Thoughts & Reflections

Tag: Restaurants

  • Jones Wood Foundry

    English Cheese Plate

    When my friend Regina was in town recently, the two of us spent a very long and relaxing lunch at Jones Wood Foundry. I hadn’t been there in ages since it’s inconveniently (for me) located on the Upper East Side. We went on a weekday and there were no other customers except ourselves for a while, which was rather nice.

    Haddock and Chips

    Organic Scottish Salmon Burger

    I ordered the Haddock and Chips and Regina thought the fish looked huge when it arrived at the table. I didn’t think it was that large; I’ve had much bigger portions when I was in London. She ordered the English Cheese Plate and Organic Scottish Salmon Burger. To me, the burger was pretty large and it looked really tasty. I’m not a fan of cooked salmon but I think I would enjoy that burger very much.

    Sticky Toffee Pudding

    With full stomachs, we debated on ordering dessert but decided to go for it. The Sticky Toffee Pudding is the quintessential English dessert and it was very, very good. To accompany it, Regina ordered coffee and I had my second pot of tea in one sitting.

    And it was well worth it, calories and all. (We did end up walking quite a bit afterwards so that helped too.)

  • Brunch at Ladurée

    Menu

    Finally, I made it to Ladurée‘s Soho location. Well, I did drop in opening weekend but walked right out after seeing the crowds queued up for a table for lunch. The lines have been like that every weekend and my patience was rewarded when I saw one could make reservations via OpenTable.

    Dining Room

    In the span of a week, I’ve made or accepted bookings to Ladurée with different people. This is the first eat-in visit so there will likely be a follow-up post next month. This past Sunday’s visit was with a former coworker who’s now a good friend. We met at 10:30am and were seated in the front dining room. Both of us arrived prepared to devour a fancy French breakfast (though I will admit to having a small roast pork bun at home earlier in the day). From the many choices in the menu, she settled on a pot of tea, the French Toast and an order of scrambled eggs with truffles. I chose the Champs-Elysées breakfast set which came with a basket of baked goods (walnut croissant, pain au raisin, and a brioche—all of which I ate), a choice of eggs (I went with scrambled), a fruit salad, fresh juice (orange or grapefruit) and a hot beverage (a pot of the Thé de Othello for me).

    Beverages and Viennoiserie

    Scrambled Eggs

    The food was excellent, the servers were nice and polite but the service was a bit low. The restaurant’s only been open for about a month or so, so they still have some kinks to work out. Hopefully, things will improve by my next visit. I only realized later that I never did get my fruit salad… neither did the woman that sat at the next table who ordered the same set. It was a very good thing that the food that did arrive was filling, so I didn’t miss the fruit much though it would have been nice to have received it.

    On our way out, we stopped at the retail counter. My friend loved the tea she ordered with her meal (the Thé de Vanille) and wanted to buy it. I browsed the desserts on display and did not walk away empty-handed: a few seasonal macarons, one pastry and some canelés. I think I bought enough sweets to last me for the week.

  • Sweet Chick

    Chicken and Waffles

    Impromptu dinner plans mid-week in my neighborhood are very rare. It happened this past Wednesday and even with a list of suggestions, my friend and I still could not decided where to eat. We ended up at Sweet Chick, a fried chicken and waffles restaurant.

    To be honest, we’ve been discussing eating fried chicken and waffles off and on for the last few weeks so I suppose we finally got rid of the cravings that night. And that’s exactly what we ordered, though she had the bacon and cheddar waffles while I chose the mushroom and rosemary version. Also available are the classic plain waffles as well as ones with dried cherries. We washed the grease away with soda, and Arnold Palmer version for me while she had the Mexican Coke. All in all, it was tasty and filling enough without being too stuffed. Unfortunately, neither of us had room (or were in the mood for) dessert, though we did eye the apple pie on the menu.

  • Pok Pok Phat Thai

    Pad Thai

    As much as I love eating Thai food, I was never a fan of the country’s most famous dish (in the States, at any rate), pad thai. On the rare occasions that I would order it at restaurants, I’ve always found it to be too sweet for my tastes. But now, there is one place in the city where I would happily order it: Pok Pok Phat Thai.

    It’s an offshoot of Andy Ricker’s main restaurant (which is excellent) in Red Hook and it specializes in the noodle dish, offering about three or four variations. On this visit, I stuck with the regular pad thai and a Thai iced tea (with lime, not milk). It makes for a great lunch when I’m looking for a quick bite and I want something hearty but not too filling. The restaurant is tiny, with maybe about a dozen seats; there have been a few times when I’ve gone when it’s crowded but there were plenty of seats when I went yesterday.

    And you know it must be pretty good when your Thai friend thinks it’s pretty authentic. We both love the Brooklyn Pok Pok but Pok Pok Phat Thai is a lot easier to get to when you need to satisfy a craving.

  • Dinner at Lafayette

    Lafayette

    An unexpected but very welcome invitation to have dinner with a friend on Thursday led to quick plans to meet up at Lafayette. It was also a great excuse to actually leave the office on time for once, though I still barely escaped from a very last minute phone call at my desk. The meet up time was 5:45pm which was good for me; I prefer early dinners, especially when we did not reserve a table in advance.

    Skate Wing a la Plancha

    The two of us skipped drinks and appetizers. She ordered the steak frites and I debated between two seafood dishes. I ended up ordering the Skate Wing a la plancha, served with smoked cauliflower and uni. It was delicious and the portion size was perfect for me.

    Floating Island

    To be honest, the dessert menu didn’t exactly thrill us. We thought about heading elsewhere for sweets but none of the nearby dessert places were appealing either. In the end, we chose the one item on the menu that seemed a bit intriguing: the Floating Island. A very retro dessert but when it arrived at the table, it looked nothing like what we expected it to be—it looked more like a giant toasted marshmallow. Traditionally, the meringue would sit in a pool of crème anglaise but in this variation, the custard was inside the egg whites. It was a good dessert, not too sweet nor too heavy and a tasty way to end the meal.

  • Whitehall

    Brunch at Whitehall

    There’s nothing like a hearty meal to help get through these cold winter days. I met up with a friend for brunch at Whitehall and we ate very well: she had the avocado toast with poached eggs while I chose the English fry-up. We both ordered rashers of bacon and I added black pudding to my plate as well (because no fry-up is complete without a bit of black pudding!). The food was great; it filled but did not leave us feeling overstuffed. We washed it all down with a pot of English Breakfast (for me) and several cups of coffee (for her). It was the perfect way to spend a Saturday morning and once fortified, we stepped out into the cold once more.