Brunch at Public in Manhattan

I have to admit, I'm not a big brunch person.  I know, to say this is almost sacrilege, especially considering how much New Yorkers around me seem to love their brunch, but I find the meal to frequently be overpriced and uninspired.  I can make delicious pancakes at home, and honestly, charging me more than $14 for poached eggs, no matter what you serve them with, is kind of a rip off.  But when my sister up from DC to visit me, she sent me the menu for brunch at Public, and I immediately okay-ed it.
First of all, there is a great variety of creative dishes on the menu, it's not too expensive, and most important of all, I saw a brunch dish that included foie gras.  Sold.  Get your purse, we're going out to eat.
Because my sister was taking the morning bus from DC to NYC, she ended up arriving at the restaurant before I did.  She put our names down for a table, and then sat down at the bar at around 11:30am and ordered a latte while waiting for me.  I joined her a little bit before noon.  The hostess came and asked if we wanted a table since there was space, but we decided to stay at the bar, since it was brightly lit, not loud, and there was a good view of the restaurant.  Plus, it fun to watch the bartenders make everyone's morning cocktails.

After some deliberating over the menu, I ordered the Black Pudding Waffles with red wine poached pears and whipped foie gras butter.  This sounded a little risky even to me - the avid lover of all things foie gras - but the bartender assured me it is delicious.  I'm glad I decided to try it because it was excellent.  I would order this again in a heartbeat.  In fact, even as I write this, I am contemplating going back for brunch immediately so that I taste this once more.  The waffles were decadent and smooth; if I wasn't told they were made with black pudding, I wouldn't have known, but they had a delicious savoriness that was really nice.   I also loved the foie gras butter and poached pear combination. I cleaned my plate.

My sister ordered the Tea-smoked Salmon with poached eggs on multi-grain bread.  This was also a big hit.  The salmon filet is fragrant from being smoked with tea.  The poached egg had a perfectly runny yolk, and we loved how the hearty bread stood up to the flavors and the moistness of the egg yolk.  I would be happy to order this again too.

We also were given two little black sesame biscuits, drizzled with lavender honey. The biscuits were alright, but the honey was like heaven. I'd eat that stuff on its own.

For brunch drinks (which, honestly, I wouldn't have ordered, but the bartender kindly gave us two free glasses, perhaps out of pity for the two girls at the bar avidly staring at every drink he sent out to the tables), we tried the Salty Dog, which has gin and grapefruit juice.  It was light and refreshing from the grapefruit, but had a fairly strong alcohol kick.

For dessert, my sister and I split the Concord Grape Panna Cotta (not pictured, because, sadly, it wasn't that attractive).  This is served with a grape sorbet with prosecco foam and candied peanuts. The peanut and grape combination kind of reminded me of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, minus the bread.  Neither my sister nor I were fans of the foam, as it was made with egg whites and was not strongly flavored with prosecco; it tasted kind of strange.  The panna cotta was fine, as was the sorbet, but after the amazing main courses, I was expecting a little bit more wow factor from dessert.  Maybe my opinion is being swayed by the fact that I don't really like grapes.

My sister got the brunch prix fixe deal which is $24 for a coffee (they let her latte count), entree, and dessert.  My dish was $14 (a steal!). Our cocktails were a gift from the bartender and the biscuits were free (I think all tables are given them) so our lovely meal was less than $40 before tip.  Not bad for the delicious brunch.  I can't wait to go back!

