We like Food
The past week and a half has been all about the food.
Restaurant week has been going on in NYC - if you haven't done it before, it's the time when restaurants all over the city offer meals at discounted rates allowing you to try some of the best cuisine in the city without taking out a loan.
Or something like that.
I don't think any of us would take out a loan for lunch.
I Trulli
This was our first restaurant week entry last week. I Trulli is Italian - it's specific to a region of Italy, but I am too lazy to follow-up and find out.
The food was fine, but it wasn't doing anything in the 'gee-whiz' department. I suppose if you like basic yet fancy yet lackluster food AND you don't mind paying a bit more for the lovely décor and homemade pasta, then this is the place for you.
(5 robots out of 10)
Tabla
This was a mess because I had a reservation and I was going to go with my Irish IT pal, but he ups and cancels on me at the last second (well, last minute, but barely a minute). So, what do you do in that case? You call Eric of course and blab into the phone all in one breath, "hey you had lunch yet wanna go with me to Tabla its restaurant week and it only costs twenty dollars and it will be great come on what do you say what are you doing hello eric let's have lunch meet me out front".
Eric said, "sure".
Tabla does this kind of fancy Indian quasi-fusion thing and the space is pretty cool.
We started with a very tasty pasta soup dish, which had pieces of sausage that looked a lot like hot dogs. Naturally, we made jokes about that.
For the main course I had the monkfish. White beans and the same pieces of sausage like material from the first dish made the hot dog jokes increase.
But, this too was very good.
For dessert we had the chocolate tart that about kicked our asses it was so fine.
I when I say "fine", I mean "fiiiiiiiine".
The tart also came with a scoop of ice cream that was amazing, yet I have no idea what flavor it was. It was puzzling. Kind of an herbal flavor, but couldn't place it.
If you know, don't tell me, because I need a good excuse to go back.
No complaints? Well, actually I thought the waitstaff was a little standoffish. I mean, they answered our questions, but that was it.
(8 robots out of 10)
Grocery
Wowzers.
So, Grocery is up the street from our apartment and this year was ranked by Zagats as one of the ten best restaurants in all of NYC.
Go Smith Street!
We went for my birthday, and even though it was a Tuesday night the earliest reservation we could get was 9:30. It was just Mrs. Robot and myself, and when we got there our table wasn't ready and they suggested we could go next door to Qwench to wait and they'd come get us.
Now, Qwench has been on our street for... maybe 2 years. And I have been to every bar in a 20 block radius of our house, except that one. I always wrote them off as being a trying a bit too hard (they have an almost south beach look going on) but was pleasantly surprised. Nice space and bartender. Great selection of scotch - good VTs.
About 10 minutes later the very nice Grocery person came to fetch us and we were finally seated at around 10pm. No a big deal since we don't eat until 8:30 or 9 at home anyway.
Did I mention the staff of Grocery was really friendly?
They have a very nice wine list and I had wanted to try an Austrian wine, because a lot of folks say that is where it's at. I was looking at two whites, and the waiter was asking what we were thinking of eating and even consulted with the chef. He and the chef person agreed on one of the wines (the one I first picked - that whole 'initial impulse is correct' thing at work again).
The wine was a Gruner Veltliner. It's a white. It was chilled. It was gorgeous. There was shiny, chilly party in mouth and everyone was invited.
The first course I had was a dish with squid and Mrs. Robot had a beet salad. A "dish with squid" and "beet salad" are both understatements - but the fuzz of the food hangover blurs the actual details.
We ate it all and licked the plates.
They also served us a small cup of acorn squash soup that had a bit of pumpkin in it and something spriggly and green. Delightful.
Then they snuck in a small dish of mushroom risotto. I am not a big "hello mushroom" fan, but this was tasty as well.
Our main course was their lamb chops. Hello Nurse!
Cooked medium rare and sliced thin - it looked gorgeous. It tasted - well, we would of licked the plates and chewed on the bone if we could've.
Did I mention the wine? The wine and the lamb worked wonderfully together. I know I usually scoff at the pairing of certain foods and wine - to be honest, I have never had a good 'pairing'. Tabla did that for our lunch, and it was like, "Nice wine. Nice food. No connection."
Pairing. Whatever.
So, I don't know if it was this wine, or this lamb, or the half bottle of wine that we had already consumed, but damn, that shit was paired.
You know, I doubt anyone has ever said "Damn, that shit was paired".
But, yea, the wine and the lamb were making sweet love in my mouth (ewwwwww).
Dessert was a simple bowl of passion fruit sorbet. Or was it mango? I forget. I think they made it from scratch or something because it was, for a such a simple thing, the bomb.
(10 robots out of 10)
i linked to this above, but it's a really cool article/radio bit about Grocery
