FOOD PIC OF THE WEEK - MARSEILLE

MARSEILLE (***)

630 9th Avenue, NY, NY 10036 (Midtown West, Hell’s Kitchen, Theater District)

The hubby and I decided to check out this spot for NYC Restaurant Week 2022. Basically, Restaurant Week gives folks a chance to check out restaurants’ special prix-fixe menus. This year, the price of a three-course meal was about $60 (~$39 for a two-course lunch). My oh my, how times AND prices have changed. I remember doing restaurant week for the first time back in 2003, and I remember the prices being $20.03 and $30.03 for lunch and dinner, respectively.

I will say that walking into this restaurant definitely took me back to Paris, France. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that Paris is in the central region and Marseille is in the southern region of France. However, the vibe and the decor of the restaurant were definitely French.

Let me get to the food. The photos (like always) are kind of struggling because the restaurant was pretty dark, and I did not care to mess with all of the camera settings. Also, I was in true starvation mode.

APPETIZERS

Left to Right: Oysters (not included in the Restaurant Week's menu), Kabocha Squash Gnocchi, and Tuna Tartare (with seaweed salad and roe)

Since I know that the hubby loves his tuna tartare, I let him choose that appetizer while I went with the gnocchi. I've never been a huge fan of gnocchi because many places make it a bit TOO chewy for my liking, but this one had the perfect consistency/texture for me. Also, the crème fraîche really elevated the dish. I wonder if it would be appropriate to order gnocchi at an Italian place, but request that they use crème fraîche to prepare it. ;)

Main Course

Left to Right: Branzino (with parsnip purée, cauliflower, black truffle dashi) and Duck Breast (with Swiss chard, turnip puree, and farro)

I am so glad that I selected the branzino because it was out of this world AMAZING. For me, I love when branzino's "meat" is flaky while the skin is nice and crispy. Very few restaurants (IMO) can acquire that perfect combination. The fish was so delicious that I almost ordered another one for the road. Being that Marseille is a French restaurant (and we were dining there during Restaurant Week), I expected the portions to be on the smaller side, but the portions were pretty generous for my starving a**.

DESSERT

My Sticky Toffee Pudding with pecan ice cream was delicious, but it was not anything out of this world.

RESTAURANT WEEK: FINAL THOUGHTS

Because of Restaurant Week, I definitely could see myself dining at Marseille again. Since the restaurant is right in the Theatre District, it is a perfect spot to grab a bite to eat and/or some drinks before or after hitting up a Broadway show. I have to say that my French 75 cocktail was very yummy. Also, it's good to know that Marseille has oysters on its happy hour menu, and y'all know that I love all things shellfish.

Ok, the point of Restaurant Week is to sample food from restaurants that you would not regularly visit and to help the food services industry. For this year's Restaurant Week, I really wanted to support a Black- or Brown-owned restaurant in my neighborhood of Harlem. However, for the Harlem restaurants that piqued my interest, none of the $60 special menus really made me go: LET'S EAT HERE. Keep in mind $60 is the bare minimum because you have to add in additional cocktails, tax, and tip. Since you are getting more bang for your buck, it's an unwritten rule that you should tip a little more during Restaurant Week. Being raised on Soul Food, I am not going to pay $60 for corn chowder (appetizer), fried chicken with a couple of sides (main), and peach cobbler or banana pudding (dessert). Let me stop being so negative. Since there is a lunch option for Restaurant Week, I'll look into some of the lunch offerings from the Harlem restaurants.

FOOD PIC OF THE WEEK

SETTEPANI (***)

196 Lenox Ave, New York, NY 10026

A Christmas Eve pizza craving. After running some errands in preparation for “Tropical Christmas”, I was so frustrated with everything (and everyone) that I needed to eat my frustrations away with a pizza pie from a local spot. Settepani has been my go-to (primarily for cocktails and wine) pretty much since we moved to Harlem back in 2017. Actually, I think this was the second restaurant that I visited after moving to the neighborhood. Of course, I visited the restaurant because I “needed” a glass of wine.

PROSCIUTTO PIZZA

I decided to go with this guy because I was feeling meaty. The “simple” pizza consists of prosciutto (of course), mozzarella, basil, and Mike’s honey.

