are my favorites!) He said he wanted to take me there for our first date and I told him it was a four hour meal that was probably best to be saved for a later date. We ended up going to Corton on our first date (practically the same as Per Se!) and decided to visit Per Se for a late Valentine’s day celebration. We had a wonderful meal starting with my favorite salmon cone with creme fraiche:
And ended with so many desserts (the desserts from the lunch tasting was actually not that good but the extra desserts were awesome) – coffee:
And fresh brioche doughnuts:
I think that sums it up for my hedonistic weekend…Ken and I are heading to St. Maarten at the end of the week – maybe I can top this weekend diet!
I made a quick trip to the Limelight Marketplace to get gelato with Ken after a long week of work. There were a lot of flavors to choose from, but we settled with yogurt with berries and mocha with chocolate chips:
The yogurt was my pick because it wasn’t overly sweet like the other flavors we sampled. The mocha with chocolate chips was a little too much for both of us; it was way too sweet and after a couple of bites, it just tasted like we were eating spoonfuls of sugar.
Baci gelato has other offerings like crepes, orange juice and shakes, but I’d stay away from the gelato unless you’re into the super sweet.
For our first Valentine’s day, Ken and I decided to celebrate on Saturday night at Wolfgang’s Steahouse in Tribeca. I had never visited the steakhouse before but Ken was in the mood for steak when we were brainstorming ideas for places to go on Valentine’s day and I agreed that it was a good idea. The steakhouse is located next to one of my favorite restaurants, Il Mattone, and was opened by waiters from Peter Luger’s. Our reservation was for 8:30 but the restaurant was so packed that we weren’t seated for another hour (which was a huge bummer because we were both starving).
The restaurant reminded me of Del Frisco’s in midtown because the crowd all looked a little older (at other steakhouses, I’ve noticed the customers skew towards men but they’ve usually all been a little younger than the people at Wolfgang’s). We had a general idea of what we wanted to order (steak, bacon, and wine) but then also added the Wolfgang salad:
The salad was simple but surprisingly good; half a head of lettuce served as the bowl that was filled with tomatoes, large chunks of shrimp, onions, roasted red peppers, green beans, bacon, and tossed with a lighthouse vinaigrette. The salad was slightly underseasoned but I’m guessing it’s because the bacon was so overseasoned that they wanted to balance it out. The waiter tried to dissuade us from ordering the extra strips of bacon because we were also ordering the salad with bacon, but seriously, how can you not order the thick strips of bacon when you visit a steakhouse?
The bread basket was pretty plain – although I’m not a huge fan of onion bread I think Peter Luger’s bread basket is still a lot better than the bread from Wolfgang’s:
I lent my camera to David and Laura for their vacation to Brazil so I was stuck with an older camera that didn’t cooperate after our bread basket. The rest of the pictures are from my iphone (and I didn’t want to use flash!) so they’re little dark. Our steak for two, medium rare:
The steak had a much crunchier crust than other steaks I’ve had (a very interesting crunch) and I was surprised how well it was cooked (I feel that most places in New York tend to undercook steak). We also ordered a baked potato and creamed spinach:
Midway through the meal, I was starting to fill up (I was so hungry that even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the bread I had more than I probably should’ve). We ate ¾ of the steak and I ate all of the creamed spinach and my baked potato. I thought we were finished but Ken wanted to get dessert, so we ordered the chocolate mousse cake:
As we were stuffing our faces with the chocolate mousse cake and the rest of our wine, Ken surprised me with one more gift for Valentine’s day: a trip to St. Martin! We had a wonderful Saturday night at Wolfgang’s and then celebrated on Monday by bowling (I won two games, Ken won the last game). I’d definitely return to Wolfgang’s; it wasn’t too expensive, the food was very good, and my only gripe was the amount of time it took to get our table.