Public
210 Elizabeth St
New York, NY 10012
Tel. 212-343-7011

NYC Restaurant Week Lunch at Riverpark

I wait for restaurant week all year long.  It happens twice a year - once in the winter and once in the summer - and as soon as the restaurant list is released, I'm scanning over it and checking the menus for where I want to eat.  I have a fairly strict set of criteria for restaurants.  I only eat at restaurants that are expensive enough that I might not eat at them normally.  If the lunch prix fixe for Restaurant week is $25, I will also not make a reservation at a restaurant where the entrees typically cost around $15 because that's hardly a good deal.  And if the restaurant is only offering two choices for the main course and one is chicken and the other is pasta, I also won't eat there.  This is partially because I generally find chicken not to be that exciting and partially because, once again, I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth if I'm paying $25 for chicken that I can buy at the market for less than $2 per pound.  And ditto for pasta.  So with these criteria in mind, I quickly narrow down my list of potential restaurants to try.
Last year I read some effusively wonderful reviews of the Restaurant Week experience at Tom Colicchio’s Riverpark, on the East side of Manhattan.  Main courses for lunch typically run $18 - $25 with desserts from $8 (for simple sorbet or ice cream) to $14.  They offer a nice selection of choices for Restaurant Week - more than four options for each course! - so my criteria were met, and I made my reservation.
The only problem with Restaurant Week is that you have to make reservations during the week.  For anyone who works and can't easily take a 2-3 hours lunch break, this is difficult.  I, luckily (or perhaps unluckily... depends on your point of view), don't work, so I had no problem with this.  I couldn't find anyone to go with me though, so I decided to hell with it, it's my birthday, and went to lunch with just the company of a good book, which I figured I would read while waiting in between courses.  Both the hostess and my waiter seemed very sympathetic to the fact that I was dining alone.  I don't know if this was because I had noted that it was my birthday when I made the reservation, so they pitied the girl celebrating alone, or if it was because they seated me outside, where I just happened to be surrounded by couples, romantically enjoying each other's presence.  Either way, I wasn't particularly bothered.

My lunch began with the Sweet Corn Panna Cotta. It was served with a corn salad, avocado, lime crème fraîche, and huitlacoche (apparently a type of corn fungus???) vinaigrette. I was not a big fan of any of the items accompanying the panna cotta (and this was before I came home and google told me that one of the ingredients was corn fungus).  The corn salad was fine but I honestly couldn't tell if it was fresh corn or canned corn, which is kind of sad.  The avocado was rather over-salted/over-seasoned and the vinaigrette was far too strong.   I loved the corn panna cotta though.  The texture was on point - quiveringly light - and the flavor was stellar.  I'd order it again in a heartbeat, I just wouldn't waste my time eating anything else on the plate.

The bread served with the meal is in the form of a mini baguette, served with good cold butter. It was really good; light, with a nice crust.  I finished my first one with my appetizer, and was asked if I wanted more with my entree. (The answer to that is always yes.)

My main course was the Lamb Ribs and Sausage, served with tempura artichokes, olives, almonds, and a yogurt sauce.  My ribs were scorched.  By that, I mean, they arrived at the table black. I had to scrape off the burnt outside layer, and then sadly found that the meat was over-seasoned.  I was also not a big fan of the yogurt sauce. The sausage was a bit dry, but not bad. The biggest problem was that this was just not a good summer dish.  It felt heavy and I was tired of it after a few bites.  The fish dishes being ordered around me looked far tastier and I wish I had ordered that instead.
I was given - for free - a side of grilled okra (typically $6).  I was unsure if this was because it was my birthday or because they felt pity for me because I was dining alone.  Either way, it was a nice touch and I enjoyed the veggies, but they were also fairly scorched.  Is this the new style?  Maybe I'm just unsophisticated.

For dessert, I had the Basil Cream Puff served with strawberries, granola, and strawberry sorbet. This was amazing.  Really.  The basil cream puff was so fragrant, and the combination with the fresh strawberries and the sorbet was on point.  I wish I could have had two more servings of this.  I enjoyed every single spoonful.

The service was very friendly. I got a happy birthday message on my menu and a candle on my dessert. The timing of the dishes was also good. It was a leisurely meal, and I never felt rushed, but I never felt that service was slow.

While I was fairly disappointed by my main course, I don't think the lamb is normally scorched that way, and I did enjoy both of my other dishes.  I had a good overall experience and left full.  I had been so looking forward to Riverpark though, I couldn't decide if they let me down or if it was a fluke, so I wanted to give them another chance.  I don't typically do this, but I decided to go back for another Restaurant Week lunch (and this time, I did have company).

