All'onda

Well well well. So here I am, caught in a heavy Manhattan rain, running from block to block, every canopy in sight, trying to find a nice suitable restaurant. So what do ya know? I run into this little place: All'onda. I mean, I was like "I gues I'll give it a try." I come in and I'm just like going up stairs and sit down: service sucks.

Alright: because of sucky service, I would atleast expect my food to be out in a jiffy. THIRTY MINUTES AND STILL NO FOOD. I mean, c'mon! I come to New York and I have thousands of options! Service and food should be mandatory!

Ugh. Whatever. 

So I get the dish. ^^^this is what came, but I mean it's supposed to be the "house special best dish here." Okay...I've gotta admit, it's preeettyyyv good, but a bit creamy. It's the Bucatini that's served with smoked uni and spices bread crumbs. The portion was a bit too small for the price being charged (yikes) but the flavors are very nice. Spicy but light, and a bit sweeter than salty.

Here's my recommendation though: for the price that they charge they should increase the size of their portions (and maybe better service :P ) 

So don't come here if you have any options; The Cities the Big Apple, so you should take a bite. 

Le Colonial

Wow...Haha. I mean sure, there's a few good French- Asian fusion restaurants in the area, but nothing comes close to Le Colonial. Jungles of plants and elegant ambiance prompts the restaurant in the perfect location: across 5th avenue.

THOUSANDS of restaurants build Manhattan everyday, creating the city as a beautiful layout for a perfect culinary experience. Le Colonial shouldn't be an option, it should be a choice. No. Wait. Let me rephrase that. It should be the choice.

FOOD: So I mean, I love asian food. Kim Chi is basically my love; I can eat it every day. But you know what, I've never had it in a sandwich! At Le colonial, there's an option called "express lunch" where you choose 2/3 from a soup, salad or sandwich. I made a bright decision and chose the soup/ salad. I mean, look: a light, upscale Pho with oxtail broth, containing beef, scallion and rice noodles along with a hardy, flavorful sandwich with my love (kim chi), beef and fresh greens, really can top off a meal. 

So yeah...if you don't come here when you're in Manhattan, you're gonna regret it.

Darya

 Hahaha....I honestly thought that Persian restaurants couldn't go upscale, but I was wrong. Darya introduces a new aspect of culture to the Californian lifestyle, giving them a little break from Mexican food.

 You know what sucks? So I was getting ready last night to go out for dinner and I was feeling pretty sick and nauseous. My stomach was killing me and I had a pounding headache, and the minute my uncle said "Let's go", I threw up all over the bathroom. Ugh...

 

So about twenty minutes later I leave for dinner, and was pretty impressed by the ambiance: high risen ceilings with dimly lit rooms, a live saxophonist and servers dressed in suits. The service was polite, friendly and attentive.

DISHES: Everyone knows the rule "If you throw up you have to wait two hours until you can eat anything" so I basically had to follow that. I ordered the barley soup at Darya (yeah, I know. Who the hell orders a soup at a Persian restaurant?)  Anyway. The soup was good (for a soup) with shredded chicken, parsley and cilantro. The chicken made the soup hardy and the cilantro/parsley brought out the soups flavor whilst making it seem fresh.

So Persian food always consists of Kabobs, and there's nothing wrong with going classic. I ordered the chicken Koobideh which were two strips of boneless chicken breast, served with charbroiled tomato and basmati rice. The kabobs had a very nice flavor, were very tender and juicy, however the unique thing was that there was more rice on each plate than more meat...

 

  But anyway: there are two Dariyas in Orange County: one in Orange and the other in south coast plaza. The one in south coast plaza is better because of the nicer area and it has more elegance.

 

Asian Gourmet

 So: last night I had a lot of studying to do and I was exhausted, cranky and you know how you get on those long days...Anyway! Being born into an Indian household the one thing my parents would never refuse is food, so I used my Indian instincts and applied them to my hankering of Asian Cusine.    As some of us know (but all of us should) America has basically butchered the Chinese Cusine by creating artificial dishes like general jaouse chicken and fried chicken fingers. I mean, c'mon! There's already enough 'McDonalds serving chicken fingers! Now the Chinese restaurants too?!? Lol...Asian Goumet though isn't like that! It serves ACTUAL Chinese food! I mean, sure, if you're in Boston then don't go. There's a China Town just around the corner!

DISHES: So of course in a Chinese restaurant you're gonna go family style. Oh and btw.. I LOVE FISH! Fish is ten times better than steak or chicken or any red meat as well as fifty times healthier! You MUST TRY the Bubbling fish. It's similar to a Szechuan  style napa cabbage fish but lighter and spicier! If you don't like fish then you can get the Bubbling Beef, which is the same thing as bubbling fish but instead of fish, it's beef (hence the name :P), and not as tasty, because the base the meat is made in goes better with white meat, which is obviously lighter.
As we know, coming to a Chinese restaurant means that we'll be full when we leave (unless we're sick, because in that case, order egg drop soup) SOOO obviously we want to be full and feel GREAT afterwards, not binge for the heck of it. So: in order to feel great at asian gourmet you need to satisfy yourself with something not too heavy, yet not too light (I seriously hope that you know what meat I'm coming to because if you don't, that's just sad...) CHICKEN! EVERYONE loves chicken (well, except vegetarians and vegans) and who doesn't love authentic Chinese food?!? One of Asian Gourmets signature dish is the three cup chicken. With a name like that, it's gotta be good. First off, the chicken comes on the bone and is made with one cup of soy sauce, one cup of cooking sherry, one cup of chicken broth, basil and ginger. Simple ingredients to start off with but when they're combined together the dish creates a whole new culinary world for my taste buds. The chicken is always tender and tastes almost minty with the combination of basil and ginger, giving the dish another layer of flavor to top off the key ingredient that differentiates the dish from any others: soy sauce. I mean, sure, "so many different Asian restaurants use soy sauce in everything! Sushi, rice, noodles, etc..." but if you analyze the simple ingredients and compare it to other restaurants, you'll see that not a lot of them have soy sauce (mainly because a lot of them aren't Asian cuisine restaurants that use sherry) but anyone can take a bottle of cheap sherry, marinate it on a piece if chicken and call it a gourmet meal, but adding soy sauce to the combination makes it unique and taste better. Lol I can't believe I could write a whole ranting paragraph about chicken...

