Burger & Barrel and Venieros Pastry

Manhattan is really a miserable place to live, so when I really hate it, I go to a really chic restaurant so I feel like I'm living in a romantic comedy.

At Burger & Barrel, I got beef tartare, which is raw ground beef mixed with various condiments. This was really good; the seasoning was very simple and didn't overwhelm the meat. The beef itself was very rich, so the escarole, capers, and pickled radish balanced it very well.

Is it weird to get so excited about toasted bread? I feel like most restaurants can't get toasted bread right; it's usually too thin and flimsy, or not charred enough. However, the toasted bread that came with this was so perfect. It's the perfect dense texture, charred, and buttered.

I also got duck lasagna. The edges of the noodles were really crispy, which was pretty interesting. Although the duck was very tender, the dish was just very bland. Although there's tomato sauce underneath, the lasagna itself is filled with very basic bechamel sauce (basically white cream sauce), which really masks the flavor of the duck. The only time I actually tasted the duck was when I burped 20 minutes later.

I'm really starting to wonder if I can get good truffle fries anywhere in New York. I've had some pretty incredible truffle fries (like at Umami Burger), but this one was just plain fries with three drops of truffle oil sprinkled on top. Once you eat through the top layer, the truffle essence is gone.

I was getting pretty sad towards the middle of the meal (yes, food can make me sad) so I decided not to stay for dessert. Instead, I went to my favorite pastry shop, Venieros in East Village.

Venieros has the most fantastic pastries and cakes. I got tiramisu cake, which is a big wedge of chocolate cream with small chunks of cake in it. It's just a delicious, fatty dessert that's not too heavy and always makes me happy.

The best part of being 21 is being able to drink alcohol mixed with coffee in a public place. I ordered Bailey's Irish Cream coffee, which is exactly what it sounds like. Bailey's itself tastes like chocolate milk, so this just tastes like an alcoholic mocha, which is never a bad thing.

Burger & Barrel
25 W Houston St
http://www.burgerandbarrel.com/

Venieros Pasticceria
342 E 11th St
http://www.venierospastry.com/

Triple Pastry Wednesday at Magnolia Bakery

Wednesday is officially my least favorite day, because I have a three-hour lecture with no breaks and an overly tough professor. And for lectures over two hours, I think I deserve one pastry per hour in class. It's just common sense.

I had to get Magnolia Bakery's famous banana pudding. The custard itself is so creamy and rich, and not overly sweet. And there's chunks of cake it in, which is always nice. The slices of banana are okay, but I thought they were kind of mushy and had an odd, spongey texture. I would order this again, but I would prefer the bananas to just be pureed into the custard.

Magnolia Bakery is the only place I buy cupcakes from, because you can get buttercream instead of cream cheese frosting, which is gross. Their red velvet cupcake is so moist and fluffy, and the buttercream is so light. Honestly, I don't really know what red velvet cake is supposed to taste like, but I just love eating something that's so unnaturally red.

Fall means pumpkin pie! I got a small one--six inches, which I feel is still quite large, especially since I refuse to share. I like this quite a lot; most pumpkin pies are overly cinnamony and sweet, but this tastes very mild and creamy. The crust is also quite nice and flaky.

I really love everything at Magnolia Bakery--just make sure you go at a random time to avoid long lines. I can't wait for next Wednesday to get three of something else...

Magnolia Bakery
Various locations
http://www.magnoliabakery.com/

Cronuts at Dominique Ansel Bakery

The "cronut," which was released four months ago, is supposed to be a combination of a croissant and a doughnut, and it has taken America by storm. On the Dominique Ansel Bakery website, it says if you start waiting 2.5 hours before the bakery opens, you will have a "good chance" of getting a cronut. Meaning, even if you start waiting at 5:30am, you still may not get one.

I decided to get up bright and early to get in line before 5:30 (or actually, dark and early); I woke up at 4:30, leaving half an hour to wake up and half an hour to get there. I didn't even put on my eyebrows--it would just slow me down. I got there at 5:21 and there were already six people in front of me. The hardest part is waiting; bring an iPad to watch a movie or a fully charged phone, and maybe also a lawn chair if you don't like sitting on the sidewalk or squatting. Around 7:45, a guy will come out with baskets of madeleines and pass them out to everyone who has been waiting in line. Thanks, but when I've been up since 4:30, I need something more substantial than an extremely dry madeleine.

