Archive | August, 2011

The Sunburnt Calf

8 Aug

One of the first brunch places that made me fall in love with brunch was The Sunburnt Cow in the LES.  It was always a trek, however, to get to Avenue C.  So I was thrilled when they opened up a new place, called The Sunburnt Calf, on the UWS (79th between Broadway and Amsterdam).  Like The Cow, The Calf offers Endless Brunch, which is a selection of most brunch meals on the menu plus endless Moomosa’s, Moo Mary’s, Foster’s, Screwdrivers, and Greyhounds for $18. My mom, also being  a fan of The Cow, joined me for my first sampling of the Calf.

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The day we arrived it was HOT!  And the AC was not working.  We kept our menus to use as fans.

Mom got Eggs Benedict.

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I decided to try the omelette of the day, which was a Greek Omelette.

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It had feta and tomatoes and was supposed to have shrimp.  Sadly, they went a little skimpy on the fillings (and since it was $5 more, it seems pretty sad).

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Overall, it’s hard to beat endless brunch drinks at all.  This was a bit disappointing, however. Nothing was outstanding and the lack of filling in my omelette was a pretty poor performance.  The heat didn’t help at all.  I’ll give them another try, but this time was just… barely above average.

Total Nom Points: 5.5 out of 10

Total Nom Points: 5.5 out of 10

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Homemade Salted Caramels

5 Aug

 

 

The day Lori (of Stuff I Ate) came to my house with homemade salted caramels, I knew my life had changed.  These were just SO fantastic. I can’t believe it took me nearly 6 months to make them for myself.  But make them I did!  (Her post about it is here, and the recipe is here)

Though not without some, as usual, thermometer troubles.  I tried my new one, but it stopped moving after a bit, so I added the other 2 (which have shown various levels of accuracy) figuring that I would hopefully find 2 numbers that matched.

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Since I didn’t have temperature to rely on, I used the method of cold water drop for caramel.  In this method, you drop a bit of the caramel into cold water to see if it’s done.

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You can then scoop it up and test for texture.  I stopped the cooking when it was forming balls that didn’t spread out once formed and tasted delicious (ok… to be honest… I tasted many iterations along the way and they were all delicious).  They definitely hardened quite a bit from here, but the texture was great.

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The first thing I did was fill my peanut butter cup molds up about halfway with the caramel, then top it with chocolate, and sprinkle on some sea salt.  This was DELICIOUS!

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I then took the rest and put it into a silicon baking mold.  

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I should have put it into a smaller one, since it got quite thin, but it still tasted great.

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And then I topped it with sea salt.

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And then cut it into pieces and, not having wax paper at the time, wrapped it in foil

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They made cute little caramel pillows.

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This recipe was delicious, but I do not recommend making them in the dead of a 100 degree heat wave.  Half of them melted together before I even got them out of the mold.  I definitely had to keep them in the fridge and each one MUST be individually wrapped or else it melts into one big (delicious) ball of salted caramel.  

I would say go make them NOW, but the heat wave is upon us again… so give it a few weeks and then GO! Make them! 

 

 

 

 

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Cho Cho San Sushi Boat Bachelorette Party

3 Aug

A friend of mine had a Bachelorette Party that was much more “her” than the typical craziness.  The party started with brewing beer (which was used for the wedding!), then they came to the city (where I joined them) for an Off-Broadway Play (Miss Abigail’s Guide to Dating, Mating, and Marriage) and then to a Sushi dinner.  (We also had massages the next day)

For Sushi, she had a hell of a time finding a place to fit 12 of us, but eventually happened upon Cho Cho San near NYU.  She booked the private back room, but when we got there, a party was still wrapping up.  They said it should be quick, but we chose to sit up front (sidenote: it didn’t wrap up for about another hour).

This place was… an adventure.  I have no idea what happened but literally every interaction I had with the server was completely and utterly awful.  I was the only one that didn’t get my sake, they forgot my soup, they never refilled my water, and then my dessert came out about 5 minutes after everyone else’s.  (Did they see me taking pictures and decided to punish me? I have no idea.)

Our sushi boat came out and it was… okay.  Nothing great, nothing bad.  Just okay. It was very reasonably priced, however.

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And then… the check debacle happened.  I wound up having ZERO cash on me (after a pedicab debacle earlier in the day… don’t ask) and was the only one to have to pay on card.  It was decided that everyone else would throw in cash and I would put the rest (which happened to be the tip) on my card.  The server took the cash and then handed me back my card… with no receipt.  I went to him and told him there was a mistake, and to please put the money on my card.

He said no.

Um… what?

I tried explaining that it was his tip, and everyone else paid, so I owed the money.  He refused over and over again.  I went back to my seat, secretly figuring out where the closest ATM was so I could give my share (at this point it was much less about the guy’s tip, which was totally undeserved anyway, and more about my not wanting to be the ONLY one not to pay).  One of the other girls decided to give it a try and took my card up to the same server (since I was obviously not lucky that evening)… and was back in less than 2 minutes with my receipt to sign in hand.

WTF.

Note to self: DO NOT RETURN

Overall, the food was average and this was some of the absolute worst service I have ever seen in the history of my eating out.

Total Nom Points: 3 out of 10

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