New Year's Eve and New Years Day with Friends

Happy New Year! Thank you for all the people who visited my blog last year and I hope you will keep on visiting my blog in 2011 :-)

It has been three days sine this new year has started but let me tell you what I did on New Year's Eve and New Year's day. I had great new year's eve and new year's day and I feel that 2011 will be a great year for me!

Anyway, on new year's eve, we invited one of my husband friend and had Fondu at home. When you think of Fondu, I think you think about Cheese Fondu but my husband family have broth fondu every new year's eve so we decided to keep the tradition and have broth fondu also.

Unfortunately, I didn't take good pictures of this night so I don't have any photo of fondu but it was really good. We had chicken, salmon, shrimp and lots of different kind of vegetables. I also made dipping sauces which my mother-in-law taught me. Egg sauce, Garlic sauce, Onion sauce and Banana sauce. I also add one more sauce with little bit of Asian flavor, sesame sauce.

I had a photo of cheese plate which I served as an appetizer so here we go. I bought this dates and apple spread and this was really good with cheese. I served three different kinds of Spanish cheeses.

Our New Year's Eve was very relaxed and pretty quiet. Nothing crazy like it used to be when I was younger :-) but it was really nice and I loved our relaxed New Year's Eve. We watched Time Square on TV. This year's new year's eve and new year's day was very warm so I think it was great for the people who were at Time Square.

Then, on New Year's day. We went to Manhattan to watch a musical. It is a musical called "American Idiot" by Green Day. From this New Year's day, the lead singer of Green day was performing on this musical for limited time. Even though he was not a main character in the show, it was great to see Billie Joe Armstrong in the actual musical. Everybody was so excited when he showed up on the stage.

Since the musical was Matinee, we had dinner after that with one of our friend couple. We went to a restaurant called "The Standard Grill". It is in the standard hotel on highline. My husband had been to this restaurant once and he had this amazing mushroom bread pudding there so he wanted to take me there.

First, we ordered appetizer. Green Beans salad and Potatoes with aioli sauce.

For main course, I ordered Pasta. The portion was very small but the taste was really rich with beef red wine ragu so I couldn't even finish them all despite the size of the dish. It was really good but it was really rich.

My friend ordered duck dish. I tried a piece and this was also pretty good with some spices.

My husband and my friend's husband ordered Mushroom Bread Pudding.

This was extremely good as my husband told me. I never had mushroom bread pudding before but I really loved it. I would love to make this at home but I am not sure if I will be able to recreate this dish. I checked for some recipes on-line and found lots of mushroom bread pudding recipe. I will definitely try it sometimes when I get different kind of wild mushrooms.

My husband even asked the restaurant the day before to make sure that they still have this on the menu. He was really happy to have this dish again.

For dessert, my friends order some kind of chocolate dessert.

My husband and I shared this caramel apple dessert.

Everything was really good and we spend great time with our friends. I wish we live closer so we can do this more often.

Anyway, it was a great way to start a new year and I am very happy. New Year's day in NY was really warm and I saw some people without any jacket. I wish it will be a spring already.

Well, there will be more fun coming to our way. Our friends from South Africa will be visiting us from tomorrow for a few days. It was April last year when we saw them last time (Click here for the post about their last visit) . They will be bringing a baby (1year and 1/2 old) so I am excited to see how much he grew.

Well, I wish all of you a happy and healthy 2011!

Fancy Lunch at Eleven Madison Park

Last week, my husband and I had some errands in Manhattan. Since we normally don't have a chance to go to Manhattan on the weekdays during the day, we decided to have a fancy lunch at one of the restaurant I wanted to go. The restaurant is called "Eleven Madison Park" which is right next to Madison Park.

The restaurant has lots of big windows so very bright and nice atmosphere. We really enjoyed this luxurious feeling.

Of course, the food was excellent also.

First, amuse. It was chicken soup and truffle oil crouton. This is not the regular chicken soup. It was creamy yet not too rich and tasted very delicate. Truffle crouton was great since we love truffle.

Then appetizer. I had scallop and my husband had white truffle.
The scallop dish was so colorful and beautiful. It really was like an art.

My husband white truffle dish was white truffle dish over torterillni. The chef came out from the kitchen with a glass container with white truffle in it and explained about this white truffle and shaved it right in front of us. It was super good. I love truffle.

Then we had this egg thing which is something like form inside with some green oil (sauce?) in the bottom. It was very fluffy and good. I don't know the name of this dish but the presentation was cute.

For main course, I had chicken and my husband had pork.
My chicken was very tender and good. I especially liked the crispy skin of the chicken. It also had a few black truffle slices.