Since I am of a Southern background, I tend to like my food a bit spicy. That said, I’m not too sure that I am a huge fan of Mike’s Hot Honey (***) on my pizza. I do not know, but the sweetness of the sauce took away from the flavor of the prosciutto topping. I guess that many folks like the combination of sweet and savory, but I’m not too keen with this mix of flavors on my pizza. Maybe I was not feeling the sweetness because I was in a crabby mood from running errands on the day before Christmas. Oh well, next time, I’ll just ask for the pizza without the hot honey sauce. However, I think Mike’s Hot Honey would be a perfect sauce for other foods such as french fries, chicken waaaaangs/tenders, or any other fun fried food.

FOOD PIC OF THE WEEK

Calle Ocho (***)

2756 Broadway, New York, NY 10025

I have been going to Calle Ocho (Cuban fusion) since the early 2000s, and it always hits the spot. To be perfectly honest, Calle Ocho was a favorite for my grad school buddies and me because the restaurant has an all-you-can-drink sangria brunch with the purchase of any entree.

LOOK AT ALL OF THESE DIFFERENT SANGRIAS!!!!

FYI: The Samba, Roja, Gramada Punta Cana, and Blanca are my favoritas.

Man those were the days when we did not have time limits for our all-you-can-drink brunch needs. Now, most places have a 1.5 – 2 hour time limit, which is fine . . . I guess.

For my most recent brunch visit, I went with something new and ordered the

Camarones Ahumados

Normally, I order the same things (ropa vieja or chilaquiles), but I am glad that I decided to go with something different.

While I love coming here, I will say that the prices have gone up a bit. Since I have been dining here for about two decades, I guess that’s understandable. Back in the day, dishes were about $20 and included all-you-can-drink sangria. Now, the delicious brunch options are around $40. I mean it’s not a huge deal because most places typically add an extra $15-$20 bucks if you want an all-you-can-drink option. I guess Calle Ocho now includes the all-you-can-drink in the price of the entree. There is no way in the world that anyone should pay close to $40 for a bowl of shrimp and grits. I guess this kind of sucks for non-drinkers to pay that much for a brunch entree.

That said, the muffin basket (err box) is totally worth it.

One tip if you dine here: As long as you continue to order food, the sangria will keep flowing. When we dine at Calle Ocho, we usually get a dessert after brunch so we can have one or two more sangrias for the road.

FOOD PICS OF THE WEEK - A POTPOURRI

We’re going to do a few mini entries.

The Jeffrey Craft Beer & Bites (***)

311 E 60th St, New York, NY 10022

I have been going to this bar for YEARS. It is a few blocks away from my former place of employment, and I passed it pretty much every day on my commute to and from work. While this place has countless types of yummy beers and unique cocktails, I never really had the food here . . . with the exception of the $1 happy hour oysters and probably the french fries. On Friday, I was STARVING, and my half dozen of oysters just was not going to cut it. The bar has an interesting list of tacos, and I decided to go with the Pho Tacos. OMG!!!

The Pho Tacos reminded me a bit of Birra-style tacos, but these tacos had a pho-based consommé. After the first dip of one of the tacos, I was this || close to asking my waitress for a larger bowl of the cosommé to eat as a soup. These guys were out of this world delicious. Looking back, I wished that I had ordered four instead of three

Thanksgiving

Harlem, NY

This year, I decided to stay in NYC instead of going to VA. This decision always makes Thanksgiving a bit bitter-sweet for me; however, you gotta power through adversity. The hubby and his friend pretty much made our Thanksgiving feast. It was a nice touch because they are chefs so we get some traditional bites with some fun and unique sides. I gotta say the six of us had a nice Thanksgiving . . . I guess they call it Friendsgiving these days.

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Once again, my contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was dessert. For this adventure, I decided to make this White Christmas cake.

RECIPE: White Christmas Cake.

I know that the recipe has the word “Christmas” in it, but I wanted to make a cranberry-based dessert. While I did not have a baking meltdown like last year (last year’s meltdown post ***), the cake started off kind of a struggle. I was this || close to aborting the dessert after this happened.

I decided to power through this fiasco and continue with the cake by making it with three instead of four layers. I really have to give it up to the pastry experts or near experts out there because I did not realize the complexity of frosting and assembling a multilayered cake.

I deviated from the recipe a bit

• Added whiskey to the cranberry jam

• It was three layers instead of four because I messed up one of the cakes as you can see in the photo above.

