A Full Belly

Think a restaurant gave you food poisoning?

What to do if you think a restaurant meal has made you sick

churrascaria

Best. Description. Of. A. Churrascaria. Ever. I had a dream once about a hot guy taking me to a churrascaria on a dinner date. Can you say knockout combination? I'm totally cute and still single, people, so if you know an attractive carnivore, we could make this happen.

soup lines, coming soon

NYC Soup Man Al Yegeneh (a.k.a. Seinfeld's Soup Nazi) is opening a store—but on 42nd and Madison instead of his old location on West 55th, which according to his site he's looking to lease out until 2019. Also: he's changed store names on us, from Soup Kitchen International to Soup Man, to capitalize on his fame and tie in with his upcoming heat-n-serve soup line, which should be in groceries this month. Anyone seen or tried the soups? Let us know!

sietsema on shanghai cafe

NYC Nip and Squirt. A Full Belly patron saint Robert Sietsema reviews Mott Street's two-year-old Shanghai Café: "The most expensive ($6.95 for 8) features pork and a larger wad of crab than has ever been found in a juicy bun before. Sans crab, the dumplings are two dollars less, and I don't know which to recommend, since each is equally good in its own way. A third type cloaks gravy and pork in a doughier dumpling, fried crisp on the bottom like a pot sticker. The squirting grease will still kill you." Sounds like my kind of place! When I'm in Chinatown I almost always eat at New Green Bo, but I'll give Shanghai Café a shot next week.

christie's jamaican patties

NYC After reading yesterday's New York Times paean to the thing of wonder that is the Jamaican beef patty, Island Flavors in a Yellow Envelope, I decided to have one for lunch. Lucky for me I recently moved to Brooklyn and live within walking distance of one of the best Jamaican patty places in all of the city, Christie's.

My $3 dollars bought me a beef patty engulfed in sweet fluffy coco bread and an ice cold can of Coke, a deal so wonderful it made sitting in a rickety plastic chair on dirty old Flatbush Avenue watching the cars speed by as I ate feel like a blast. If you don't like beef, they have chicken, pork (jerk options available for both), goat and of course, veggie patties; their fridge is stocked with Jamaican sodas like Kola and ginger beer besides the usual sodas and Snapples.

Christie's
334 Flatbush Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11238-4302
(718) 636-9746
Q train to Seventh Avenue, 2/3/4 to Grand Army Plaza.

mmmm, lobster

After reading about it on Chowhound, I visited the recently-opened Black Pearl on Avenue A with friends last month to check out their Tuesday Night Lobster Special: $14.95 buys you an entire lobster + a load of tasty fries. We also really liked the seafood platters and steamers, can't go wrong with those, and the bar they share space with, Julep, is very low-key. It's a good place to have a meal and then drinks with people and not have to worry about any sort of scene.

Black Pearl's specialty is lobster rolls but at $20 a pop, I haven't gotten around to trying them yet, and maybe I'll hold off for a while since despite being deathly allergic, the Village Voice's Nina Lalli has put together a great list of places to have lobster rolls in the city: To Die For: It's Lobster Roll Season in New York. My belly appreciates her courage in the face of danger.

dumpling resolution

NYC Peace in the Middle East (Village). Curbed reports that Plump Dumpling has changed their logo, it's no longer the blatant Dumpling Man ripoff it was before. Great, but what I really want to know is if Plump Dumpling's offerings are going to be any better than Dumpling Man's, or if the status quo (of having to trek to Mandoo in the West Village if I want good dumplings) will be maintained.

nyt on restaurant week

The Times discusses NYC's upcoming Restaurant Week: For 20 Bucks, Is It Worth It?

David Waltuck, the chef and an owner of Chanterelle, said he uses ingredients that are "maybe a little less expensive" like chicken or salmon during the Restaurant Week lunch rush. "I wouldn't do calves' liver or tripe or a strong fish," he said.

But Akhtar Nawab, the chef at CraftBar, might. "We kind of try to show off that week," he said, offering dishes plucked from the regular menu, like orzo in rendered bone marrow and sea urchin tagliatelle. Portions, he said, are slightly smaller.

Other chefs do not change the portion size but may skimp on costly ingredients. "It may be the amount of fresh morels," said Kerry Heffernan, chef at Eleven Madison Park, referring to his signature English pea flan, one of five appetizer options.

Devi, the new Indian restaurant in Chelsea, may be too young to know any better, but dinner customers can pick any three dishes from its lengthy menu, including Jamison Farms' tandoor lamb chops, which usually cost $29.

Some chefs say it is worth the financial blow if participating customers return, and research compiled by NYC & Company says two-thirds of them do.

 

Two-thirds! Wow. I wonder if the return rate is different at places that offer cheaper, off-menu items as compared to those that treat Restaurant Week as a loss leader (like I talked about in my Taste of Chinatown review), not to mention the satisfaction rate for the second visit.

(I've reservations with friends at Blue Smoke and Artisanal for Restaurant Week, but now I'm thinking I should be checking Devi out for those tandoor lamb chops and Butter just because I like the chef's attitude about making a good first impression.)

galatoire's

Galatoire's. You'll have to scroll down the page a bit, but Chuck Taggart's story (and photos!) of dining at the hundred year-old New Orleans institution that the James Beard Foundation recently named Outstanding Restaurant in America is worth it.

behind the scenes at shake shack

NYC Shake Attack: Behind the Scenes at Shake Shack. Andrea Strong of The Strong Buzz worked at Danny Meyer's Madison Square Park outpost for a day and kept a journal:

10 a.m. The staff arrives. Gary Burkhart, a soft-spoken guy with rosy cheeks, is setting up all the mix-ins for the concretes, warming the caramel sauce and hot fudge, filling whipped cream canisters with heavy cream and powdered sugar, and dumping quarts of milk in the milk machine. Just before 11 a.m., he puts on a neck-to-knee plastic apron that resembles a giant tarp. As I will learn later, the custard station is a merciless war zone of milk, hot fudge, and frozen custard. Protective gear is essential to survive.

I haven't been to the Shake Shack yet this year (a travesty I know, and one I'm working on fixing) but I did go shortly after it first opened in 2004, you can read my review (and see my photos!) from then.