Ah, Valentine's Day. The day of...chocolate?...cards?...gold pagodas with fresh water pearls (http://www.neimanmarcus.com/store/catalog/prod.jhtml?itemId=prod35730304&parentId=cat16130831&masterId=cat16130736&index=8&cmCat=cat000000cat000553cat17640731cat16130736cat16130831)?
I guess so.
Originally, the wife and I weren't going to go out - she'd been feeling very under the weather for about 2 weeks (so sick that she hampered child making practice). But fortunately, she was feeling a little bit better - her nose was now pink and not too red - and she got us a reservation for 8.30 at MK. I don't know if we enjoyed it as much as we could, I still had work to do when we got back and she had to study for class, but we tried our best.
Ah, we arrive there and got valet parking. Valet parking is key in a large city. I'd much rather drive someplace than wait for a train in the cold. The key here, dear restaurants, is to charge a MODEST price for valet, so much so that the valet price is really convenience. My wife and I travleing via train would have cost a total of around $8. The convenience for valet is no more than 3 dollars. So, 11 bucks is kinda my limit. MK charged 10. Kudos.
We enter and they take our jackets, not much eye candy (sans my wife, of course) around, maybe this place isn't the hot spot Yelp is telling us about.
We sit down at the far end of the restuarant and it's nice and warm. Though 10 minutes later, for the rest of the evening, there's some sort of draft that making us a tad chilly. We soldier on.
Due to our impending work, we only get one drink, a white wine Riesling. Wow, it was delicious, very crisp, well chilled. Mmmm, tasty, and I'm not really a wine connosieur.
An amuse bouche comes out, very tasty - 'twas salmon with creme fresche on a heart shaped biscuit. It was good, very amuse bouche like, got my appetite rearing. Anyways, we order and start our wait. Now there's something a little odd. We've been waiting for about 10 minutes and we have a bread plate and no bread! Well, the bread comes out. Clearly someone reads my blog. There were different types of bread with varying textures. The butter, however, was TAD too cool, but after a few moments or so, it was still spreadable. MK, fix that, make it spreadable immediately.
Our appetizers were Foie Gras and Fetuccini with wild mushrooms. The fetuccini was not particularly great, quite honestly. It was a tad "overproduced," a little oily, not entirely fresh pasta, and the sauce wasn't nearly as creamy as I was anticipating. Though the mushrooms it had were good. The Foie Gras was good. Not the best. I believe the best foie gras I've ever had was in Sarasota FL (I don't remember the name of the restaurant). It had a very light meaty aroma and was super rich, and the date reduction was a fantastic flavor. I'd give the appetizers a 7-8
We then waiting a bit more and nothing. Apparently something happened to our food and a waiter came to our table to apologize. I like the way they apologized. They gave us free food - a carrot soup for us to share. The carrot soup was good, the presentation was very traditional nouveou cuisine - a bowl with a little something in the middle and then the waiter pours the soup into the bowl. 6.5-7.5
Out come our main courses. I had the Venison while my wife had the skirt steak. We both had it medium. Oh boy, was it medium. That is some terrific cooking. Take note L'Oricio. My venison was good, very strong pepper flavor, though the chocolate sauce (or mole as they call it in latin cooking) didn't really speak much of anything to me. But boy, was this meal cooked well. My wife's skirt steak was also cooked VERY well. I found the flavors bold, but thought the outside was TAD charred, adding an uncharacteristic burned flavor to meat.
The meal was accompanied by truffle oil pomme frites with aioli. The presentation was interest - a big old drinking glass with wax paper and stuffed with the fries. I wasn't wowed. At all. The fries were rather too well cooked, a surprising mix of soggy and burnt, weird, I know. My guess is the kitchen used the double fry method (essentially you cook the fries twice, once to cook them, the second time to color them - I don't have the time to explain this technique, read about cooking french fries and you'll understand) and it didn't work successfully. Though, the truffle oil was very nice and the aioli was very rich.
Main course = 7.5-8.5
We didn't get a chance to have dessert as we were both full, but we will be coming back for drinks and dessert. Maybe another review?
total Grade: 8-8.5
Good eats
Monday, February 15, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
L'Oricio - New Haven, CT
L’Oricio – New Haven, CT
I was rolling off my current engagement and the colleagues at my company had a “rolling-off” good bye dinner for me. I had two options to choose from, L’Oricio and Zinc, both in New Haven.
