Tag Archives: restaurant review

Palma

Good morning and happy Saturday! Palma was great last night. It’s definitely on my list of favorite Italian restaurants in NYC now. I still feel kind of uncomfortable taking tons of photos of food in public, and I was having dinner with a couple people I didn’t know very well so I only took photos until they arrived. I feel like a bad food blogger for having basically NO pictures of the 3 (!) restaurants I ate at this week.

Palma is gorgeous inside. Very, very romantic.

My friend and I ordered blood orange margaritas made with tequlia and basil. They were delicious! I would typically just order a glass of wine, but these sounded too good to pass up.

And this is when I stopped taking photos :( Here is what we ordered: one of my friends and I split the burrata fritto (fried burrata cheese) as an appetizer. It was a special last night. Burrata is similar to mozzarella only much creamier. It was basically a fancy burrata “stick.” The only thing was that it came out a little cold. Not a big deal, because who is going to turn down fried cheese? Not me. It was served on a bed of arugula, and when you cut into the burrata, the cheese would run a little bit on the leaves. So yummy :) For my entree I ordered the agnolotti di spinaci which was homemade pasta (ravioli-shaped) filled with spinach and ricotta. It came in tomato and basil sauce. It was simple and delicious. Other dishes served to the table that were great: malfatti, which is similar to gnocchi, served in a butter and sage sauce; pappardelle ragu d’agnello which was homemade pappardelle in a lamb ragu with rosemary; and also prosciutto di Parma. Palma is fantastic! A lot of the dishes were classic Tuscan dishes which made me happy :) Even the plates had the classic Florence symbol on them! I miss Italy!

Onto breakfast:

Standard egg sandwich.

Action shot!

Ran out of milk…

I’m off to watch TV in bed with my coffee :-D

See ya!

Park Avenue Winter

So, I am a bad food blogger. I went to dinner at Park Avenue Winter last night for Restaurant Week and took only 3 photos :( None of which include food. After the terrible uploading experience with Mercat the other night, I was not in the mood to bring my real camera. So I tried to use my iPhone and the pictures came out dark and terrible. I’m sorry!!!! I will get better at this stuff, I hope!

Here’s what I did snap a photo of:

The beauuuuutiful chandeliers in the restaurant. PAW is interesting because it changes the decor and menu each season.

I liked this little salt pot.

Annnnd here is the wine we drank.

I ordered the butternut squash soup (excellent), organic salmon with citron and dill (pretty good) and chilled banana parfait (ehh, not good). My friends all got the gorgonzola ravioli and then lamb shank with polenta and then various sorbets and ice cream. Everything was decent but not worth the price tag in my opinion. The service was terrible. I’m not sure if it was because of restaurant week or if the waiters didn’t care about us because we are younger and thought we wouldn’t tip well or something? Not sure. But the meal took 2.5 hours. And not in a fun lingering way. It was more of a I’m starving and then my entree has been left in front of my face for 45 minutes after I finished…way. It isn’t the type of restaurant I would generally choose to spend money at, but hey, it was Restaurant Week.

My salmon basically looked like this. Photo taken from PAW website.

Anyway, I am going out to dinner again tonight (eek, wallet) but I am looking forward to it and will balance out this week by not eating out at all next week.

Mercat & Veniero's

Tonight I went to Mercat to celebrate my friend Catherine’s birthday! The meal was excellent and I highly recommend Mercat if you like tapas or Catalan cuisine. Following Mercat, we hit up Veniero’s, which is classic for Italian desserts.

I am sad to say that I am having trouble uploading my photos onto WordPress…I finally used a real camera, not my iPhone, and the upload automatically put the photos in a “gallery” and they’re all out of order. :(

So here they are:

Here’s what we ordered for dinner…you’ll have to guess which each is! :(

3 cheese plate with:

Manchego
Idiazabal
Cana de Cabra

To share at the table:

Patates Bravas (we ordered a second shortly after finishing the first) :-D
Empanada del dia – pork and apple
Croquetes del dia – spinach, golden raisins, pine nuts

Main courses:

Pebrots Farcits – Piquillo peppers stuffed with beef short ribs and caramelized beans (both Hannah and Catherine got this)
Arros caldos amb anec – Bomba rice “caldos” style with duck and orange zest (I got this)
Arros caldos amb sepia – Bomba rice “caldos” style with sepia and onions (Rachel got this – no photo – too dark!)

At Veniero’s, we shared a raspberry cheesecake, molten lava cake and frutti di bosco torte. Catherine and I also had decaf espressos. All in all, great night. Happy birthday, Catherine! :-)

Can anyone help me not suck at uploading photos?!