The start of a weekend in London

Time for a long weekend. Armistice day in France = visiting AG, who I went to school with and who was my roommate for 2 years while she's in London. Equally as food-obsessed as me. She works so I had two days of entertaining myself until the weekend. I didn't really feel like going to any museums (although I did drop by the British Museum for two hours) which left only two things - shopping and eating. You can guess which one I focused more on. And so I took myself over to Covent Garden with the intention of wandering around, looking at some stores and finally finding my way over to Wahaca, a Mexican market-based restaurant. First, I'd like to mention that I'm too tall to stand against the "leaning seats" in the tube- I have to bend my head forward. It is not a comfortable position. Also, unlike at the Abbesses stop in Paris, at Covent Garden you get a warning that "there are 193 stairs, the equivalent of a 15 story building" to get to ground level so really, unless you're in fantastic shape, you best be taking the elevator. Which I wisely did. 

After wandering around, trying some things on, taking a picture in Neal's Yard (Dairy and Remedies are both there), the rain started to drizzle, as it most certainly always seems to do in London, so I started in the direction of the restaurant where I seated myself at the bar and proceeded to order an agua de Jamaica. But they're not as cool as me (hah!) so they just call it Hibiscus water. Menu held the usual suspects - tacos, taquitos, quesadillas, burritos, etc etc. But most things are served as small plates. I seemed to have missed this and when I got my pork torta with conchinita pibil, this arrived:

Tiny torta! £4.85! Good but not as good as the ladies at the back of Tehuitzingo grocery store in NYC. This was when I realized that this is glorified street food at expensive prices. Good, sure, but also overpriced. But then again, isn't everything (£4 one-way tube ride?...I got an Oyster after that). The agua de Jamaica previously ordered was downed in a few gulps and then I was convinced to get the hibiscus margarita (tequila during lunchtime, fabulous idea). Good but not great - the one with hibiscus and blueberries at Toloache in midtown Manhattan is a thousand times better.

Despite my better judgement and sensing I might still be a tad hungry, I ordered one more small plate - black bean tostadas.

Disappointment. Don't get me wrong, the flavor was there but it wasn't really a tostada but a large round tortilla chip with a teaspoon of refried beans, topped with lettuce and tomato, corn and blackbean salsa...it tasted more like I was eating chips + fresh salsa than a tostada. But I must commend them on the two accompanying salsas they serve - a chipotle salsa and a habanero salsa. The chipotle brought an earthy smokiness (perfect for the torta) and I thought it was spicier than the habanero, which kinda just numbed your mouth while the chipotle set your lips on fire. Conclusion: if this is some of the best mexican food in london, there are most definitely opportunities to be had.

On Thursday, I had two lunches. The first was an overly-greasy fish and chips of which I ate maybe about 1/3, and the second was wagamama. I couldn't come to London again and not eat there! Actually, the only other time I have been to wagamama was sophomore year in college when we based our operations management project on them.

Behold the chilli men (hah, funny name) - soba noodles (I got really excited there because I thought it was like buckwheat soba but no, tear) with mangetout (wiki says this means either snap or snow peas), spicy tomato sauce, chicken and veggies. Exactly what you need when its cold and drizzling outside so it totally hit the spot although it was actually not as tasty as I remembered. The spicy sauce was heavy on the heat and lemongrass, light on the veggies and noodles overcooked. In retrospect it may have been better to order two appetizers...oh well, can't always win can you?

I would also like to add that had I decided to live in London, my blog might be titled "eating my way though M&S" - there are so many things there that I want to eat. Its like TJs on ready-made, ready-to-eat, takeout crack. Look at these juices!

Stay tuned for more small-plate obsession in London, lots of veggies and some market tidbits. Oh, and one of the most awful services ever in the form of ridiculously long waits. Yay!

