recent eats

my desire to post about restaurants i eat out grossly outweighs my actual ability to create these posts. thus, i will combine the pleasure of several weeks of delicious dining into one post.

thanks to the glorious occasion of a friend's birthday this past week, i got to dine at tom colicchio's eminent craft. not craftbar (which is also AM-azing), neither craftsteak, nor 'wichcraft (where i recently had the gruyere with caramelized onions--which is the sandwich version of french onion soup, and the BLT with my favourite heirloom tomatoes--both DE-licious), but the end-all-be-all CRAFT. luckily, the service was family-style, meaning i got to taste a little bit of everything. i won't go into extreme detail about everything we ate, but i'll just give you a taste of a few of my favorites: the berkshire pork shoulder with tomatillo sauce was tender, fatty, and delicious. the braised beef short rib with root vegetables was hearty and winter-y. the sugar snap peas were by far my favorite--sweet and perfect! the pureed (baby food) potatoes were hard not to like. i could go on to explain the salads (including an heirloom tomato and basil!!) and side dishes, but it would be a waste of space, because what really blew me away were the desserts. my favorite course by far. we got a banquet-like selection of desserts. the most memorable to me were: a selection of sorbets (including white peach prosecco, ruby grapefruit, cream (?), and espresso), a lemon cake accompanied by blackberries topped with chopped pistachios, mini doughnuts dipped in your choice of creamy caramel or chocolate sauce, a brown butter plum cake, a chocolate souffle, and a sheep's milk panna cotta served with raspberries. i would go there again just for dessert. it was remarkable.

i have also visited the lower east side's alias on more than one occasion in recent weeks. both times were excellent, not only because of the delicious, new southern-style with a local edge cooking, but because of the cool, intimate atmosphere (and a lovely weekend waiter there named joey!) the grilled sweet corn and summer squash salad there is great and is served looking a bit like ratatouille, which is fun. last time i was there i had a pulled pork taco with apricot mustard and green cabbage (!) and the time before i had the roasted hanger steak. both were delicious, but what really looks good that i'm going to try next time is the half rack st louis style BBQ ribs served with cole slaw and jumbo fried onion rings. MMMMMM!

i also had one great neighborhood dining night where i started at momofuku with pork buns and roasted shrimp over sweet summer corn with miso butter and bacon, and later moved around the corner to the dessert bar chikalicious, where for a $12 prix fixe, i got an amuse-bouche, a "main course" of vanilla bean and white peach ice cream served with a fluffy cinnamon cake, and a few petit-fours to top it all off. i wish i could write more about the experience, but it was too good for words. just now i was bouncing in my seat the entire time we were there.

so, that's about all for now. eat at those places and maybe soon i will reveal more.