Alright: coming back to the fish...who doesn't love fresh seafood, especially in Boston? I mean HEELLOOOOO???!? Were on the east coast for Gods sake...Anway, most of us have had crappy stuffies which are basically mouthfulls of breadcrumbs and processed clams. No. Do not eat a stuffy and say you've eaten a clam. That's like saying "oh yeah, I love French food! I eat it's toast every morning for breakfast!"...smh....YOU HAVENT EXPERIENCED REAL SEAFOOD! Okay: so for an appetizer you're gonna want a light, not-so-heavy type of dish that brings flavor, not something bland that you eat just to impress the person you're dining with (huh. Salad much)? So at Asian gourmet. Get the clams with blackbean sauce. I mean, I don't want to sound cliche or anything like that, but if I could, I would eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. So restaurants like to make up "unique" dishes that consist of ingredients that you probably wouldn't normally combine, and half the time they end up failing. Asian Gourmet combined black beans (something that I would probably eat in the Midwest) ans clams (something that I would probably eat on the coast), which created this different, unique dish. One peeve I've always had with clams and muscles mostly was the quantity of the shells to the quantity of the actual protein, but I had no problem with this restaurant. The black bean sauce went really well with the clams which actually surprised me considering they both are in different climate zones.

So: the restaurant is actually in Concord, MA but it's worth the drive for authentic Chinese food. I highly recommend this restaurant because it's casual with really great service.

La Morra

Let's get this straight: if you're visiting Boston, you have to drive a little. It's not like New York where you can hitch a cab anywhere, and that the only good restaurants are in Manhattan or Brooklyn. In Boston, there're places like Brookline or Cambridge where Boston's hidden treasures are revealed (not for locals, of course)...but...I wouldn't drive out of my way if I was visting Boston to go to La Morra...it's not bad, but it's not the best restaurant...If you're in the Brookline area, then try it and let me know how you like it (in the comments), it's just that what I ordered wasn't the best Italian food (judging by my Italian food experience in Boston, I think that I'm just going to stick to the North End).

MAIN COURSES: I played it simple and old school at La Morra: Gnocchi. Again...it wasn't bad...but it was a little bland. The Gnocchi came with ox tail and dates. Hence the description, I thought that I would get a kick out of it! Honestly, the ox tail and dates were great!  Tender, sweet and tasted great together. The dates cut out some of the gaminess of the ox tail, but the Gnocchi was...bland. I felt like I ordered ox tail and dates with a side of Gnocchi; it was that bland...On their own, the dish would be great but together...it just didn't work...

So like I said...if you're in the area then maybe try it, but don't waste your time driving all the way to Brookline and back.

Joe Beef

Haha...Meat lovers heaven...no joke...ANYWAY! France is a long flight from the US (somewhat), so wouldn't you rather go to Montreal, without spending all the money on airfare? Well...most likely. Joe Beef is one of the hottest restaurants in Montreal, mostly because of the menu theme: MEAT. It's not a typical kind of meat restaurant...IT HAS SO MANY UNUSUAL DISHES! For one, rabbit pate. I mean, sure...you can get pate anywhere in France or French Canada, or even a gourmet-enough restaurant in cities like New York or LA. But this one...it's...different...I mean...I think that whenever I order pate at other restaurants, and I get like a sliver of pate with a basket of bread. I order pate at Joe Beef and I get a mountain of pate with a basket of bread. See the difference? *Sarcastic voice* Whenever I go to a French restaurant in New York I love how I order bread and they bring me a sliver of pate. Ugh...it's a mouthful of carbs with a small amount of protein...#healthynut hahah not really. Another thing; rabbit stew. It. Is. So. Amazing. I. Can't...I can't describe it! Perfect ratio of liquid to meat...really nice flavor...meat is tender and slips off the bone...mhmmm...The only thing however that I would not recommend, is the horse meat. It tastes sort of tangy and it's slimy...I felt a little disgusted chewing and swallowing it...but other then that...explore! They have a wide variety of different, unique meats that would please your palette, listed on a giant blackboard for a menu, representing meat lovers galore :)

Eataly

Eataly basically describes a Foodies heaven. NINE DIFFERENT RESTAURANTS! Plus an abundant amount of stores where you can purchase any food or ingredient your heart desires. The thing that really lit me up about Eataly was how in New York City, Joe Bastianich and Mario Bitalli are able to create a classy, indoor food market that includes (again) NINE DIFFERENT ITALIAN RESTAURANTS. That part I can't get over. That, and how the appearance makes you feel like you're in Italy. On one side there's a cheese store and across from that there's a gelato place and next to that is a desert and coffee store and next to that there's a pasta store and across from that...etc...I mean the list could go on...