Off Topic The Review Thread

Final NYC food reviews

Breakfast, boring, Le Pain Quotidien, E 53rd St. Just handy for where we are staying, they have one of these in Westfield, it’s a Belgian (originally) chain. Our stay at the big communal table was enlivened by one of the restaurant managers delivering a disciplinary to one of the staff for persistent lateness about two seats away from us. Not a quick telling off, but the full procedure, with lap top and paperwork. One of the other customers told the manager how completely inappropriate this was, to a small cheer from me. Meal fine, but nothing like as good as the previous two breakfasts. $50 for two.

Snack (focaccia, humus, wine, beer) at the cafe at MOMA, 53rd St, high quality, delightful staff but predictably expensive, $50. MOMA is excellent, but as a tip everything you want to see (Picasso, Gaugin, Manet, Pollock, Braque etc) is on the 5th floor (of a great building). I am still undecided whether Pollock and Rothko were con artists or not. New phenomenon for me, many of the visitors spent most of their time photographing the pictures with their phones rather than looking at the pictures. Twats.

Quick dinner at another Urban Space food hall, on Lexington Avenue, good but not as lively or funky as the first one. Thai meal and booze $35 for two. I made the mistake of having a cup of chocolate chip cookie dough for desert, a sugar bomb which is now lodged in my gullet. But somebody had to do it.

Rounded off the evening with a stroll to see Times Square at night. Predictably hideous, bright and crowded, but enlivened by a giant neon billboard featuring the Grinch with rolling slogans including ‘Times Square - as classy as it is subtle’. Who says the Americans don’t do irony? Disappointed to learn that I missed the chance to see the SpongeBob Squarepants musical.

Sweet home Chicago tomorrow, where I expect to be too pissed to provide sensible reviews. Already know that we will be having breakfast, if I get up for it, at Yolk which is brilliant, eating a ruinously expensive but exceptionally good steak at the Chicago Chop House, visiting Pizza UNO (or Due) for a proper Chicago pizza pie and drinking at Pippins, Maguires and a bunch of other Irish bars.

 

Not as comprehensive as and but here gos

 

Oops
Air New Zealand breakfast was quite nice
Some sort of fritatta
Only two empty seats on the plane and they were both next to me
Result
Few hours to kill in Sydney so got a ferry to manly fast boat back
Lunch in a very nice bar in manly
Couple more beers in the absolutely manic circular quay
Now in bar at the airport waiting for a British airways flight

Always hated air nz but if this morning is anything to go by they have massively upped their game

 

Wasn’t going to post on Chicago food, and multiple pints in probably shouldn’t now, but here goes.....

Yolk had massive waits for breakfast, so ended up at the Hampton Social, just off Michigan Avenue North, which is epic, so good we have been two days in a row. Including Morning Mule vodka cocktail today. Best hash browns ever. $100 for 4.

Pizza Due for deep dish Chicago pizza pie. This is a meal you only need in Chicago once every couple of years, but great frozen margaritas. Long waits to get a table and be served. $50 for two.

Chicago Chop House. Game of two halves. I had a genuine and highly enjoyable explosion at poor service in a very expensive place at the beginning of the evening. Big sports weekend in Chicago, with Bears and Blackhawks at home, no way would we have found anywhere else to eat, so didn’t march out, and they turned the evening round very well, including writing off a lot of the booze. Superb but hugely expensive steaks. Still $450 for 4 despite discount.

Had desert at Grand Lux Cafe. They had port on the list, but obviously had never been ordered before and bar manager came out to watch us drink it. Great fudge cake, but hard to digest on top of steak.

Lots of pints and very good pizza and nibbles at a sports bar pre Blackhawks match. Can’t remember the name or location.*

* have now been reminded, it’s the Haymarket Pub and Brewery, W Randolph Street.

 

Back home now, so final final Chicago eateries.
Yolk, E Ontario St, easier to get into on a weekday. Very good, but Hampton Social beats it as breakfast place, because of the hash browns and cocktails. About $25 a head.

After being dragged around the shops, fell into the RL Grill on N Michigan Avenue, which is attached to the Ralph Lauren shop (didn’t go in there) because we needed a snack and a drink. I had low expectations but a great place, classic club type decor, great service, very good food. $90 for two. The steaks looked great as well, though we just had salad and booze.

Final meals at Shaw’s Crab House on E Hubbard St. Apparently this is a Chicago institution, has live music (jazz/blues) posh restaurant plus more relaxed area where we were. Really good seafood, shrimp and lobster tacos plus wine, $50 for two. Recommended.

