Smörgås Chef

58 Park Avenue

(between 37th and 38th Streets)

www.smorgas.com 

Housed on the first floor of the Scandinavia House (NYC's cultural center for Scandinavian countries), this location of Smörgås Chef (of which there are three in NYC) is the one to go to if you are in search of a festive, holiday décor. A large, birch tree sculpture is the dining room’s centerpiece, and it is decorated with Christmas lights in honor of the holiday season. There is also a holiday shop at the entrance where you can purchase an $8 bottle of glogg (the traditional Scandinavian holiday drink).

Went there for dessert (after having another hot-and-spicy lunch around the corner at Café China--see earlier posting!). All of the restaurant's dessert offerings sounded tasty.

We went for the raspberry almond glaze, which was deliciously light and airy.

And the chocolate espresso cake with mocha butter cream, salted caramel, and vanilla ice cream (they had run out of hazelnut ice cream). Beautifully presented and the mix of chocolate and salted caramel was unbelievably decadent.

Accompanying the espresso cake with a glass of the J. Lohr Pinot Noir is the perfect pairing. The red wine was rich, but smooth and, most important, it had no after taste.

My dining companion decided to be adventurous and ordered a cup of glogg. If you enjoy the taste of warm, mulled wine, you’ll like glogg as well. My friend loved it so much she even ended up buying a bottle at the holiday shop afterward.

Happy 2014!

Cooking With Fall Produce

In honor of Thanksgiving (and home-cooked meals), I wanted to write about a very special cooking lesson that I recently had the honor of experiencing. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am a diner and not much of a cooker (my specialty is knowing how to heat things up!), but a dear friend had received a home cooking lesson from Home Cooking New York (homecookingny.com) as a gift, and she generously invited me to be a part of it. How could I not accept such a generous and amazing offer?

My friend selected Cooking with Fall Produce as her cooking lesson. The menu was:

Roasted pork tenderloin with apple cranberry compote

Butternut squash and sage risotto

Beets with warm prosciutto dressing

Apple hand pies

We were very lucky to have as our instructor, Jennifer Clair, the founder of Home Cooking New York. She arrived at 1 p.m. and for the next 2.5 hours we were cooking up a storm!!

What I learned:

Red beets: You can eat the greens! Use them to make a great Asian-styled salad.

Pie crust: The secret is making it with 3 sticks of butter. Forget about the fruit filling, the crust is everything! Though to be honest, we sort of made 2-hand pies, as opposed to hand pies . . .

Rice counts when making risotto: Arborio rice was requested.

Chicken broth: Again, no regular old chicken broth would do. Pacific Organic or Imagine was suggested. We went for Pacific Organic.

READ YOUR LABELS when shopping: We didn’t actually make pork tenderloin as my friend mistakenly purchased the center cut (it was placed right next to the tenderloin and the identifying wording was in fine print). So, watch out for grocery store trickery!

And as the sous chef, I was too busy chopping and prepping to take as many pictures as I had actually wanted to. However, below is the finished product—and trust me when I say that the food was delicious!

My only substitution might be the apple cranberry compote. It just seemed a bit boring in comparison to everything else on the menu.

MUST KNOW: For anyone considering the home cooking lesson, you are responsible for purchasing all the groceries for the menu. Home Cooking New York will provide you with a shopping list.

Chelsea Chinese Restaurant (aka Grand Sichuan International)

229 Ninth Avenue

(at the corner of 24th Street)

On a bitterly cold day with threats of a Nor’easter, I am craving soup dumplings. The restaurant, formerly known as Grand Sichuan, has been touted as having the best soup dumplings outside of Chinatown.

Ordered the pork soup dumplings, and it arrived in a steamer almost 20 minutes later. The fact that it took awhile for the dumplings to cook reassured me that these were not some frozen dumplings that were nuked.

It was deliciously satisfying with the soup literally pouring out of the dumpling. So much so that when I bit into one the soup squirted out onto the table (as mortifying and embarrassing as it sounds!) Only criticism would be the need for a larger soup spoon.

While waiting for the soup dumplings, ordered a small bowl of vegetarian hot and sour soup. Very tasty and I would rate it as one of the best hot and sour soups that I’ve ever tasted.

Also, ordered the dan dan noodles with chili sauce.

Helpful Hint #1: The restaurant will make to order. We asked if they could make it mild spicy and they were more than willing to accommodate.

Helpful Hint #2: Remember to mix the dan dan noodles, the ground pork, and vegetables as the sauce is on the bottom of the bowl. Super tasty and the noodles tasted as if they were freshly made.

Helpful Hint #3: Order a small bowl of white rice to sop up the juices and sauces from both the dan dan noodles and soup dumplings.

