Caught up in the excitement of snow and Sunday night dinners and salted chocolate, I forgot to mention one eensy thing: It’s Restaurant Week in New York City! Restaurant Week, if you’re new here, is when a number of notable restaurants offer three-course prix fixe menus for two weeks, $24.07 for lunch and $35 for dinner. While by no means cheap, it’s a fabulous way to check out some of the nicest places in town.
Though I missed it on the blog, I certainly did not miss out in real life, enjoying dinner at Maze by Gordon Ramsey and Colicchio and Sons, and lunch at Maialino. All three were pretty great — it may have been my best Restaurant Week yet!
Mili and I went to Maze last Wednesday to celebrate some good news. The restaurant is in the London hotel in midtown and the bar was clearly a post-work watering hole for midtown suit-types. I ordered the Hubbard squash soup with braised duck ragout to start, roasted Amish chicken breast with braised red cabbage and bacon as my main course (clearly I’m such a braised cabbage aficionado now) and the chocolate fondant with cardamom caramel sea salt and almond ice cream. I loved the soup and the cabbage, thought the chicken was very good and the dessert over-the-top but delicious. Mili had the butter lettuce salad with mustard vinaigrette and pickled red onions, risotto of sunchokes, mushrooms and mascarpone and vanilla custard with citrus and oatmeal streusel for dessert. Her risotto was divine and I’m already thinking of how I can approximate it at home.
After going back and forth on places for dinner Friday night (our options were Butter, L’Ecole, the restaurant at the French Culinary Institute which I am now dying to check out, and Colicchio and Sons), Keith and I finally chose Colicchio and were able to sneak in with a rezzo at 10:30(!). I got there a little early and hung out at the bar for a bit, which was really nice. The bartenders are friendly, the drinks are good, the room is entertaining — I highly recommend it if you should ever find yourself on the westernmost outskirts of the Meatpacking District.
Foodwise, I ordered the roasted bone marrow(!) with truffle vinaigrette and “drunk” onions, then the “surf and turf,” scallops and pork belly with citrus and a bacon mayo, and a vanilla ice cream parfait with red velvet cake and an Oreo cookie crunch. I wasn’t sold on dessert, and truth be told, my pork belly was overdone. But the scallops were perfect, and the bone marrow was certainly the most interesting thing I’ve ever eaten. Anthony Bourdain, in one of his No Reservations episodes in New York, has bone marrow at Prune (loved this place) and declares it the most luxurious thing he’s ever tasted (I paraphrase). He’s not kidding — the marrow was extremely rich, but I couldn’t decide if it was off-putting or just amazing. The onions were perfect though, winey and briny to cut the fat of the marrow, but caramelized enough so that they were sweet and almost jammy. I could eat those onions all day, every day.
Keith had the caramelized onion soup with bacon and raisins as a starter, the Tom Colicchio burger with onions, pecorino and chips as a main course (on a glowing recommendation from our server) and the zeppole with malted ice cream and butterscotch. His dessert was spot on, and makes me want donuts right this minute. While I didn’t try his burger, the chips were very good and his soup was tasty too, though I hate raisins. Minus the trek out there, I really liked this place, perhaps enough to rival my love for Craftbar.
Then, because I was clearly not finished with my Restaurant Week adventures, Desi and I went to lunch at Maialino on Monday. It was my first RW lunch experience, and it was fabulous — it may have been the best part about working part-time all of these months. I had the artichoke mousse, then the suckling pig ragu and olive oil cake to finish. The mousse was very good, the ragu amazing and the cake reminded me of a more plush, lush version of the humble olive oil bread I made over Thanksgiving. Desi ordered the fried salted cod, suckling pig terrine (Maialino is known for their pig so we wanted to make sure we ordered it) and a cheese plate to finish. Her terrine, on a bed of lentils with a poached egg, was so good it had me thinking I might need more lentils in my life. Plus we had wine with lunch and I am always a proponent of daytime drinking. (Not.)
Overall, it was a great week of trying new food and new neighborhoods. I enjoyed it immensely — summer Restaurant Week, watch out!
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