Le Bistrot Paul Bert

Oh Mr. Bert, I had heard such great things about you. Were you sick this evening? Was something wrong? You seemed so...down and soooo not up to the praises sung upon you by former diners. Granted, as usual, I mistranslated (only a little) your menu but really, not warning us that the rabbit wasn't really rabbit and was drenched in a sauce made with sang? And underwhelming so much on the tete de veau that as we watched other dinners try it, their mouths puckered and eyes narrowed in disappointment? And cooking your volaille to the point of such dryness that no meat could be found on the bones? Even if you were having an off-day, I don't think I want to cross paths with you again. Ever. It just wasn't worth it.

To start, an under-seasoned and all too cold multi-colored beet salad with arugula and hazelnuts, dressed with olive oil, then the disappointing carpaccio of tete de veau (exactly what you think it is and bad enough that you're eating it already) with an anchovy vinaigrette and capers, and lastly some pan fried squid rings (I was so happy I knew what the word encornets meant and the French couple next to us didn't) that to me seemed a bit too chewy.

The misunderstood lievre a la royale with celeriac puree came next. Why misunderstood? Well my conversation with the waiter went something like this:

Me: Qu'est ce que c'est, le lievre? (What is this lievre thing?)
Waiter: C'est comme un lapin (It's like rabbit)
Me: Mom, it's rabbit
Mom: Oh yes sure I'll have rabbit
Waiter: Mais il y a un gout tres....fort (But it is very...strong tasting)
Me: Mom, its gamey
Mom: Thats fine, I like rabbit. Rabbit is gamey
Me: WHAT IS THIS?!

You wanna know what that is? It's rabbit (well hare actually) marinaded with a bunch of stuff and wine, then all of it (minus the bones) ground with pork and bacon and foie gras and truffles and mushrooms and shallots and other spices and aromatics. Sounds ok, right? Well the sauce is the marinade, reduced, with a final addition of foie gras and the animal's blood which was reserved when the cooking process started. So it was a wine-rabbit blood sauce...apparently that's what the waiter meant by strong. Would have been nice if we had understood each other but hey, a la royale means fit for kings!

My pave de veau aux trompettes de la mort, was a huge chunk of meal and was fairly palatable actually but my aunt's pheasant with sauteed green cabbage with bacon was a dry affair and somewhat amusing seeing her pick up the little legs and wings to attempt (and ultimately fail) to get some kind of meat off them.

The Paris-Breast was the best choice by far, with a thick hazelnut praline that had a long finish on the tongue. It was surprisingly less sweet than the chestnut macaron my aunt ordered.

My dessert, the baba au rhum au savarin was essentially a cake donut with whipped cream in the center hole, all drenched in the cheap-tasting rum that I highly dislike. But props for putting a whole bottle of rum on the table in case I wanted to get completely hammered off a dessert. Which I didn't.

La Regalade St. Honore

Finally. I managed to get a reservation at the La Regalade Saint-Honore.This is what a value meal should be. €33 for 3 delicious courses, starting with complimentary terrine (it was chicken liver) and cornichons, and ending with complimentary madeleines. Accompanied by a bottle of inky cahors that stained teeth and lips black for those who were drinking (not included in the price but not expensive either)

The potimarron soup (can't seem to get enough of it) came with crunchy croutons, bits of bacon (not be be confused with bacon bits), two giant grilled shrimps (prawns perhaps?) and something cheesy over which the smooth soup was poured from a pitcher by the waitress. 

The foie gras (which I thought was just a slab on a plate) was nestled in the middle of an intensely mushroom-y soup.

My poitrine de cochon with lentils de Puy was an intensly porky affair (in a good way). Although the pork belly (from Eric Ospital whose cured meats I had at Avant Comptoir) was mainly fat, I managed to find some crispy meat morsels which were beyond delicious. And the lentils? That was my favorite part of the dish. Smoky from the addition of lardons, these were not your lentil-soup-mushy-lentils. These were something else entirely and I could've licked the plate clean of them had I not been facing the entire dining room.
 

