Pleasant House

Just like the souvenir bumper stickers and T-shirts say, except with the heart symbol. A few weeks ago, Chelsea asked me if I could take off the weekend of my birthday, which this year was also Fourth of July weekend. I said sure, as I am glad to take any opportunity to get away from the job. But little did I know what she had planned. Obviously, she planned big. Specifically, she had planned to take me to Mario Batali’s Babbo for dinner. Seeing as we live in Chicago, that was real big.

Of course, my birthday was only one day, so we had to plan out the whole weekend, and that involved dining at some of the many great places that we only get to hear and read about. But first, before the food, before the drinks, before the amazing service, I just have to write down how much this city impresses me. I know that being there on a holiday weekend can be a little misleading because most of the locals are away, escaping their hectic routines. Still, there were enough good people left to give an idea of who makes up the population–for instance, Mr. Big and Chris, the fabulous designer from “Project Runway” who did things with human hair that no one thought possible. And the great bones that make up New York were still there.

This was the first time I was there in the summer, so I had the good fortune to be able to really absorb the architecture and my surroundings.

We also visited the area of the former World Trade Center, which we did not do the last time we were there. I’m not sure what is planned for the site but the city has moved on, and I will never forget.

There is so much history and character in New York that makes me proud to be an American, believe it or not. Kind of fitting for such a patriotic holiday and for someone who doesn’t often feel so patriotic.

But enough of the cheesy sentiments and on to the juicy and tasty tidbits. First of all, we had the luxury of being able to stay with Chelsea’s good friend who has a place in SoHo. And we also got to take a tour of her friend’s big-city newsroom office. It seems like our friend is adapting well to New York life, as she too split town the day after we got there! Good for her, though, as she got to live it up on the beach, and good for us as our stay was made so comfortable by getting to stay in a comfy apartment in a great location.

Some people look at my photos from trips and say, “Sure were a lot of pictures of food!” Well, I am a chef. And food is beautiful. But there are many other pictures. Like this one:

Since Chelsea and I love to eat and cook so much, planning a trip around the restaurants we want to go to helps us to organize our trips. It’s not like we have an itinerary for everything, but if we know we are going to have lunch at Franny’s

and chocolate at Jacques Torres

we’ll make sure we walk the bridge back to Manhattan to work it all off!

Before I get into the specifics of each of the places where we ate, I have to say that everything was great. The growing season is really starting to kick in, and that was definitely reflected in all of the dishes we tasted. We even hit a couple of farmers’ markets just to scope them out.

Our first restaurant was a pilgrimage of sorts. I remember many years ago being handed the book Simple Cuisine, written by the chef Jean George Vongerichten. This book is all about creating simple yet elegant food whose flavors are bright, light, and tasty due to techniques that embrace fresh broths and the juice from vegetables rather than the use of heavy butter, cream, and demi-glace, which are popular in traditional French cuisine. So a trip to one of Jean George’s restaurants was a necessity. Believe it or not, Jean George offers a $27.07, three-course tasting menu in several of his restaurants. We opted for the one in the “casual” dining room of Nougatine, which is in the Trump Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park.

You can actually look into the kitchen from the outside of the restaurant, so if you are geek like me you can watch the cooks preparing the food.

Below are the pictures of the food from Nougatine. The tasting menu offers two choices in each category, so naturally we ordered one of each course plus an extra course.

I was very happy with everything and feel like I’ve come full circle by tasting a nice range of Jean George’s dishes. The brilliant colors are the first indicator that his cuisine is vibrant and fresh. It’s nice to have a multi-course lunch and not leave stuffed as well!

After lunch I mentioned to Chelsea that it was probably the best start to any vacation we’ve had! A nice walk through Central Park helped to solidify that feeling.

That night we headed out to a relatively young restaurant called Resto, a Belgian-style place with a pub-like atmosphere. We tend to like these types of places that are casual but tend to have really tasty food and beer. I also liked the overall look of the place. Especially the gunmetal Xavier Pauchard stools.

Some standouts on the menu were the chicory salad with crispy pig’s ears and the braised beef cheeks over fries.

The next day was a rainy one. The whole weekend was pretty overcast with spotty showers but we weren’t complaining. We headed to the Greenmarket nonetheless and took shelter a couple of times under some produce tents.

