Tag Archives: lincoln center

Ed’s Chowder House

17 Oct

We met up with some friends for a pre-theatre dinner at Ed’s Chowder House near Lincoln Center.  It is located in the Empire Hotel and is right outside the mecca of NYC performing arts.

I have been meaning to try Ed’s since it opened in 2009, so I was excited when my friend suggested it and they had a reservation at the right time.

Our friends decided to split the tuna tartare and the spicy mussels.  I couldn’t try the mussels, but the tuna tartare was quite fresh and good.

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Mike went with a special of a salad with clam strips.  The clam strips that were on this were super awesome.  I really enjoyed my bite.

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I really wanted to have some chowder at the Chowder House… but most had peppers. The one safe one was the sweet corn chowder with crispy shallots.  So I went for it.
But it came out with popcorn that were the shade of danger.  I am allergic to peppers.  It’s a huge pain in the ass, but it could be a lot worse.  Peppers are brightly colored and flavored, and I’m not anaphylactic.  I will just burn and blister from them, which is annoying and uncomfortable, but at least it won’t kill me!  And I have come to know the warning color is typically this special shade of orange.  Sure enough, it had paprika on it (which is made from peppers… damn).  I was bummed since I love popcorn in soup, but they were quick to return with a bowl sans popcorn.  And it was very tasty.

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As for entrees, one of our friends got the scallops. They looked great, but they had peppers, so I have no first hand account.

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Mike chose the tuna steak with fries.

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The tuna steak had hotel butter on it and was served raw, the chef’s recommendation. This is how I LOVE tuna steaks.  I love sashimi, but I also love the grilled char flavor. This combined the best of both worlds and was a really delicious piece of fish.

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My friend and I split our entrees with each other. She got the skate, which was delicious. Well cooked with a little bit of crisp and a really nice sauce to compliment it.

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And I got the linguini with clams and shrimp.  This was good but a bit lacking in depth. It tasted like seafood and the sea and butter.  But perhaps it needed some salt or some more interesting herbs. It was good but not great.

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We also split the smoked bacon macaroni and cheese around the table.  This was a really good mac and chee.  It was made with very small tubular noodles and was creamy without being soupy.  The crunch on top was just enough and the smoked bacon added a great level of flavor.

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A very good meal.  A solid meal. A meal I cannot find much to say about. Besides the fact that it was good. If you are in the area, it’s a good option.

Total Nom Points: 7 out of 10

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Bouchon – Time Warner Center (And our adventure in getting a French Laundry reservation!)

30 Apr

We were on a shopping adventure this past weekend and it took us to The Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. (For you non-natives, The Time Warner Center is right on the Southwest corner of Central Park, on 59th Street at the convergence of 8th Ave/Central Park West and Broadway. It is filled with mostly higher end stores and the entire basement is occupied by a Whole Foods).  There are a number of amazing restaurants there, including A Voce, Landmarc, and one of the top 3 on our Bucket List, Per Se.  (The other two on top are The French Laundry in Napa Valley and Alinea in Chicago… funny enough, both The French Laundry and Per Se are from Chef Thomas Keller, and Alinea is from Chef Grant Achatz, who worked for Thomas Keller at The French Laundry… and who also wrote the amazing book, Life, On The Line about his struggle with tongue cancer, but somehow as intriguing, his desire to push the food world into the future).

Now a funny sequence of events… we had spent the previous 2 days dialing and redialing The French Laundry with the hope of securing a reservation for our honeymoon. Yes, our honeymoon 2 months from now. But the rule of The French Laundry is that you can only get a reservation by calling 2 months prior to the date you want, on the date (so on the 28th of April for the 28th of June).  We will be in the area for three days on our honeymoon (June 26-28) and we had spent our lunches for the past 2 days dialing in vain.   On the 26th they told us that they have a private party on June 26th so no reservations were available, on the 27th we got in after an hour of dialing, but all the reservations were gone (so we went on the wait list). With the 28th being our last shot, we pulled out all the stops. We booked a hotel in the area and then called to speak with the hotel concierge… of which there was none but there was a man there who offered to help us… by Googling The French Laundry for us (um… no).  We called our credit card concierges and I convinced my Chase Sapphire Preferred to call on our behalf the following day. I even contacted a few well connected friends to see if they happened to have Thomas Keller in their rolodex.  (Alas, no).

