Eaten at Peter McManus Café on 7th Avenue. While the pitchers kept rolling to our table, I had to absorb the flowing beer with some greasy bar food. Of course I tried their burger. Dug the steak fries and the Muenster cheese gave the greasy burger a nice kick. The bacon could have been cooked a little more but if I ever go back to McManus’, I’ll definitely try their decent McManus’s Chelsea Cheeseburger again.

Dope fresh.

Earlier this week I went to Los Dados with a couple coworkers for a nice little lunch.  They have a lunch box special that includes an appetizer and either a taco, chalupa or enchilada for $11. Not a bad deal, but their portions tend to be on the tiny side if you don’t make wise choices for each.

The poor choice for appetizer. Mango Pineapple Salsa. While delicious and sweet, chips already come to the table with some dip so all you’re getting for you appetizer is this little cup. Yeah, that’s it.

The wise choice for appetizer. My buddies Matt and Julia had the Organic Greens with Lime Vinagrette. Portion seemed more rewarding, no?

I ordered the Chicken Chalupa. Love the colors and presentation of this layered Mexican cuisine. While delicious, I wish they gave you two since the portion is so small. After the salsa and this, I was still left hungry after lunch. : /

The Shrimp Tacos were another wise choice not picked by me. Shrimp, jalapenos, pico de gallo - these little tacos were chock full of flavor.

Went to Brasserie 360 over the weekend with the family. They asked me to pick a place in the Upper East Side to celebrate my promotion (yippee!) and I went on nymag.com, closed my eyes and chose at random (after, like, looking at the menu and being satisfied with that). My finger, once landing on my monitor, rested on top of a bunch of pixels that formed the words “Brasserie 360″. With that we were off to our dinner at this quaint french restaurant.

For the sake of this blog and my stomach, we ordered the trio of kobe beef sliders. We had our sliders topped with bleu cheese. The soft, fluffy bun overpowered the meat and the tomato, while resting nicely on top of it all, battled with the kobe beef for the primary flavor in these tiny burgers. If you buy kobe sliders, it would be nice to taste the kobe beef.

My main was the Sesame Crusted Ahi Tuna with Red Swiss Chard. It was fantastic. I love Swiss chard and the tuna surrounding that mountain of greens was seasoned well. The tuna was cooked perfectly at medium-rare and fell apart at the slightest touch of my fork.

New picture taken of the Dumont Burger, this time at Dumont Restaurant off Union Ave.  If you recall, I did a crappy job last time.  This particular Dumont Burger came topped with Danish Blue Cheese, Boston bibb, tomato, pickles and some fries on the side.

Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburgers.  Um…wow.  Nasty and apparently a favorite of Luther Vandross.  

via wikipedia

Vera Cruz is a fine Mexican establishment on Bedford Ave right off the L train. I’ve gone a couple of times for their potent margaritas and chicken mole burritos. I brought a camera with me this time and snapped a pic of the latter.

Last time I had it the chocolate sauce overwhelmed the rest of this gargantuan burrito but this time I’m happy to report that the flavor didn’t overpower. Comes with some rice, dried beans, salsa, sour cream and guacamole. I highly recommend Vera Cruz as a solid Mexican outing in the Billyburg area. Get the pineapple margarita pitcher. Although pricey, by the time you get to the bottom of the pitcher it’ll make any food outing there a blast.

Last weekend I had a party and my buddy Mike was adamant about having some chocolate covered bacon at the event.  So, we went ahead and did it. We used two pots as the double boiler (because we’re classy like that) and heated some chocolate chips and dunked bacon that was cooked and then cooled beforehand in the chocolate vat.  Pictures of the process are as follows:

It tastes better than it looks, especially the one my buddy Jordan is in ecstasy over. A nice combination of salty and sweet. We doused the bacon in chocolate so it had a hint of smokey flavor inside of it. Gotta try everything at least once.

