My wife scored a heavily discounted Groupon for Le Jardin Bistro so we gave it a shot. The deal came with two cocktails, two apps, and two entrees, with just one or two block outs that were understandable (a $26 foie gras app was one). Here’s what we got:
Apps: Escargots and steak tartare. Both great, and easily can hang with some of the big boy French spots that are super popular and expensive in other neighborhoods.
Entrees: Steak frites and rack of lamb. The lamb was the winner here, and nicely composed with tomatoes, cheese mashed/baked potato, and carrots. The steak was about a 6/10. A little tough, a little thin, and technically not a shell steak (a shell should have bone on two sides – this was boneless).
We added on some desserts: apple pie and strawberry tart. Both were good.
I would definitely come back to try their burger and mussels.
LE JARDIN BISTRO
95 Delancey Street
New York, NY 10002
This joint recently opened in the old Kissaki space on Bowery and serves up a nice omakase. Here’s what we had:
Favorite bites were the uni and the daily specials: shrimp with uni, and crab with ikura. We will definitely go back, especially if they offer another $89 special (15 courses). They also offer some nice cocktails. I had a nice martini at the sun-drenched bar before dinner.
SOZO SIP BAR + OMAKASE
319 Bowery
New York, NY 10003
My wife and I took a trip to Amsterdam, and, while there, we are a ton of really delicious shit. Here’s a quick rundown of the food.
Cafes and bars offer a great way to sit down, relax and hydrate. They also have some great snacks.
Arendsnest had this huge slab of cured pork belly:
Cafe Belgique had some insane olives. HUGE!
The Louis Bar ham and cheese tosti was super low budget.
Such an awesome bar, by the way. The building has been there since the early 1600s..
Wester Cafe won the bar snacks competition. Bitterballen, fried sausages, and fried cheese wrapped in egg roll wrappers.
But we also liked the fried seafood and cocktails at Pompa.
The bars in general were really awesome and old. This one (In t’ Aepjen) was ape themed for some reason:
One of the most impressive bars we went to was actually at our hotel, the De L’Europe hotel. There was a speakeasy in the back called Chapter 1896, and it had, basically, a museum of Macallan selections.
The hotel had great breakfast included, and with a nice view too.
The Heineken Experience gave me a new appreciation for the brand.
Other bars we enjoyed:
Dutch Courage and Wynand Fockink for genever.
Cafe t’ Smalle
The Old Sailor
Kikkie
Kaap Tein
Cafe Staalmeesters
Of course we got steak along the way. Sagardi was one of the best European steakhouses I’ve ever been to. This is a Basque/Spanish style steakhouse, serving vaca vieja (old dairy cow). I generally don’t love this stuff, but here, it was amazing. A 9/10 for the steak (rib eye), and I think the total score would be somewhere around 90 as well.
Amsterdam is known for its pancakes. We went to Upstairs Pancakes, a small 4-table spot that’s up a very steep set of stairs. We loved the bacon, brie and honey pancake. Maybe the best bite of the trip!
I think the best sweet items we had were the stroopwafel at Hans Egstorf (overpriced tourist trap, and I prefer the plain instead of the ones with toppings), and the apple pie at Winkel (absolutely insane – so fucking good).
We enjoyed some find dining experiences while we were there, too. First, the very long but very delicious meal at Kaagman & Kortekaas.
Next, the wonderful meal at De Silveren Spiegel:
Hard to choose a favorite between the two.
We also had some Indonesian food, as the Indonesian people have a long and interconnected history with the Dutch through the spice trade and colonialism/immigration. We had a great lunch at Sampurna.
Our worst meal in terms of both service and food was at t’ Westerhuys. It sucks when you get a double whammy like that.
Too much of a tourist trap, perhaps, but at least we got to try some more Dutch food (meatball stamppot, ossenwurst – like a beef carpaccio or tartare). The dessert was the best part of the meal (tompouce – tart crust with strawberry icing on top and custard in between – kind of like a pop tart or toaster strudel).
It’s housed in a beautiful old church building annex though.
We sampled a shitload of cheeses, both in the countryside at a cheesemaking facility, and in the town at shops.
We had some great french fries at the Keukenhof tulip gardens.
Here are some flower pics:
On our last night, we had a seafood feast at The Seafood Bar.
An amazing trip, and I feel like we barely scratched the surface. There were still a lot of places that we didn’t get to try on our itinerary (food halls, bars, etc). I think we need a return trip!