Having already been to Zinc (fairly good though some definite miscues), I chose L’Oricio.
When I first walked in, it was nice, there were actually people there, unlike at Pacifico.
They didn’t have much to offer in terms of beer, which was disappointing, but a colleague of mine and I ordered a bass. Wow, it was awesome when it came out. Ice cold. That is something that should never be looked past. For me, all cold drinks should be on the very precipice between frozen and liquid state – I’m talking 4 degrees celcius (where water actually starts to expand because it doesn’t know whether to be in liquid or solid state). So, the Bass was amongst the most delicious beers I’ve had – I know it’s a bass so I can’t rate it too highly, but the ice cold temperature made me think I would be in for some treats that evening.
I decided to be adventurous that day and instead of getting a boring salad, I ordered myself the Sardines stuffed with bread crumbs and pan fried in EVOO (frying it in EVOO I thought would be weird, but I gave it a go), a spicy Bucatini all’Amatriciana, and a filet mignon in cream sauce. How did I get three things you ask, am I an over-eater? No, I’m not. I was very happy when the menu said that one could order half size entrees of the pastas, so I decided to do that. I think having a meal with more courses is a terrific way to indulge in the taste of chef, it’s more difficult to hit a home-run, but one gets a better indication of the success and weaknesses of the chef.
Do not be alarmed, my minions, there will be negativity in this report.
Before the food came out, the true test of the restaurant was upon us. The bread and butter portion. How do some many restaurants manage to get this wrong!? Do the owners or chefs, or waiters NEVER eat out? There’s one rule and a few pointers to the bread and butter act: 1)Do not have cold butter, it makes it darned near impossible to spread the butter often leaving the patrons with portions of the bread that have too much and too little butter on it! 2) To improve the experience, have a variety of breads – sometimes I’m in the mood for a roll, sometimes a flatbread, shake up the texture waiter! 3) if you want to wow me with the portion either bring out warm bread (not room temperature) or have the butter in a little dish.
Moving on, the first course comes out and lo-and-behold, my sardines have arrived. Presentation was ok, nothing particularly resplendent – it was three sardines surrounding a small mesclun salad. I ate into the first sardine with unabashed fervor, not because I was hungry but rather because I was anxious to have sardines that didn’t come from a can. Well, they were “eh”. Not bad, but not great either. The flavor was lacking. I don’t know what it is with New Haven, but there are some restaurants that cook their food and the end result is flavor, some have an end result of a high temperature, and some are neither particularly warm nor flavorful, what gives!? My supertaster taste buds will tell you the Sardines were not salty enough and I couldn’t taste the lemon on the sardines. Sardines 4.5-5
Other appetizers included a salami and roasted red peppers on grilled bread. The salami was kind of like what you get at the supermarket deli counter, I won’t even talk about it. The red peppers...well, the peppers were good but the bread was a disappointment. Why disappointing you ask, was it flavor, texture, look, what? It was the look and the temperature. The damned bread had grill marks on it and it wasn’t even hot. That’s like blatantly lying to me. I’m going to figure it out, if I don’t eat the bread I will at least touch it to see how hot it is. Honestly, don’t try fooling me L’Oricio.
Antipasti aside, here comes Nostri Primi – my pasta. Wow, this was good. It took a while for the heat to set in, it wasn’t too hot, but it had a bit of a kick, which is always welcomed. The meal had a good earthy flavor with rich pancetta and onions. This was a hit. I even had the group taste it after I was done. They all liked it. I would give it, individually a 6.5-7.5
Now I was excited again for my main course, the filet.
And out it comes. Thusly, disappointment sets in. “Where’s the steak”, I mutter to myself. It was sinking underneath the cream. Figuratively sinking and drowning. To make matters worse, mine was amongst the first that came out, so I had to wait while everyone else got their meals. This is bad because while it waits, under the hot cream, it’s actually continuing to cook from the residual heat of the rest of the meat.
Then I cut it open. Oh FUCK! Now I’m pissed. This is garbage. I ordered it medium. I wanted to see some pink or if I was lucky a little bit of red. What I got was medium well to well done. See the link = http://www.goodcooking.com/steak/doneness.htm . You’ll notice the difference between medium and medium well. Well damnit, I got medium well.
