Lately.

Just a quick roundup of things I've eaten and sipped lately. First up, superlative green papaya salad from Wondee Siam II in Hell's Kitchen. This place has some delicious Thai and is a stone's throw from Ars Nova (my brother's theater), so we spend a serious amount of time here. (Also worth trying? Any of the curries.)

Speaking of curries, they come with a pyramidal side of fluffy white rice. As a rice lover, I hardly need any inducement to eat mine, but come on. That's too fun.

Shake Shack does day-of-the-week flavors, which change up once a month. August's Friday flavor is blueberry coffee cake: soft blueberry custard with coffee cake mixed in. It's pretty freaking good, and is delightfully redolent of cinnamon (my favorite compliment to the juicy blueberries of summer).

 

A gin gimlet at Ouest on the Upper West Side. These guys sling the most reliably delicious cocktails north of 59th Street, and I love spending an evening sipping and nibbling - the kitchen sends out regular batches of toasty warm gougeres.

Finally, a pickle sampler from the new restaurant Jacob's Pickles. The biscuits are good; the pickles are awesome. From left to right, we've got dill spears, carrots, spicy beets and dilly green beans. More pickles than even this obsessive could finish.

Stumptown pitstop.

Monday was Presidents' Day here in the States, which meant I had a full extra 24 hours off. I spent my morning going to the gym and drinking a lazy, giant cup of coffee, then headed out for an afternoon of errands and a showing of The Artist. Afterward, I made my way down to 29th and Broadway to stock up on coffee (the lazy, giant cup having rather depleted my stash) at Stumptown.

I grabbed an Ethiopian blend from the shelf and ordered myself a cappuccino. I drank it standing in the window, watching dusk fall over the neighborhood. It was a bittersweet moment, knowing I had to head home to do a bit of work before the evening was out. But the sweet outweighed the bitter - just enough.

Rockefeller Center, 10 January, 3:15 PM

Zamboni ahoy!

Mixed feelings.

Nick, Louisa and I enjoyed a lovely breakfast at The Breslin last Friday. The coffee was stupendous, the baked eggs with tomato and chorizo simply glorious, and the service, frankly, lacking. At a restaurant of The Breslin's quality, I shouldn't have to wait ten minutes for sugar for my coffee.

But, man, what good coffee it is. Love you, Stumptown.

It cures what ails you.

A couple of Fridays ago, Jason gathered a few friends together to see an opening night showing of the latest Harry Potter movie. Being ever a joiner (and a desperate Harry Potter fan), I decided to go along, even though I'd had a terrible chest cold for days on end. Luckily, we also managed to schedule a stop at the 2nd Avenue Deli, home to the best matzoh ball soup on earth.

Nowhere else has consomme been this chicken-y, this delicious, or this good at curing a cold. And nowhere else do the bring you a shot glass-sized chocolate soda to finish off the meal. Even though the waitress laughed at me for ordering soup with a side of coleslaw, I didn't care. Nothing beats chicken soup and cabbage for getting through a cold.

Nothing.

This is the life.

I love my job. I like my life. And, most days, I'm pretty darn content with the demands they place on me. But, every once in a while, I sneak a glance over at the other side. What might it be like to be feckless and free, to be one of the ladies who lunch? One recent afternoon, I caught a whiff of luxury, and I liked it.

Lunch at Brasserie Ruhlman, Laurent Torondel's vast indoor/outdoor restaurant in Rockefeller Center, is most definitely a luxury. Menu highlights include steak frites, a lobster roll, oysters and sole meunière. Starting with shrimp cocktail, therefore, does seem the thing to do. What's more classic, or more perfect for a warm summer afternoon?

And I know you know that a true lady who lunches always orders steak tartar. After all, what good is a meal if it doesn't need to be mixed tableside? (Actually, this is the place to tell you that the service at Brasserie Ruhlman was a bit odd. Our waiter didn't seem to care for us much, and instead of offering to mix up my tartar himself, he said, "Would you like to stir?" and kind of walked away. Lame.)

