Sweet and Sour in Boston

Holiday travels have made posting difficulty. Here's some pics from our 2nd and 3rd day in NYC:

Amy Ruth's



A famous soul food restaurant in Harlem. I guess my buddy Nabeel sees tour buses on Sundays lined up outside Amy Ruth's full of Europeans and Midwestern Americans taking a tour of the famous churches and choirs and eating damn good soul food. We asked the very friendly and fast waiter what we should get and he said Chicken and Waffles...neither of us were in the mood for waffles, though they did look and smell great, so we got the fried chicken breakfast instead. Fabulous! This is what Hen House should strive to be. I give Amy Ruth's a 3 1/2 out of 5. (It would have gotten a 4, but i did get a peice of hair in my home fries. Now I know what you are all saying, why didn't I bring this up to the manager. To be honest, I didn't even care. I've gotten hair, bugs, other stuff in my food before and normally I just remove the foreign object and continue eating. If I was at a 4 star place, or some ultra trendy and swank place I would have made a stink. But this hair could have been one of Abby's that was on my sweater I was wearing, since she likes to wear that sweater too. I didn't want to dock the restaurant a full point for this mishap since it didn't really affect my meal much, but it should be known.)




Spotted Pig



The famous Spotted Pig! Owned partially by Mario Batali and with April Bloomfield as head chef, this is a gastropub made famous by all the celeb chefs that visit frequently. (I also didn't realize Michelin has given the Spotted Pig a 1 star rating!!!) So we knew we were in for a damn good lunch. The waiters and servers were way too hip to be real. I mean, they were just dressed so cool and trendy. If I dressed liked that, I would have been beaten up and made fun of...but these guys were just so hip. Abby and I split the hamburger with shoestring fries. Nabeel gets one for himself. (We did feel a little guilty bringing our Muslim friend to a place called Spotted Pig, but after one quick glance at the brunch menu, there wasn't much pig available.) Next to us a European couple get their side order of shoestring fries...and it's a damn lot. The amount of shoestring fries you get with your hamburger is quite a bit already, so the side order is really for 2 or more people. Our burgers come out and it was damn juicy and freakishly good. I mean, there is no place in Boston I can get a burger this good...no place. Which really, really sucks. If I lived in the West Village, I would easily visit the Spotted Pig at least once a week if not more! The only knock on the gastropub is the coed bathrooms. I'm ok with coed bathrooms (hell I have one in my condo) but the fact that the stalls were sized for anorexic models. Very claustrophobic indeed. I give Spotted Pig a 4 1/2 out of 5.




Aquavit

I had a lot I wanted to say about Aquavit, but due to my holiday travels I wasn't able to update the blog as much as I would have liked. Abby ordered the smorgasbord and I got the Swedish Holiday Plate (Julbord) allowing us to taste a lot of different Swedish bites. We figured this was the best way to judge what Aquavit and Swedish food was all about. Nabeel was all set to get the meatballs, until he was told there was pork in it, so he went with the chicken over mashed potatoes.



This was our complimentary starter, a salmon pate. Pretty good.



This was the cold plate of my Swedish Julbord dinner. Some hits and some misses...basically good, just nothing special. It came with some sort of hot wine drink which I did not like, but Abby did, so I gave it to her.




Abby's Smorgosbord dinner. Some similar bites that I had, along with an oyster and some other items.



Nabeels chicken dish...it looked really good and Nabeel said it tasted pretty good.




The last of my Julbord, the first picture being Jansson's Temptation. Some sort of potato dish. Again, this was basically all good, but nothing special.

We asked if Marcus Samuelsson was in so that we could take a picture with him, but he just left for the holidays. Bummer. While I was disappointed in Swedish cuisine, I cannot say I was disappointed in Marcus Samuelsson. I believe I just don't have the palate to enjoy Swedish cuisine, but when done by a master such as Marcus, I can enjoy certain flavors of the cuisine. While it may be against what he is all about, I wouldn't know since I've never met him nor have talked to him, I'd love to taste his Ethiopean heritage or maybe his own version of French cuisine. Taking the Samuelsson out of Swedish food would be a bad thing indeed, for I'd probably never eat Swedish food (other than Ikea hot dogs) again. I give Aquavit a 3 out of 5.



Congee Village




Before our food arrived, I asked Nabeel if he had ever ordered food off a menu, thinking it had no pork in it, only to have the dish arrive and have pork. He said he has and he'd return the dish and ordered something else. Sure enough, after our little conversation, Nabeel's chicken and mushroom dish comes out with Chinese Pork Sausage in it. Luckily he ate a lot of the Chicken and Mushroom Congee I had ordered and some of Abby's Sesame Chicken. The other congee I ordered was Duck and Meatballs and it was fantastic. Both congees were in fact. Abby liked her Sesame Chicken. As always, I've never had a bad meal here, though sadly I feel bad my buddy Nabeel didn't get what he wanted. I give Congee Village a 3 1/2 out of 5.

We are taking a little trip to NYC this weekend. Going to visit a friend (and fellow foodie) and hit up some good restaurants. It's been over a year since we've gone to NYC, and I blame that on my siblings for moving out of the city to live on the West Coast for that.

We already have a few spots lined up. Since we are broke saving up for our wedding, there will be no $1K trip to Masa or $500 trip to Le Bernardin, though one day maybe we'll go. We have reservations for Friday night at Perilla. Those Top Chef fans out there will know that to be Season 1 winner, Harold, restaurant. Saturday night we have reservations at Aquavit Cafe. Aquavit is of course Marcus Samuelsson's place and it's main dining room is too expensive for us this weekend, but the Cafe menu is just right up our alley. Those not familiar with Marcus, he's the famous Ethiopian/Swedish chef that you can see on episodes of Simply Ming and other chef shows. His wiki bio is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Samuelsson

While reading chowhound and yelp for the latest reviews of both places have not been encouraging, I'm hoping for and will expect the best from both places.

We are also planning on hitting up Congee Village (cheap, cheap and sooooo good!) and also Momofuku Ssam (again, can't afford David Chang's Ko, so we'll go with the Korean Burritos instead) along with getting street vendor food (no place in America is as good as NYC in terms of street vendor food).

There are tons of other places I'd love to go to, but probably won't have time, and these include Prune, Spotted Pig, and Les Halles (though I've been here many times, so it's not a total loss if we skip it). We do hope to drop in on Le Bernardin for a drink in what we've read is a really cool lounge/bar and maybe we can get a picture of everyone's favorite: Eric Ripert.

Late night after some drinks might find us searching for Shwarma King. I have no idea if that's even the name or where it's located, but memories of $3 shwarma while heavily intoxicated just make me happy.

Any other hole-in-the-walls we should hit up? Your favorite bars? Any food related specials going around NYC this weekend you know of? Leave us a comment and let us know!