Yotel : The Best Brunch I Have Ever Had!!!

I ventured all the way over to the west side of Times Square on a very rainy Saturday to experience brunch at a hotel that I had never even heard of! My foodie friend, yet again picked a great place! I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I accepted to have brunch. I was expecting the usual standard unlimited drinks with one entree type of deal. Much to my surprise, Yotel was offering a 2 hour unlimited drinks and unlimited small plates menu for brunch for $35. The menu had very unique drinks and dishes to choose from. Also, the ambiance of the place was very nice. It was bright, airy, and modern. It also had a beautiful bar and outdoor patio that would be amazing to sit on during the summer. It wasn't overly crowded, which was kind of surprising because of the quality of food and great special.

The amazing menu! 

From the variety of drinks to choose from, I decided my favorite one on the menu was the Peach & Bourbon Tea. It was served in a shorter glass, and had such an extreme flavor, as compared to standard brunch menus that just consist of bloody marys, mimosas, and bellinis. 

The only catch to ordering is that each person is allowed to order 2 plates at a time. Which to me, is a fine rule, because how fast can one eat! Also, when the plates were served, the waiter was willing to take an order immediately for the next round of choices. We were never left waiting or wondering when we were going to have a chance to order more drinks or dishes, as with most unlimited brunch places do. So service is something that Yotel excels at. 

The first four dishes we ordered were: The Crunchy Shrimp, The Falafel Lettuce Wraps, Crab Wontons, and the House Ground Beef Burger Sliders. 

The Crunchy Shrimp were coated in lemon sake aioli, sesame, scallion, and masago. They had extreme flavor and a lot of crunch. This dish we actually ordered seconds of because it was so good. They reminded me a little bit of coconut shrimp with an asian flare. Yum! 

The Falafel Lettuce Wraps were served with slow-roasted chipotle-tomato, cucumbers, and onions yogurt. I am a total falafel lover, so I was happy to even see this on a mostly asian menu. My friend also generally doesn't like falafel, and he told me he loved this dish! I loved the freshness of the lettuce and yogurt paired with the fried falafel. 

Crunchy Shrimp and Falafel Lettuce Wraps (shown on one plate, because we dug into the food too fast!) 

The Crab Wontons were served in egg roll form and filled with crab, cream cheese, corn, mushroom, shiso, truffle, and dipped into ponzu. They were definitely good, but not overly full of flavor or necessarily a "must order." I could have gone either way with this dish. 

Crab Wontons 

The Beef Sliders were of course amazing! Its pretty hard to have me not like a burger, since they are my favorite! They were served as a pair with tomatoes, lettuce, red chili, pickle, and manchego cheese. Yum! 

House Ground Beef Burgers 

The next four plates we ordered were: The Wagyu Brisket Benedict, Sweet & Spicy Bacon, Yukon Gold Tostones, and House Ground Meatballs. 

Our Next Set of 4

The Wagyu Brisket Benedict was amazing! It was actually more exciting than ordering a lobster benedict because it had a good amount of Brisket on it. I actually have never seen brisket on an eggs benedict before, so I thought this was ingenious. Perhaps, I'll be asking my mom for leftovers at our next holiday dinner, since she makes the best brisket. 

Wagyu Brisket Benedict 

The Sweet & Spicy Bacon was a little bit of a disappointment. The plate had only two pieces of bacon and they tasted pretty normal. I didn't notice any overly sweet or spicy taste. But all in all, bacon is tasty, so I guess its passable. 

Sweet & Spicy Bacon

The Yukon Gold Tostones were also not what I expected. I am used to Tostones being made from plantaines, so I was expecting something with more of a banana flavor. The Tostones we received were pretty much regular potatoes that were cooked to be extremely soft, and melt in your mouth. I actually loved the taste of the potatoes even though I wasn't expecting to eat potatoes. I would definitely order this dish again, now that I know they are potatoes. 

Yukon Gold Potatoes 

The House Ground Meatballs were served in a kaffir lime-tomato sauce. It more so reminded me of a vodka sauce because of its pink color. Definitely delicious! 