The restaurant has an extensive menu, which includes American Chinese food and fare from various provinces—Sichuan, Shanghai, and Canton. They also offer a special lunch menu.

Helpful Hint #4: Service is what you would expect from an authentic Old World Chinese restaurant - rude, inattentive, and gruff.

Rafaella Cafe (CLOSED!!!)

178 Ninth Avenue

(between 20th and 21st Streets)

rafaellacafe.com

On a cold, rainy Halloween night, my dining companion was in the mood for a dinner that would be suitable for the fall season. A menu that might include pumpkin . . .

Rafaella’s is a small, comfortable café that reminds you of an old armchair, in which you could settle into for the entire evening.

And most important for that evening, it offered a dinner special—a complete pumpkin meal. For the appetizer, you started with a pumpkin soup, which I thought to be a bit heavy on the cream:

For the entrée, pumpkin ravioli. Really good, but one piece was filling enough for me. Again, thought it was a bit too creamy.

And for dessert, pumpkin cheesecake—which was excellent!

They did show us their entire dessert offering, but, hey, we were committed to sticking with the pumpkin theme.

For my starter, I went with their sangria $5 happy hour special. It was okay, but I’ve tasted better. Plus, perhaps not the best choice to pair with my dinner.

I soon switched to a cabernet (V Bianchi, from Mendoza, Argentina) to better accompany my meal.

My dining companion went for a glass of the chenin blanc (Simonsig, from Stellenbosh, South Africa). She had initially requested a glass of the gruner veltliner (Count Karolyi, from Tolna, Hungary), but sadly they were out.

For my entrée, I ordered the steak au poivre—cooked medium rare—served with mashed potatoes and sautéed broccoli. Delicious! And it was perfect for a cold, rainy autumn night.

Helpful Hint: In this instance, instead of following the saying of “You can never have too much of a good thing,” we probably should have heeded the warning of “Too much of a good thing, is a bad thing.”

Le Grainne Cafe

183 Ninth Avenue

(between 21st and 22nd Streets)

www.legrainnecafe.com

On the weekend before Halloween, went for a Sunday brunch at Le Grainne Cafe, a cozy café that’s off the beaten path in Chelsea where you could fantasize that you’re dining somewhere in Europe.

Have been wanting to go for brunch there for years, but was always put off by the long lines and even longer wait times.

Helpful Hint: Arrive close to 2 p.m., when the brunch crowd has lessened considerably.

Menu offers extensive French bistro fare.

But instead of ordering my usual Croque Madame, we decided to share a bowl of their renowned moules. A bit wary of being experimental, we went for the more traditional marinières style—mussels in white wine, with a shallot, garlic, and fresh herb sauce. Good, but not enough sauce! Since the best part of having mussels is, of course, scooping up the sauce with bread or french fries. Alas, no fries were included with the dish, either.

So we decided to accompany the mussels with a salade de chevre—warm goat cheese croutons, tomatoes, walnuts, and grapes on a mesclun salad. A light and somewhat healthy option.

My dining companion decided to start with a bowl of their French onion soup. She assured me that it tasted as good as it looked.

I declined to sample, as I wanted to save room for dessert—the main attraction!

We topped off the meal with not one, but two (2!) desserts. After watching many of the other customers order crêpes, we knew that we too had to try one as well. We decided to go for the crêpes fruits frais—mixed fresh-cut fruit with strawberry sauce. Deliciously fresh and light!

And it was good that the crêpe was light, because for our other dessert we went for the crème brûlée à la lavande—homemade lavender crème brûlée. And, yes, you can actually taste the lavender!!!

As we were sharing two desserts, we of course had to also order some kind of coffee. I went for the café au lait, which arrived in a lovely bowl.

She ordered the espresso (perhaps it might have even been the double espresso).

It was the perfect ending to a French brunch that could have been enjoyed on a cold, autumn day in Paris.

Café China

13 E. 37th Street

(between Fifth and Madison Avenues)

cafechinanyc.com

If you wish to experience a 1920s intimate, Shanghai café atmosphere

And if you want to try unique, interesting, so-spicy-that-it-will-make-you-tear-just from-looking-at-it Sichuan food at a Michelin-rated restaurant, then Café China is a must-try for you!

Went for their attractively priced lunch special (from $9 to $13), which runs daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

My throat was a bit scratchy and the air was nippy with it being autumn, so I decided to order the three-pepper chicken. Did not disappoint. Extremely flavorful and cleared out my sinuses right away. I was however careful not to eat the red chili peppers and the cook was fine with preparing it medium spicy. I cannot imagine having it as spicy as the kitchen would normally cook it!

Helpful Hint #1: When eating very spicy dishes, I find it helpful to have a drink containing some sort of dairy so that it may cut the heat. I ordered the Vietnamese iced coffee.