My husband's pork was done in three ways (I think). I tried one of them. It was also very tender and good but I think I liked my chicken better.

Then sorbet. Look at this plate! Isn't it pretty? I had never seen a plate like this. I love it. The sorbet was bit too intense for me but I love the presentation.

For dessert, I had chocolate dessert. I was in a form of flexible chocolate ganache with some sorbet. I think it might have been persimmon sorbet. I am not sure. I also tasted some yuzu in one of the sauce.

My husband had coconut dessert. It was coconut sorbet with some tropical fruit. It was very refreshing and tasted great.

After our dessert, they also bought out some mini desserts. It was ice cream lollipop and thin almond brittle. Both of them were really good.

 In the beginning, we were worried that we might not be full from all these small portioned dishes (We were even joking that we might have to go to Shake Shack which is in the Madison Park to get hamburger after this) but by the time when we finish all the course, we were so full. It was a very satisfying lunch. We spent about two hours enjoying every single dish.

It was pretty pricey but this is something which is once a year experience. The time we spent at this restaurant was very luxurious and we thanked each other for everything we did and we got this year. Maybe we should do this every year! At the end of the year, we should pick one fancy restaurant and enjoy end of the year meal and appreciate everything for that year.

Anyway, I am very thankful for everything and my husband. We are very lucky to be able to have such a wonderful lunch in such a nice restaurant.

A Week With My Sister (Part 2)

The other restaurant I went during the restaurant week with my sister was "River Cafe" in Brooklyn.
It is at the bottom of brooklyn bridge and has fantastic view of down town. This restaurant is pretty famous especially the view from the restaurant. I wanted to go there for a while but this was my first time trying this restaurant.

This is how the restaurant looks from outside. There are lots of flowers also inside and it is beautiful.

Since we went there during the restaurant week, it was pretty packed even on a weekday lunch.

We decided to have a restaurant week three course menu ($24.07). First, we had Lobster Miso Consommé soup with shrimp dumpling. This was very light but really good.

For main course, I had duck. It was crispy outside and juicy inside. I normally don't eat ducks too often but it was quite tasty and I liked it.

My sister had grilled swordfish. It was smoky and very light. Maybe it was too light for my taste but my sister liked it. I wished it had more tangy flavor in the sauce.

For dessert, we had strawberry ice cream, creme brulee and warm blueberry almond tart.  All of them were really good but I think my favorite was ice cream and tart.

This restaurant is famous for their view so I think many people come here at night. I would like to take my husband to this restaurant sometimes and next time, I would like to try going there a night.

By the way, there is a famous pizza place near this restaurant and there is always a line in front of this pizza place. I don't care much for pizza but I would like to try this pizza sometimes also. If people are lining up to have this pizza, this must be really good. Maybe this will change my perception of pizza.

After the lunch, we spent some time in a park like place next to the restaurant. It was such a nice day and we enjoyed nice view of Manhattan.

I wanted to use water taxi to go back to Manhattan side but it seemed like they were not operation during the time we were there. Oh well.

I am very glad that my sister enjoy this restaurant and the view from it.

A Week with my sister (Part 1)

I hadn't updated my blog for a while because my sister was visiting me from Japan. She spent one week with us here in NY. It felt like such a short time but we had a lot of fun and I was very happy to spend some time with my favorite sister in the whole world.

My sister and I always had a good relationship ever since we were little. I think we are getting closer and closer as we get older. I am always very thankful that I have my sister in my life. She is the best sister in the whole world.

She has been always very nice and kind to me even when we were little. Every time when she go somewhere with her friends, she took me with her. This hasn't changed even when she was a teenager. Now when I think back, I would assume that teenagers want to spend time just with their friends and don't want your little sister around but my sister never complained about it and happy to take me everywhere with her. This is something I really appreciate.

I think she had to be very patient just because she was older than me. She never acted big or never tried to control me even she is older than me. (Sometimes, I act as if I am her older sister :-) She is very nice and kind and respectful to me all the time. It is great to have a sister in my life. I have no doubt that we will continue to have a great relationship despite the physical distance we have in between.

Anyway, when my sister was here, we had restaurant week in NYC. We went to two of the restaurants which I wanted to try.

One of them was called "Kittichai"(There will be sound with their website) . This is a modern Thai restaurant in Soho.

My sister had some kind of noodle. This was OK. It is very light and has some distinct flavor.

I had shrimp fried rice. This was something different from what I had expected. It tasted good but I think there were too much shrimp roe in my opinion.

We had fish cake for appetizer and this was really good but we forgot to take photo....

