Labour Day Weekend in New York City: Nougatine at Jean-Georges

On our last day in New York City, we hit up Nougatine at Jean-Georges for lunch before making our way back home.  I had originally booked for Jean-Georges, but there was some kind of mix up with the reservation desk as they've penned me down for Nougatine.  I only realized this mistake when they called to confirm and by then it was too late to make a change.  Jean-Georges was full until 2:30pm. Bleh.  Ah wells, Nougatine it is.  Nougatine had the lunch prix fixe menu, which wasn't a bad deal.  For $32, you can get an appetizer, entree and a dessert, so that's what we went for.

For my first course, I decided to supplement a couple bucks to get an appetizer that was off the prix fixe: Foie gras brulee, slow-roasted strawberries and aged balsamic vinegar.  I had originally wanted to try the Foie gras brulee at Jean Georges which came with the pineapple-meyer lemon jam, but this will have to suffice.  I was pleasantly surprised at how light the roasted strawberries complimented the dish.  The top was seared crispy, and when I applied pressure to cut into it, bits of the foie gras would bubble up through the crust! Joy!  In the cross section, I found the roasted strawberries nested in the foie gras which was the other surprise.  All in all, I think the berries really lightened up the entire dish, making it suitable as a lunch item.

This was Kel's appetizer: Tuna tartare, avocado, spicy radish, ginger marinade.  I didn't get to try any (just as he didn't get to try my brulee) as we weren't sitting next to each other during this meal, but he told me it was wonderful.  In particular, he thought the ginger marinade was a nice and unique touch.

My entree: Slowly cooked skate, eggplant, pepper ragout.  I thought the skate was made really well, just tender and not overcooked.  Each piece of the wing flaked off nicely.  Wasn't a big fan of the ragout though.  I expected the fresh pepper taste, but it came out to be pickled pepper.  A little sour for my taste on an entree.

Kel's entree: Slowly cooked salmon, with sauteed potatoes, black olive and passion fruit.  As you can see, the salmon was a good sized portion, not what we expected.  And it was sitting on a bed of spinach, which was on top of the potatoes.  Kel said the overall dish was good, but he thought the spinach was slightly over done, a bit chewy.  What can I say, the man's picky about his greens!

Kel's cousin's entree: Sauteed red snapper, spaghetti squash, sesame broth and chili oil.  No complaints here.  She said the flavours melded very well together.

We ended our meal with the warm chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream, which once again, put us over the top, but hey, who can complain about too much chocolate, especially when it's oozing out the centre? :)

Labour Day Weekend in New York City: Momofuku Noodle Bar

Another place we visited was the Momofuku Noodle Bar!  Of all the Momofuku locations only the Momofuku Ko allowed for reservations online and it is a known fact that they book out under ten minutes of opening.  Each Momofuku location has a different theme and offers a different menu.  We were told the Momofuku Noodle Bar is a must, if we haven't been to the other locations, so that is where we ventured.  Indeed, when we got there, the restaurant was packed to the brim with people waiting for tables inside and out.  What's more interesting was that it seemed like it was the only place on the block that was busy at all!  We ended up waiting close to an hour for our table, but did not regret it.

Our kimchi jar came out first.  Kel loves kimchi so getting it was a must!  Their kimchi was more crispy than our usual experience and the jar it came in was too cute.  Kel wanted to bring it home!  Above that, you can see Kel opening up our first of three tamales.

We ordered three tamales, one of each kind offered: the pork kimchi, chicken mole verde, and the jalapeño qeso.  They arrived in three cute packages, with their authentic leaf wrappers.  Unwrapping each was like opening a present on Christmas Day. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea.

The one dissected in front on my plate there, is the chicken mole verde.  "Mole verde" simply means green sauce.  We didn't find them as exciting as we'd hoped.  Passable, but not something we'd crave.  Maybe we're just not big on tamales.

They offered three types of buns there: shrimp, pork, and oyster.  We ordered the pork bun since that was Wallace's favourite.  Besides pork, it also had shiitake mushrooms and cucumbers, dressed in scallions and hoisin sauce.  As anticipated, these were delish!