House Ground Meatballs 

After the first 8 dishes, we were starting to become way too full, but we had to continue on! We decided to order something on the lighter side. We ordered the Spicy Tuna Roll, which was pretty much a standard Tuna Roll that you can get at a sushi place. It was great quality fish and I enjoyed it! 

 Spicy Tuna Roll 

Next we ordered the Chilaquiles, which I can't even pronounce. This was a mexican influenced dish. It was basically a fried egg served on nacho chips, with black bean puree, salsa roja, and cotija cheese. I didn't really notice much cheese on the dish, even though it was in the summary of the dish. I also wasn't the biggest fan of this dish. I thought it was sort of on the bland side and was missing some actuall tomato style salsa, which could have added a little zing to it. 

Chilaquiles

Next, we ordered the Hijiki Seaweed Salad because a man at the table next to ours was eating it, and it looked amazing! The Hijiki Seaweed Salad was the marriage of a coleslaw and a seaweed salad. Since coleslaw is one of my favorite things to eat, and I love seaweed salad, this dish was one of my favorites. It blended apples, carrots, seaweed, daikon, and ginger vinaigrette to make a very refreshing dish. Can we say, "Waiter, can I have more?"

Hijiki Seaweed Salad

Since I love eggplant, I was excited to see it on the menu. I usually associate eggplant with italian food, so the fact that they made it Chinese inspired, I was more than enthused to bite into this dish. The eggplant was soaked in miso and covered in tomatoes, red chile, and mint. I thought it was very refreshing and easy to eat. I could definitely taste the miso soup flavor in each bite, which I loved! 

Chinese Eggplant

Since my dining partner and I were running out of dishes that we wanted to try, since some of them on the menu sounded too heavy or uninteresting, we decided to go with something more traditional. We ordered the Bacon Fried Rice. It was topped with a poached egg. It was nice to have the rice at the table, but not necessary to order. We definitely did not finish it, as we were becoming way too full!

Bacon Fried Rice 

Our second to last dish was the Seared Tuna Salad, which was soooooo refreshing. The tuna was seared to perfection and was accompanied by avocado slices, snow peas, shallots, and miso mustard vinaigrette. I definitely loved this dish, and could see ordering more than one of these if my stomach would allow it. I also love avocado, so this made me happy :) 

Seared Tuna Salad 

Our last dish, the Wok-Seared Cauliflower was not that great. We didn't finish this dish because it was a little on the sour and salty side. I generally love cauliflower, but not in the asian way. I would not order this one again! 

Wok-Seared Cauliflower

On our way out, we noticed the hotel was decorated with all these different funny sculptures. I definitely had to take a snap shot with one of those! 

Funny Sculpture Figurines 

All in all, this brunch was an amazing experience. I believe for what we had, $35/person is an awesome price. I will most likely be hitting up this brunch for my birthday brunch this year!! 

Vezzo - Who knew there was pizza this good in Murray Hill?

So after years of living in Murray Hill. Yes, I hate to admit it. I finally got to go to Vezzo. I had ordered a personal pie once for delivery from this place, but delivery thin crust pizza is never as fresh and piping hot as ordering it in the restaurant. I decided to go here one night with a friend to carbo-load before a 10k run that we were running the following day.

I must say, the ambiance of this place is amazing! It was extremely romantic because of the mood lighting, candles, and size. My friend and I sat at the bar because on a Friday night around 8 it's impossible to get a table! There was actually a line out the door! We ordered glasses of wine from the very friendly bartender. The wine selection was decent. There was at least one type of each wine available to order by the glass.

We decided we should start with a salad to add some vegetables to this carb-heavy dinner. We ordered the Greek Salad. Even though I hate olives, I was okay with ordering this salad and giving my friend all the olives, which her and I had discussed. Much to our surprise, the salad came out without olives anyhow. This was surprising because we didn't even discuss this with the bartender when we ordered our salad. I was happy about this mistake, but found it kind of odd that they left out one of the main ingredients in a greek salad. Oh well! The salad came out very colorful with tons of each type of vegetable and tons of feta cheese. They definitely did not go cheap in giving us our greens and left me with a very fresh feeling.

