…Archive for the ‘restaurant’ Category…

Margot Restaurant

After Leslie and I stuffed our faces at a baby shower, we decided that we wanted MORE food, so we perused on Yelp for some good eats. (this is why we are friends)

I found Margot Restaurant, which was nearby and therefore would take very little time to get to my door, and gave it a try since it had gotten some good reviews. We had been joking about fried chicken for the last…oh…two months, so the fact that it had fried chicken on the menu was clearly a huge draw.

Here’s the spread:

… for two people… who JUST ATE.

The fried chicken was, as expected, delicious. With some lime juice, it was perfection.

Here was the pepper steak that came highly recommended. It was… meh. Good but not anything to write home about, although I suppose that’s essentially what I’m doing.

The man on the phone INSISTED I get this rice and peas dish. Thank goodness I listened because it was my favorite out of everything we got. Salty and delicious with a hint of… lime juice? Divine. I ate it for two more meals.

Excuse the blurry picture. I was VERY excited to eat it.

We also got some straight-forward rice and beans, which were also very good. I think all of this food came to be just $22 so it was definitely a win.

If you’re ever in Harlem (which for most of you will be never), you should give it a try – although I hear the actual restaurant is pretty small and has very little seating. So… if you’re ever at my apartment, let’s order from Margot again. Consider this your invitation

Recipe

A couple weeks ago, I went to Recipe with a couple friends. I had been hearing good things about this Upper West Side restaurant so I decided to “stop by” on a Saturday evening to see if they had a table for three and they basically laughed in my face. This place is tiny so if you don’t have reservations at least a few days ahead, you probably need to go elsewhere…

We sat down at a tiny table (the other tiny tables were just about a foot away from ours) (note to self: don’t go during flu season) and were handed these cute little guys:

Of course, Leslie immediately broke her little clothespin. Typical

We started with a bread basket that came with honey and butter. We all know that aside from dessert, my favorite part of the meal is the bread so I was a little disappointed when we had to pay $3 for this bread basket but ah well. It obviously didn’t break the bank. And the bread was warm and delicious and fresh!

Oh, yes.

Abby and Leslie both got two appetizers but I went for the Braised Duck Leg & Shaved Foie Gras Torchon with lentils, swiss chard, kale, in a caramel duck jus.

At least that’s what the menu said but I can tell you that I definitely had duck… it was definitely braised…. and came with this wild rice with kale, corn, and snap peas. Yum!

Also, how is it okay that duck is pink? Isn’t it basically like a chicken? Did I just lose 30 readers by saying that because I actually know nothing about food??

Oh, well.

I couldn’t finish my portion but I will tell you, that the sauce was divine and I’m pretty sure all of the rice/veggies mixture was consumed.

Leslie and Abby were happy with their dishes, too. I think Abby had either a pumpkin or butternut squash soup and a foie gras plate and Leslie had a salad and this amazing tomato tart with cheese, sitting on top of a thick slice of chewy bread.

The service was friendly and it’s a great, casual atmosphere. I definitely recommend it for a date

Sugar in the City

Spencer and Derek were in the city so naturally, we went on a sugar binge. And when I say “we”, I mean Spencer and I since Derek is actually healthy.

I had a cupcake coupon to redeem so we planned on meeting in the East Village. However, we thought it might be good to eat something that wouldn’t put us in an immediate sugar coma so we meandered over to Dumpling Man for some lunch.

I chose the “special” of the day which was a Japanese inspired, vegan dumpling. It had edamame, hijiki and carrots in there and was quite tasty! The best part was, they supply Sriracha, which is always a plus.

Derek stopped by a vegan bakery for his lunch…

And we sat on a park bench and tried our darndest to not get bird poop all over ourselves

And then we headed to Butter Lane to pick up our sugar for the afternoon…

Don’t let the above photo deceive you – we got 6 for the two of us. I picked the sea salt chocolate caramel cupcake, the blueberry, and my favorite – vanilla with vanilla buttercream. Yum…

Although, after eating these cupcakes, I’m convinced we didn’t get the WHOLE recipe during our cupcake class. These were more cake-ier and delicious.

After that, we had to have more sustenance so we went to ChikaLicious since I had a gift card for it. Since I had sampled most of the cakes the last time I was there, I went with The Situation.

It was a gigantic cookie with marshmallow, peanut butter chips, pretzels, corn chips, and possibly some chocolate chips as well.

Let’s get another angle of this beauty…

It was delicious, as expected, although the peanut butter was slightly overwhelming. This satisfies both the salty, sweet, crunchy craving and probably contains a million calories. Worth it.

I should note that all of these were eaten in a 6 hour period but regardless, if you’re not a trained professional, don’t try this at home.

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