liger - CHOW

Weber BBQ's CEP 310 vs S330

Looking to buy a bbq and have narrowed it down to these 2 - here's what it comes down to for me:

- The CEP 310 has 9mm stainless steel grills the s330 has 7mm grills
- s330 has a sear station and side burner, CEP 310 just has the 3 burners

given that both are the same price, is the 9mm more important or the sear station and side burner?

on Mar 28, 2012

liger in Cookware

Review of 2 day Trip - Modern Bar Room, Locanda Verde and Babbo

Just got back from our mini vacation in NYC and wanted to thank all who helped us plan!

Saturday - got in just after lunch, we ended up grabbing some pastries at Balthazar and walked around - the sticky buns were tasty

Dinner at Modern Bar Room - I think we expected too much after the praise this place gets around here. Overall it was good experience, just not great, both in terms of service and food - here's what we had:

Tarte Flambee - it's a french pizza and it's big, one person could have this and dessert and be done for the night.
Liverwurst - same feeling as the Tarte Flambee, too much food. both of these dishes would be perfect for sharing amongst 4 people - but too much for just the 2 of us.
Alsatian Country Soup - this was delicious! it was unexpectedly thick and chunky and i just wanted more.
Long Island Duck - pretty good, we finished just about all of the dipping sauce.
Pork Belly - loved this, skin was super crispy. Could have did without the grated turnips though.
Beignets - very light and airy, another fairly large order, but we finished them real quick!

Sunday

Brunch at Locanda Verde - great vibe, would love to come back for dinner, anyway we weren't super hungry so we order (somewhat light):

Sheep's milk ricotta - lives up to the hype, so simple but so good.
Uova modenese - their version of eggs benedict, couldn't stop eating the hash
- wanted to grab some olive oil coffee cake on the way out, but wifey stopped me because she wanted to go back to balthazar for more sticky buns (we got there and they were out!)

Dinner at Babbo - we had 730 reservations and we got out of the subway at around 720 and ended up lost. We didn't get to the restaurant until about 745 - although we did end up getting directions from Rick Moranis! When we finally got there, we were expecting them to tell us they had given our table away, but they were very gracious and said that our table wasn't quite ready yet. WE didn't get seated until just after 8:15pm. Anyway, we were pretty set on ordering 1 antipasti, 3 pastas and 1 secondi until the manager told us that was too much food, very glad we listed to him. Onto the food:

Bread - the bread sucks here and they don't give you butter or olive oil
Octopus - really amazing, very meaty, almost lobster like texture, i've never had it like this before. we were definitely craving more.
black spaghetti with calabrese and shrimp - this was our favourite dish of the trip. everything was perfect about it, al dente, just spicy enough, crunchy, we oohed and ahhed over this the entire night. anything following this was going to be a let down.
goose liver ravioli - not as rich as i thought it'd be, but also delicious, just not as the dish above.
pork chop - it was massive but juicy and tender, but it was the best pork chop i've ever had.
warm apple and fig budino - not much of a pudding, more like coffee cake, it was only ok, wouldn't order it again.

and that's it - can't wait to come back!

-----
Babbo
110 Waverly Pl, New York, NY 10011

The Modern
9 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019

Locanda Verde
377 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10013

on Oct 18, 2011

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