Greek Salad 

For our main course we ordered the large Shroomtown Pizza. The Shroomtown pizza included: Marinara sauce, cheese, portobello mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, button mushrooms, and white truffle oil. I particularly thought that this was an interesting and great choice because usually dishes with truffle oil in them are more of a buttery or creamy dish. I liked that the pizza also included marinara sauce in addition to truffle oil.

While waiting for your pizza, my friend and I noticed that everybody around us has ordered the same pizza that we had. Apparently, it was a popular choice! I believe that anything with truffle oil in it is worth ordering! So I approve of everyone's decision. 

Shroomtown Pizza 

The pizza arrived at our table covered in so many mushrooms that I couldn't do anything but smile! :) I love mushrooms! Also, the pizza was coated in the perfect amount of cheese, not too much, and not too little. I loved the marriage of flavor of the truffle oil and marinara sauce. They didn't go light on the truffle oil, which made me very happy. Every bite was just as good as the last. My friend and I finished every bite! 

I highly suggest going to Vezzo if you are in the Murray Hill area and are looking for a fun spot to catch up with a friend or a place to bring a date. Also, the prices on the menu won't break the bank. 

Ember Room: Asian-American Fusion!

My fellow foodie friend has a knack for buying food deals, and often brings me along for the fun and excessive gorging! Recently, he had to cash in on an 8 course tasting menu that he had bought at the Ember Room, one of Todd English's new restaurants. Also, the deal included 3 rounds of drinks per person. What a find!

Upon approaching the Ember Room, I was impressed by the look of the place. It has a very rustic, dark wood interior with many fun decorative details. I knew that this place was going to be good just by the looks of it!

Outside The Ember Room

Beautiful Lanterns on the walls

Lanterns 

The menu at this restaurant is a combination of Asian and American delicacies with some BBQ items to focus on the traditional American fare. The 8 course tasting menu was pre-designed and just served to us as ready. It took all the guess work out of ordering, which was kind of nice. Luckily, neither one of us is overly picky with foods, so we weren't too worried about being served something that we couldn't eat. 

I started with a very delicious drink, that I have to admit, I forget the name of. But it was really pretty to look at and extremely tasty, so I have to share!

Tons of fresh berries in my drink :)

The first course delivered to our table were the Roasted Sea Scallops. The scallops were pretty large in size, and were covered in smoked bacon, pea shoots, and kohlrabi, which is a cabbage. The plate had two scallops in total, so we each got to enjoy one. I have to admit, when I crave seafood, I don't generally think about scallops, but hese scallops had a lot of flavor and I really enjoyed them. I especially loved the fact that they were covered in bacon! Perhaps one of the most non-kosher delicacies anyone could consume! 

Roasted Sea Scallops 

The second course served were meatballs! Generally, I don't expect to see meatballs at an asian place, so this came as quite a surprise to me. The meatballs were called the Thai Pastrami Meatballs, which were covered in Chinese mustard and tamarind glaze. The meatballs were really moist and definitely had that asian flavor, versus having an italian marinara flavor, which you expect of meatballs. 

Thai Pastrami Meatballs 

Our third course arrived at the table, and both of us had no idea what it was! We were served BBQ Berkshire Pork Belly, which was covered in maple-soy, fuji apple, and celeriac slaw. At first, I wasn't sure if I liked this dish because when I think of pork, I don't think of it being very sweet. As I kept eating, I actually decided I really liked it! It almost reminded me of eating french toast, which is definitely a weird thought when you think of pork. Also, the apple and celeriac slaw was a nice touch to the dish because it brought a little bitterness to the dish to contrast the sweetness of the pork. I would definitely eat it again. 

BBQ Berkshire Pork Belly 

Next, we were served Shrimp Satay. I generally love shrimp, but this dish wasn't anything special. The dish had two lonely shrimps covered in finger chili, cilantro, and lemon grass. It was refreshing to eat, but like I said, nothing life changing. 

