Jin Restaurant
Posted on | April 7, 2010 | 1 Comment
With the weather warming up, I decided to head to Jin Restaurant with a few friends for their awesome Happy Hour Special. There’s a vast selection of items (beer, sake, rolls, dumplings, along with cooked items such as yakitori, etc.) are all just $3 during the pre-dinner rush, every day of the week. With so few good sushi restaurants open for lunch & the weather being so nice, it made complete sense to take a stroll in search of some extremely well priced food & booze. The decor of the place is nice, with a lot of bamboo accents on the walls. There are 2 bars in the restaurant (1 sushi bar & the other for drinking). Open outer doors & the lack of a busy lunch crowd gave the place an airy feel. Read more
Fishmonger coming to East Village
Posted on | April 1, 2010 | No Comments
According to EVGrieve, a seafood restaurant & fishmonger will be opening up at 171 Avenue A @11th street. As you can well imagine, this is a major bonus for us seafood lovers in the East Village, we’ve been without a fishmonger for some time!
According to the owner/operator;
I am planning on opening a seafood market/restaurant/high-end cocktail bar in that space… We certainly need a place to buy fish around here.
Yeah, yeah — fishmonger. There will be a display case when you first walk in about 6 feet by 3 feet with approximately 20-25 different types of fresh seafood. Most of it will be kept in the basement and brought up as we run out of things in the case. This way we can do the volume of a bigger store with a fraction of dedicated space.
I’m really looking forward to this!
Picture & full coverage via EV Grieve
Update: It’s not happening
Bacon Bash!
Posted on | March 30, 2010 | No Comments
Tomorrow (Wednesday March 31st) is the Bacon Bash @6:30pm at the Village Pourhouse (64 3rd Avenue @11th Street). $30 gets you 2 hours of pure bacon gold! According to The NYC Menu Girl;
Taste a selection of three kinds of bacon: applewood bacon, honey smoked and thick ol’smokehouse bacon. Our bacon buffet includes Bacon Popcorn, Bacon Potato Chips, Mini Sliders with Baconaise, Wings with Bacon Ranch, Fries with Bacon Salt, Chocolate-infused Bacon and Bacon Caramel Bacon.
Don’t forget to wash it all down with a Bakon Vodka Cocktail & some Brooklyn Brown Ale!
If you use her promotional code, you can get 15% off tickets! I’ll be there, hope you can make it. If not, I’ll be reviewing all of the porky goodness!
Update: Full review here.
Brunch at Esperanto
Posted on | March 27, 2010 | 3 Comments
Esperanto’s brunch is one of my favorite destinations on the weekends. If the weather is nice enough it has outdoor seating & they open the outer doors, giving the space the really airy feeling. For $10, you get coffee or tea, a drink (typical brunch fare; Screwdriver, Mimosa, Bloody Mary, etc.) & a dish of your choosing. It can get pretty packed in there, but luckily we were able to get a table pretty quickly.
Normally I go straight for the burger which is very good (although there are better burgers in the ‘hood; Royale, Black Iron & Belcourt to name a few), but I felt like trying something different, so I got the Huevos Loisada; a poached egg over a potato shrimp pie with Hollandaise sauce. I really wish I had stuck to my burger. Nothing wrong with the egg (except for the fact that there was only one) or the sauce, but the potato shrimp pie was severely lacking in the shrimp department. I managed to find a tiny piece in there (a leg or a wing perhaps?) All in all, this dish left me very unsatisfied, both emotionally & nutritionally.
I still really like Esperanto, the service is good (the manager there is awesome), they make great drinks (particularly mojitos & caipirinhas) & there is often live music. The Red Snapper Ceviche & grilled salmon are also good dishes. If you’re going for brunch, get the burger!