• Since I had so much cranberry jam leftover (remember, there was one less layer), I decided to mix the remaining butter cream with the cranberry jam. Actually, I think doing that somewhat masked my crappy frosting technique for the top layer. While assembling the cake with the buttercream and the cranberry jam layers, I was like why didn’t the recipe just mix the buttercream with the cranberry jam for the filling in between the layers.

• Not sure why the recipe called for TWO cups of cranberries for the garnish. I think that I used about 20 cranberries for the garnish on the top layer. I guess if folks are huge fans of cranberries, one could use all 2 cups. With the cranberry jam-filled layers, I figured that topping the cake with 2 cups of cranberries would have been overkill . . . and this is coming from someone who loves cranberries.

• Boy was it tough to cut the cake evenly for the layers, which resulted in the cake looking very lopsided. The hubby said that pastry work requires quite a bit of practice, and I have to agree with him.

Overall, everyone was pleased with the cake, and I will admit that it was delicious. Aesthetically, it looked like it was on the losing end of a knife fight.

Meal Prep

I’m still trying to power through Beachbody’s 21-Day Fix, and we’re going with the tuna noodle casserole with veggies.

It’s an interesting take on an American classic; however, I will say that it tastes “weird” without any cheese. I guess the lack of cheese is what makes this thing healthy. While the veggie component was kale and peas, I decided to up the veggie content by adding shredded Brussel sprouts, carrots, corn, and tomatoes.

21-Day Fix Container Equivalents: 0.5 green (veggies), 0.5 red (protein), 1.5 yellow (carbs)

I hope everyone had nice Thanksgiving . . . or a nice Thursday if you do not celebrate Thanksgiving.

FOOD PIC OF THE WEEK

McDonald’s

The McRib sandwich is back!!! I do not know why, but there is something very special about this sandwich that draws me to it. Maybe this feeling is because the sandwich is offered for a limited time. You know, the whole wanting something more when you cannot have it.

Back in high school, I used to work at McDonald’s and absolutely hated all things associated with the McRib. During my McDonald days, I worked drive-thru (one of the reasons why I am not a fan of people ), and drive-thru workers had to wash ALL the dishes at closing. OMG, the smell from the McRib sauce was very potent and would make me angry. Also, one needed a freaking jackhammer and the patience of Job to remove the sauce from its storage container.

SPEAKING OF MCDONALD’S, HERE ARE A COUPLE OF HACKS:

in case you already did not know

-If you want fresh out-of-the fryer french fries, request them without salt. Then, you can watch the employee roll their eyes at you when you request 10+ salt packets. 

-For the breakfast sandwiches request the ’round’ egg. With the exception of the Egg McMuffin, all of the egg sandwiches are made with some “fake” liquid egg product.

-The ice cream machine is rarely broken at night. It takes forever and a day to clean the machine, and no one is trying to reclean the machine once it has been cleaned that’s why they say it’s broken. Workers might make an exception if you order ice cream without any toppings.

Food Pic of the Week

886 (***)

26 St. Marks Place, New York, NY 10003

Great Taiwanese food in the heart of the East Village.

Scallion Pancake Beef Wrap

Braised and Shredded Beef Shank, Szdaddy Mayo, Cucumber, Black Bean Sauce, Scallion Pancake

Lo Ba Beng

Classic Taiwanese Rice Dish – Tender Braised Pork Belly Served Over Rice, Pickled Mustard Greens, Egg, Cilantro

Fly’s Head

Pork, Chives, Chili, Fermented Black Bean, and Garlic

Honey Glazed Popcorn Chicken

Marinated Chicken, Szedaddy hot honey, Thai Basil

The Notorious T.F.C

AKA Spicy Fried Chicken Sandwich. Deboned Chicken Thigh, Daikon Slaw, Martin’s Sesame Bun

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Food Pic of the Week

Red Rooster (***)

310 Lenox Avenue, NY, NY 10027

Another weekend, another brunch. Believe it or not, we did NOT have bottomless brunch this time around. A good choice because this place does not have bottomless brunch.

Anytime someone visits Harlem, they always want to have a meal at Red Rooster Harlem, but I honestly do not get all of the hype surrounding this place . . . Lemme show the food pic before I get into hater mode.

Cornbread & Gravy with Chorizo, Fried Egg

I gotta say that this dish really did hit the spot. Honestly, I never would have considered eating cornbread and gravy for my brunch. BUT, the restaurant's brunch menu was uuummmmmmm a bit lacking.