Shrimp Satay

The shrimp was followed by the Crispy Gingered Oysters. I must say, this dish was SCRUMPTIOUS! The oysters were crusted with panko, topped with champagne mango relish, and accompanied with spicy mango aioli. If there was a dish I would want more of, I think it would be this one. The refreshing salsa killed the heaviness of the heavily fried oyster and made it a perfect combination. 

Crispy Gingered Oysters 

Next, we were served seared tuna with salad. I felt that this dish should have been brought out as one of the first dishes because of its lightness and salad-like look. Although, I definitely enjoyed this dish because who can pass up seared tuna! 

Seared Tuna 

For the last two courses, I was surprised to receive the most American influenced dishes, that actually didn't have any trace of Asian flavor in them. I can't complain about the dishes though, because who can pass up wings and ribs. The BBQ Wings were made with a house made BBQ sauce. I thought they were good, but not overly revolutionary. I also prefer my wings to be more on the spicy, hot side, so these BBQ wings did not impress me. They were covered in sauce, so at least they weren't dry. 

BBQ Wings

The St. Louis Ribs were very standard ribs. They were very tasty and covered in the ember room special BBQ sauce. There was a hint of Asian flavor to them, but not enough to make me think that these were anything special. 

St. Louis BBQ Ribs

For wings & ribs, I generally associate going to a BBQ place that only does BBQ. I kind of prefer to keep it that way. Otherwise, I did generally love all the Asian/American dishes that actually showed the combination of the cultures. 

I would suggest going to the restaurant for the ambiance and the interesting selection of food. Keep in mind, that our tasting menu was something special that was all part of the deal that my friend had bought. All of our dishes are featured on the regular appetizer menu, which is usually A la Carte. Also, there is a Pre Theathre Pre fix 3 course menu available. 

Enjoy! 

La Mar Cebicheria Peruana- Peruvian Delight

I attended a dinner at  La Mar Cebicheria Peruana for one of my best friend's birthdays. As soon as I entered, I was slapped in the face with the beautiful ambiance and aromas of delicious foods. I had always wanted to check out La Tabla when it was situated in the same location, but had somehow missed out on it. I was very excited to have the chance to dine at this restaurant, so close to Madison Square Park.

I arrived a little late to the party, so I unfortunately missed out on some of the earlier appetizers of ceviche. But the menu selection was definitely interesting and had a huge selection of dishes to choose from.
I did arrive in time for the Aji de Gallina Fritters, which included empanadas, tequeno (a little like an egg roll), and croqueta (croquettes) that were accompanied with mashed avocado, rocota cream, and olive sauce. This appetizer was definitely tasty, but I didn't think it was anything special or different than I've had before. It also was extremely fried. I would suggest getting a different appetizer off the menu, if you are looking for a more "fresh" feel. Although, the avocado dipping sauce did add a nice touch.

Aji De Gallina Fritters 

The next appetizer we ordered I happened to love! I would highly suggest it. We ordered the "pulpo," which was smoked Spanish day-boat octopus, anticucho jus (juice from grilling skewered beef heart), potato cream, olive foam, and garlic crisps. This dish was the most fascinating way I have ever seen octopus served before. The foam made it very nautical. The octopus was super tender and full of flavor. This is a dish I definitely would have wanted to eat more of. Also, the additional thrown on vegetables gave it a very nice textural crunch. 

Pulpo 

The last two appetizers we ordered were anticuchos, which were two grilled skewers with anticucho sauce, smashed fried potatoes, choclo (a spanish corn with HUGE kernals) , and huacatay sauce. We ordered the steak and chicken skewers. The steak was unreal! It made me want to order more for my real meal. It was super saucy, and had these crunchy, but tender all at once kernels of corn. Also, the potatoes served on the side of it, were extremely delicious. The chicken skewers were also very finger licking good, but not as good as the steak. The chicken had more of a BBQ flavor, that wasn't as robust in flavor as the steak.