For some reason, I thought the cronut was going to look a lot more refined than this. Dominique Ansel is hailed as a star patissier, and all of his other cakes and pastries are beautiful. But this just looks like a $1 doughnut from a street cart with a fig on top (September's flavor is fig mascarpone). I must admit, I was very skeptical of how good the cronut is, but the texture is really interesting; it's less fluffy, and a little chewier than the interior of regular doughnuts. However, the big mistake that they made was to serve it at room temperature--a fried doughnut that isn't warm tastes a little greasy (but still okay), but then when you fill it with marscapone and cooked figs, the flavor just becomes kind of muddy. Although I like figs, and I like marscapone, I would've preferred a plain cronut because the execution is a little disappointing.

If I'm going to wait for 2.5 hours outside a bakery, I'm not going to walk away with a just croissant shaped like a doughnut. I've been told that the canele and eclairs are good, so I got one of each (I got the salted caramel eclair--they have chocolate as well). The canele is good, but I don't feel like it's a vast improvement from any other good caneles, like the ones at Lafayette--I wouldn't make a special trip here if you have a more convenient location to go to. The eclair's salted caramel flavor was spot-on, but the pastry shell just did not taste fresh--it had this kind of "refrigerated" flavor, kind of like when you leave cake uncovered in the fridge for a while, and then it tastes stale and the texture becomes kind of dry and crumbly.

Overall, I give Dominique Ansel Bakery an average rating. If I'm going to wake up at 4:30am for anything, it better be something that is life-changing and ruins all other food for me. However, cronuts just didn't do it for me. The texture is interesting, but it's not something that I'm going to dream about for the three hours of sleep I get before lining up to get another one. And the other pastries were just kind of eh. Although it was a cool experience, I wouldn't do it ever again.

Dominique Ansel Bakery
189 Spring St.
http://dominiqueansel.com/
For more information on the cronut: http://dominiqueansel.com/cronut-101/

Ice Monster 冰館

This place used to be on Yong Kang Street (永康街) but because of a nasty divorce, the owner moved it to its new location on Chungxiao East Road (忠孝東路). After 17 years of business, Ice Monster is still super, super popular--so much so that people are willing to wait a good half hour (or more if you go on the weekends or at night) just to get a seat.

All over the restaurant you'll see this illustration; it's supposed to be the owner's face. I've never seen a picture of him, but this motif is super cute.

Ice Monster has always been most famous for its mango sorbet. They have a ton of dishes with it, but we just got the one called Mango Sorbet (芒果雪酪). It's a scoop of mango sorbet on top of shaved ice and a mango compote. It's so juicy and refreshing, and actually has tiny chunks of mango in the sorbet. I really wish that they'd given us a bowl full of sorbet, because I can literally go to any nightmarket and get a bucket of shaved ice for free. It's just a little expensive (150NT, about $5) for what you're getting.

We also got the Rye Beer Sorbet (黑麥啤酒雪酪), which is supposed to be really popular right now. I'm a bit too much of a girly girl to like beer, but this is actually quite nice! It's not bitter and doesn't have a strong alcoholic taste, and it has pop rocks candy in it, which makes eating this really fun. It also has coffee-flavored jello cubes, which complement the rye flavor really well. If actual beer tasted like this... I think I could like beer.

For Taiwanese standards, this is not a cheap place, and they really enforce the 120NT per person minimum (about $4). Because I am greedy and impatient, I rarely say something is worth the wait, but I think this is. If you come here, be a nice person and get out of there quickly; there are other people waiting in the heat!

Ice Monster 冰館
No. 297, Section 4, Chungxiao E. Rd.
台北市忠孝東路四段297號
http://www.ice-monster.com/

Lafayette (Part 1: The bakery)

Lafayette just opened on April 15th, and I was so excited to try it because it's opened by the same people who own Locanda Verde in Tribeca (post coming soon!). At the entrance, there is a mini bakery, and I ate at both the bakery and the restaurant. There's just a lot to talk about for each, so I'm going to split the review into two parts. This post is going to be about the bakery.