We also ordered their smoked chicken wings, but I didn't take a picture of them as they looked like normal chicken wings on a plate with some scallions sprinkled on top.  The wings were good, but can't say they were spectacular or the best wings I've had.  Wallace mentioned that in the Momofuku cookbook, these wings takes a whole day's effort to make.  We deemed them not quite worth the work entailed.

Our main course, the momofuku ramen, with pork belly, pork shoulder, and poached egg!  This might look like a normal ramen, but the toppings were not ordinary!  The poached egg resembles that of a hard-boiled egg, but upon closer inspection, we found that it was incredibly soft!  Even the whites was incredibly silky.  The pork shoulder was pulled pork, and the pork belly was even more fatty than expected, melting like butter on the tongue.

We ended our meal with some lemon flavoured soft-serve and were quite surprised to find basil bits at the bottom.  It was a nice touch.  We left carrying our bellies. :)

Labour Day Weekend in New York City: Lady M Confections

While in New York City, we had a chance to check out Lady M Confections and were we glad we did!  We wanted to dine in and had to wait a couple minutes for a table, but it was well worth it!

Here's a picture of the boys sitting out front playing on their phones, waiting for a table.  I swear, this picture wasn't posed.  They just happened to be sitting the same way!

The cakes available that day displayed behind the glass from the front, they had the Lady M® Mille Crêpes, Marron Mille Crêpes, Strawberry Shortcake, Gâteau aux Marrons, Green Tea Mousse cake, Gateau Nuage, Checkers, Tarte Au Citron, Strawberry Mille Feuille, and Banana Mille Feuille. They also had individual cakes available as well! Nom nom nom!

A close up of their signature Lady M® Mille Crêpes.  Constructed of more than twenty paper thin, hand-made crêpes layered with light and creamy vanilla custard!

What we ended up ordering, clockwise from the top, and individual Mont Blanc, chocolate croissant, Checkers, and the Lady M® Mille Crêpes!

A close up shot of our slice of Lady M® Mille Crêpes.  We unanimously agreed that this is by far the best cake ever!  I generally don't like custard, but the vanilla custard in the Mille Crêpes was absolutely divine.  As well, even though I knew that there's more than twenty paper thin crêpes, before I bit into it I doubt that I'd be able to tell, but I was!  The texture was absolutely wonderful!  It's too bad they didn't have any dry ice, otherwise, we'd definitely bring some home.

Our slice of Checkers cake. A chocolate and vanilla sponge cake woven into the pattern of a checkerboard with a thin layer of fresh cream, covered with dark chocolate ganache.  Yum!  Checkers was good, but beside the Mille Crêpes it paled in comparison.  I have to admit its not quite fair to compare the two, but all in all, we had an awesome time at Lady M's!

Labour Day Weekend in New York City: WD-50 Tasting Menu

This Labour Day Weekend, we went on a road trip down to New York City for some good shopping and of course, good eats!  Our first meal in the city was a late dinner reservation at WD-50 for some molecular gastronomy.  Since we were late in confirming our trip, I didn't get around to making reservations until Thursday afternoon, which meant we were dining at 10PM!  This at first sounded really late for dinner, but the fact of the matter is, we were shopping the entire day at Woodbury Commons and didn't make it into the city until 8:30PM.  By then, we just wanted to check into the hotel and freshen up before dinner, so the 10PM reservation actually worked out great.  We knew we wanted to have their tasting menu beforehand and worried that we'd be too tired to enjoy the twelve course meal at such a late hour.  Luckily, they were able to keep us pleasantly on our toes for the entire duration leaving us all very much satisfied.

The menu at WD-50.  I thought the usage of a pair of lips as the front cover was very suiting for what lies ahead.

From our table, we could see into the kitchen where the chefs were busy running around preparing each dish.  The kitchen looked so spotless!

Instead of a basket of bread, we were given these to snack on before the first course arrived.  They were paper thin and reminded me of sesame snaps, but much more addictive!

The September tasting menu at WD-50. Nom nom nom!

Our first course: Poached oyster, celery, caper, vodka, lemon.  It was a nice amuse-bouche with the vodka warming up our belly.  At first glance, I thought this would be a cold dish, but the oyster was still warm and the thin strings of celery added a nice touch.  See the little white/clear ovals the oyster is resting on? It's actually vodka lemon beads.