The restaurant has very nice decor and I like the atmosphere. They also have outside seating which might be nice on a cool sunny day or night.

I will post the other restaurant we went during the restaurant week on next post.

There are other things we ate during her stay. One of them was a burger from "Shake Shack". (There will be sound when you open the site). I went to this famous burger place for the first time just about a month ago and really liked it so I decided to take my sister there. We were not too hungry so we shared one shack burger. My sister like it a lot!

Also, we went to Cheesecake Factory.

I recommended "Bang Bang Chicken & Shrimp" to my sister and that's what she had.

I had my favorite "Tostada Salad"

My husband had chicken salad sandwich and smoothie.

Of course we can not finish all these so we took them home and ate next day again!

On the next post, I will talk about the other restaurant which we went during the restaurant week.

Manhattan Dinner @ Balthazar

The weekend was so beautiful and sunny, we went to Manhattan one of the weekend and spent a day there. Well, I had a dentist appointment so that was the main reason to go there but my husband came with me and we enjoyed rest of the day there.

Well, first thing we did was baking this croissant in the morning.

These are frozen mini croissant (it is not so mini :-) from Trader Joe's. This is so easy and delicious. I just need to take out some of them from the freezer the night before. In the morning, the croissant is doubled or tripled in volume. Then, I just stick them into the oven for about 15mins. (Please click here for the previous Trader Joe's Croissant post)

And these sunflower below is the ones we bought about two weeks ago. It was getting little sad looking so my husband took the only flower part and float them in a bowl with water. Isn't this pretty? The color combination of blue and yellow is perfect. My husband also loved his own creation and was admiring this bowl for a while with excitement :-) We had a croissant breakfast outside looking at this beautiful sunflower bowl.

My husband and I started the morning in such a good mood and went to Manhattan.

After the dentist, we walked around the city. It was quite a hot day. Summer is here! I love it.

After walking a while, we wanted to decide on where we are going to eat. I have a long list of restaurants I want to try out in Manhattan. We looked at the list and decided to go to Balthazar which we both wanted to go for a while.

This restaurant is a quite famous restaurant. It is a french bistro style restaurant in SOHO. I once borrowed their recipe book from a library. (Click here for that post)  Also, I watched on TV once that celebrity chef Bobby Flay was saying that their french fry was the best french fry he had. So I wanted to try out.

It is a popular restaurant and we didn't have a reservation but the time was little bit before 5pm so we thought we have a good chance of getting a table without waiting too long.

We went there and found out that the finish serving hot food at 5pm and start again with dinner at 6pm. We were lucky that we arrived there just before 5pm.

I had stake and fries. I had to try this french fries bobby flay was complimenting. I don't know the name of the sauce it came with the stake but the sauce was very creamy and rich and tasty! The french fry was really good but I think I had it better...

My husband had homemade fettuccine with shrimp and broccoli robes. This dish was excellent. I loved it. I think I liked this one better than my dish. The shrimp was so fresh and tasty.

We had another wonderful day in Manhattan. Both of us were so satisfied with this day. My husband really liked this restaurant. After the dinner, we walked around soho area and then to China town. Then took a subway and went home.

There are so many restaurants in Manhattan and it is difficult to choose which one to go. It will take a long time to go all the restaurants I want to go but I would like to check my list off slowly and enjoy the process.

Manhattan in summer is so nice. There are so many events and nice parks around. I would like to explore Manhattan and Brooklyn more this summer.

Lunch and delightful afternoon with a friend (Panko Crusted Sole)

My friends from Queens came to visit me the other day. We never hang out by ourselves but we have seen each other so many times. It was very very nice to spend one-on-one time with her and get to know her more.

We went to a small restaurant for lunch. This resutaurant has a variety of items on their menu and I always find it difficult to pick on dish to order.

This time they had a lunch special and I found my favortie fish on a lunch special so I decided to order that. It is Japanese Panko crusted Sole. Sole is one of my favorite dish but it is quite expensive sometimes. This sole was lunch special and was not expensive at all but it tasted great.

I love Japanese Panko becuase when you fry them, it is extra crispy. It seems like Japanese panko is getting popular here in the U.S. since I see tham in a regular supermarket and in lots of restaurant menue and recipes.

After lunch, we went to a farmers market and came back home and spend the afternoon talking about a lot of different things. She is my age and very nice to talk to. I am excited to hang out with her more often. Since she is having a baby soon, she will be very busy after the baby arrives but I hope that I can help her somehow during those busy days :-)

It was so much fun and when we realized it was already 7:00pm. Time flies when you are having fun :-)

The funny thing was that my husband had a business dinner that night. And when he came home, I asked him what he had for dinner. He told me that he had Sole!!! How funny that both of us ordered sole that day without realizing it :-) I would like to belive that it is a special telepathy between us.