It comes as if it were French-pressed coffee, with condensed milk on the bottom.

When it’s ready, mix the contents in the cup. Liked the fact that it's glass so that you can see the liquid change color.

Then, you quickly pour the contents into a Mason jar. Emphasis on the word “quickly” as when I was pouring it slowly the coffee started to spill on the table. Luckily the server was there to jump in and take over the pouring and right the situation.

Delicious! It was the perfect accompaniment with my three-pepper chicken. Without it, I don’t know if I would have been able to eat my food, much less taste it.

My dining companion chose the savory tofu with shredded pork. She noted it was good, but wished the dish came with more green vegetables. However, she did enjoy it enough to leave an empty bowl.

The lunch special also came with the option of soup or salad. For the soup, you had the choice between seaweed or hot and sour. As I was already having enough spicy food for my meal, I went for the seaweed soup.

It was amazing! Made me think of home as it tasted just like how my mom makes it.

I had also heard about their spicy duck tongue appetizer—it was featured on the Cooking Channel’s show Unique Eats. As it was touted as such a “unique” dish, I thought I should try it and luckily my friend was feeling just as adventurous as I.

It was a cold appetizer, and it was spicy. I could taste the peppercorns heat my tongue after swallowing a piece of duck. However, it had a very rubbery texture and worse yet contained a lot of cartilage. Glad I tried it, so that I know never to order it again.

In spite of my lack of enthusiasm for the dish, I must confess that I did take home the leftover duck tongue and three-pepper chicken. (What's even more stranger is the fact that I almost never take home leftovers.) It made though for a very nice dinner on that cold, autumn night. I did however make the mistake of not having any ice cream or milk in the fridge, so my eyes teared quite freely that evening.

For dessert, we ordered the coconut sorbet in a coconut shell.

Pretty sure it wasn’t an actual coconut shell; have a suspicion it was a bowl shaped like a coconut shell. But it was the perfect ending to our Sichuan meal.

Will definitely go back to try their other menu options, as well as experience their dinner vibe.

Service: Very attentive and helpful until the lunch crowd started to arrive. I then noticed a more harried tone to our questions when we ordered dessert.

Helpful Hint #2: Go early, as the place fills up very quickly. It’s reputedly a popular lunch and dinner spot, and since it does not take reservations (for less than 4) I was not surprised to see a line waiting for a table when we left at around 1 p.m.

One odd note: Restaurant was unable to provide white rice; they only had brown rice available. I was told that I would have had to wait another 10 minutes. (We had arrived at 11 a.m. and since we had spent some time reviewing the menu, I would not have received my rice until 11:30 a.m.) My dining companion did note that it’s very strange for a Chinese restaurant not to have white rice cooked and ready to be served when it opened. The server was apologetic, but did not seem to be really giving me an option as he made this announcement when our food arrived (with two bowls of brown rice in his hands) and not when I ordered. And since I didn’t wish to make my friend wait to eat her food, I decided to go with the brown rice that the server had at the ready. So make of that what you will.

Final thoughts: My assessment is to go early, but not too early if you want your white rice!

Best Happy Hour: China Grill

60 W. 53rd Street

(between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas)

www.chinagrillmgt.com

China Grill’s Lucky 7 Happy Hour does not offer your run-of-the-mill happy hour food and drink specials. If you are expecting mixed nuts, pretzels, or greasy finger foods, go elsewhere. Both the food and the cocktails are beautifully presented and prepared with sophistication. You can actually watch the food being prepped in their big, open kitchen.

Plus, the bar décor is lovely and the atmosphere civilized. It is the perfect spot for a quiet, gossipy girls’ night out, which was what I was looking for.

And at $7 (Lucky “7”) for each drink and each dish, the price can’t be beat.

Drinks: I ordered the Lychee Saketini.

Warning: It tasted like candy, and I drank it like water. The next thing I knew I had finished two drinks in less than an hour.

Food: steamed edamame (with just the perfect amount of salt), vegetable pot stickers (the kimchee aioli dipping sauce provided just enough of a spicy kick), and crispy calamari that came with a tasty jalapeno aioli dipping sauce. Portions are generous.

However, my favorite dish was the spicy tuna tostada that came topped with avocado and red tobiko. The red tobiko really made this flavorful dish extra special.

Service: And since it’s Happy Hour, I consider service essential. I am “happy” to report that the service was excellent. They were attentive and friendly without being intrusive. Also noticed that the staff paid particular attention to patrons who were dining alone at the bar. The staff made sure that each person was made to feel comfortable and having a good time.

China Grill’s Lucky 7 Happy Hour runs weekdays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Tip: Go early, as it gets crowded!