This little ice cream joint serves up some interesting flavors like taro, Thai tea and green tea.
They do this cool thing where they spread out the cream and ingredients on a cold table and then scrape up the ice cream in these cool log curls. Check it out:
We stopped in here with a gaggle of food bloggers and ordered up a few cups to sample among the crew. Here’s a shot of what the Thai tea looks like:
As you can see, they offer panda and monkey cookies as toppings. They also have face emojis, like this one with the taro flavor:
And last but not least, this flavor is vanilla with banana mixed in, and then a nice money-shot of sweetened condensed milk dripping down the panda’s face. Hashtag cummybear. This is the one that was being made in the video above.
The ice cream here is light and not too sweet, which is nice because you can eat a bunch without feeling like you’re fucking yourself over.
FROZEN SWEET
184-186 Mulberry St
New York, NY 10013
After eating Bangladeshi food across the street, a group of us walked into this joint for dessert.
The display case glowed with interesting shit I’d never tasted before.
We tried several items, most of which had similar flavors (dense, yet sugary and moist quasi-cakes), but each was packaged and presented with different textures, colors, etc.
The most interesting was this spherical thing that had smaller spherical things attached to it like sprinkles. In the middle was a pink colored paste of some kind. It tasted like a very light cheese cake.
This actually tasted like sweet cheese in a creamy cold broth.
But my favorite was this snaggle of deliciousness, which was essentially a honey-soaked funnel cake. It was crispy on the outside but juicy through and through. When biting down on it, the liquefied honey just oozed out like squeezing a dessert sponge. Yum!
PREMIUM SWEETS
3714 73rd St
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
Epcot Center in Disney World is famed for its “world walk,” highlighting about a dozen countries and offering some cuisine and culture from each. This place, in the French pavilion, is known to be one of the better places to eat in the park.
My wife scored us some reservations in advance of our trip, and I was looking forward to trying the steak selections.
First off, the bread at this place is amazing. You can choose from about four different kinds: mushroom onion bread, Swiss cheese bread, traditional baguette, poppy seed, etc.
My wife and I each had a price fix menu. For $89, we received the following:
The escargot was great. It had the texture of clams and a great truffle essence.
For my starter, I went with the oxtail soup. It was okay – not as robust in flavor as I hoped, but the use of truffle was generous, and the popover on top of the soup bowl was magnificent. French cuisine is great for shit like this.
My wife went with the lobster item, which came with a truffle broth, quail egg and some fancy foam.
For my entree, I went with the strip steak. It was cooked perfectly to medium rare. My only gripe is that I like my steak seared hard on the outside with a crust, whereas this was served almost like a sous vide style. It was still excellent though. I’d say an eight out of ten.
It came with some tomatoes, potatoes and asparagus:
And a nice truffle wine reduction sauce for the top:
My wife’s lamb rib chop was crusted with pistachio, and also cooked absolutely perfectly.
Some other guests at the table ordered the filet, which was equally delicious and nicely prepared. On top is a mushroom and bacon mash of some kind.
La Myrtille is a short bread base with a pistachio cake, topped with fresh blueberries and compote, vanilla cream, and creme fraiche ice cream. Not only was it beautiful, but it was the best dessert of the night, and we sampled a bunch from other plates. It was unique, and the right balance of sweet and savory for me. Perfect.
Here’s a look at the almond, mango yogurt and strawberry concoction that I also tried – pretty good!
And this was my wife’s dessert, L’ile Flottante, which was light meringue, vanilla creme Anglaise, rum raisons, toasted almonds and a vanilla tuile.
Better Than Sex is a dessert-only restaurant in Key West that’s known for it’s over-the-top sexual references.
That’s apparently supposed to be a black “member” entering a white booty. Classy!
Anyway I had a “peanut butter perversion,” which is a super soft peanut butter mousse cake with chocolate covered pretzel bark. REALLY good, but can get heavy despite the lightness of the mousse.
My wife had this banana crepe cake, which was really good as well.
We also shared this unique brie and chocolate grilled cheese. I liked this because it wasn’t as heavily sweet as the other items.
This place does a lot of interesting drinks too, like “rimmed” glasses of wine or root beer floats with chocolate and caramel:
The staff here is incredibly chipper. It is SO chipper that it will ruin your sex mood if that’s your goal for coming into this place. The server kept saying things like “super awesome,” and “girlfriend” (when talking with the ladies at the table).
Taureau is a French fondue joint down in SoHo that’s owned and operated by the same badass chef dude, Didier, who runs neighboring La Sirene and cross-town East Village gem Le Village.
My wife and I were invited here to round out a trio of press dinners for Didier’s restaurants.
