The Wandering Eater

For the sake of being curious, I wanted to try Eleven Madison Park’s tasting menu for lunch. Why? Well, I still have their Restaurant Week certificate (which worth $24.07). It would be interesting to let Chef Daniel Humm strut his stuff for lunch, instead of me picking out what I think tastes good.

The only thing differed from my tasting from the menu was the Lobster Cappuccino due to the fact that I’m allergic to shellfish. Here’s the menu (read the second page).

As always first, the bread and butter.

I’m still amused how they serve the butter

Butter dish, uncovered

My French Baguette/Roll

This time, I just chose the French baguette. I’m not feeling for olive or multi-grain bread. The bread was good. A thin, crisp, crust with a chewy, irregular crumb. The butter is fine. I just kind of miss how they had the maple leaf shaped butter. Now, it’s a bit unappealing to see that they cut the butter with a serrated knife that isn’t even cut straight.

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Today, I actually ate barbecue for breakfast and lunch. The crazy thing about that statement is that I ate this in Madison Square Park with all of these people!

It’s insane how long the lines are, and how eager people are to get things for free. Come to think about it, who would actually pass up the chance of eating barbecued meats and be graced by the presence of Chris Lilly, one of the country’s best known pit masters, Rick Rodgers, and chef Aaron Sanchez? Chris Lily injecting marinade into pork butt

Aaron Sanchez talking on an interview

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All of my (two) previous experiences with Caffé Falai, the food has been delicious but I tend to think their service sucks since it’s been sloth-like. But I have reached a late epiphany with this place. It’s wonderful to eat here for breakfast and/or brunch.

The waitress never rushes you out; the loud, garrulous Italian gentleman, Enrico, greets you and assists you in your coffee and/or pastry order. You can linger here as long as you would like to. Heck, I stayed there for 1 1/2 hours for breakfast and that’s not normal for me. I guess because being a native New Yorker, weekday mornings and afternoons tend to be the mode of “get food now, eat, and go back to school.” It seems to me Caffé Falai’s philosophy is, “Take your time. Unwind and enjoy your stay here with really tasty food.” I concur with this idea. It’s just too bad that I don’t have that kind of time and serene life.

Back to the main focus, the food. Since it’s morning at 8 AM, I don’t want to eat another chocolate croissant (since I ate it before), I chose to seat myself near the windows, where there’s better lighting and ordered a meal here. Since I was left to think what the heck I want to eat (and that debate took a good 5 minutes), I opted for their “Baked Eggs with Tomato, Fontina and Basil” ($9) and a regular cup of coffee ($1.50) to start with. While I was waiting for these items, the bread plate appeared before me.

It’s a plate of lightly toasted, sliced foccacia. This bread is delicious. The slightly crisp, thin crust meets chewy, yeasty crumb. The olive oil flavor is also in there…just a slight. The dipping oil is fine; it just makes the bread tastier due to the added (good) fat.

After noshing on the foccacia for a couple of minutes, I just got a bit impatient waiting and just started to snap a few photos of their pastry case and bread rack. So here it is:

Look at all that lovely bread loaves…

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This week I went Japanese: for lunch and a dessert flight, if you will. The latter will be explained later on. On Tuesday, I went to Choshi Sushi for lunch. There are two reasons for this venture: (1) I craved for sushi, (2) Chowhounders recommend this place, and (3) I found out recently that this week is Japanese Restaurant Week and that they are participating this event.

I went there when it just opened for lunch (12 PM). The place looks clean and streamlined. Take a look:

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I don’t know what exactly drove me to eat this much sugar, butter and flour in one morning…as I’m writing this, I getting worried that I’m going to get diabetes and suffer a heart attack eating that many pastries in one day. This is not a good sign. This morning, I went to Georgia’s Bake Shop just because I wanted to scope out the potential macarons that Robyn and I are planning to do for our macaron hunt on April Fool’s Day (that’s Sunday, April 1; anyone who can and will be in NYC, is welcome to join!).

The strange thing is that I passed this place several times whenever I walk from Silver Moon Bakery (trying to burn off a couple of calories) down to my campus (on 58th Street) and I never realized that this was a bakery. Hmmm… Strange.

Anyways, this bakery is quite small but their pastries, cakes, and breads look gorgeous! Take a look…

Oooh…pretty

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Yesterday was kind of weird. My two problems were dinner and finding out that my former blog at Blogspot is preventing me from publishing because they label it as SPAM! Why?! Especially it’s been last September that I have been publishing. Since I don’t have much faith in waiting for a response on from Blogger, I’m hoping this place won’t give me problems…my last hope is actually going to Typepad and get meself an account there. To the new readers, welcome! To my loyal readers from Blogger, thank you for reading. I really appreciate it!

Ok, enough of my problems…I want to wallow myself in food. So here it goes.

Starting from yesterday morning, I went back to Caffe Falai.

It was about 8 AM, surprisingly there wasn’t much bustle as I would imagine for a cafe or bakery spot. I had a hankering for some chocolate croissant and that’s what I ordered ($2.50).

I did take out, since it felt odd to just eat there alone and where there are no other diners eating there. It’s just the local residents who are just coming in for a cup of latte or a pastry to go. The croissant was not I was really expecting. I should have remembered that this place is meant to be Italian, not a French patisserie. So, I was surprised by the chocolate pudding/custard filling. The croissant or to be more exact, a coronetti, was still awesome though: it was über flaky, crisp, light and slightly buttery. Probably I’ll go for their chocolate pear croissant next time…

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