I was hesitant to put up this post simply because of the backlash/shower shankings I had anticipated. I asked my loyal friends and blog readers what Philly place mastered the cheesesteak the best. I heard many recommendations and planned on having at least one during my trip to the two burger joints a few weekends ago. I settled on heading down to Pat’s and Geno’s, the legendary cheesesteak places directly across from each other. However, you must understand that by this time I already sampled 4 burgers, numerous appetizers, multiple beers and shots. I was aware that I wouldn’t be able to finish an entire cheesesteak but thought it would be outrageous to overlook a hoagie with Steak-Ums and artificial cheese on my trip.

Geno’s looks a little like Vegas, way down the strip Vegas. Pat’s was more low-key even though they both claim they are superior to each other. Some people say they are nearly identical. Others will stab you for saying this, as the loyalty to each of these places is rather strong. Just yesterday, I had two buddies of mine formerly from Philly become near rivals due to this rift of cheesesteak-dom. I watched like a small child seeing his parents argue in front of him in the living room. I wanted to sample both but didn’t have the stomach size to do so. Seeing how the lines were equally long, I flipped a coin in my head and chose Pat’s King of Steaks.

The way it works: Know what you’re ordering before you get to the guy. The orders are fast and furious. You ask for WID or WID OUT cheese (they have cheez whiz, of course, amongst others) and WID or WID OUT onions.  I ordered a cheesesteak WID provolone and WID onions.

I hunkered my jaws into this thing and the meat was…dry? Whoa wait a minute. I thought this was THE place to get a cheesesteak? Maybe I was spoiled from my burgers I had right before this? After having juicy burgers the entire afternoon I was surprised to find this beloved cheesesteak was super dry and stringy. The Steak-Ums were not leaving a good impression. The roll was soft and large enough to absorb the juice of the cheesesteak but I was not wholly impressed with this cheesesteak.

In the photo above I’m clearly giving it a mediocre thumbs up. I think that if I have a weekend devoted entirely to cheesesteaks my assessment will be fairer but Pat’s did not go over too well with me. I had about 5 bites of this gargantuan sandwich before throwing in the towel and fearing I may explode from all the food I ingested that afternoon.

People of/from Philly, don’t stab me.

Thanks in advance,
Tom Censani

Yes, the titles of my posts will get cornier and cornier.  Deal. with. it.

This weekend I had lunch at Momofuku Ssam, a place I’ve been dying to eat at for some time.  With a no reservations policy and seemingly endless waiting times during the evenings, I’ve always been reluctant to try out Daniel Chang’s infamous pork at any of the Momofuku restaurants.  Finally, I decided to quell my fears and head there for a late lunch to avoid the packed dinner hours.  To my delight, I arrived at an almost empty Momofuku Ssam but by the time I left, was packed.  Note to interested eaters: get there before 3pm on Saturdays to eat without hassle.

As an appetizer, I tried the Chicken and Egg Pate en Croute with ramp marmalade. The pate was firm but delicious and the ramp spread on top of it gave it a sweet and garlicky taste.

For my meal I ordered the Momo Lunch Box. You have three choices for the lunch boxes and they all come with a side of pickles, one side and a soda! I of course had to try the steamed pork buns, the infamous tiny pork sandwiches that make Momofuku so good.

They come in pairs and the pork is wrapped in this pita shaped “bun” that tastes buttery and airy. The focus is diverted to the pork, which thankfully delivers on its praises. The pork was fatty but not overwhelmingly chewy. It had some barbecue sauce and housemade pickles lightly on top of it and the accompanying hot sauce gave the pork buns a nice zing.

The side of pickles comes with mushrooms, carrots and onions, all of which were coated lightly with a dressing that gave them a sweet taste. Everything is from local, sustainable farms and it shows. The two sides me and my friend ordered were the Kewpie Slaw topped with black sesame seeds and the Bean Sprout Salad which was doused in Chinese BBQ sauce and sesame oil. The sesame oil was a little too generously coated on my bean sprouts and made it more syrupy than it could have been but the Kewpie Slaw was nice and had a great spicy kick at the end of it.

I would definitely head back to Momofuku Ssam and even try my hand at dinner there.  The pork buns would have to be ordered again of course, but thankfully they’re an appetizer during dinner hours so I may be able to order something else if I can pull myself away from them.