Our second course: Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese.  When it first arrived at our table, we thought the miniature bagel was really cute.  Upon turning it over, we saw that the underside of the bagel was creamy, like someone had already put the cream cheese spread on this tiny bagel.  Biting into it, we realized, this bagel was melting!  It had the consistency of ice cream!  With the smoked salmon dusting, the crispy cream cheese and tiny red onion circles, it filled our mouths with a familiar flavour yet unbelievable texture.

Our third course of the evening: Foie-lafel.  Doesn't it look quaint?  A tiny pita bread, with melt in your mouth foie gras balls dusted with chickpea bits.  And its got the tabouli and shredded lettuce to go with it! Yummmmy!

Our fifth course: Poached egg in the shell, pumpernickel, caesar dressing, bean sprouts.  Yes, you guessed it, the egg shell is actually edible.  It is made of brown sugar, but looks and breaks just like an egg shell would on your plate.  The egg is poached easy so it mixes well with the caesar dressing to add an extra bit of decadence to the sauce.  I thought the parsley added a nice touch, but our friend Wallace who's not a parsley fan would beg to differ.

Our sixth course: King oyster "udon", sweetbreads, banana-molasses, pickled ginger.  We had our reserves when this came to the table.  Personally, I don't like bananas, but I wouldn't indicate that to the restaurant staff for fear it would take from the experience.  Afterall, the whole point of a tasting menu is to trust your chef.  This dish worked out really well, in that they really did slice the King oyster mushrooms to the thickness and length of flat udon noodles, and I thought the pickled ginger and banana-molasses worked really well with it.  The banana taste was barely on your tongue, although for our non ginger fan Wallace, he'd prefer it less gingery.  The added green was a nice touch to offset the sauce as well.  We were pleasantly surprised that the sweetbread had a bit of bounce to them and not your usual soft mush.

Our seventh course: Tai snapper, onion tart, coffee, asian pear.  We thought the coffee-walnut crumb and the bits of cucumber and pear added an interesting touch to the half cooked snapper.  The slight fishiness of the snapper evened out with the onion tart.  Now if only I can figure out how to make that onion tart...

The eighth course of the evening: Quail, nasturtium yogurt, turnip, nutmeg.  The rounds of quail were tender as can be.  We couldn't help but wonder where they got such a big, thick, round piece of meat for such a tiny bird.  The fried turnip was a little strong, but the yogurt was good to even it out, as well as bring out the taste of the quail.

Our ninth course: Lamb loin, 'red beans & rice', chayote squash.  Once again, it was the most tender and juicy piece of lamb I've tasted thus far.  Can you guess where the rice portion of this meal is?  The two crisps!  Now it may seem that rice crisps could be very commonly had, but these crisps actually tasted like fresh steamed rice, but crunchy!  Added to the dish, it provided a nice change of texture with the beans.

Our tenth course: Black sesame, yuzu, mango, popcorn.  This was an interesting bit with the popcorn.  The white clouds are the yuzu and the orange at the bottom of the bowl is the mango puree.

Our eleventh course: Apricot, buckwheat, rhubarb, green tea.  The bigger orange round at the bottom is the apricot jelly, topped with the gobs of green tea mousse.  The pink cubes on the two sides are the rhubarb, and the big brown blob is the buckwheat lying on buckwheat specks.  I'm not too big on rhubarb so I skipped some of that.  The buckwheat was interesting though, because none of us actually knew what to expect, but it helped neutralize the slightly sour apricot.

Our twelfth course: Soft chocolate, beet, long pepper, ricotta.  This dish was a nice touch to top off our evening.  We wondered how the beet would fit in with a dessert dish, but it didn't taste too strong due to its consistency.  The ricotta and pepper helped lessen the richness of the soft chocolate so we were able to finish the dish.  But hey, I'm sure if the boys thought the chocolate was too rich, they didn't need to ask me twice for help!

Our meal ended with rice krispie treats and a ball of lemoniness with a crunchy shell. :) ahhhh need I say more?