Seeing as I completely mis-translated half the menu, mama got a crispy roasted piece of cod topped with some jambon (de Pays? Eric Ospital's jambon Ibaïona? Whatever, it looked good), sitting on a bed of haricots de paimpol (not to be confused with haricots verts, as I did...) and sauced with cilantro. Mama wasn't a fan of the beans but I'm a sucker for creamy, well prepared beans even if they are under-seasoned. Although she did say that once she started eating them with the ham and fish, not separately, they tasted good.
 

My aunt got a crispy skinned skate with calamari that sat on a bed of squid-ink risotto and was sauced with something...don't know what but it looked pretty! And tasted yum.

And desserts...oooh these were goooooood. Souffle a Grand Marnier was light and airy and seemed textbook perfect or at least how a souffle should look and it was my first time trying one! The crumble aux pommes et poires with caramel chantilly was satisfying in that "its-cold-weather-season-and-this-is-like-pie-but-healthier". Although I'm not sure how healthy caramel whipped cream is.

And my dessert? Probably the best dessert I have had all year. Two pots de creme a la vanille with fruits de passion (why two? I don't know but apparently they sometimes give one vanilla and one chocolate). Basically, a loose custard flecked with vanilla beans and topped with passion fruit. Not only is it visually beautiful but it was so ethereally light. Yes, I went there. I used the word "ethereal". There was no slickness of fat on the roof of my mouth that you sometimes get when you eat a cold dessert thats high in fat. No, this was light, smooth and silky with the passion fruit cutting through the sweetness of the custard. I could have eaten another one of these but 2 was more than enough for this korovka who has let herself go a little in the past month or so.

I'm still not sure if there was another reservation for our table that night (they turned away every walk-in and said everything, even the tables that had emptied, were reserved) or if they just do one-seating-per-table...but we came in at 730pm and left close to 10pm happy stuffed (and perhaps a little tipsy), walking our way back to the Marais, past the Pompidou and Hotel de Ville.

 

NYC = food, friends, family and fun

After flying into PHL (it was cheaper), getting picked up by mama and then taking the train up to NYC from Jersey, I somehow mustered up enough energy to put together a small spread for when JP came home (super late and so not hungry). Not enough energy to go all the way to Whole Foods in Union, but enough to go to the Grand Central Market where produce is ridiculously overpriced but I justified the $8 for 12 strawberries by not taking the train ($5) down and back up from Union. Can't really justify all the prosciutto from Murray's Cheese though...

The awesome weather the next day post-cold and dreary Paris was sunny and high 60s which called for ice cream. I sat on the little bench outside one of my favorites - L'arte del Gelato in the West Village - with a cup of zucca (pumpkin) and dolce di latte (Italian dulce de leche I guess...?) and watched the cars go down 7th Avenue. The pumpkin was surprisingly delicious and I think I'm liking pumpkin more and more now. There may have been spices in it, there may have not...but if there were, they were very subtle as there was no real hint of nutmeg or cloves or cinnamon. I'd like to think I was eating unadulterated pure pumpkin gelato. And it was fantastic. I was almost sad that I got the second flavor with it as I could've easily polished off a whole serving of just the pumpkin but the dolce di latte wasn't too bad either in that I'm-creamy-and-delicious kind of way.

 

And earlier in the day, a sloppy bao with mildly spiced curried ground meat, paired  with grated mango, cilantro and a dash of sriracha from Baoguette, although not as good as I remembered, and definitely not a Num Pang contender, totally hit the spot in a pinch (that pinch being the aftermath of picking out and buying stockings and other related legwear at Century 21...)

Eating continued at dinner where eight of us (sans JP, who had to work a lot while I was in town, tear) descended upon Donatella in Chelsea, the new pizza place with the ridiculous gold-tiled oven. No pictures but the verdict is that, even though there seem to be new non-New York slice pizzerias popping up all the time in NYC and I have yet to visit the majority of them (I've only been to Keste where the middle of the pie was super wet), Donatella was ridiculously delicious. But apparently their oven is a bottleneck (I'm using concepts I learned in school!) and handles only 3 pies at a time so instead of us each having our own (yea, we're fatties, don't hate), we shared and they were kind enough to cut each one into 8 slices rather than the regular 4. 