Wait a minute! Y'all have only three things on the brunch menu? FYI: There were more cocktails than the ones in the screenshot. I get that this is a fancy restaurant so one should not expect a menu with 20 different brunch and lunch items, but may we get a few more fun brunch items? I mean the owner, Marcus Samuelsson, did win the second season of Top Chef, and I'm sure that contestants from the show have to do some sort of innovative dish challenge.

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Food Pic of the Week

Cap’t Loui (***) 

3147 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

At this point, I probably should be saying “food pic of the month” instead of “food pic of the week”. That said, I will try to update this thing more often with yummy food pics. Because of the pandemic, it has been difficult to try out new food spots around the city. Since things are beginning to open up (a little too fast for my liking), I think that I will be able to update this blog more frequently.

Have you ever pass a restaurant on multiple occasions and think to yourself that you should try out the joint? A couple of weeks ago, Cap’t Loui was that place for us. To be perfectly honest, the hubby and I were going to have ramen at another spot about a block away from Cap’t Loui. Before going to the ramen place, I was like screw it, let’s do to Cap’t Loui.

Man Oh Man, I’m so glad that we went to Cap’t Loui because it was AMAZING. Long story short, the restaurant is pretty much a New Orleans-style seafood boil spot. You pretty much will pick a boil and select 1+ seafood options (crawfish, shrimp, crabs, etc.), a sauce, and any extra fixings. For our boil, we went with shrimp, mussels, corn, potatoes, garlic noodles, and sausage. Since I spent my undergraduate years in New Orleans, I guess that I was supposed to select crawfish as one of the seafood options. Under normal circumstances, I would have gone with crawfish, but I was EXTREMELY hungry and did not have time to fiddle around with crawfish. Sometimes, I find getting to the meat of crawfish takes too much effort for a little reward.

One tip: Wear clothes that you do not care about messing up because the food will be quite messy (especially because of the butter sauce).

Although I did not relive my memories of New Orleans through crawfish, I did relive my time in New Orleans years through a Hurricane cocktail at Cap’t Loui.

In my opinion, I found my Hurricane WAY too sweet. Maybe Hurricanes are supposed to be really sweet, and I never really noticed the sweetness as a 21/22 year-old. Let me stop lying about the 21 year old thing, I probably had a few Hurricanes as an 18-year old freshman. If memory serves me correctly, I think Louisiana (or maybe it was just New Orleans) raised the drinking age from 18 to 21 a couple of years before I started college so many bars in New Orleans were pretty lax in serving underage folks. Yeah, I think it was the state because Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) successfully lobbied to withholding federal funds for Louisiana unless the state raised the drinking age.

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Food Pic of the Week

Tomiño Taberna Gallega (***) 

192 Grand St., New York, NY 10013

This place has made several appearances on here. Because of this pandemic, it has been a bit tough to check out new spots. I've been repeated many places because

• many places are closed or do not have outdoor dining options;

• if I have to wear a mask, load up on hand sanitizer, and eat outside during the winter, I want to go to a place that I know will serve up good food.

The hubby, one of his best friends from Spain, and I went here to celebrate Three Kings Day. Unfortunately, I was distracted by the events that were taking place in DC so I really did not take too many pictures of our food . . . and cocktails.

The plato fuerte - Arroz Caldoso

I wonder if the restaurant put three cigalas (Norway lobster) in the dish because it was Three Kings Day. You know, one cigala for each king.

In addition to serving yummy food from the Galician region of Spain, Tomiño has a wide array of gin tonic cocktails. After learning how much sugar is in tonic water (prob back in 2004), gin n seltzer has been my go-to cocktail. However, Tomiño uses tonic water (I forget the brand's name) that's typically served in Europe, which is significantly less sweet than the tonic water that we use here in the States.

I think this one was the roses and juniper berry gin tonica.

Food Pic of the Week

The Chelsea Bell (***) 

 316 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10001

I cannot remember the last time I had lunch or dinner in/near midtown.

A classic, Fish & Chips

Usually, I select fish & chips when I have to make a quick decision. Hands down The Chelsea Bell has the best fish & chips in NYC. I pretty much enjoyed this dish because the breading for the fish was out of this world amazing. Honestly, I could have just had the fried breading for my lunch. In my opinion, many restaurants' fish n chips dishes are kind of bland, which "forces" me to dump copious amounts of vinegar and hot sauce to get some flavor. This definitely was not the case at The Chelsea Bell.