So I suck it up and continue to indulge, scratch that, I continue to eat what’s on my plate. It honestly felt like I had ordered heavy cream with a sprinkling of meat. I could barely eat it the taste was so overwhelmingly creamy and the cream covered the steak. It wasn’t even like it was dark cream, no. It truly was white-as-day heavy cream that covered my meal.
We then got dessert, which was ok, nothing special. Ooh, a brownie cake (what am I five years old?) with coffee ice-cream or something equally as cliché.
Overall, be careful what you get from this place.
Overall experience 6-6.5 (the bucatini is what set this meal apart)
I was rolling off my current engagement and the colleagues at my company had a “rolling-off” good bye dinner for me. I had two options to choose from, L’Oricio and Zinc, both in New Haven.
Having already been to Zinc (fairly good though some definite miscues), I chose L’Oricio.
When I first walked in, it was nice, there were actually people there, unlike at Pacifico.
They didn’t have much to offer in terms of beer, which was disappointing, but a colleague of mine and I ordered a bass. Wow, it was awesome when it came out. Ice cold. That is something that should never be looked past. For me, all cold drinks should be on the very precipice between frozen and liquid state – I’m talking 4 degrees celcius (where water actually starts to expand because it doesn’t know whether to be in liquid or solid state). So, the Bass was amongst the most delicious beers I’ve had – I know it’s a bass so I can’t rate it too highly, but the ice cold temperature made me think I would be in for some treats that evening.
I decided to be adventurous that day and instead of getting a boring salad, I ordered myself the Sardines stuffed with bread crumbs and pan fried in EVOO (frying it in EVOO I thought would be weird, but I gave it a go), a spicy Bucatini all’Amatriciana, and a filet mignon in cream sauce. How did I get three things you ask, am I an over-eater? No, I’m not. I was very happy when the menu said that one could order half size entrees of the pastas, so I decided to do that. I think having a meal with more courses is a terrific way to indulge in the taste of chef, it’s more difficult to hit a home-run, but one gets a better indication of the success and weaknesses of the chef.
Do not be alarmed, my minions, there will be negativity in this report.
Before the food came out, the true test of the restaurant was upon us. The bread and butter portion. How do some many restaurants manage to get this wrong!? Do the owners or chefs, or waiters NEVER eat out? There’s one rule and a few pointers to the bread and butter act: 1)Do not have cold butter, it makes it darned near impossible to spread the butter often leaving the patrons with portions of the bread that have too much and too little butter on it! 2) To improve the experience, have a variety of breads – sometimes I’m in the mood for a roll, sometimes a flatbread, shake up the texture waiter! 3) if you want to wow me with the portion either bring out warm bread (not room temperature) or have the butter in a little dish.
Moving on, the first course comes out and lo-and-behold, my sardines have arrived. Presentation was ok, nothing particularly resplendent – it was three sardines surrounding a small mesclun salad. I ate into the first sardine with unabashed fervor, not because I was hungry but rather because I was anxious to have sardines that didn’t come from a can. Well, they were “eh”. Not bad, but not great either. The flavor was lacking. I don’t know what it is with New Haven, but there are some restaurants that cook their food and the end result is flavor, some have an end result of a high temperature, and some are neither particularly warm nor flavorful, what gives!? My supertaster taste buds will tell you the Sardines were not salty enough and I couldn’t taste the lemon on the sardines. Sardines 4.5-5
Other appetizers included a salami and roasted red peppers on grilled bread. The salami was kind of like what you get at the supermarket deli counter, I won’t even talk about it. The red peppers...well, the peppers were good but the bread was a disappointment. Why disappointing you ask, was it flavor, texture, look, what? It was the look and the temperature. The damned bread had grill marks on it and it wasn’t even hot. That’s like blatantly lying to me. I’m going to figure it out, if I don’t eat the bread I will at least touch it to see how hot it is. Honestly, don’t try fooling me L’Oricio.
Antipasti aside, here comes Nostri Primi – my pasta. Wow, this was good. It took a while for the heat to set in, it wasn’t too hot, but it had a bit of a kick, which is always welcomed. The meal had a good earthy flavor with rich pancetta and onions. This was a hit. I even had the group taste it after I was done. They all liked it. I would give it, individually a 6.5-7.5
Now I was excited again for my main course, the filet.