Esperanto: 145 Avenue C @ 9th Street
Je’Bon
Posted on | March 27, 2010 | No Comments
Normally, when I think of sushi, the last place I think to look is along St. Marks as there is so much to choose from in the area , but it was sort of early, so I met a friend at Je’Bon (15 St. Marks near 2nd Avenue). I had been there before for lunch a while back, so I knew the food wouldn’t kill us. Je’Bon is yet another ultra-inexpensive, design-oriented, dance track blaring Asian restaurants that seem to be all the rage with college kids nowadays. As I said, it was early, so we arrived in the after lunch, pre-dinner lull. We were the only ones there so service was no problem at all. Read more
ReCORK
Posted on | March 19, 2010 | No Comments
Ever wonder what happens to the cork after you pop a bottle of wine? Odds are it’ll end up in a landfill along with the 13 billion other corks popped annually around the globe. Amorim, the world’s largest manufacturer of natural cork bottle stops is hoping to put an end to this waste. In 2008 they launched ReCORK America in an effort to recycle used cork. Currently, there are collection points at Wholefoods stores in California & the latest partner is in Las Vegas, so expect the trend to move further east. I doubt it’ll be long before NYC Wholefoods are collecting corks. If you’re a heavy drinker/alcoholic & collect a minimum of 15lbs of cork, they’ll send you a postage paid sticker so you can mail your cork in to be recycled.
Drink some wine then help the environment!
Brunch at Back Forty
Posted on | March 18, 2010 | 2 Comments
So I’m sitting (drinking) at my local watering hole (7B) a few Sundays ago, minding my own business & a friend asks me if I wanted to go to brunch. I said no, because I was more interested in getting hammered, but then he uttered 3 magical words; Pork Jowl Nuggets. Needless to say, moments later 4 of us were running down Avenue B towards Back Forty. Read more
Tags: Booze > Brunch > East Village > Fried Chicken > New American > Pancakes > Southern
Get Your Sake Fix!
Posted on | March 17, 2010 | No Comments
Two sake events coming up this month;
Tuesday, March 23rd 8-11pm @ 1 or 8 (66 South 2nd Street, Brooklyn).
$55 (plus tip) gets you a four course menu & ‘generous pours’ of sake.
Wednesday, March 24th 6-8pm @ En Japanese Brasserie (435 Hudson Street).
$37 (including Tax & Tip) gets you the opportunity to taste this year’s Arabashiri & ‘generous pours’ of 5 other sakes. RSVP; 212-647-9196
Caffe Pepe Rosso Closes
Posted on | March 16, 2010 | 1 Comment
Caffe Pepe Rosso (127 Avenue C @ 6th street), the East Village outpost of the popular Sullivan St. Italian eatery has shuttered & now become Cotto Restaurant & Caffe. I remember seeing the listing on Tower Realty some time ago, but I never thought anything of it. Passing by on Sunday, I saw that the Pepe Rosso sign had been sanded off & the new dividers outside. I’ll try to review the new restaurant soon.
Update: I passed by yesterday & there was a lot of work going on. New signage went up, etc. I expect that the front will be painted blue as well. I spoke to the shady looking dude that was lurking around (the owner or manager maybe) & he said they were open for business.
Update: Verso is now open.
Felix Ortiz vs Salt
Posted on | March 13, 2010 | No Comments
Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (or as I like to call him; That Raving Lunatic) is proposing legislation that will ban the use of salt in New York restaurants. Offenders could be fined up to $1,000 for the merest hint of Sodium Chloride. Americans consume 50% more salt than the daily recommended amount, with most of that coming from eating out. He is claiming that by banning salt, the state can save on health care costs & also generate revenue from fines.
No Salt!?! Has this man lost his mind? What’s next; butter, sugar, high fructose corn syrup (as if the corn lobbyists would ever allow that)? Obviously this is a man with no taste.
According to the Guardian (UK);
Ortiz’s bill comes on the back of a high-profile attempt by the city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, to encourage New Yorkers to consume less sodium. The city estimates about 1.5 million residents already suffer from high blood pressure, which can be exacerbated by overconsumption of salt. In America as a whole, the average daily intake of 3,400mg is well above the recommended maximum of 2,300mg.
Bloomberg’s campaign aims to cut the amount of salt in pre-packaged and restaurant food by a quarter, in five years. Unlike Bill A10129, however, it is purely voluntary.
There is a clear difference between a reduction in salt consumption (plausible & completely reasonable) & an outright ban (rubber room, straight jacket style crazy). The fact that this even got this far & Ortiz is getting so much press baffles me!
ARKFoodie has in-depth coverage if this lunacy.
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