paul_bklyn's Profile
Looking for a Restaurant near the Javits Center
Manganaro's website says they closed in February.
Peter Luger=nothing but hype
I went to Peter Luger's once many years ago; my steak was awful--it was so tough I could barely chew my way through it, and though I love crusty meat, this crust had been through a four-alarm fire, just hard and bitter. I liked the pecan pie, but never went back. I've always assumed that I just got a bad break-- Luger's wouldn't have lasted one year if my experience had been typical, but I haven't been tempted to try again, at that price. Still, my real lesson ought to have been that you can't necessarily tell from one visit.
best place for an office holiday lunch in Brooklyn?
About as close as possible to the 2/3 trains and serving lunch is the fairly good, I think, sushi restaurant Iron Chef House.
Chow Mobile !
I seem to be adding to a thread that came to a stop a year and a half ago, but I just found on my Palm TX that Chowhound points me to a mobile version exactly as it did for Chuckles here on 1/24/07, and the resulting page contained only a recipe search function, AND it led to an error message if I tried to click any of the recipe links!
Is there actually a Chowhound mobile version? That refers to restaurants rather than recipes?
Casual, moderately priced dinner for 3 tomorrow, vaguely midtown west and quiet enough for a conversation catching up on the last ten years...?
But now they've closed. They say that if you send your email to them at info@lemadeleine.com they will alert you to their reopening, if they reopen as they are hoping to.
Le Petit Marche in Brooklyn Heights
I stand chastened. I do apologize for having come down so hard on a place that I have no wish to do any harm to, on the contrary. I'm glad that my posting is coming to be only one of many, and I will go back again, hoping to find myself happier with the food.
Le Petit Marche in Brooklyn Heights
We tried Le Petit Marche on their second night (having walked past and seen them filled and bustling the night before), and I thought about posting a report here, but decided to wait a while and see if more enthusiastic postings came in first; our experience was disappointing-- it was all right, but no more.
The menu was very promising, I thought; there were lots of interesting items I was tempted to order. The leg of lamb I chose was the nicest part of the meal. A bit too bitterly charred for the extremely mild flavor of the meat, but perfectly cooked inside, and tender. Everything else was at best unobjectionable. Salmon tartare, mussels, green salad and creme brulee were the things we ordered; the salad (an uncut lettuce-- is this a new trend?) seemed to be dressed with pure vinegar. The roasted vegetables and couscous that came with the lamb were, respectively, cooked to the texture of slime with thick skins to chew through, and an unremarkable mass of unrelated flavors, especially with the mango chutney (I think it was) on top. The creme brulee wasn't delicate, in either crust or custard.
The staff was pleasant and the service good; the restaurant's appearance is cozy and almost a little silly in its attempt to look French, but that was fine (not so wonderful was the Edith Piaf music that played non-stop through our whole meal-- I mean, I like Piaf as much as the next Francophile, but after 45 minutes that voice can start to grate. I don't hold this against anyone; we could have asked for a change in music).
The steak frites delivered to the table behind us looked and smelled great and appeared to be well received. I hope that the chef here can find a way to inject more deliciousness into the dishes; I don't want to hold our one experience against the new enterprise. And then I have been feeling unsure about my right to judge them like this (what if the soft tomatoes and eggplant accompanying the lamb were supposed to be like that?) but last night we had dinner in Manhattan at Compass, and it was such a different level of experience-- such wonderful flavors and textures-- that I feel okay about sharing my view of Le Petit Marche on its second night. It was pedestrian, and may it find its legs.