And this is excellent steak tartar. The meat was fresh as could be, and the sauce and, er, fixins were wonderful: big, juicy, salty capers, chopped shallots, dill and parsley, all topped with a piquant dressing and a teeny, perfect quail egg. Yum.

The fries were pretty freaking awesome, too. If not terribly ladylike. Whatever.

Brasserie Ruhlmann
45 Rockefeller Plaza
212.974.2020

Loving Lever House.

Working in midtown Manhattan is, most of the time, kind of a pain in the butt. It's crowded, it's full of bad, over-priced food, and it's just not as good as working across the street from Madison Square Park (like I used to). It's not completely without its rewards, though, and one of those is the fantastic mid-century architecture that abounds in the East 50s.

I work at 52nd and Madison, which means I pass both Lever House and the Seagram Building on my way to the office. On a clear, sunny day, looking up at either of those towers and glass and steel fills me with a Mary Tyler Moore-esque swell of excitement. I realize where I am, and I get all tingly.

One of the cooler things about Lever House is their rotating collection of art on public display in their glass-walled lobby and open-air atrium. The current installation, by Richard Woods, is entitled Port Sunlight, and is just plain awesome. The pillars and benches inside and surrounding the lobby (and the floor of the lobby itself) have been printed with mosaic motifs, from feathers to black and white patterns with graphic punch.

Walking through the atrium makes me feel warm and cozy, like I'm strolling through a Caribbean plaza immersed in equatorial sun. If you're in New York - either as a resident or a tourist - I highly recommend a visit to 53rd and Park to check it out.

Photos courtesy of Richard Woods and This Week In New York.

Smörgåsbord!

Louisa and I hosted one hell of a dinner party on Saturday night (full details soon, I promise), at which eight bottles of wine were consumed between six people. (Not to mention the Manhattan apiece enjoyed by me, Nick and Louisa.) Like I said - a hell of a party. So it's no wonder that the three of us were a bit dazed when we gathered at Aquavit for brunch.

The waiter started us off with a glass of Glögg each. Glögg, for those of you who, like me, are among the uninitiated, is not dissimilar to the German mulled wine Glühwein. Marcus Samuelsson, the chef at Aquavit, starts his with citrus and spice-infused vodka and adds red wine, port and sugar. If you think that sounds potent, you'd be right. Wowza. Delicious, but a bit too much for this one post-party.

In addition to the Glögg, Aquavit offers a complimentary cocktail or glass of juice with its brunch, which is a traditional Swedish smörgåsbord - yes, a smörgåsbord! An all-you-can eat, stuff-yourself-with-gravlax-and-pickled-herring-and-meatballs brunch! For my cocktail, I chose the Danish Mary, made with aquavit (instead of vodka) and garnished with a cucumber, lemon wedge and fresh horseradish. Unlike the Glögg, this hit the spot, and the magic of the hair of the dog kicked right in.

First up, fish and eggs! Nick went straight for the table of pickled herring (there are always at least six varieties on offer), but I couldn't face it, and opted instead (clockwise from three o'clock) for a big pile of gravlax, a pond of the unparalleled espresso-mustard sauce, a bit of mushroom omelet, a tomato wedge, potato salad and a cup of langoustine bisque.

Everything was delicious, in particular the potato salad, which has a healthy dose of salty capers, and, like everything else, a bunch of chopped dill. The mushroom omelet also deserves a shout; it was filled with sauteed wild mushrooms (Yay!) and some kind of oozy, delicious, creamy substance (could have been a very mild cheese) that soothed my wounded soul.

The gravlax was, as always, superlative. I cannot get enough of Aquavit's gravlax, and I can't imagine I ever will.

Next up, a cold meats course! As you can see from my plate, I couldn't resist the siren call of the gravlax this round, either. Clockwise from the gravlax, we've got cornichons, another tomato wedge, steamed potatoes, beet salad, bread and, in the center, a slice each of foie gras and country pâté, topped with grainy Swedish mustard.

Aside from the gravlax, my favorites in this round were the country pâté (I think I'm hopelessly doomed by my Eastern European peasant roots to prefer it to foie gras forever and ever.) and the perfectly steamed potatoes. The latter went a looong way to curing my hangover blues.