One sight that I wish I had taken pictures of was of the many cooks and porters who were making their way through the market, loading up dollies and push carts with boxes of fresh produce. They were even using their own Lexan kitchen boxes, which was particularly impressive–no waste! Craft was one of the restaurants I recognized doing this because of the workers’ embroidered jackets.

One positive thing about overcast weather is that it makes for better photography. Especially at the Greenmarket, where the color contrast tends to be so intense.

After consulting our damp Time Out NY Dining Guide, we pinpointed the mini empire that is Bouley Bakery and headed in that direction. We had a late breakfast/lunch above the bakery. Then we headed downstairs to the bakery for a few sweets and some coffee. Canneles must be consumed wherever they are found. The canneles at Bouley Bakery were incredibly delicious, with their unique chewy outside and just a hint of some sort of spicy liquor throughout the eggy interior. We also enjoyed an incredible grapefruit dacquoise.

The rest of the afternoon was spent bumming around, and we snuck in a much-needed nap before dinner. I’m glad for that because dinner turned into a mini marathon of dining and ummm, research, of creative mixology.

Sometimes the best experiences turn out to be the least-expected ones. This was the case with a little restaurant in Greenwich Village that is gaining a lot of notoriety these days, Blue Hill. We had the chef’s tasting menu and also put together another tasting of various dishes in order to sample a wide range of the menu and to get a good feel of the chef’s philosophy. In addition, we were brought a few complimentary starters, one of which was a cured meat sampling made from the heirloom pigs raised at the restaurant’s farm upstate. Without going in to detail about each and every dish, I can say that the meal was absolutely incredible. It was not elaborately plated or garnished. The fresh ingredients of impeccable quality and the flawless preparation of those ingredients made the meal memorable and kept me thinking the whole time, “This must be what Chez Panisse is like.” The comparison was even more apparent when we were presented with a small dish of unadorned cherries after dessert. I would really like to try the chef’s other restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in the future.

After dinner at Blue Hill, we walked to Tailor, a hip, forward-thinking bar in SoHo, to ring in my birthday. Tailor definitely lives up to the hype, with a variety of unique flavor combinations and surprises on its cocktail menu.

The next day we took a trip to Brooklyn and wandered around the waterfront. We had heard about the pizza place, Grimaldi’s, at the base of the bridge and thought it would be a good opportunity to try some Brooklyn pizza. Well, it took a stroll past the block-long line complete with a huge thermos of water for thirsty patrons standing in line to realize that we would not be trying Brooklyn pizza here.

The next turn of events turned out to be quite interesting. We consulted our handy Time Out guide for another pizza option, called it, there was no answer, before we came across another option, Franny’s. We wandered for a while, got directions from a nice woman who had felt our pain of being a tourist in an unfamiliar place, hopped on the 2 train, and sat right across from someone we had met in San Francisco who, unbeknownst to us, had relocated to NYC. After a nice chat on the train we headed a couple blocks to Franny’s, which turned out not to be what we expected–a typical Brooklyn pizza joint. Rather, it reminded me that I had once sent Chelsea some photos of Franny’s taken by a photographer and food blogger I keep up with, Ulterior Epicure.

I didn’t take any pictures of the food at Franny’s because I was too busy eating amazingly delicious food like fresh sugar-snap peas and Neapolitan pizza, and drinking delicious beverages like homemade celery soda and Brooklyn-brewed beer.

After a hike back across the bridge and a little freshening up, our trip culminated in the piece de resistance, my birthday dinner at Babbo.

The place certainly lived up to its reputation–an elegant room, delicious food, and cool music. Once again, we were given the VIP treatment, but this time I think it was because we had to wait a little while for our table. The portions at Babbo are definitely on the hearty side, so keep that in mind if you are a tasting menu kind of diner. Our eyes were bigger than our stomaches but everything was greatly appreciated.

Just when I thought the night couldn’t get any better, Chelsea gave me a birthday card. When I opened it I found some pasted images of what else, a Caja China!!!

Do I have the coolest wife in the world or what?!

A nice stroll home on a warm summer night marked the end of yet another dream-like adventure.

Thanks to my pumpkin,

See you next time, NYC.