So on this day that we set off on our shopping adventure, I suggested we grab a bite to eat and a coffee at Bouchon, which is right in the Time Warner Center.  We realized that we would have to make it a quick one so we could start calling The French Laundry at 12:45 (15 minutes before they officially open their lines at 1pm EST/10am PST… we were hopeful that our starting early would earn us some points in the… um… phone universe?)

Bouchon has a to-go window, but we decided to sit in their cafe and hoped to have a quick pastry and coffee. We sat down and realized that they actually served a full breakfast menu (yet no pastries… hmmm), so rather than croissants and coffee, we wound up with breakfast cocktails and full meals, plus the coffee.

And just a few minutes after sitting down it dawned on me… Bouchon is part of the Thomas Keller empire. On the day revolving around getting a reservation at the very restaurant that made this chef famous, we sat down at his casual cafe.  Hopefully that would be a good omen.

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Mike got a cobb salad, which was filled with incredibly fresh ingredients.  It was a very good cobb salad and the bacon was especially delectable.

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I got the Quiche of the Day, which was a Florentine (spinach and gruyere) and a side salad. The salad greens were very nicely dressed. The quiche was very good and was pretty soft (which I happen to like) with a nice crust. Best quiche I’ve ever had? No… but certainly very tasty and a nice, satiating meal to start our full day of walking all over the Upper West Side. (And to get us fueled up for aggressive phone dialing!)

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As our meal wrapped up and we got the bill, my alarm went off alerting us that it was 12:45. Time to start calling.

We browsed through the Time Warner Center for the next 15 minutes before getting “serious” and finding a bench in Central Park to focus on dialing and redialing.

When it was around 20 after one, I noticed I had received a voice message in between all my dialing.  I switched over (concerned about losing precious redialing seconds) and found it was my Visa concierge… calling to tell me that they hadn’t gotten the reservation but they could put me on the wait list if I wanted.

I was defeated. If Visa had called me, surely they had gotten through and found all the reservations gone. (Though why they wouldn’t automatically put me on the wait list I didn’t understand… just add my name to the list and call back to remove it later if I don’t want it… come on now).  I continued to dial and redial, deciding that I would eventually get through and put my name on that wait list.  Mike continued to furiously call as well… but we were disheartened.

Then 5 minutes later, I got the recording… the magic recording that is only slightly better than a busy signal… It says something about the reservations being open 2 months to the day prior and blah blah blah… Press 3 for a reservationist. So you press 3 and you wait… and wait… and wait… hearing a lovely recording telling you that all reservationists are busy but they will be with you soon… and you wait… and you pray. And you hope that when they pick up that they will not tell you that all reservations are totally gone (like the day before) or that they were closed for a private event (like 2 days before).

After a solid 5 minutes, the reservationist picked up and asks how she could help me. I refrained from screaming that we had been hearing busy signals for 45 minutes (plus all the busy signals and disappointment of the prior 2 days) and we now just needed to know ARE THERE ANY RESERVATIONS LEFT?!?!  So she goes through the whole dog and pony…

“What date are you interested in?”

“June 28th” (why else would I be calling with such fury on April 28th?)

“How many in your party?”

“Two” (but I will beg and/or pay and/or force people to join us if all you have left is a 4-top!)

“Well…”

(You’re killing me lady!!!)

“We don’t have anything left for dinner…”

(She said dinner… but she didn’t say lunch… tell me about lunch dammit… TELL ME ABOUT LUNCH!)

“But…”

(SHE SAID BUT!)

“We only have 11am for lunch that day. Is that okay?”

(WELL OF COURSE THAT’S OKAY! I’d take 3am if you had it!)

“Yes. That would be great.”

So there you have it… after the most epic reservation system (well… maybe Momofuku Ko was close, but that didn’t feel so dire since we live in NYC, so we weren’t under a time crunch of having to secure the reservation during the only three days we would be in town), we GOT IN!  I actually screamed and jumped up and down in Central Park after we hung up the phone.

Though I must say, Visa Concierge… your lack of tenacity has been NOTED. (But pretty awesome they would devote someone to dialing and redialing for us!)

We’ll have to tell you more about it when we return from 2 weeks of eating and drinking our faces off as we road trip from Seattle through Portland and California Wine Country (specifically Russian River Valley since we love their wines so much) at the end of June…

 

Oh right… I was writing about Bouchon!