Steak Anticuchos

Chicken Anticuchos

My favorite part of dinner was my actual entree. Usually, appetizers and sharing plates are the best part about eating out. This situation was in reverse! I ordered the "Tacu Tacu a lo Pobre," which was described as lime bean tacu tacu, grilled hanger steak, fried quail egg plantain, onions and tomatoes, in a chorrillana sauce. Typical peruvian tacu tacu is a mixture of beans and rice, fried, and topped with breaded or pan-fried steak and onion salsa. This dish was the opposite of traditional. It was heaven on a plate. There was no rice also, which was a huge plus! I genuinely had no complaints about my dish! I also would not want to share this dish with anyone, because I'd want to be selfish and have it all to myself! Additionally, to my surprise, there was a potato pancake on my plate! The steak was cooked to perfection, medium rare of course. Also, the sauce on the vegetables was succulent, as well as the combination of the egg on top of the plantain. I would definitely order this dish every time. 

Tacu Tacu 

The birthday boy ordered the Maine Lobster. Usually, lobster is served with just butter, corn, and potatoes. This lobster was nothing but original. It was served cut open, with the lobster marinating in a special ceviche sauce that also had the special spanish style corn kernels in it. The lobster was beautiful in presentation. I also was assured by my friend how delicious it was! 

Maine Lobster 

Lastly, to finish up dinner on a sweet note, my friend had brought in a cake to the restaurant to serve. The cake was from my favorite bakery, Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery!!! This bakery to me, is known for their amazing Sunshine Cupcakes and also their Chocolate Bomb. The cake they served exceeded my expectations! It was a strawberry layer cake that was so creamy, and sweet! The buttercream frosting was just like I always remembered from Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery. Also, the strawberry filling on the layers added the most heavenly flavor to the cake. I finished my whole slice, and was left wanting more. Unfortunately, my inner voice said no! 

Birthday boy with Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery Strawberry Layer Cake 

I want more! 

I hope I have left you with a craving for something savory and sweet! Now, go eat! 

Vietnamese Comfort Food: L'Annam 28

After walking past this place almost every day for 3 years and looking in the windows at patrons' delicious looking platters, I learned that it was the other location of the L'Annam in Union Square that has recently become a favorite. I decided I needed to try it before I move out of the neighborhood! I learned that L'Annam 28 has the same level of great service and great food as the one in Union Square, but had a much better ambiance than their other location.

I have never ordered a bad dish at their other location, so I knew this place had to be the same. They totally satisfied me once again! One complaint I have is that it took forever for them to bring us our appetizer. It got to the point that I was staring at each plate that came from the kitchen to see if it was ours.

My friend and I ordered the Steamed Lady Finger appetizer and it did not disappoint. It came out piping hot and was extremely succulent. Each dumpling had big chunks of shrimp in it and soaked up the dipping sauce that accompanied it. After I was done with my three I definitely wanted more!  Just writing this now makes me want to run to L'Annam and order some to go!

Steamed Lady Finger Appetizer 

For our main meals, we shared two dishes. We ordered the standard dish of pad thai with chicken in it and also ordered my favorite meal, the Crispy Pan Fried Noodles, which was topped in shrimp, chicken, vegetables, and brown sauce. 

The pad thai was very appetizing because it wasn't just a pile of noodles and meat. There was definitely enough vegetables in there to add some extra crunch and flavor. It also came with a sauce that added an extra zing to the dish. I have never seen pad thai come with dipping sauce, so this was very different for me. 

Pad Thai with Chicken

Now, onto my favorite dish, the Crispy Pan Fried Noodles was served just as amazing as usual. I love this dish because it has contrasting textures, which when eating I find very delectable. The noodles come from the kitchen very crispy, and soften up as you let them soak in the brown sauce. I think that they have the perfect combination of crunch and sogginess once they soften. Also, the fact that this dish has shrimp and chicken, makes my mouth smile. Also, the crunchy vegetables add a level of zest to the meal. 

Crispy Pan Fried Noodles - Shrimp, Chicken, and Veggies in Brown Sauce

I highly recommend this restaurant because it has all three qualities when looking for a restaurant. It has good prices, decent ambiance, and also amazing food!