And out it comes. Thusly, disappointment sets in. “Where’s the steak”, I mutter to myself. It was sinking underneath the cream. Figuratively sinking and drowning. To make matters worse, mine was amongst the first that came out, so I had to wait while everyone else got their meals. This is bad because while it waits, under the hot cream, it’s actually continuing to cook from the residual heat of the rest of the meat.
Then I cut it open. Oh FUCK! Now I’m pissed. This is garbage. I ordered it medium. I wanted to see some pink or if I was lucky a little bit of red. What I got was medium well to well done. See the link = http://www.goodcooking.com/steak/doneness.htm . You’ll notice the difference between medium and medium well. Well damnit, I got medium well.
So I suck it up and continue to indulge, scratch that, I continue to eat what’s on my plate. It honestly felt like I had ordered heavy cream with a sprinkling of meat. I could barely eat it the taste was so overwhelmingly creamy and the cream covered the steak. It wasn’t even like it was dark cream, no. It truly was white-as-day heavy cream that covered my meal.
We then got dessert, which was ok, nothing special. Ooh, a brownie cake (what am I five years old?) with coffee ice-cream or something equally as cliché.
Overall, be careful what you get from this place.
Overall experience 6-6.5 (the bucatini is what set this meal apart)
Friday, February 5, 2010
Pacifico - New Haven, CT
Pacifico in New Haven, CT - one of two restaurants I visited this past week, here's the review:
The evening started off a bit strange, a Monday night in New Haven, CT (Yale), but the place looked deserted. In fact, one of my compatriots even asked whether the place was open, it looked very dark from the outside.
Anyways, we entered the place and it was fairly empty - but have no fear, management did not anticipate that at all (they even made it two stories!). Fairly empty also mean practically no one at the bar (I counted one person, I don't know if that includes the bartender). So we walk upstairs and have a seat at our table for 10. The wait staff was kind and we began our orders.
I'm no wine connoisseur, but Marcelo from Epicurean Musings is. He placed an order for a fruity non-Chardonnay, and what do they bring, well, I'm actually not going to answer that, you know the purpose of this blog is to speak the truth, right?
So we end up ordering some appetizers for the table: fresh Oysters, spicy Guacamole, Beef Empanadas, and Lobster Quesadillas.
The Oysters were a hit, for me at least, and especially when combine with their red sauce - I didn't get to ask what it was. The Empanadas were also good, though I felt the beef lacked a little bit of flavor - Pacifico probably thought they were high class and could use "premium beef"....that usually means no fat, which in turns means limited taste. But, it was still "ok".
Then there was the guacamole. Ugh. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as delivered (soon to be a recurring theme here). Spiciness was no where close to the taste of the guac, it was rather bland. In fact, the bottled water I'm drinking now has more spiciness than the guac!!
Then there was the Lobster Quesadilla. It wasn't as bad as the Guac, but it was too cheesy and creamy, and (of all things) too much guacamole. I don't abhor these things per se, but the level of those accoutrements made me think they were trying to compensate for something. They were. The lack of lobster. The quality of lobster was good, but it wasn't there in quantity. I guess that's a typical trick the restaurant biz does. "Let's fool them with the limited amount of specialty in the dish and add more cheap stuff". I can't be fooled with that.
Drinks and appetizers = 5-6.5
I then ordered the Chilean Sea Bass. Originally it was supposed to be a full fish, but I requested them to filet it and pan fry.
Admittedly, I'm not a chef, but I do cook a lot, and fatty white fish is something I'm pretty good at (you'll get the point in a minute).
I got my perfectly filleted fish with a goat cheese salad on the side of the plate (rather odd, I would have probably placed the fish on the salad, not have a side of salad). I then looked at the food more carefully. Both myself and Marcelo, who on my right, got the sea bass. Something looked awfully weird. It was PERFECTLY filleted. I mean perfectly. How does that happen on both of them. There were no tears or other signs of manual knife skills in place. How could Pacifico afford should a good chef (or sous chef) when no one even comes to the place on a Monday (and also when the food isn't that good, really...read on). I don't think it was ever a whole fish, they just plan on most people asking for it filleted (I wouldn't call myself a conspiracy theorist, but more like a realist).
The salad was good, not too oily, the goat cheese was beautifully warm and blended with the greens quite nicely.