The deliciousness factor was as follows: Diavola with spicy salami and chili oil (this seemed to be the most popular as we probably had a total of 3-4 pies), Margherita (you can't go wrong with a classic), Donatella with stracciatella and arugula, Capellacio with roasted and marinated mushrooms and then finally, the one I was not a huge fan of, the Enzo, with sausage and broccoli rabe (I love sausage and broccoli rabe pasta but this was just not very good...maybe they should've crumbled the sausage or maybe broccoli rabe doesn't belong on a pizza I don't know but I'd pass on this one next time). We also split some desserts (2 desserts for 4 people) and since we are all such great friends, both sides of the table inadvertently picked the same 2 desserts to share - the zeppoli which were surprisingly light and the sfogliatella where I found the ricotta cream too heavy for my liking.

And speaking of liking pumpkin more and more, at next day's lunch at Maialino with JL, we split an order of the pumpkin agnolotti which were amazingly melt-in-your-mouth tender delicious little packages of pumpkin goodness. The serving size is ridiculously small (12 pieces to an order? And they're not that big) but I could've easily kept eating and eating and eating them. Suckling pig terrine, which was breaded and deep fried, didn't do it for me because of its lack of seasoning but I didn't care since the agnolotti made up for any errors in judgement.  

And in other pumpkin news, what's Halloween without some jack-o-lanterns? So off I went to the pumpkin patch with mama + the little brother (no clue who ppl in background are)...
 

Finally, for JP's and my combined birthday dinners down in Jersey with my family including my mama, grandparents and my brother (who tends to act like a little brat at times, although I love him still) we went to Rat's Restaurant (unfortunately named, I know) at the Grounds for Sculpture. Why? Because the chef there won the last season of Top Chef and because its a 15 minute drive from mama's house in Jersey. I will add that taking my grandparents to a nice restaurant is always such a disaster because my grandfather's diet consists primarily of pelmeni, or Russian raviolis, and he thinks everything else is garbage, while my grandmother is just awkward at restaurants and will only eat filet mignon and is dealthy afraid of choking on fish bones. Le sigh, but what can you do?

Overall, the meal was a little underwhelming - I was expecting better. My tomato salad appetizer was meh with no hint of the promised serrano chile, my brother's smoked salmon was just that and nothing special (although I'm super proud of him for eating half of it, and for finishing most of his mussels since he's a super picky and measly eater who munches on broccoli and celery, as well as sour cream and onion potato chips for fun) and JP's scallops crudo looked pretty but disappointed.

The mains were much better. I actually liked my duck breast, which was clazed with black mustard and soy and came with a pear puree, haricots verts and beets. Thankfully, the licorice-fennel marmelade on JP's super moist grilled pork chop wasn't overbearing and the dried fruit cous cous that came with it was israeli cous cous (he doesn't eat regular cous cous). And my brother liked his mussels, like I said, and liked the fries even more so.

Desserts again nothing special. I remember the creme brulee being much better and the parsnip cheesecake, while cool-sounding, barely registered a hint of parsnip. The caramel ice cream we had was pretty decent but it was presented on little pastry shells that was been pre-frozen onto the plate and were hard to eat. On top of that, they messed up and put the "Happy Birthday" on the wrong dessert, not to mention the awful service all night.

Bottled water instead of tap as requested, the waiter trying to leave before we had finished our drink orders (during which he thought "hard apple cider" sounded like "sidecar") and failure to actually explain what was on the tasting menu. But I guess that's what (unfortunately) happens when gratuity is automatically included, although I thought they'd be more professional.

The rest of the time was spent sorting my brother's Halloween candy. And eating it.

JP - sorry you're not accounted for in the title of the post, but "BF" does not go with the whole "F" theme. Also, I carved the cuter pumpkin, again.