Hopefully any forum travellers to NYC and Chicago will not go hungry. Glad to have been of service.

NYC is obviously a truly great town, but Chicago pips it for me, probably because I’m more familiar with it and it has the Chicago River with the stunning architecture along it. In Manhattan you have to be quite a long way off or high up to appreciate the scale. Lovely trip, worth saving up for. Good deal for flights and hotels from BA.

 

A very powerful piece by Mark Urban on Newsnight about PTSD in US forces post Iraq. A startling fact that there were 4,500 US troops killed in Iraq, but since then there have been 110,000 veteran suicides - 22 a day. Three less a day and someone could have made a song about it.

All very moving, but it did make me wonder what our own veterans would make of it. What about them?

 

The Albert Hall is a lovely venue. Your review seems a bit like faint praise, though.

 

Great to know that the blow monkeys are still digging your scene

 

A very pleasant weekend away in the Cotswolds last week. I was hoping to bump into David Cameron so that I could tell him what I thought of him, but he must still be in the south of France with his 'trotters up'. We stayed at the Bell Inn in Moreton-In-Marsh, which is said to have been Tolkien's inspiration for the Prancing Pony in Lord of the Rings. Pleasant enough, and a really lovely room in a converted hayloft, but too many things wrong to get a positive review (the shower was too hot to stand under with no apparent way to reduce the temperature, and the TV reception was constantly cutting out). Moreton-in-Marsh is an unremarkable market town, but a few miles down the road is Boughton-on-the-Water which is a ridiculously pretty village on the river Windrush. The river is very shallow - probably four or five inches - and there is a football match held each year in the river, which sounds like great fun. The best thing about the weekend though, was a rather boozy Indian meal at The Spice Room in Moreton-in-Marsh. I guess it's unlikely that anyone reading this will find themselves in Moreton-In-Marsh, but if you do, try this place. The staff were very attentive without being intrusive, the food was excellent and so was the wine. We had a sizzling mixed grill starter to share, I had Chicken Madras and my wife had Monkfish. We ordered a white Rioja, and it was so nice that I was pouring the last of it half way through the meal. The waiter was straight over to ask if we wanted another, and we really didn't need to think about it. To top that off, when we asked for the bill, we were offered a drink on the house, so we asked if they had Limoncello. So after having had two bottles of wine between us, we were presented with two enormous glasses of lemon liqueur. Tip-top service, lovely food and lots of excellent booze for £72.

 

My Mum lives in Moreton, in the nice bit round the back away from the incredibly busy main road, I’ll take her to the Spice Room, we both like a curry. We normally lunch at the Manor House, which is very nice though a bit pricey.

Wine with curry? Really?

It really is a nice part of the world. The price of property reflects this.

 

I suppose we really only saw the main road, which, as you say, is incredibly busy.

What's wrong with curry and wine?

 

Nothing in principle, It’s just never worked for me, the strong taste of the curry destroys the wine (and a white Rioja can be a lovely drink) for me, I stick to lager.

Moreton is nice away from the main drag, very quiet. Also has the benefit of a direct train line to Oxford and London and a couple of supermarkets within reach. The little villages and hamlets are gorgeous but have nothing in them, if you are living there.

I am just about to tuck into a rack of lamb sourced from the excellent Meat Room in Leamington and have started on the Chianti Riserva to accompany it. I didn’t drink Chianti for years out of wine ****er snobbishness, but have realised it can be very tasty indeed.

 

I get your point, but the white Rioja worked fine for me. I wouldn't have a red with curry.

 

Well, there is hope for you yet.

 

Now, now.

I didn't know there was any snobbishness towards Chianti. I rather like a Classico now and then.

 

I picked it up with an anti Chardonnay impulse, which I still haven’t grown out of. I do find Chardonnay too oaky, but it was more about the people who drank it in the nineties. The chianti thing was because there was a lot of very average Chianti’s popular in the UK in the nineties, and it was on every wine list, everywhere, and I grew out of the habit of drinking it.

I know very little about wine, but having lived in Italy for a few years I default to Italian stuff.

 

I enjoyed some Queen stuff, but was never that much of a fan, so the film doesn't appeal much to me. From the reviews I've read (including yours), it seems well done, but a bit superficial. Seems to me there's a good Freddie Mercury biopic to be made which doesn't overlook the darker side of his sexuality.