Fresco by Scotto is a family style Italian restaurant that is owned/operated by Rosanna Scotto, host of Good Day NY and long time news anchor for Fox 5! We were so grateful to be able to meet her there too. She was a great host and super sweet.
My wife and I tried a ton of stuff when we came here. Check it out:
Slideshow here:
We started with the potato and zucchini chips with gorgonzola, and the giant “Mama Scotto’s Meatball,” which weighed about a pound! Both were amazing.
Next up was this smoked hamachi crudo, which was one of our favorite items:
We tried two pasta dishes, both gigantic and enough food for two. The rigatoni Bolognese is partially made with chicken to help keep it lighter than most other Bolognese sauces. It still packed a ton of flavor, while allowing you to really go hard and eat a lot of it.
The pasta is all made in house, and this tagliolini was one of the best I’ve had. Porcini cream sauce with truffles. Perfect.
For mains, we had the veal chop with potato gratin, and the branzino.
We actually both liked the branzino more. It was so perfectly crisp and really nicely seasoned. It was plated with zucchini, spinach and a parsnip puree.
For dessert, we tried the banana pudding, the Italian ice cream sandwiches, and the chocolate mousse cake. I think the banana pudding was my favorite here.
Service was incredible, fast, and fun. My martini came to the table in about 1 minute and 48 seconds!
The table is set with a bunch of really nice marinated olives and peppery bread sticks.
We loved our meal here. It felt like we were at home for a big Italian family holiday meal. I can’t wait to go back and try their cavatelli and porterhouse for two.
FRESCO BY SCOTTO
34 E 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022
My wife and I went to Musket Room this past weekend to try their tasting menu. Overall it was good, but I feel like, for the price, you really aren’t getting a lot of food. Some of it was aggressively acidic as well, but that I didn’t mind so much. I was still hungry when I got home, and after a $500 meal, that should never be the case.
First course; sourdough bread with chicken butter (nice that they gave this to us on the house), red snapper tartare, oysters three ways (half shell, grilled and fried), and prawns.
Of these, the prawns were the big winners.
Next course; duck confit (this was dry), and crab congee.
The congee, while a bit more “whole grain” than porridge style, was delicious. It had crab and sunchokes in it.
Main course; venison and pork ($15 upcharge for the pork instead of the tilefish).
These were both excellent, with the pork being slightly more excellent than the venison. But two slices and three slices? Come on…
Dessert was nice. We had some complimentary French Amer (amaro).
The chocolate cloud with orange cream cake was just slightly less delicious than the sweet potato gratin with toasted ice cream.
There was also a little platter of cookies and things. Very nice.
I probably wouldn’t go back, but the food was indeed very good, as were the cocktails.
MUSKET ROOM
265 Elizabeth Street
New York, NY 10012
My wife and I stopped into Domodomo for a quick early dinner. Check out what we had:
We started with some tuna cones and their 18-piece sashimi platter. Then we moved on to some Korean style fried chicken nuggets and squid ink pasta with uni.
Everything was good, and I would definitely go back to try their omakase.
I took my wife here for a belated Valentine’s dinner, mainly because they offer an all-you-can-eat uni add-on at the end of their omakase. This place was a bit pricey, especially with the sake pairing, but I feel like we got our money’s worth. The pieces were all high quality. In fact, the uni was probably lower in our rankings of favorite pieces here. Anyway, here’s a photo dump of everything they served us:
The sake:
SHINPI OMAKASE
121 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
This place is a sister restaurant to the Michelin-starred Jungsik restaurant. We went big here, so I’m going to make it quick. Check this out:
First off, the oysters here are probably the best I’ve ever had. I think that has to do with the jalapeno and cilantro granita (ice), and their version of a mignonette.
I also really enjoyed their steak tartare.
The prawn rolls, sticky rice sausage, and fried eggs were great too, but my focus on a re-visit might be on the other stuff above.
The stars of the show were the short rib special and the crispy pork belly.
I would get these every time I visit. The pork belly was the best version of this dish I’ve ever had. The fat was completely rendered and soft, the meat extremely tender (no stringy bits), and the skin was nice and crisp without being too hard and hurting your teeth/mouth.
The crab fried rice was a bit fishy, but beautiful nonetheless. It went nicely with the curry, actually.
The soft serve dessert sundae was a great way to end the meal.
I will definitely be back here again. I highly recommend it.
SEA BY JUNGSIK
151 W 30th Street
New York, NY 10001