But, ugh...the sea bass. Really? Super bland. There was no taste to the fish, which is surprising given how fatty a meat it is. In fact, the rub the put on the fish and oils in which they cooked it made the Sea bass taste almost like vegetable oil. Practically no taste. I further checked my senses when I proceeded to the extremes of the fish, where there was more skin and less meat. I would have expected a stronger showing of flavor there due to the amount of time and soaking the skin would have compared to the meat.
Ugh. Quite frankly, I can't even talk about this anymore it was so disappointing.
In fact, I think it was so bad, not one person in the group of 10 even got dessert.
So my rating, you ask? Appetizers: 5-6, Main Course 4.5-5.5, Service, 5.
Total Rating: 5-5.5
Good eatings all
The evening started off a bit strange, a Monday night in New Haven, CT (Yale), but the place looked deserted. In fact, one of my compatriots even asked whether the place was open, it looked very dark from the outside.
Anyways, we entered the place and it was fairly empty - but have no fear, management did not anticipate that at all (they even made it two stories!). Fairly empty also mean practically no one at the bar (I counted one person, I don't know if that includes the bartender). So we walk upstairs and have a seat at our table for 10. The wait staff was kind and we began our orders.
I'm no wine connoisseur, but Marcelo from Epicurean Musings is. He placed an order for a fruity non-Chardonnay, and what do they bring, well, I'm actually not going to answer that, you know the purpose of this blog is to speak the truth, right?
So we end up ordering some appetizers for the table: fresh Oysters, spicy Guacamole, Beef Empanadas, and Lobster Quesadillas.
The Oysters were a hit, for me at least, and especially when combine with their red sauce - I didn't get to ask what it was. The Empanadas were also good, though I felt the beef lacked a little bit of flavor - Pacifico probably thought they were high class and could use "premium beef"....that usually means no fat, which in turns means limited taste. But, it was still "ok".
Then there was the guacamole. Ugh. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as delivered (soon to be a recurring theme here). Spiciness was no where close to the taste of the guac, it was rather bland. In fact, the bottled water I'm drinking now has more spiciness than the guac!!
Then there was the Lobster Quesadilla. It wasn't as bad as the Guac, but it was too cheesy and creamy, and (of all things) too much guacamole. I don't abhor these things per se, but the level of those accoutrements made me think they were trying to compensate for something. They were. The lack of lobster. The quality of lobster was good, but it wasn't there in quantity. I guess that's a typical trick the restaurant biz does. "Let's fool them with the limited amount of specialty in the dish and add more cheap stuff". I can't be fooled with that.
Drinks and appetizers = 5-6.5
I then ordered the Chilean Sea Bass. Originally it was supposed to be a full fish, but I requested them to filet it and pan fry.
Admittedly, I'm not a chef, but I do cook a lot, and fatty white fish is something I'm pretty good at (you'll get the point in a minute).
I got my perfectly filleted fish with a goat cheese salad on the side of the plate (rather odd, I would have probably placed the fish on the salad, not have a side of salad). I then looked at the food more carefully. Both myself and Marcelo, who on my right, got the sea bass. Something looked awfully weird. It was PERFECTLY filleted. I mean perfectly. How does that happen on both of them. There were no tears or other signs of manual knife skills in place. How could Pacifico afford should a good chef (or sous chef) when no one even comes to the place on a Monday (and also when the food isn't that good, really...read on). I don't think it was ever a whole fish, they just plan on most people asking for it filleted (I wouldn't call myself a conspiracy theorist, but more like a realist).
The salad was good, not too oily, the goat cheese was beautifully warm and blended with the greens quite nicely.
But, ugh...the sea bass. Really? Super bland. There was no taste to the fish, which is surprising given how fatty a meat it is. In fact, the rub the put on the fish and oils in which they cooked it made the Sea bass taste almost like vegetable oil. Practically no taste. I further checked my senses when I proceeded to the extremes of the fish, where there was more skin and less meat. I would have expected a stronger showing of flavor there due to the amount of time and soaking the skin would have compared to the meat.
Ugh. Quite frankly, I can't even talk about this anymore it was so disappointing.
In fact, I think it was so bad, not one person in the group of 10 even got dessert.
So my rating, you ask? Appetizers: 5-6, Main Course 4.5-5.5, Service, 5.
Total Rating: 5-5.5
Good eatings all
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