Restaurant Review: Vinyl

Happy Broadway Week everyone! One of best things about NYC is theater. The only negative about this is good seats at a show can be very costly! The solution: NYC Broadway Week and Off Broadway Week. During this time, tickets are 50% off to some of the most popular shows like The Lion King and Wicked! My husband and I have taken advantage of this every year and see as many different shows as possible. This year, we decided to go to Wicked!

. My first Wicked experience was a couple of years back with my bestie. Since then, I have been itching to see it again. This year – the Hubster made it happen. I couldn’t be any more excited to sharing his first Wicked experience with him! Verdict: I still loved it!

Enough of talk on the show. One broadway tradition is the pre-theater dinner. The theater district offers a range of restaurant options including some of our favs Tolache, Carmine’s and John’s Pizzeria. This time around we tried a new place – well new for me – Vinyl. This retro diner offers an eclectic upscale diner menu highlighted by an equally enticing cocktail menu. To start with, we ordered a side of their brussel sprouts. Our waitress was really honest with us about this dish – some people love it and some people hate it. We loved it! If you like tangy, lemony and spicy all in one, you will want to try these brussel sprouts. I wanted to just drink the cooking juices left at the bottom of the bowl. For our entrees we ordered the veggie burger with fries and the truffle mac and cheese with a small side salad. The truffle mac and cheese was divine!

. Instead of using traditional elbow macroni, this was made with gemelli pasta. This has to be one of the best mac and cheeses I’ve tried so far. The veggie burger on the other hand was a disappointment for me.

First, the bread was not sturdy enough to hold the burger together. The veggie burger and all it’s toppings were just too big for this thin small sliced bread. The veggie burger itself was not my favorite. It tasted more like a bland black bean burger. I would recommend not ordering this item.

As for the drinks, I recommend the Don ho. To us it tasted like spiked ginger sugarcane juice and brought us back to our homeland of India.

All in all it was a pretty good pre-theater dinner.

P.S. If you are not to tired after the show, stop by Schmackary’s for cookies and shakes. Believe me you won’t regret those extra calories!

Till we meet again!

Restaurant Review: Sabores Restaurante Mexicano,Hoboken

Random date nights are the best! Especially when they are filled with sangria and some healthy Mexican food! Last night, the hubster gave me a break from the kitchen and surprised me with a special date night at Sabores! This restaurant is amazing! Two floors, outdoor seating in the summer, a little bar and best thing of all it’s BYOB! Bring a bottle of wine and they will make you sangria, bring tequila and they will make you margaritas, bring champagne or prosecco and they will make you a mimosas and bellinis all for a very small fee. We brought a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and had a pitcher of white sangria made. It was very sweet and definitely mellowed out the taste of the wine (personally just how I like it!). I was super excited to go to this restaurant due to their extensive vegetarian options and especially because they had vegetarian tamales! Unfortunatelly, when we tried to order the vegetarian tamales, the waiter said they were basically finished. However, after learning that it was going to be my first tamale experience, he went to the kitchen and learned there was one last tamale left and served it up for me.

And for my first tamale experience it was okay. I expected more sweetness from the corn and then more flavor from the veggies inside. I will give it one more time before I make my final verdict on tamales. For our main dinner we ordered Sopa Azteca (tortilla soup), Plato fiesta (nachos) and vegetarian enchiladas rancheras. Let’s start with the soup.

The portion size was much larger than we expected and we wished we had gotten the smaller size because it filled us up! It had the makings of an amazing soup but was somewhat lacking in the flavor department. It just didn’t compare to the tortilla soup at our East Village spot El Camion. Would I order it again? Most likely a no but catch me in another NYC polar vortex and I might just say yes. Next comes the nachos.

Now, I make a pretty mean plate of nachos myself and my base point is always that. Can I just say, I may just have a new base point?! These nachos were truly amazing! The right proportion of black beans to cheese to lettuce to tomatoes on each bite! Not to mention the chips were pretty sturdy and were able to hold the load of the toppings and stay crunchy. As full as I was, I kept nibbling on them and didn’t want them to take away the plate! Last, we’ll move onto the enchiladas which we unfortunately forgot to take a picture of (what can I say we were so tempted from the presentation that we dug right in!). I loved these enchiladas for the flavorful sauce, the loads of veggies and for the fact that they did not load up on the cheese. As a vegetarian, I appreciated that I didn’t have to settle for just beans and cheese. This offered me a healthier lighter version of a traditional favorite. Looking forward to my next visit there to try some more of their vegetarian options!

Thank you Sabores for a great date night!

