Brunch @ East Coast Grill

The brunch at East Coast Grill is famous for their DIY bloody mary bar. In my experience, this doesn't always translate to great bloody marys (I often over do it on the habanero sauce), but it sure is fun. This is my favorite place to get brunch in the Boston area, so we decided to go here with some friends for our last day in Cambridge.

The bloody mary bar starts with a choice of tomato juice, ECG's house made bloody mary mix, and clamato juice. You then move on to a dizzying array of pickled vegetables and peppers, hot sauces, chutneys, salsas, and spices to add to your bloody mary.
When you order a bloody mary, the server brings you a large cup filled with vodka and ice. This time around, they included some beef jerky that they had made out of a brisket that had been served as a special the previous evening. The East Coast Grill always has great specials, and they often do some really cool theme dinners, such as Hell Night, and the previous night they had done a whole roasted pig. The leftover pork was used in the next morning's brunch menu with a carnitas plate served with fried plantains, cole slaw and grilled corn...

...and pork tostadas.
Both were good, but by far, my favorite dish on the brunch menu is the tortilla relleno. The tortilla relleno is a large tortilla stuffed with shredded duck and monteray jack cheese and topped with a red enchilada sauce. All of this is served over sauteed garlicky greens and yucca fries.

Brunch @ Diner, Williamsburg

We spent the weekend in New York and had an amazing brunch at the Diner in Williamsburg. The combination of local seasonal ingredients, tasty drinks, good company, and relaxing, sunny weather made for an ideal Sunday morning.

For the best bloody mary bar in existence, Sam and I usually turn to the East Coast Grill. It'll always be our go-to place for the drink (my favorite cocktail) in Boston. However, the version served at the Diner is arguably superior to anything I could fix up, even with the Grill's extensive bar. The Diner's bloody mary had a touch of herbs to it, garnished with sage flowers and pickled cauliflower, among other things. Because of the added punch of fragrance, it may very well top my list. I'm going to have to start experimenting at home to see if I can reverse engineer this deliciousness!

Jacob had an omelette with gruyere and salsa verde. Not a conventional combination, but it really worked. In all our dishes, the eggs were really fresh and bright.

Quite possibly the best fried oysters I've ever had. They were bursting with flavor and topped with a nice mix of lightly sauced herbs and fennel, over eggs. The Diner probably got them from Marlow & Sons next door, known for its fresh oysters.

Sam had biscuits and gravy, with a salad of fresh local greens. It's always nice to have something healthy and seasonal in your brunch! Also, on a side note, the portions were just perfect. Sam and I usually leave most brunch places engorged and on the verge of a food coma. But brunch at the Diner hit the spot, satisfying the tastebuds and stomach without going overboard.

Overall, a phenomenal brunch place! If I lived in New York, I would definitely frequent this restaurant.

Bailey's French Toast and the World's Best Bacon

This morning I was trying to come up with something to make for brunch when I noticed the bottle of Bailey's that was sitting on the liquor cabinet. French toast is one of my favorite breakfast foods, and a little Irish creme seemed like the perfect accent for a French toast mix. I headed over to Savenor's to pick up some bread - I was looking for challah bread, but ended up getting this amazing cinnamon bread instead - and I also got some applewood smoked bacon. Savenor's bacon, by the way, is the best bacon ever.

As you can see, they cut their bacon fairly thick. It's at least twice as thick as what you normally find at the supermarket, and about 20 times better.

Here's the recipe for the French Toast. These portions make enough for two servings.
4 slices of bread (challah or cinnamon bread, about 3/4" to 1" thick)
2 eggs
3/4-1 cup milk
3 Tbsp Irish cream
1/8 to 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

The Bailey's adds a great flavor that goes well with syrup or whipped cream. If you want to go with a fruit topping instead, try switching our the Bailey's for some orange juice or 1/8 tsp of lemon extract. This will give you a "brighter" tasting French toast.

Mix together the ingredients.
Soak the bread in the mixture. It should soak up everything
Cook over medium to low heat until done. Since the bread is really thick, you want to keep the heat fairly low so you don't burn the surface before the the middle is done. You can turn the heat up at the end to get some color. The time really depends on how thick and soaked the bread is and what heat and cooking surface you are using, so just cook until the color looks right. You should also cook the bacon over medium heat. In my opinion, bacon turns out better when you use a lower heat.
Plate and serve with the topping of your choice.

New York Dining

After a one year excursion to the Fletcher school, Abby is officially in her "2L" year at Harvard Law. This means that she gets to spend a substantial portion of her fall semester being wooed by just about every top law firm in the country. After going to around 30 on campus interviews, she narrowed her choices down (but only slightly) and spent about a week and a half in DC and New York doing 1 to 2 interviews a day. While tiring, the nice thing about this process (besides having all of these firms make you feel really loved) is that they put you up in some pretty nice places. I spent last weekend in NYC since Abby had a gratis room at the midtown Hilton. Here's the view from her room by day (that's Cental Park in the distance):

and by night (that's a lot of energy being wasted in the foreground....some of these offices NEVER turn their lights off!!)