Cured salmon appetizer (left) and merluza with faro and heirloom tomatoes main course (right)

On my second visit, I started with the house cured Atlantic salmon, which is a fairly simple dish. It was rather generously salted, but that only encouraged me to eat their bread, which is quite good. I also enjoyed the slightly brined cucumbers.

For my main course I ordered the merluza, which is a white fish served with heirloom tomatoes and faro.  A tomato consumme is poured on top, tableside.  I really loved this dish.  It was light, fragrant, and perfect for summer.  The tomatoes provided a lovely accompanying acidity to the flaky fish, and the texture of the faro was perfect.  There was nothing to complain about.

For my dessert, I considered trying the peach cobbler, but I had so enjoyed the basil cream puffs with raspberry sorbet the last time I was here that I wanted to order it again.  It did not disappoint.

Amusingly, I had the same waiter for lunch that I had had for my previous lunch.  He remembered me (I suppose it's hard to forget an Asian girl who dines alone on her birthday), and service was just as friendly and attentive as it had been the first time.

The seating area outside is beautiful.  As their website describes, this restaurant is located in a "garden plaza with romantic East River views."  What they fail to mention is the construction going on around the area, or the sounds of traffic which you can clearly hear if you sit outside.  However, neither of these things bothered me.  The area is very comfortable, with pillows on the "booth" sides and a nice breeze coming off the water and the shade from the building keeps you cool, even when it's hot out.

In general, I think Riverpark earned itself a solid B.  There's definitely room for improvement in terms of seasoning (less salt!) and cooking (there's a difference between a nice char and a terrible scorch), but the creativity and flavors are there, if they can just get down the execution.  For $25, it's not a bad deal.

Riverpark
450 E 29th St.
New York, NY 10016
Tel. 212.729.9790

Strawberry Rhubarb Oat Bars / Rustic Tart

I love summer fruit.  I could easily eat several pounds of strawberries for a meal.  In fact, I have.  That's one of my favorite things about going berry picking.  But what this means is that I rarely ever bake berries when I have them because I find the fresh product so tantalizing.  It's hard to save any for a cake or pie.  This year, however, I impulsively bought some rhubarb at the market and I knew they'd go well with some strawberries, and since you don't eat rhubarb raw, one thing lead to another and before I knew it, I was in the kitchen making these bars.

I want to call them oat bars because the name has a healthy sound that seems to justify my eating them for breakfast.  Both times I made this recipe though, I actually used a 9-inch spring form tart pan and I thought it worked beautifully and would be a lovely way to make this for a picnic or dessert when entertaining so hence why I am also calling this a rustic tart.

This recipe is so simple - it honestly takes no more than 10 minutes of prep time, and that includes washing and cutting the fruit.  There are weight measurements for the oat base, which makes it easy to do everything with a kitchen scale, just kitting the "Tare" button as you go.  Then, the ingredients are mixed in whatever pan you'll be baking with, and the fruit is only lightly sweetened, so the natural flavor is really allowed to shine.

I have a feeling that if you make this once, you may find yourself eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dessert, just as I did.


Strawberry Rhubarb Oat Bars
adapted from Smitten Kitchen
yields one 8x8 pan OR one 9 inch tart pan


1 cup (80 grams) rolled oats
3/4 cup (95 grams) all purpose flour
2 tablespoons (15 grams) whole wheat flour (if you don't have this on hand, just use all purpose flour)
1/2 cup (95 grams) light brown sugar
pinch of salt (1-2 grams)
6 tablespoons (85 grams) salted butter, melted
1-2 stalks of rhubarb, diced small
1 cup (1/2 pin) small-diced strawberries
1 tablespoon (15 grams) granulated or raw sugar

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.  Lightly butter an 8x8 baking pan or a 9-inch tart pan.
Combine the oats, all purpose flour, whole wheat flour (if using), brown sugar, and salt in bottom of baking pan and mix.
Pour the melted butter on top and stir until clumps form.   I find it easiest to do this with my hands.
Optional: set aside 1/3 cup of the crumble mixture if you want a topping.
Press the rest of the crumb mixture evenly against the bottom of the pan.
Spread your diced berries and rhubarb evenly over the crust.  Sprinkle with granulated or raw sugar.
Scatter reserved crumbs (if using) over the fruit.
Bake bars on the middle rack of your oven at 375F for 30 to 35 minutes.
Allow to cool in pan before cutting.
Note that bars will crisp up in the fridge if placed there for a few hours after cooling.

