OUR TRIP TO NY

As I do every year, a few weeks ago, I attended the Fancy Food Show in NY. But it was a different situation for me. In previous years, I'd always attended the FFS as a buyer, walking the floor and checking out new products and trends for the next year. This year, I was at the show on behalf of work, and I was now a seller, and I gotta say, it's much more fun to be a buyer than a seller. But I won't complain too much, since working at the FFS provided me with a free trip (well, at least they paid for the flight) to NY and a mini break for me and Tom. I also got to hang out with my friends, Harin and Big Ed, whom I hadn't seen since moving from Boston last year.

Of course, upon finding out that I would be in NY, I started planning on where to eat. After I bit of effort, I landed two reservations - one for Casa Mono and the other for Sfoglia. Any reader of this blog knows that I'm a huge fan of Batali-Bastiniach restaurants, and I was greatly looking foward to visiting Casa Mono. As for Sfoglia, after our memorable meal in Nantucket last year (I still think of the radish bagna cauda), I was looking foward to visiting their NY location.

Our first night in DUMBO, we landed in the early evening, which allowed a casual dinner with my friends, Jayna and Juliet. We decided to stay in Brooklyn, and visited a Japanese restaurant near my cousin's house (which we'd gone to before, and I think I've blogged about it). Afterwards, we went over to the promenade to check out the NYC Waterfalls, but while over there, we decided to get in line for ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. Now, I've always seen the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, but the last time I'd tried to go, they had amazingly run out of ice cream. This time, they definitely had ice cream, so we got in the "express" line (limited menu and you order from a window). We stood in line and chatted, and it took us nearly an hour (so much for express) before we got to the front and ordered our ice cream. Ultimately, it really wasn't worth it. The ice cream was allright, nothing amazing, and by the time we got it, they'd shut off the Waterfalls for the evening (we thought they ran all night). Oh well.

The next day, was Sunday, and the beginning of the show. It was crazy and tiring and after it was over, I was ready to eat. We had our reservation for Casa Mono and headed down to Union Square. (sorry, no pics, it was a small place and I didn't want to disturb other diners). When we approached the restaurant, we found a tiny little place packed full of people. We were a little bit early for our meal, but they sat us anyway. We got a seat by the windows, but the place is literally so tiny that they table had to be pulled out before I could get to my seat.

Tom and I ordered quite a few dishes. The menu changes pretty frequently, but I definitely enjoyed a lovely plate of grilled sardines (it was also Tom's favorite dish of the night). The pimientos del padron were allright, but they for some reason included sweet peppers with it. At least they were cooked well. I also got a plate of mushrooms, which were too charred for my taste, I wasn't even able to finish it. But I did get this amazing dish of soft shell crab. I forget what else we ordered, but I do remember that this was some of the best tapas I've had in the U.S. and I certainly wouldn't mind going back. (I will say it was pretty pricey, though).

For our second night in NY, we had dinner with Tom's parents and brother, at a casual neighborhood place in near his brother's house in Brooklyn. The following night we had our reservations at Sfoglia, however, we ended up having dinner with my cousin and Juliet, so I had to search around for reservations elsewhere. I did a quick search at Opentable and after looking at the available options, I chose Vong. I'd heard of Vong before (it's a Jean Georges restaurant) and after taking a quick look at the online menu, it seemed like a decent bet, it was also located very close to my cousin's condo.

Upon entering Vong, we found a very modern looking restaurant, with lots of cool bamboo work and decorated in dark reds and browns. We were seated right away and as we waited for the rest of our party arrived, I noticed a rather ominous thing - the dining room table was barely 1/3 full and it was already 7. As we looked through the menu, I noticed another ominious sign, Vong offers a prix fixe menu all the time. After our party arrived, we were able to put in our orders. Juliet and I went for the prix fixe menu, while the other two menus over our party ordered from the regular menu.

Juliet had also put in a drink menu, which never showed up, she actually had to ask for it. And in fact, our wait service was pretty slow and spotty. The appetizer I started off with was decent, but nothing amazing, just a seared tuna roll served like a summer roll in a thin, soft rice paper wrapper. After waiting nearly 25-30 minutes, our entrees finally showed up. It's the kinda of waiting that makes you wonder what the hell happened to your food. I had a dish of chicken which was supposed to have lemongrass (though I never really tasted it), long beans and sticky rice. It wasn't a memorable dish. Just a chicken dish that was ok. Meanwhile, Tom was having a much worse time. The crab spring rolls that we got for his appetizer were pretty good (again nothing memorable), but his tuna burger was memorable for a bad reason. It arrived at the table lukewarm, and the fresh potato chips it had been served with had sat so long, that they were cold and greasy. After eating it, he actually began feeling sick, and ended up with a mild bout of food poisoning later that evening.

Meanwhile, service was neglectful and sluggish. We did end up ordering a few desserts. Actually, both Juliet and my meals came with dessert. None of their dessert options truly appealed to me, so I went with something I felt was pretty safe, a tropical fruit salad with, interestingly enough, white pepper ice cream. Let me just say that people should not make a white pepper ice cream. As for the "tropical" fruits, apparently that meant a whole lot of kiwi and bananas. I was looking foward to maybe mango and passion fruits, but just picked out all the kiwi and ate that. We also got a passion fruit souffle to share, which was ok, the texture was a bit strange, and I think Juliet got the typical warm chocolate cake, it was the only decent dessert, but really, it's a hard one to screw up. In Tom's words, Vong sucked. It's clear that after opening over 15 restaurants, Jean Georges is just resting on his name for this place, which I should've known, with warning signs like reservations available at all hours and a dining room that never became more than half full.

And the last meal I'll write during our trip to NY, was my lunch at Google. That's right people, I finally made it into the Google cafeteria (who knew it'd end up being the NY one). My coworker's boyfriend is an employee at Google, and was working out of their NY office while we were at the FFS. And since my co-worker new that I'd always wanted to dine at the Google cafeteria, she invited me to lunch after a meeting with our publicist.

They actually have two cafeterias at the NY location. We checked out the first one, which was smaller, and they had a lasagna bar going on. They also had an area where you could pick up sushi in to go boxes and any drinks that you wanted. But we weren't too interested in the offerings and headed up stairs to the main cafeteria. The main cafeteria is on the top floor of the building, affording a nice view of the city. It had lots of different themed stations, but I stuck with the salad bar offerings. There was certainly a lot of variety and lots of nice fresh veggies, but to be honest, this wasn't the most amazing food I'd ever experienced. I mean, the selection of food is readily available to anyone who's ever been to City Bakery or an type of gourmet food market. The difference is at Google, you don't have to pay, and you can eat as much of it as you want. I did enjoy my meal there, but overall, it wasn't the transcendent experience that had been described to me.

So that as our trip to NY. I don't know if we'll be back next year, because the FFS will be in D.C. But we'll certainly return in December, to visit Tom's folks. I'm already thinking about where we'll be eating....