Restaurant Review: Charrito’s Hoboken

Sometimes all you want is some good homestyle cheap Mexican food. My husband and I get cravings for it! We had our spots when we lived in NYC but after moving to Hoboken, we didn’t know where to go! And one magical cold winter night we stumbled upon this place – Charrito’s located right in downtown Hoboken on Washington Street. We walked into this tiny place and felt so welcomed by the wait staff – it was as if we were walking into their home. We decided to forego appetizers this time around and went right for our entrees. My husband ordered one of his favorite Mexican dishes – veggie enchiladas and I went for veggie chilaquiles! Every since our trip to Cancun where we had the best chilaquiles for breakfast everyday, I try them at every place we go to hoping to find something like it! How did this compare?

To be honest, they were a bit disappointing. They lacked the flavor, veggies beyond onions and peppers and some crunch. Not to mention I was disappointed with the browning avocado slices =|. No bueno! But not to fret, my husband’s veggie enchilada’s were the saving grace.

Proper ratio of cheese, tortilla to veggies and sauce. Our favorite part was the side of refried beans. They reminded us of our childhood. I could have done with another side of those! So although we will never order the chilaquiles again, we will certainly going back for the enchiladas!

Restaurant Review: Alta

Happy 2014!! I hope you had a great holiday season and are in full gear for the new year. This new year I’ve made a new resolution instead of my traditional “I’m going to work out” which never works out. My resolution is to post more recipes and restaurant experiences to share with you and officially kick off this blog! Let’s hope I can keep it! Fingers crossed!

So in trying to keep to my resolution, I give you a vegetarian’s take on Alta. This year we decided to celebrate New Year’s in a very quiet manner. Dinner and drinks with some amazing friends. Our night started at Alta – a tapas restaurant in the West Village that we have been waiting almost a year to try! Reservations were made a month in advance (highly recommended!) so we had no issues with waiting or timing. This hidden gem (literally hidden!) is spectacular on the inside! When you first walk in, the restaurant seems really tiny, however, you soon learn it is indeed very large – it spans the multiple floors of the brownstone. Each floor has a different feel with the first floor being the liveliest. We sat on the third floor – very cozy with a fireplace and a few tables. If you are looking for something more intimate, this is definitely a floor you may want to request.

Now onto the most important part – the food and the booze! For drinks, we had a mixture of white sangria, mojitos and manhattan. The white sangria was perfectly sweet and definitely sneaks up on you! The mojito was nothing special and the manhattan was super strong! Now get ready for the food. We started immediately with their most popular tapa, crispy brussel sprouts.

They outside leaves of the sprouts were charred and had the most wonderful smoky flavor. The apples and pistachios added an additional crunch and tartness. Perfectly simple dish that was so delicious we ordered it twice! We then proceeded to order almost every vegetarian dish on the menu. Everything was really good but there were a few dishes that deserve a few extra stars. Number 1 – the Philly Truffle Surprise. If you love the flavor of truffles – this is the dish for you. Cream cheese, mushrooms, truffles all wrapped in a phyllo dough. Melt in your mouth yumminess!

Another ooey goey melt in your mouth dish was their fried goat cheese with lavender honey. The lavender honey gave the fried goat cheese a wonderfully floral note that was well balanced and not super sweet.

The seared wild mushrooms were really good if you are a huge mushroom fan. The hubster especially enjoyed this.
Next we move to the gnocchi and polenta. Generally, I have not a huge fan of gnocchi – but this one I can definitely eat again. It was very light and fluffy – not dense and heavy like I have usually had. My only complaint was I wish I had a big heaping plateful of it!

The polenta was another creamy dish that you want to eat small spoonfuls to just enjoy and really indulge in the rich truffle flavor. Unfortunately, the picture I took of that dish is absolutely horrid so I will not be sharing it with you. Other dishes were good, but not on my list of favorites. The housemate pizza was a typical white mushroom pizza that can be found at most Neapolitan style pizzerias.

The Japanese grilled eggplant with feta, watercress and sesame seeds was something of an acquired taste.

Next is the seared wild mushrooms with dried figs, spinach and argan oil and cider vinegar. The Hubster really enjoyed this dish and if you are a mushroom lover, you may want to try it.

And lastly the grilled merguez toasted falafel with labneh and goat cheese sauce. Though it was good, I still prefer my good old street food falafel from Taim.

Lastly – desserts!! There is no better way to end the year than with chocolate. We ordered the chocolate molten cake with smoked earl gray ice cream and the Torija (Ginger pudding with Meyer lemon yogurt gelato). My preference is the chocolate cake however if you want something with a bit of a tangier note you may want to try the Torija.

All in all, an excellent meal that didn’t break the bank! We will definitely going back here for seconds =)

I hope you get to try it out and share your experience with us!