192 Grand St., New York, NY 10013
The place has appeared on FPotW countless times, folks should know the deal:
A Galician (a region in northwest Spain) restaurant in the heart of Little Italy (or Chinatown depending on who you ask).
Amazing food
Great gin-tonics
1125 1st Ave New York, NY 10065
So simple yet so basic.
A friend and I took a “stroll” to our old neighborhood (UES) where we completed our postdoctoral training. We grabbed some bites (and beverages) at Treadwell Park. Since it was an easy breezy Friday evening, we decided to grab some nachos and chicken waaaaaaangs.
Sorry for the blurry pic. I think my phone’s camera had some grease on it.
OMG, these pork nachos were everything and more. Normally, nachos do not do much for me because most places use crappy cheese and stale nachos. Also, most nachos dishes tend to make me super gassy the next day (yes, TMI). I do not know, but it seems like this restaurant took care and placing slabs of pork on each nacho chip. For example, every nacho had an adequate amount of cheese, guac, and pork. Most places’ nachos tend to have a plate of nachos with everything thrown on the nachos, then the nachos are baked until they are a nice gooey (sometimes disgusting) mess. However, Treadwell Park is fancy, so you will not have that problem.
Most folks know that I’m not a huge fan of super sweet drinks. Why dilute the fun of a cocktail with extra sugar? Frozen margaritas are the exception. I ordered a Modern Farmhouse cocktail, which is prepared with Interboro gin, Old Duff Genever, lemon, chamomile, honey, and Ayinger Brau Weisse. Being complicated, I asked our waitress if she could tell the bartender to make the drink without honey. Lord, I think the staff had a mini-conference about my beverage. Five minutes later, three staff members came to the table and asked me (a few times) if I was sure that I did not want honey in the beverage.
Some statements/questions raised by the staff:
Are you sure?
Positive?
You know that the drink will not be sweet?
We will not be able to refund you if you don’t not like the drink.
It turns out that our first waitress was training that evening so the other two staff members were just confirming that she got the order right.
All in all, I definitely will be sure to make another trip to Treadwell Park the next time I’m on the UES . . . if it is still there. For some reason, restaurants do not last very long on 62nd St. and 1st Ave. Perhaps, the space is too large, which makes it hard for the owners to keep up with more likely expensive rent in the area.
Writing this post has made me realize that I am very behind in writing my Yelp reviews, and I better upload a few reviews before Yelp revokes my Yelp Elite status.
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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.
1823 L St. NW, Washington DC 20026
The hubby and I needed to get the heck out of Dodge for a couple of days. By “the hubby and I”, mean me. Also, by “Dodge”, I mean NYC. We decided to make a trip down to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (my hometown) with a three-day “layover” in Washington DC. Also, it just so happened to be the week of our second wedding anniversary. During this trip, I have to say that we definitely had some good food, especially in DC. It felt like we were eating all the time. However, in our defense, pretty much all of the museums (with the exception of The Museum of the Bible) were closed due to the pandemic so we spent a LOT of walking around to enjoy the sights. Funny enough of the museums were going to be open the week AFTER our trip. According to my Apple Watch, we averaged about 15 miles of walking each day.
Since we were constantly in hunger mode from all the walking, I was so glad that we stumbled upon Pisco Y Nazca. Just in case you did not know, Peruvian food is one of my favorite cuisines.
We were both shocked by the amount of food included in the restaurant’s tasting menu. For $55, the tasting menu included: 1) a flight of pisco sours; 2) a flight of leche de tigre shot (shrimp ceviche), toston, and ceviche cremoso; 3) a causa sampler (crocante, tartare, pollo); 4) a choice between lomo saltado, pescado a lo macho, or chaufa de mariscos as an entree; and 5) pionono a la mode for dessert.
I gotta say this was the first time that I was completely full from a tasting menu. Actually, there was so much food that we had to ask our lovely waitress, Luz, to pack up our entrees and desserts to go. I will say that the pescado was not super delicious on the reheat. :(
I definitely have got to keep this place in my mental Rolodex for my next trip to DC.
Growing up (middle and high school age), I never saw the lure of or excitement with DC. Maybe this was due to only relating DC with school. I do not know, but there must have been some rule stating that all Virginian school-aged children had to go on at least one field trip to DC every year. For that reason, I kind of thought that DC was a “boring” city. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that politics is very important and exciting. As an adult, I absolutely LOVE visiting DC because of the historical and (now) social significance of the district. Since visiting Georgetown (as a potential graduate school), I’ve always had a good time in DC. By “good”, I mean AMAZING. Honestly, if I was not so stubborn in attending a graduate program in NYC, I probably would have attended Georgetown for my graduate studies. I wonder where I would be now had I gone through with that decision.
That said, I CANNOT wait until my next trip to DC.
1658 Pleasure House Rd., Ste 101, Virginia Beach, VA 23455
Dining here for breakfast (or was it brunch0 was the perfect way to end our quick ‘getaway’ to Virginia. Also, it is conveniently located near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. I am so glad that I had an opportunity to try (for the first time ever) a fried oyster eggs Benedict. I’ve had fried oysters plenty of times during my family Christmas brunch celebrations. But, why not combine these delicious bivalve mollusks with eggs?
I gotta say that going forward The Rustic Spoon will be one of my go to spots for brunch doing my trips to VA.
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.
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.
OUR APARTMENT IN HARLEM
Trying to get into the Christmas spirit . . . I guess.
The plan was to make two batches of cookies - the bacon chocolate chip cookies (aka aconbay ocolatechay ipchay cookies - Get it? Pig Latin since the cookies have bacon) and the peanut butter cookies. However, I was lazy and did not feel prepping two batches of cookies so I just threw everything together into one bowl. While delicious, this time I had time to refrigerate the cookie dough before baking, I think these cookies had too much stuff in them. Although not pictured, I did prepare a whiskey glaze for the cookies. Remember that I have to add booze to all of my desserts.
OUR APARTMENT IN HARLEM
Earlier this week, I had a wonderful opportunity to attend and participate in a virtual baking class through Yelp Elite.
Chef Mel, a 2X winner of Chopped, took us through the process of making macarons (https://www.bakeitwithmel.com/). Overall, the event was kind of cool, but I admit that the class sometimes was a bit difficult to follow. This had nothing to do with Chef Mel, but because there were 130+ people in the Zoom room. I guess these types of things are better in smaller groups.
Within the first moments of the class, the instructions were kind of intense so I prepared myself a “get it together” cocktail. I was a bit of a struggle, even with chef hubby’s help, but I think I was about average compared to the rest of the Yelp Elite party. Why do I have to make everything a competition? When my macarons were finished some people were still on the first step of making the merengue. For the most part, my result looked like actual macarons.
-Overall, the event was very fun even with the somewhat difficult recipe.
-Chef Mel was really nice and a great instructor. Although the event ended around 9 pm, she was willing to hang out to help the folks that were struggling. She even gave folks the option to message her after the event if they were still having trouble with the recipe. You can check out her website where she sells her at-home baking kits (Link: ***).
-The cohost of the event was kinda annoying because he would talk over Chef Mel while she was giving instructions. I think he was supposed to assist her, but it was like he was trying to take over the event. Also, he was trying way too hard to be funny. MAN, just tell us for hold we have to caramelize the sugar and leave it at that.
-Next time, I think that I’ll just buy my macarons instead of making them. It was a lot of work (maybe not that much) and a lot of dirty dishes for 10 macarons.
-Shoot there was something else. Oh well, I guess it was that import
Happy week before Christmas.
We were on a mission to enjoy some ceviche and pisco sours.
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.