Finally, the hot meats course - or, as Louisa termed it, "the hot meat injection." (I may pay later for revealing that one.) The one problem with this course is how full of gravlax I typically am by the time I make it here. I suppose I could work on that, but I don't wanna! In any case, here we have (clockwise from top) red cabbage, cucumber salad, Swedish meatballs, Johansson's Temptation (potatoes with cream and anchovy), roasted brussels sprouts and parsnip, cider-mustard rib, venison and Swedish sausages and lingonberry sauce in the middle.

I have a special affection for Aquavit's Swedish meatballs (particularly smorgasbord-style, when I can freely up the proportion of cucumber to meatball), but they were outshone by the awesomeness of the braised ribs. Holy man, were those good. Possibly their fattiness worked some sort of alchemy on my alcohol-soaked body - whatever the reason, I really want them again for dinner, preferably tonight. And the Johansson's Tempation? Also sinfully delicious. (And the fantastic name doesn't hurt, either.)


Finally, dessert. I couldn't even get up from the table to help myself, so Louisa brought me a yeasted, brioche-like roll studded with raisins and glazed with egg and sugar. It was great with coffee, but didn't rock my world like the savory courses. In fact, I have to say that dessert at Aquavit has never rocked my world. For me, it's all about the meatballs.

And the gravlax, of course.

Aquavit
65 East 55th Street
Between Park and Madison
212.307.7311

Snow!

Snow has a way of transforming New York, of softening its edges and making it just a smidge more magical than usual. This weekend's snowstorm was a gorgeous one, leaving heaps and drifts of the white stuff in its wake.

Even midtown is magical when it snows, don't you think?

And nothing says "Christmas" like a tree covered in real, honest-to-goodness snow. Yay!

A peanut butter cookie so good it makes you want to play hooky.

A couple of weeks ago, my colleagues Lory, Julie and I decided it was high time for a proper lunch, one not eaten at a desk or conference table, but in a restaurant - with waiters and everything! Our other reason for venturing outside was to check out the offerings at Má Pêche, David Chang's new restaurant in the Chambers Hotel.

Chang is taking over the old Town. space (No, that period is not mispunctuation. The restaurant really had a period in its name.), and the full-scale restaurant is set to open in January. In the meantime, he's trying out a pared-down version of the Vietnamese menu in the hotel's lounge area, just upstairs from the lobby. The experience is indeed lounge-y, with low-slung tables, couches and poufs.

There's an à la carte menu (featuring a rumored-to-be-delish burger and fries) as well a $10 prix fixe option. (Note: a salad in midtown will run you about $12, so this is an excellent deal.) We all went for the prix fixe; Lory and I ordered the bun (rice noodles with pork) and Julie went for the chicken terrine banh mi.

The noodles were delicious; the pork ragout was rich and meaty with a nice spicy kick (me being me, I added a bit of Sriracha to mine) balanced by the saw leaf and some of cilantro. (There was a bit too much cilantro for me, though I know other people just can't get enough.) The noodles themselves were sheets of rice noodle rolled into cigars and lightly browned. I'd never seen bun done that way, but I loved the alternately chewy, crispy and tender textures the method produced. The best part might have been the crispy shallots sprinkled all over the top - Lory and I both wanted a whole bowl of just those.

Julie's terrine was also tasty; a thoroughly respectable version of Momofuku's standard three-terrine model, this banh mi was served with the traditional herbs and carrot-and-daikon pickle. The chicken terrine was moist and really flavorful; for some reason, I was worried this would be just another grilled chicken sandwich - luckily, I was wrong!

For dessert, we each ordered a Milk Bar peanut butter cookie. These cookies were INSANE. Big, but not huge, they tasted strongly of peanut butter and had some sort of caramel swirl running through them...I'm now in desperate need of the recipe, lest I never taste anything this delicious ever again. If you have it, give it up.

I mean it.

Má Pêche
15 West 56th Street
Between 5th and 6th