Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Vacation HighLights

Obviously, we spend a good part of our vacation budget on dining out.  (And it's not a tax write-off folks, unless we are working while we vacate, and we certainly were not doing any of that.)  Kevin ate from the California Coast to the Atlantic; we both succumbed to menus from Manhattan to Nag's Head.  The variety of venues was as broad as the geography.  We forked out the big bucks for lunch at Jean-Georges in New York, where every table was ordering wine with their prix-fixe, and Jean-Georges himself was in the lobby as we left, greeting what appeared to be old friends from home.  (the highlight of this meal was the black bass sashimi.)  The other end of the spectrum was probably lunch at the Crumpton sale barn - one of those guilty pleasure pretzel dogs from the Lancaster Ladies stall.  In many ways, just as yummy.  

Best dishes - aside from the aforementioned sashimi?

Believe it or not, those steamed chicken feet, during our meal of dim sum at Golden Unicorn in New York's Chinatown, was right up there.  I have always wanted to try them - I just knew they were something that would be right up my alley, if I could just work up the nerve to eat them - and when I saw them coming around on one of the carts in the huge dining room, I knew it was time.  Let's put it this way, as long as I didn't look directly at them, they were just as delicious as I had hoped - richly chicken-y, with lots of tender skin and gelatinous meat.  I had to watch a neighbor eat them to figure out the technique - basically bite off a mouthful (of toe...), suck all the juicy goodness out, and spit the pieces of bone back on to your plate.  Great dinner party food, eh?  They were wonderful.

Also in New York, probably one of the best Milk Shakes - at the new Shake Shack in the Intercontinental Hotel near Times Square.  We got there about a quarter to noon for lunch on Saturday, and luckily the line was nothing like what it became a half hour later...


That's Kevin way in the back - but it's after lunch for us.  The milk shake in question was called the "Fair Shake", a combination of vanilla milk shake and coffee.  Quite thick and pretty satisfying in both the shake and coffee corners. 

Among the top 5 meals in the "overall goodness" category was one about an hour into our drive down to Nags Head. We stopped for lunch  at  Bistro Poplar in downtown Cambridge.  It is obvious from the ambitious  French menu offered in the small, quietly elegant dining room that someone in the kitchen knows what they are doing.  From the French onion soup - even beefier than BT's - to the quenelles to the profiteroles: excellent.  And so close!  dinner is definitly on our future agenda.

There is a lot more food to report, and you know I will.


2 comments:

  1. Glad to have you back up and writing. I can honestly say that I've missed keeping up with all things @ Brooks Tavern. Hope you had an enjoyable Holiday.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, and thank you. It's good to be back.

    ReplyDelete