Spice Market in NYC

Hello! I am back! I hope everybody is doing well. Last weekend was really nice weather and I went to my favorite restaurant in NYC. As I mentioned it in a earlier post, it is "Spice Market" (Click here for the earlier post about Spice Market)

My husband and I met up with his friend and his wife. They haven't been Spice Market before so we decided to go there together.

We ordered two appetizer, one salad and two main and of course my favorite "Ginger Fried Rice".

I couldn't take photos of all the dishes because I was so excited about the food in front of me and I forget to take picture :-)

But here are some.

This is Egg rolls.

Here is the cod with Malaysian Chili sauce

And last but not least, my favorite, "Ginger Fried Rice"

The weather was perfect and the french door was wide open. We were sitting right by the window. It just felt so good.

After the lunch, we walked on highline which is a walking way made out from former train track. The view from there was also nice and everybody was walking around and enjoying the beautiful day.

There are some area which you can sit down and relax.

After the walk, we went to Chelsea Market for a milk shake at the milk bar. Their milk shake is really good!

After the milk shake, we went to a big Japanese supermarket in NJ side. I bought lots of Japanese ingredients for cooking. I am excited to use them :-)

This is a view from NJ side. It is quite a nice view of Manhattan.

Right next to the super market, there is a Japanese book store. I bought this book called "Toritsukare Otoko".  It is a fiction and about a man who get addicted easily about many things. First, he get addicted to opera and can not stop singing about everything and anything then, he get addicted about other things and then something else and so on. One day he fell in love with this girl and get addicted to her.

It is a love story. I am not sure if this book is for an adult or for kids but I just liked the title and some drawing in the book. I am excited to read this book. Oh, I have so many books I want to read :-)

Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges Recipe Book

Today, I would like to introduce a recipe book which I recently bought.
I ordered this recipe book through Amazon as my birthday gift and it has arrived yesterday! I am so excited.

This is the book.
It is called "Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges".

One of my favorite restaurant in NY is called "Spice Market" and the owner of this restaurant is Mr. Jean-Georges Vongerichten. He is a very famous chef who owns many restaurants. (Here is the link to his website)

He has many different kind os restaurant and some of them are Asian Fusion. This recipe book has many of the dishes from those Asian Fusion restaurants which he own and of course recipes of some dishes from Spice Market.

I love food and also the atmosphere (interior design) of Spice Market and every time I have guest from overseas or somewhere from other states, I take them there. The cuisine is asian fusion. It is great asian food with some western twist. Their food is tasty and also elegant.

The interior of this restaurant is gorgeous. I like all the furniture It feel like somewhere in Asia but not exactly Asia. It is a mixture of East and West. The place is pretty big and there is the first flour and also the basement level. On the first floor, there is a big french door and in summer, they open them all so it feels very open and fresh. In the basement level, there are some semi-private rooms which has a sofa type of seat around the table. I love those semi-private rooms. If you are going with a group of people, I highly recommend these rooms. (Here is the link to Spice Market website, you can see some of the interior)

Everything I ate here so far was pretty good but two of my absolute favorite is "Ginger Fried Rice" and "Cod with Malaysian Chili Sauce". You can see the cod dish on the cover of the cook. I love cod and I love this green sauce around it. It is delicious. And the ginger fried rice is my absolute favorite. I have to order this dish ever time I go there. It is pretty intense with ginger and garlic but it is absolutely delicious!
There is a fried egg on top of the fried rice and around the egg yolk there is lots of fried ginger and garlic. The egg yolk is not cooked all the way through so you crush the egg yolk and mix them with the rice to eat. I loved this dish so much I always wanted to make this at home. This book has the recipe for this dish also so I will definitely try it.

This book has so many other dishes which looks gorgeous. It has over 175 recipes. Some of the dishes might be difficult to make because of the ingredients or method but I am excited to try some of the easy ones.

I was just so excited about this book. I had to tell you guys here. If you ever come to NY, I recommend this. restaurant. It is a great atmosphere and great food.

If you are interested in this recipe book, here is the link to Amazon.

Cheese Cake Factory Tostada Salada, Fish & Chips

I love Cheesecake Factory. As you may know, their menu is huge and I bet many people have hard time deciding what to have. For me, it is quite easy because I normally eat one of the three same dishes at Cheesecake factory. My absolute three favorite dishes at Cheesecake Factory is "Bang Bang Chicken & Shrimp" "Tostada Salad" and "Skirt Stake".

