This weekend I had the luxury of visiting (well, mostly) three restaurants I hadn’t been too. For some reason, lately I’ve been obsessed with reading menus online of places I haven’t been too in the East Village area.
I’d been checking out nyag.com which has pretty extensive restaurant listings plus their menus.
But this weekend was also supposed to be the end of Restaurant Week NYC, but the website now says it’s been extended until Feb. 27, so I’d advise to take full advantage of the opportunity for a reasonably priced 3-course meal at a potentially “fancy” restaurant. We had a great experience.
Friday: Dinner
We went to Savore, an Italian restaurant in SoHo, banking on an awesome Restaurant Week deal. We got one. The menu was $35 a piece, and we were actually conflicted about choosing who got what appetizer and entree.
I wound up getting Tuna Tartar with an avocado purée that came with a small salad as my appetizer. It was good, except the ratio of tuna to avocado was off, with too much avocado creaminess drowning out the mellow tuna. He got the mussels in a tomato sauce- amazing. They were fresh, cooked just right, and the sauce was ridiculous.
I wish I had pictures of the food. [That photo is from nymag.com listing for Savore.] We sat in the front of the restaurant near a couple really loud tables of middle aged women getting drunk off wine and shouting at one another. Good ol’ fashioned Italian ambiance. Like I was in Rome. But more comfortable.
I had Tagliolini pasta with shrimp and cherry tomatoes. It was perfect. Sure, it’s something I could make at home, but there’s nothing like real homemade pasta… that’s stringy and the right amount of chewy and still manages to get tomato sauce on your shirt. YUM. He got the Costine, or short ribs braised in a Pinot Noir reduction and served with roasted potatoes. Wowza. It looked like a small plate to me, but he was full from it (he said), and I tried the sauce. It made me over-3-year-vegetarian-stomach want a bite. He literally stuck a fork into the meat and it fell apart. THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS? What am I missing?
Okay, we both had tiramisu for dessert. It wasn’t anything fancy really (I almost wish I had ventured for the chocolate bread pudding), but it was good, classic, can’t-go-wrong tiramisu. Real creamy.
We shared a bottle of red wine with dinner, a Pinot Noir but I don’t remember what exactly. They had a lengthy wine list.
Saturday: Lunch
We were off to a really lazy day Saturday, but we planned to go to San Loco on 2nd Ave for Mexican lunch/brunch and frozen margaritas. Well, that didn’t happen. By the 12:45, we were hanging out upstairs with my roommate, and it didn’t look like we were going out anywhere anytime soon. And it was raining! No way could we face the day. Thank god for NYC delivery.
We had a FEAST. I think we ordered guac and pico de gallo with chips, I got a taco salad and a catfish guaco loco (a soft tortilla around guac around a crunchy taco with fried fish); He got two chipotle chicken guaco locos and then another taco, Kayla got two beef taco locos, and the two of them split a ton of nachos. More than half of our meal didn’t get eaten. And they didn’t deliver frozen margaritas, only beer which we had.
The food was all right, but it probably would have been way better if we had went out. I don’t think that kind of Mexican menu travels well. Our stuff was cold, and the guaco locos didn’t really meet their potential. Anyway, after that, we couldn’t really move. Don’t get delivery from this place! It only took 30 minutes, yet somehow things were cold and messy. We watched Copycat, a psycho-thriller about a serial killer and a woman who was agoraphobic. It was funny, and of course I was the only one to get freaked out.
Saturday: Dinner
We were still full from lunch, but we had to go somewhere for dinner. I figured sushi would be light enough for us. We went to Sharaku, a japanese restaurant that I pass every day on my way to school. It’s on Stuyvesant St. near a bunch of other really good places. I recommend Tsampa, a Tibetan home-cooking restaurant that’s super dim and cozy and cheap!
Anyway, at Sharaku, we got a house salad with amazing ginger dressing, shrimp shumai that was deconstructed and put back together (if only I knew the right terminology); I got the Sushi Regular meal, which was 2 pieces of tuna, yellowtail, and whitefish, 1 piece of shrimp, and a California roll; He ordered a Shrimp tempura roll and a spicy tuna roll (OF COURSE, he never strays). We split all the sushi, didn’t finish all of it, but we didn’t get too ridiculously-heaving-over full. Skipped on drinks to get a six-pack of Newcastle and bring it back to my apartment.
Saturday: Dessert
But on the way back to my place, we kind of (more than kind of) wanted dessert. First we though Frozen yogurt at 16 Handles which was right down the street. Then we decided on Veniero’s Italian Bakery to get some gelato and espresso. Veniero’s is a super cute place for a date or to take your parents- it gets busy though. Had to wait a while to get a table, which we finally did and it was tiny. We ordered two single espressos, I got the hazelnut gelato and he got the strawberry. Then we got two mini tarts: blackberry and kiwi. The espresso and gelato were great, but he, since he spent four months in Rome and became a gelato snob, said his didn’t taste like the real thing. I enjoyed mine. The tartlettes were stale though, so we didn’t finish those.
We were full and content and just wanted to lay on the couch and drink some beer and pass out. Which we did. It was a good weekend.
[None of these photos are mine. They’re taken from the restaurant’s websites. Next time I’ll use my camera]
