My blog! My readers, if you're out there! I have neglected you worse and worse this summer! And I have so much to say! For instance, I am currently eating a bowl of what is my favorite breakfast every summer: cereal with blueberries and peaches. I truly do this all summer every summer, as long as the blueberries and peaches are available, and it makes me happy every morning, a happiness that lasts sometimes right up until I get to work (as opposed to when I realize I really have to leave the house and GO to work)! Of course, warm weather and sunlight help, too, quite beyond description. I love summer so much I tend to spend as much of it outside doing as many various activities as possible, especially if they involve fresh and summery cocktails. I cannot count the number of mojitos I have imbibed since June, and last night, Lance took it upon himself to make a white sangria with St. Germain and about eleven different kinds of fruit - best sangria (that didn't really taste like sangria) ever!
But it is this constant activity that has kept me away from my wee, dying compy for the purpose of blogging. A lot of this activity has also involved eating and playing dress-up, but for now I'm I'm going to focus more on eating, mostly so I don't have to deal with uploading photos.
Yesterday two delightful coworkers and I decided to try out DBGB* - Daniel Boulud's new upscale-pretending-to-be-downscale "Kitchen and Bar"/gastropub/cafe or something. I think this restaurant has a bit of an identity crisis. The front room has an airiness that gives it the right casual feel, but the back room where the majority of the seating is is dark and somber, decor-wise, while not doing anything about sound insulation, so it looks like you're sitting in a modern steak-house but sounds like you're in a cafeteria. The menu is short and relatively straightforward, consisting of mostly burgers and sausages, but the waiters still emphasize the wine list and wipe down your leather placemats while rearranging your silverware between courses. Don't get me wrong, I love these hospitable touches in the right situation, but we were there for the burger - everyone was there for the burger - so messiness seemed more appropriate than fussiness, which did nothing to enhance our casual burger lunch, and it drew our attention to the service, highlighting how insufferably snooty and neglectful our waiter was. Before I talk about the food, a final pet peeve: we were offered only sparkling or still water, not tap. In a time and place where it seems somewhat common knowledge that bottled water, even spring water, is questionable in its environmental friendliness, authenticity, and certainly price, and that the tap water is some of the finest available, I do not want to have to ask for tap. Certainly not twice.
The food, though was very, very good. Since it is restaurant "week" in Manhattan and since I can not turn down an excuse to eat three courses, I ordered off the prix fixe menu, choosing butter lettuce with chives, the burger, and a ginger ice-cream sundae. The salad was delightful, the lettuce perfect, maybe a tad overdressed in a mustard and tarragon dressing, which made the chives get a bit lost, but I'm a tarragon fiend, so i didn't mind. The burger was quite an experience. I got mine with Vermont cheddar, and for the rest of the parts, they thankfully do not mess around - good quality lettuce, tomato, and onion on a sesame seed bun. This is my favorite way to have a burger - simple - but in this case it went further to show off the burg itself, which was simply the highest quality burger patty I have come across. The temperature was perfect, the patty even in its thickness, and the meat so tasty, and so lean-seeming, but incredibly juicy and texturally fine. In a way, it was almost strange - a bit like the restaurant itself - to have such a fine thing masquerading as a greasy, plebeian American classic.
Dessert was delectable, my ginger ice cream came with a berry coulis that was bright in both color and flavor and complimented the ginger perfectly. It also came with a handful of neon-green lime-flavored mini-marshmallows and about three tiny, tiny vanilla cookies, but they were mostly just fun things to find in a sundae, and didn't add too much to the overall flavor experience.
So I guess maybe this restaurant exists for people who want to have a pub-like experience without actually setting foot in a place so gross as a pub, but myself, I prefer one or the other. I might have to go back, though...there were some cocktails on the menu I'd very much like to try.
*Dear readers, I wanted to provide you with a site for this as well, but my compy is so sad that the one for Monsieur Boulud practically broke it.
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