The atmosphere here is cozy, with dim, warm lighting. Taureau derives its name, logo and decor concepts from the Taurus zodiac sign. It’s an earth sign specifically, and everything served and used for decor is of the earth (no fish on the menu, lots of natural objects for decor, dark wood and earth tones for the seating and tables, etc).
The concept of fondue is pretty simple: melted cheeses, hot oils, mulled wines and melted chocolates, in which various meats, veggies, fruits, breads and other items are dunked and dipped prior to eating. It’s not complicated or messed with here at Taureau. As with his traditional French bistro La Sirene, Didier has kept his fondue concept restaurant straightforward, and I believe it’s the only fondue gig in town.
The fondue experience is inherently communal. No guys: there’s no LSD, cult leaders, hippies or outdoor multi-day music festivals. I only mean “communal” as in everyone is using the same cooking vessel. As such this lends itself to be a good place to go both with a group of friends, or even for an intimate date. After you share cooking vessels, you can share a bed together. And with music like Barry White playing during the meal, the mood for such behavior is subconsciously set. One caution I will give you is this: be prepared to come away with a scent of cooking oil on your clothing. Didier has some good air circulation in the restaurant, so it wasn’t as thick as I expected. However sometimes the fondue pots can smoke up a little bit, and the oil smells can cling to your fabrics – JUST the oil smells though; the cheese and chocolate smells don’t cling. So even though Barry White may have lubricated your libido while you were indulging in chocolate covered strawberries with your lover, you both may come away with a “fast food employee” smell on your persons that could ruin the mood. I suppose you can simply double down on the sexy and eat topless if you want; then there will be no smell on your clothing. However, while it’s perfectly legal to go topless in NYC, it may be frowned upon by the restaurant and its diners, and if you drip hot oil, liquefied cheese or melted chocolate on your nipples, you may regret the topless dining decision very quickly (unless, of course, you’re into that weird shit).
I have to be honest here: I had been to a fondue joint out on Long Island once and I didn’t like it very much. It felt over-priced and the food was underwhelming. But here, I knew I was in good hands with Didier. Everything I have ever tasted from his kitchens was high quality and really delicious. As such I was excited to dive in.
Okay so, basically, you choose your price point and fondue accompaniments (very reasonably priced, ranging from $43/pp to $52/pp), and soon the food starts to come out as the fondue pots heat up on built-in electric heaters that are embedded in the tables. They serve wine too, so you can pair your cheese fondue with white, and then transition over to red for the meats:
The first course is a salad along with some croutons, which is unlimited if you choose to gorge yourself:
The salad is mixed greens, lightly but evenly dressed. The croutons are for your cheese fondue course that comes out with this. We tried four different cheese concoctions. The first was a nutmeg-infused cheese, which smelled like fall:
Then a combination of various Swiss cheeses:
And a cauldron of Monterey jack and cheddar cheese:
But my favorite was this earthy truffle perigord cheese:
It went perfectly with our side items for dipping, which consisted of broccoli, chorizo, fennel sausage, and portobello mushrooms:
In particular, the mushrooms with the truffle cheese was an incredible “double-down” on the earthy flavor notes. And the chorizo went really nicely with the nutmeg cheese. The spice of the sausage was off-set and balanced by that touch of sweetness from the cheese. We kept diving in, dipping food, and dodging and ducking from any errant drips of melty cheese as we reached over and across each other. Dodge, dip, dive, duck and dodge. Just like the five D’s of dodgeball, from the Dodgeball movie:
Some drip-catching plates could have been helpful, I suppose, and I guess we could add a 6th D for the dodgeball reference, for Didier. He has truly created some really amazing cheese combinations, and that truffle cheese was the big star of the show for the evening. I just kept going at it, even when all that was left to dip was the broccoli!
After about 15 hits of truffle cheese, I thought I might be full, but then the meat course came out. Our cheese fondue pots were swapped for four new pots: red wine, vegetable oil, olive oil and peanut oil. The idea here is to dunk your meat in for varying amounts of time (depending how thoroughly cooked you want it), and then add a little sauce to it before eating. The sauces included a dijon cream, truffle red wine reduction, peppercorn gravy, gorgonzola cream and Hollandaise.
The sauces paired in unique ways depending on which meat you chose, and which fondue pot you used for cooking the meat. The meats are all marinated and pre-sliced, by the way, for maximum tenderness. Our meat selections were as follows:
Pork (cook for 45 seconds):
Chicken (cook for 45 seconds):
Filet Mignon (medium rare 15 seconds):
Hanger Steak (medium rare 15 seconds):
My favorite pairings were (1) hanger steak cooked in olive oil and topped with the truffle red wine reduction sauce; (2) filet mignon cooked in red wine and topped with the gorgonzola sauce; (3) pork cooked in red wine and topped with the peppercorn gravy; and (4) chicken cooked in peanut oil and topped with the dijon cream sauce. Really good shit.
