To be honest though this is my fifth trip to NYC and probably my eighth trip to the States. I'd always gone to the States and left with fond memories of burgers, hot dogs, cheese fries, gigantic meals at Cheesecake factory and on my last trip to Hawaii, the Loco Moco. However on this trip I think I wanted to free myself of every stereotypical food that I'd had in the States and New York (I did not have one of those giant sandwiches from Carnegie Deli). That's not to say that I didn't have burgers (first meal in NYC), hot dogs or cheese fries, but I just wanted to try something different. With the Aussie dollar so strong, I could afford to eat at nice places AND have enough for shopping (well that last part is probably untrue - you can never have enough for shopping NYC)! Plus given the number of times I'd been there, I could afford to spend my time enjoying meals rather than just snacking between seeing the sites.
Much of my research started before we even booked our tickets to NYC. I think we started off by watching "Man versus Food" which kind of got us (my sis and my bro in law) thinking that a holiday to the US was warranted because we, too, wanted to eat 50 buffalo wings in one sitting or try to eat 100 oysters in 5 minutes. If you haven't watched an episode it's quite an amusing show. After watching a good 50 episodes of that, I think we decided that we didn't want to gain 20kgs and have to buy that extra seat or ask for the extendable seatbelt on the way home. Food research started again.
I then stumbled on a wonderful book by Vue de Monde's Shannon Bennet. Now, controversially, I'm not a great fan of VdM. Shocking I know given all the accolades, but I was so underwhelmed the first time I went there and when I also visited the Bistro, that I just haven't been back. So I was a tad sceptical that the book might have been a bit like the food - a tad pretentious and slightly overrated. But surprisingly it wasn't. It's a foodie's version of the bible for New York. Ok, yet another outrageous comment, but I must have spent days reading the book in detail because it has restaurant recommendations ranging from the Michelin star "Per Se" to the Burger Joint at Le Meridien (which btw was pretty tasty). It's also very easy to use given the book is divided into the various areas of NYC and also lists bars in these areas too which was quite helpful given it's sometimes hard to find good bars in foreign cities. If you're my friend and heading there soon, yes you can borrow it!
So a few weeks before we left, I began my research of how to book from Australia. It just so happened that my lovely cousin Alice had flagged that NYC had a fantastic event called "Restaurant Week" which is quite similar to the one we have as part of the Food and Wine festival...but only better! It ran for more than a week so I was able to book online for several of the restaurants that I had tape flagged in the book and also for a few that my travelling companions wanted to try!!
Morimoto
Iron Chef Morimoto has a restaurant just around the corner from Chelsea market. We were lucky enough to go there for lunch so I could sample food theoretically cooked by Iron Chef Japanese (I looked in the open kitchen and he was no where to be seen). I had wanted to go to the restaurant because I have a strange fascination with Iron Chef. Who doesn't love the Iron Chefs?! I was lucky enough to go to an event in Melbourne about a year ago where Iron Chef French and Iron Chef Chinese cooked the dinners. It was delish! So I was intrigued whether this would live up to my expectations of what an Iron Chef restaurant would be.
I'm not really generally into restaurant decor but the middle section of glass was intriguing. The open kitchen is at the rear of the restaurant, but allows you to see the flurry of chefs making beautiful dishes. For a restaurant that is quite enclosed, the use of the glass helped the light carry through the restaurant.
We ordered the bento box sets for lunch and an additional soft shell crab roll (I have a thing for trying soft shell crab rolls).
I had the gyu beef bento box that had sushi, tempura, miso soup and seared beef in a sweet soy sauce. The sushi was fresh and the tempura was perfectly battered and fried. It was a good bento box for set lunch price.
The soft shell crab roll was also pretty good, but I think it just didn't measure up to the ones I've had at Nobu. I think that that the crab was a tad soggy and perhaps doesn't have that crispness that I expected. None the less, it was pretty tasty and I'm pretty sure I ate most of that plate!
I was full and happy. The thing that set it off for me was the Virgin White Lily cocktail I had - Calpico, Yuzu juice and Lemon juice. It was a magical drink. I so have to find the recipe...and Yuzu juice whatever that is.....!!!
We left Morimoto quite content, and almost felt like he had welcomed and farewelled us to his restaurant....