I was pretty famished by the time we got into town so we went out to a Korean bbq place, Won Jo, with Adam, who was also in New York for interviews, and Sarah. Most Korean bbq places I have been to use hot plates or a gas grill, but this place uses real charcoal. Before they serve you, someone comes by with a box of red hot coals that they put in the table grill.
After that we met Stefanie at a dive bar in the East Village and stopped by a really cool fry, or Pommes Frite, place before turning in for the night. This is the only place I've seen in this country where you can get fries with mayo, one of the best things ever to come out of Belgium, and I mean that in the best sense. I love fries and mayo. When Jack, Sam B and I went to the Netherlands, we ate nothing but fries and mayo for the whole weekend. One of the best things about this place is the way they make the tables. Perfect for holding fries.
The next night we were able to get a table at Lupa, one of Mario Batali's restaurants. It's run by Mark Laudner (he's the hip looking guy with glasses that is always one of Mario's seux chefs on Iron Chef) and specializes in casual Roman food.


I really really liked it. The place has a cozy front room with a bar and a more spacious back room. We sat at the bar since you have to make reservations pretty far ahead of time. Even to get a seat at the bar, we had to wait for about an hour and half, which was fine with me. Lupa is just south of Washington Square in Greenwich Village, and it was nice to have the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood. We got pretty hungry waiting though, so we stopped for a snack at a tapas place a couple blocks over. Of course, as soon as we were finishing up at the tapas place, the hostess at Lupa called us to tell us our seats were ready.
We started the meal with two antipasta plates: a salad of beats, micro greens and some sort of cheese (I can't remember exactly what it was) and shaved Brussels sprouts with Peccorino. For the pasta course we ordered the two specials they were offering that night. I had orrecchietti with sausage and rapini and Abby had tagliatelle with a roasted pork ragu. I make this orrechietti dish, so it was nice to see how they do it. Of course, Lupa's is better, but I really think the key difference is the homemade pasta. Italian food is pretty simple, so the key to making it well is getting really great ingredients and not messing them up. The final course was braised pork shoulder with prickly pear and braised escarole. I'll have to start making braised escarole. It has a great bitter flavor and is just coming into season.

The next morning we met Sam B, Jacob, and Rachel at Vynl. Jacob had just moved to New York that week and was getting used to his new job at a morning show that has him waking up at 3:30 every morning!
The brunch here is fine (I preferred the Eatery, which Sam took us to when Joe and I were in NYC over the summer), but the real standout feature was the decor, especially the bathrooms. The Elvis bathroom has a huge tile mosaic of Elvis taking up one wall, and Elvis songs are piped in to the room. I didn't get a chance to check out the Nelly bathroom cause it was occupied.

Later that evening, we capped off a weekend of food with the best meal yet. Alex and Jane (who probably know every restaurant in the city, if you ever need a recommendation) took us out to Nobu where we ordered just about the entire menu.
First, a couple things about this place:

I was pretty excited about going here. One of the best meals I have ever had was at Morimoto's in Philadelphia, and I had always wanted to go to the restaurant where he got his start in the states. Nobu's food isn't all traditional Japanese fare, so this may have been where Morimoto picked up some of the modern Japanese ideas that he is known for.

Also, the decor in this place is incredible. The most striking feature is the forest in the main dining room. I wish I had pictures. You might be able to see some on the webpage.

We ordered yellow tail sashimi with jalapeno, monkfish pate with caviar, scallop tiradito, sea urchin tempura, rock shrimp tempura, creamy spicy crab, black cod with miso, warm abalone and asparagus salad, and toro. For dessert, we had a coconut sorbet with jasmine tea icecream in the middle, an assortment of mochi, and a chocolate cake with shiso syrup. It would take too long to describe, so, suffice it to say, this was damn good. And, while the meal was great, the company was even better.

Lake Luzerne

A few weeks ago, Adam and Natalie invited Jon, Katrina, Abby, and me up to the Pollets' cabin on Lake Luzern. When camping...or cabining...or whatever it is we were doing, cooking out is imperative. We spent most of the day playing tennis, vollyball, or swimming and then the guys were sent out to get food for dinner. Being guys, we chose burgers. Cheddar jalapeno burgers, to be precise. Jon and I had made them a week or so earlier and they were good enough to merit a second go-round.

By the time we got around to cooking, it was pretty dark, and the charcoal was really smoky. Good thing Jon never leaves the house without his trusty headlamp.

Clearly, Jon and Adam were psyched about the burgers, although if I were a betting man, I would bet the Jon was slightly more enthusiastic...not sure what would give me that idea.
Natalie and Katrina preferred the corn and grilled vegetables. They were kind enough to share some of the corn with Jon.
The next morning, Katrina made an excellent batch of French toast that was enjoyed by all.

Leftover breakfast

Every culture has its own version of fried rice, a recipe that is made up on nothing but leftovers. The Italians have frittatas. We had a bunch of left overs from the previous two nights, so this was the perfect thing to do for breakfast. I made two types of frittata. One had the left over roasted vegetables, and the other had salmon, potato, and cilantro.