Revisiting Cafe des Musees on my birthday

I feel old now. All 25 years old. There was one time when I was 20 and I was sitting in my dorm room at NYU in front of my computer while my roommate, SK, was in front of hers. All the sudden I had a slight panic about how old I was - I was convinced I was still 19 and not 20. SK repeatedly assured me I wasn't 19. I was unconvinced and took a 5 minute nap after which I think I came to my senses...there were other fun stories that year including me sleepwalking out of our dorm room but I won't go into that semi-hilarious incident. But 25 is old!

And to celebrate my old-ness, I rounded up a bunch of friends who were free on a Sunday night, booked a table at Cafe des Musees (conveniently located a few blocks from my apartment and conveniently delicious most of the time) and had a turbot with fettucine-style strips of zucchini and carrots, on a bed of a parsley-butter sauce. Kinda like what I had last time, and kinda similarly delicious but not as rich (last time it was an even richer butter sauce).

And the birthday dessert was a dacquoise (lady finger base) with pistachio creme and fresh raspberries, dusted with confectioner's sugar.

I'm a huge fan of the food here - simple but flavorful and well prepared, and the big upside is that its open on Sundays and can handle large groups (although we noticed they seem to seat all the English-speakers downstairs in the basement...)

KGB - Kitchen Galerie Bis

No English menus here but the waiter happily offered to translate the menu (even though I told him I could myself) for my dining companion whose French skills are lacking (lets call him "DC") and asked me to correct him if he messed up, which, he actually did a pretty good job of although in the typical French accent. Of course my eyes are always bigger than my stomach and at first I wanted to just get entree-sized pasta until DC claimed he wasnt "that hungry" and was going to go just for a set of 6 hors d'oeuvres, until the waiter said that probably wouldn't be enough since they are tiny and so I made DC get some pasta too, at least in appetizer-size form, and then decided that if he was having 2 courses, I should as well so I went for the 4 hors d'oeuvres set but forgot to downgrade my pasta to appetizer-size. After that I had to endure the suffering of wanting to eat all my pasta but not being able to (I left 3 pieces...)

The hors d'oeuvres are more the size of amuse-bouches, and they change regularly (or so I hear). The day we went, the set of 6 consisted of (clockwise starting with the white foamy thing):

:

- Duck gyoza with tonka bean, vanilla and lemongrass sauce - this was delicious and I could have eaten 5 of these. And did you know tonka beans are banned in the US because they contain coumarin, which is moderately toxic to the liver and kidneys? Yea, I eat dangerously!  
- Sea bass ceviche with fried ginger - this was good but I'm not a huge fan of ceviche so I only ate two pieces  
- Beef croquette - I didn't like this at all; I think they used all parts of the cow in here, which was later confirmed SC who said they use tongue in it, although I like tongue
- Poached lobster
- Some other kind of ceviche  
- White bean soup with carrots and parsley foam - while the flavor of the parsley definitely shone, the flavor was alright

Then we both got the pasta with beef confit, eggplant and teriyaki jus. It didn't come as advertised (I had this problem at Ze Kitchen Galerie, its sister restaurant, as well). 

There was no eggplant to be seen, and in its place were some halved cherry tomatoes, chopped peanuts, scallions, basil and dill fronds. Regardless, this was some of the best pasta I'd eaten at a restaurant! The pasta itself was perfectly al dente and had a pleasant chew to it, the meat was super tender and flavorful and the veggies added a good contrast. Would go back if just for that pasta dish...

And, like I said, eyes bigger than stomach so dessert was not in order here, unfortunately. However, a short walk away (walking off that pasta...) was Pierre Herme which I couldn't say no to (one never says no to Pierre Herme). 

Olive oil and vanilla, apricot and saffron, creme brulee and chocolate and cassis this time around.

100th post + quarter century

My 100th post on my 25th birthday! Did I time this on purpose? Not exactly...a few weeks ago I realized my 100th post was coming up but only last week did I realize I could post it on my birthday. And so, something short and sweet...

La douceur d'Asie - sweet crepe with strawberries, green tea ice cream and yuzu butter (Bordier, bien sur!) at Breizh Cafe. Heart.