The bakery has some classic French pastries, like macarons and canele, as well as things like brownies and cookies.

They have some pretty unusual macaron flavors, like "birthday cake" and a signature Lafayette flavor. They all have a nice texture: crisp on the outside and gooey and dense on the inside. My standouts are the birthday cake (chocolate filling with sprinkles), Lafayette (I can't put my finger on the flavor, but it's like tea), and salted caramel. The one I didn't like so much was the pistachio matcha (green tea). It was kind of sour; not in a going-bad way, but it just has this off-note that green tea flavoring can have if it's not perfectly done.

I love that they know how to store each kind of baked good. Caneles should never be refrigerated, or else water condenses at the bottom, and you end up with a cold, soggy crust. I love these caneles for their texture; the shells are so crisp, and the insides are the texture of a bouncy, airy pudding (not the instant kind; more like Yorkshire pudding). I find that there's not much flavor variation between any canele; they all taste pretty light and slightly egg-y--really delicious, but what makes each one unique is the texture.

I also want to give a mention to their chocolate items. I think the mark of a great chocolate dessert is when it has a great, deep chocolate flavor, but isn't sweet (or at least not overly sweet) or cloying. I find that with a lot of chocolate desserts, I can only eat two bites because they're just so heavy. The brownie (you can get it with or without nuts) is the best one I've had in a long time; it's quite thin and flat, so the edges are nice and crisp. What ruins a lot of brownies for me, is when they make it too moist and too rich, and it just ends up being mushy and overly sweet. Lafayette's brownies, though, are just slightly denser than cake. The chocolate macaron is great, too. I'm almost never impressed by chocolate macarons, because they're just so basic and they all taste really sugary. This one, though, has a true chocolate flavor, which, ironically, is really rare in a chocolate macaron.

I hate that I will pass Lafayette everyday, because I am going to gain so much weight. I definitely will come back to try some of the other bakery items (like quiche and pain au chocolat) and I will do an updated post about those!

Lafayette
380 Lafayette St., at Great Jones St.

Spring Sweets Fair at Mitsuwa

From today until Sunday (April 21st), Mitsuwa Marketplace is holding their Spring Sweets Fair. (I posted about Mitsuwa a while ago--you can read the post here). I came today to post about this event early, but also to take advantage of the free shuttle service from Port Authority on Thursdays.

My boyfriend, who has been to a previous Spring Sweets Fair in southern California, had warned me that this wasn't going to be a big fair like the ones Mitsuwa usually does, and I said whatever. And he was right (he's always right); it's really just a few extra refrigeration units in a far corner of the supermarket, but it's packed with stuff.

My usual Mitsuwa buddy was out of town, so I couldn't try everything I wanted. So I just got my must-haves: baum kuchen, a cream puff, and a packet of green tea swiss roll cakes.

Baum kuchen is a pretty simple item: vanilla cake with lots of layers in the shape of a wheel, with a donut hole in the center. I guess it's technically mille crepe, but you can't easily peel back each layer, which is the fun part of eating mille crepe. This thing is huge--I took a picture of it with my hand to compare the size. It's super good. So light and airy, with a distinct vanilla flavor. It's also $5, which makes it one of the better bargains in the display, considering how much cake you're getting.

Next I got the jumbo cream puff (there's only one size). I just wanted to point out that all the desserts in this display are sold very much as supermarket items, and not really as ready-to-eat sweets. The cream puff is frozen, and the swiss rolls are vacuum packaged. I suppose you could eat a frozen cream puff and pretend it's ice cream inside, though. Either way, the cream puff itself is just okay; the puff is light and airy, but the cream was very bland.

My last item from the fair were the green tea-flavored swiss roll cakes. They have two kinds: one that's long, and one that has four already-sliced cakes. I assumed they were the same thing, so I got the cheaper one. They are quite nice; you can't go wrong with cake, green tea, and cream.

In keeping with the dessert theme, I also tried some from the food court. I got a small box of six macarons and a vanilla cream puff. The macarons were no good; I'm talking about soft shells and very bland fillings. Each small box contained chocolate, white chocolate, apricot, lemon, raspberry, and pistachio--very safe flavors for macarons--but I just found myself taking one bite out of each one and setting it down. However, I did like the cream puff. The puff was okay--not particularly moist--but the cream was what made it for me. It had a really rich, saturated vanilla flavor and was so light in texture. It's not the best cream puff I've ever had, but it's nice when you want a lighter dessert.