This time, I wanted to eat fish & chips for some reason so my husband and I ordered fish & chips and tostada salad and shared them.

Here is the photo of fish & chips

The outside was crispy and the fish was pretty thick and juicy. I really liked their fish & chips. This might rank into one of my favorite from now on.

And this is my favorite "Tostada Salada"

Normally, it comes with beans but since I am not too keen on beans I always ask them to make it without beans. I think this salad is one of the best salad I have ever eaten. The creamy cilantro dressing and the juicy grilled chicken and crispy salad leaves are the great combinations.

Their portion is super big so we always take half of the dish home and eat it next day. They were really good and I was really happy that I am able to enjoy good food :-)

During the dinner, I was telling my husband about the book I am reading right now. It is a Japanese book called "1Q84" from Haruki Murakami. I think many of you might know him since he is a pretty famous Japanese writer. I like his books and I have read many of his books before.

Sometimes what he writes are very mysterious and bit confusing. This book consist of two different story  in parallel and I am still on the first book of three so I don't even know what is happening or what is going to happen. So it was quite a challenge to explain the story to him. (I guess I should have read more before I start telling about it )

The character he writes are so unique and I love them. I always wonder how he come up with all these crazy characters. I think writers are very imaginative people and whatever they see and hear inspire them to create characters. I would like to ask Mr. Murakami what inspired him to create some of the characters in this book and also in his other books :-)

So, after trying the telling the story to my husband for 30mins or so, he finally said to me that he thinks that he needs to read the book to fully understand this kind of complicated story. I agree. (I really appreciate my husband for listening to me for 30 mins even when my explanation is not quite great :-) )

I am sure that it will be translated in English. (It seems like it has not yet translated into English) And this will be interesting for me to read in English because I am curious about how they will translate some of the terms which I can not think of a good translation for it.

Anyway, when the English version is released, I will let you guys know!

Today's such a beautiful day! My plants are getting sunshines! I feel so alive today :-)

Manhattan Dinner @ TriBeCafe

It has been a while since I had dinner with my friends in Manhattan last time. So it was time again to see them and have lots of laughter. This time, we went to this new restaurant in Tribeca area called "TriBeCafe". It seems like they opened on Feb this year so it is quite new place.

The food they serve is what they call "Tokyo Casual" cuisine. It is not Japanese traditional food but more like fried minced beef, curry and different kind of pasta which you can find in Japanese western food restaurant. We call this kind of food "Yoshoku". Those food are not originally from Japan but it was arranged in a Japanese way.

Anyway, here are some of the appetizer we ordered.
Banbanji salad. It is a chicken salad with sesame dressing. Quite poplar dish in Japan. The sesame dressing was great and I like the crispy wonton on top!

And, my favorite food. French Fries! This one is quite a lot! I love it. Oh, I love French Fries so much.

Then, fish capriccio. I forgot what kind of fish this was but it tasted really fresh and I loved it!

Those appetizer were awesome!

They also have many different kind of liquor and special cocktails. I ordered Bellini and this was awesome. They use homemade peach sorbet. I had to have two Bellini :-)

It has been a few months since I met them so we just talked and talked. We were so into talking, it took a while for us to order main course. They always makes me laugh. I love having dinner with them.

After two Bellini, we finally ordered main course.

We had Menchi Katsu which is fried minced beef. This is also a popular dish in Japan.

We also ordered a few pasta dish. One was mushroom pasta which is my favorite. This is exactly I remember from Japan. It is pasta dish but the flavor is kind of Japanese because they use soy sauce. I always loved this dish when I was living in japan. I am so happy to find it in NY! I make mushroom pasta at home all the time but somehow I cannot make it the way they do at the restaurant. I want to know the secret!

Another pasta dish. Red Thai Curry Pasta. This was something new to me. I never had thai curry as pasta sauce but it was surprisingly good! It was not super curry like and it was light and tasty. I loved it!

We also had some other dishes but I don't have pictures of those. One of them was Mentaiko Pasta which is very popular pasta dish in Japan. Mentaiko is fish roe and we loved this one also. We ordered some bread to scrape off the sauce we had on the plate!

Oh, such a wonderful night I had. And I liked this restaurant. The food was really good (it reminds me of  food I used to eat in Japan) and the price was reasonable. There were quite a lot of Japanese customers there that night. I think Japanese people definitely would like this restaurant. I did. I wonder how non- Japanese people think. I will bring my husband next time :-)

If you are living in NY, try this restaurant and let me know what you think :-)

TriBeCafe
277 Church St., New York, NY 10013
(212) 343-0277
http://www.tribecafe.net/