For lunch I walked 2 blocks to The Press Box, a small upscale pub on 2nd. My cousin later told me it was a historic pub that all the sports writers used to eat at and discuss, um…baseball I guess. (99.9% of people I have met love the yankees, it gets annoying)
Sidenote: The “AutoCorrect” on my computer tried to capitalize the word ‘yankees’. That makes me mad.
Anyways, it was a really elegant space with dark wood and a well equipped bar. They served a good bit of standard pub fare, including Fish n Chips, Bangers and Mash, and Shepard’s Pie.
So I order a steak sandwich…And Beef and Vegetable soup.
Both were genuinely satisfying. The soup had every ingredient it should have had like potatoes, carrots, onions, a rich stock, and good-sized chunks of beef. The seasoning was good but I add a little extra black pepper, as I usually do to a lot of soup I eat. The steak sandwich was cooked a nice medium rare and the bread was soft and slightly sweet. I sat at the bar and the service was great, so I will definitely return to The Press Box. However, next time I’ll try some more traditional cuisine. I will bring photos from my next visit. I’m getting better with taking pictures of my food I swear. Just look below.
Later in the day I wanted to check out the union square market, as well as visit Barnes and Noble (Which is 4 stories tall, literally larger than any Costco I’ve ever been in). I bought Anthony Bourdain’s bestseller, Kitchen Confidential, and the New York City Michelin Guide to Restaurants. It shows where a majority of the restaurants I want to eat at are located, which makes me happy.
I also checked out Paragon Sporting Goods on Broadway (Which is 3 stories tall). The market at the square was small because it was Monday, but there was still a good amount of fresh produce and herbs, grass-fed meats, and organic bakery items. I didn’t get anything to eat though because I was still full from lunch.
As I’m walking back from my little journey in the Village, I turned down a street at random in order to get to a northbound avenue for a cab. But as I turned the corner, a drawing of a small peach caught my eye on the window. There were no signs on the outside of the building, but I knew I had seen that drawing before. It was the moment I had been hoping for.
This was the first completely random encounter of a restaurant I had on my mental list. It was Momofuku Ssam, one of the many restaurants opened by chef David Chang. His restaurants have received a great deal of attention lately. When I realized what it was, I got so excited, and then so pissed because I was still kind of full. After starting to walk away I stopped myself thinking about how angry I would be later for not stopping to check it out. So I went in.
The lunch shift was almost over; it was around 3:30, so there were only about 20 people in the restaurant. That did not bother me one bit. I grabbed a seat at the bar and looked at the menu. After never really looking past the ‘raw bar’ section of the menu, I was torn between the cured hamachi and the sea scallops. After asking the bartender for a push in either direction, I decided on the scallops, which was a fantastic decision. I love scallops, but have only had scallop sashimi a few times. I eat hamachi practically every time I go out for sushi, so I was admittedly excited.
Just look at this dish. You want to eat it, I know, so did I.
Two skillfully sliced sea scallops were placed on a thin spread of lemon puree, and then topped with pickled cherries, sea salt, micro-greens, and finely chopped Nori.
The scallops were unbelievably fresh and would melt almost instantaneously when you put them in your mouth. The sweet and sour cherries, the subtle crunch of the micro-greens, and the sea salt provided a number of flavors and textures which all worked well together. I was really happy I stopped to visit my first ‘mental list’ restaurant, as it was hands down the best meal I’ve had since my arrival.
Are you still with me? I know this is a long one.
While trying to decide whether or not I was even hungry for dinner, I went for a walk and came across Abitino’s Italian Restaurant on 2nd. The dish I ordered doesn’t even deserve discussion because it was so bad, but it helps me to visually express another of my culinary pet peeves.
As you can clearly NOT tell in the photo, I ordered the baked ziti.
Why do places use penne and rigatoni for baked pasta dishes, and sell them as baked ziti? The name of the dish tells you what kind of pasta to use for crying out loud! Is ziti really hard to come by? (Answer: No. I've been in many Food Emporiums throughout the city and they all have plenty of ziti!) Just because you put ricotta and tomato sauce on non-ziti cylindrical pasta and bake it with mozzarella on top doesn’t mean you can call it whatever you want. “Hey check it out, I made this tasty lasagna with angel hair pasta. Of course it’s lasagna, I baked it in layers.”
After actually eating the dish though, I realized the shape of the pasta didn’t matter, as I thought I was eating three day old, flavorless leftovers. Never eat at Abitino’s.
No comments:
Post a Comment