Overall, I recommend the baum kuchen and the green tea swiss roll cakes. However, the display didn't have the most unique desserts (they also had items like tiramisu and soft cheese cake), so it's not really the place to try new things.

Mitsuwa holds these kinds of food fairs every few months; you can keep up with their seasonal events at their website here.

Spring Sweets Fair at Mitsuwa this weekend!

Update: The Spring Sweets Fair is actually a display of cakes. There is another fair starting Friday, April 19th, which is the Regional Sweets Fair and is going to be much larger. The post about this fair is now up! Read it here.

Mitsuwa, a Japanese supermarket chain, is having one of their seasonal campaigns this weekend. Every few months, they will hold a food fair with various themes (Hokkaido, crepes, etc.), usually for a weekend, but can last up to a few weeks. This weekend, they are holding their Spring Sweets Fair at the New Jersey location, which I posted about a while ago (you can read the full post here. I will be going on Thursday, and posting about it Thursday night, so you know if it's something you'll want to go to. You can keep up with Mitsuwa's season campaigns here.

Cha-An Japanese Tea House

Cha-An is an occasional indulgence for me for afternoon tea. I would usually only get one item each trip, but for blogging's sake, I got two.

My first dessert was the scones. Each plate comes with one earl grey-flavored scone, one chocolate scone, sake-chantilly cream, and blueberry compote. The scones are very different from what you would expect from a regular, English scone. They're not flaky or buttery, but rather moist and crumbly, kind of like a dense cake. I prefer the earl grey scone; the chocolate is just a bit too sweet, while the earl grey is aromatic and has a mild, slightly woody flavor. The sake-chantilly cream is amazing--really light and airy, and just sweet enough to add flavor to the scones. The blueberry compote, on the other hand, is just fine. It has a nice, smooth texture and a warm, sweet flavor, but it's nothing special.

My second "dessert" was the smoked salmon toast. It's a thick toast with smoked salmon and watercress, and the sauce is mayo, mustard seeds, and lemon. It's one of the more expensive items on the menu--$12--but well worth it. The smoked salmon was perfectly fatty, and the bread was fluffy and moist and had an incredible buttery flavor. The dish was also nicely balanced--the sauce added an acidic kick, and the watercress added lightness and crunch.

Overall, Cha-An is not the most necessary place to go eat (you don't have to have dessert or afternoon tea) but it's well worth a trip and the price.

Cha-An Japanese Tea House
230 E 9th St, between 2nd and 3rd Ave.
http://www.chaanteahouse.com/

Momofuku Milk Bar

Milk Bar is right across the street from Momofuku Ssam Bar, which is why Ssam Bar doesn't offer dessert!

Momofuku Milk Bar is most famous for the compost cookie and the crack pie, both of which I got.

The crack pie, I think, is the most oversimplified item on the menu. The filling is butter, sugar, cream, and egg yolk, which is quite off-putting for some people but is also the point of the item: it is a blend of everything that is good about dessert. But to balance the buttery sweetness of the filling is the crust, which is salty and made with oats (which also adds some texture to an otherwise smooth, creamy pie). It's sticky, light, and the pie equivalent of a sugar cookie.

The compost cookie is just a mix of everything: chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, potato chips, coffee grounds, graham crumbs, and pretzels. People will usually make faces when they hear the potato chips and coffee grounds part, but all the flavors meld together to make a really balanced cookie. All the add-ins are fine enough that you don't get one very large chunk of anything. The texture is perfect; the edges are quite crisp and chewy, and the center is malleable and soft.

I feel like many of the other items on the menu are overlooked. My favorite underdog is the blueberry and cream cookie, which is pretty much a soft plain cookie with blueberries.

Overall, I really like Momofuku Milk Bar. Although the items and combinations are unusual, each dessert is really balanced and mild--I hate when a dessert is overly sweet. I will definitely come back when it's warmer to try the ice cream and milkshake!

Momofuku Milk Bar
http://milkbarstore.com/
Hours vary by location