So Bouchon is a great place to stop for a bite if you’re in the area or finding yourself famished in Columbus Circle. I think it’s a really lovely place for tourists to stop during a day of shopping and Central Park hopping.  We were in and out within 45 minutes and our meal was very satisfying.

Total Nom Points: 7 out of 10

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Lincoln Ristorante

3 Nov

When browsing for a great place to take Mike for his birthday, I was debating between an old NYC classic or something completely new.  And by completely new, I mean opened less than 2 weeks prior.  I decided to take the risk.

I had heard about Lincoln Ristorante across the foodie blogosphere as it was being opened by Jonathan Benno, the former Per Se chef.

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It is located in an absolutely beautiful location at Lincoln Center in a fully glass walled space with sloping wood ceilings.

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I loved the space.

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The entire kitchen is visible behind a glass wall as you walk into the dining room.

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You can even take a peak around the glass wall (making it more of a decoration and less like a fish bowl).

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It even looks out on the beautiful new Julliard School.

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I was even impressed with the candles which were plain on the outside but revealed a very pretty tree and bird design on the inside.  I want these!

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The bread that came out was 2 different variations of a flat bread that was crispy (and just so so) and some yummy, buttery breadsticks.

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The menu changes regularly, so I’ll give you a glance of the menu for the night we were there.

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I was sad that there wasn’t a tasting menu, but the a la carte options sounded great anyway.

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And we were very torn on what to order.

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But in the end, Mike decided he wanted to try the beef (which I had read explained as “if we are going to put steak on the menu, it had better be the best steak we can find.”)

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We were first served with a chick pea cake with a puree that I recall being delicious, but not delicious enough to commit to memory exactly what it was.

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We started with the foie gras, sweet bread, and rabbit terrine.  It was good, but honestly, this was my least favorite part of the meal. I expected it to be a bit more flavorful.  It tasted earthy, but lacking in depth.

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And then the steak came… it was presented to us beautifully until it was whisked away to be carved.

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And it came back perfectly plated for each of us.  It was probably the softest steak I have ever eaten.  You could probably have cut most of it with a butter knife.  And it had delicious char.  The cipollini onions were so sweet and so delicious.  A perfect pair for the meat.  The greens (which may have been spinach) were forgettable and obviously there just for color.  The marrow, however, was insanely delicious and  buttery.  Mike went so far as to describe it as “the creamiest cream you could ever cream.”  I promised him I would quote him on that and wrote it down.

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We ordered a side of gnocchi and it was the best gnocchi I have ever had.  It was pillowy and buttery and cheesy and everything you could want.

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The dessert menu came and and we opted to also do after-dinner drinks.

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I chose the amaretto, and it was the best damn amaretto I have ever had.  Commit this brand to memory if you like Amaretto:  Luxardo.  As someone who only usually drinks DiSaronno (which is good, don’t get me wrong), this was eye opening.  I will find this again and drink it forever.

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Here is where things get fuzzy.  I have no idea why I took a picture of a fork on a glass of water.  Perhaps I liked the vantage point with the glasses behind?  One can only wonder now.

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The birthday boy ordered the trio of gelati: milk chocolate, caramel, and fior di latte.  They were nice enough to light a candle, write a birthday message, and not sing.  Perfect.

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I chose the Monte Bianco.  The chestnut sorbetto just sounded too good to pass up.  When it came, it looked like a Tartufo.

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And it had a pretty center.  The chestnut was good, but I wanted more chestnut flavor.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, however, and eagerly cleaned my plate and wished I could pick it up and lick it.

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We received a final plate of mini cookies.  I was especially pleased as they served 2 of everything, so as to avoid any uncomfortable “who gets which cookie” scenarios.

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Overall, Lincoln was a fantastic choice and I’m so glad we went.  The food was fantastic and the atmosphere and appearance of the restaurant was some of the best I’ve ever seen.  The service was impeccable and I was especially impressed that they asked about food allergies when I made the reservation and paid close attention to it throughout the meal.  I was impressed with how reasonable the prices were, especially from the chef who came from Per Se (the still-out-of-reach restaurant in NY that I’m dying to try but cannot rationalize spending the $ for).  I highly recommend it for special occasions.  It was definitely in the top 10, if not top 5.

Total Nom Points: 9 out of 10

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