Dessert, as you can imagine, involved copious quantities of melted chocolate. We tried both the milk and dark chocolate varieties:
We were served a plate of sliced fruit and dessert breads for dipping. Bananas, pineapples, apples, kiwi, grapes, strawberries, banana bread, white chocolate bread and even marshmallows were all involved.
You can mix and match to your heart’s desire. I was actually surprised to find that I liked kiwi with milk chocolate. Pretty interesting.
But you can’t really beat the simplicity of a chocolate covered banana or marshmallow:
That about covers it for this really fun fondue night. If you’re up for something unique and different for dinner, this is definitely the way to go. When you go, tell Didier that Johnny Prime sends his regards.
This shave ice chain is often called the best on Maui. This colorful little kiosk in Lahaina has a great atmosphere, in a cobblestone alley with lots of umbrella’d seating nearby, accommodating customers for the other food places in the alley as well. This joint uses the flower-looking plastic containers instead of the styrofoam. I think I like these better, because they are more iconic, and the shape allows for melted ice to run back into the cup-like base.
My wife had an awesome combo of coffee, chocolate and almond flavorings, with coconut cream topping. Nicely done!
This Dole Whip business is dairy free, gluten free and cholesterol free.
Essentially it is pineapple that has been whipped into some sort of magical soft serve ice cream swirl. Apparently they also have it in other locations, like Disney World or something.
It was good! Soft, tasty, fresh. It would be very easy to put down gallons of this shit.
My wife and I were invited to another awesome Tabelog event – this time at a new gelato parlor on 18th & 8th called Amorino.
This place is known for its beautifully crafted cones that look like flowers, and their unique flavors like pistachio and biscotti.
If you see this fellow, be nice! He’s the owner, Federico:
Our task was to rate a bunch of flavors on a scale of 1-5 using this nifty score card:
The flavors came around in little sample cups like this:
And we were permitted to ask for pretty much anything else that we wanted to try. Check out this wild mix:
My favorites were pistachio, yogurt and biscotti.
At the end of the tasting, there was a little blind taste test going on:
I got 3 out of 4 correct, with my one mistake being a tech-fault. I wanted to write raspberry but since it wasn’t passed around as a sample earlier, I just didn’t think it existed. So I wrote strawberry instead. Lesson: Always trust your taste buds! I was right, but I was wrong. Oh well.
Afterward, they passed around some of their awesome gelato-filled macarons:
These were really good! I definitely recommend hitting this place for a tasty and unique treat.
This little crepe spot just opened around the corner from my place, on 7th Avenue at 58th Street. They serve both sweet and savory crepes, with stuff that’s suitable for everything from breakfast to lunch to dessert.
My wife and I came for the dessert varietals. I got a butter and sugar crepe with bananas, and my wife got dolce de leche with strawberries and raspberries.
Pretty great! Light batter, airy and crisp. I have to come back and try the savory offerings.
City Kitchen is a small second floor food hall that has some pretty decent proprietors in it. All of the food sold within is pretty much meant for take-out as opposed to dine-in, though there are a few tables available and bar seating along with windows.
I’ve decided to lump all of my reviews for each place within into this one post for easy access.
First is Kuro Obi, the ramen joint at the far end.
This is an offshoot of Ippudo. They offer the karaka-men spicy pork and chicken broth ramen. It was good. The noodles were the wavy egg style, and all the ingredients within were great. I just wish for $13 I got more than two thin slices of the pork belly.
Next up was Whitman’s for a burger and fries.
The burger was great – cooked nicely to medium, good pickles, mayo coverage, lettuce and tomato. Excellent bun (potato) as well.
The fries were lackluster. Maybe I should have upgraded to blue cheese fries. They were just a little greasy and not crispy enough.
For dessert get some “shaved snow,” An ice-cream textural spin on shave ice.
We had the banana cream, finished with some coconut shavings and condensed milk (and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal).
Nab some donuts from Dough on your way out. But if you see the famous hibiscus flavored ones, get as many as you can. They sell out quick.
We tried lemon poppy and chocolate this time. Both were amazing, doughy, big, soft, and flavorful even if not fresh out of the oven/fryer. But I was bummed that the hibiscus was all gone by time we finished our ramen and burger. Ahh what the hell… I’ll throw in some shots of the hibiscus donut from way back when I first tried them at another location:
CITY KITCHEN
Row NYC
700 8th Ave.
New York, NY 10036