Leftovers can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 days (if they last that long!).  Bars do get a little softer on the second day, but they remain just as delicious on day 3 as they are when fresh out of oven.

Making Madeleines

On our first Christmas together, B. got me two trays of madeleine molds.  I didn't use them right away because I had never made madeleines before, but after about 6 months of disuse, he told me he would make me a batch.  I'm normally the baker in the house, so it was nice to be spoiled by him.  We used the recipe that had come with the trays, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for.
This week, my husband decided it was time to make madeleines again, so I looked up a recipe online.  One of the first recipes I stumbled upon was Dorie Greenspan.  Her recipes are quite popular among food bloggers and her pictures showed a very big "hump" -- which is very desirable in madeleines.  We had not had humps in our last homemade batch, so I was interested in trying her recipe and her method.

We were quite pleased with our results, and when B. brought some to his office to share with co-workers, he said they enjoyed them as well.  This recipe is not at all intimidating, and I'm glad we decided to try it.  I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to making them, but homemade madeleines are a lovely treat.

I did, of course, alter a few things.  First, the original recipe calls for lemon zest.  I never buy lemons because they're more expensive than limes.  These past few months, however, we've been eating a lot of oranges, and whenever I buy particularly beautiful citrus from a good source, I will wash them, zest them, and freeze the zest for uses in baking, cocktails (mocktails for me; cocktails for B.), cooking, and so on.  So I had orange zest on hand.  I eyeballed out what I thought was the appropriate amount for one orange (though really, this depends on how well you zest your fruit... on cooking shows when I watch them zest, I am appalled by how much they waste).  I thought the orange flavor was beautiful and I will be repeating the recipe this way from now on.

Second, I used a hand blender (also called an immersion or stick blender) to really chop up the zest and mix it with the sugar and egg.  I thought this helped infuse the flavor, but it's probably not a necessary step.

Third, I highly recommend browning the butter.  This will add a complexity to the flavor, and since you have to melt the butter anyhow, you might as well do it on the stove and make the house smell like magic.

Fourth, I would also highly recommend sifting your dry ingredients into your wet ingredients to prevent lumps.  I did not do this the first time and I think the texture is far better when you sift.  This will also help you in that you won't have to stir as much.

Fifth, this is a nit picky thing, but I always mix salt with sugar in my wet ingredients, as I think this makes the distribution of flavor better than having salt be with the dry ingredients.  I never know why recipe writers always insist on coupling salt with baking soda/baking powder and flour.  Also, I always used salted butter.  Yes it adds more salt, but I think it also adds more flavor.  I almost never use unsalted butter and if I do, it's normally because I ran out of the salted kind.

Love and Lobster Risotto

B. and I moved into our apartment together in July.  It was my first time living with someone (and I mean someone whose relationship with me was not "female roommate"), and it was our first time being truly together on the same side of the ocean.
I remember two meals from then.  The first was the meal we had the day we moved into our apartment.  We had signed the final papers at 10:30am, spent all day moving things out of my storage unit and into our new apartment in the pouring rain, and then we'd gone to Ikea to buy a bed.  At this point it was past 7pm and we hadn't eaten all day.  We went to the food court and I had the famous Ikea meatballs for the first time.  I was sweaty, ravenous, and exhausted.  The food tasted amazing.
The second meal was a few weeks later.  The furniture we'd bought had just been delivered so we finally had a dining room table.  We'd been so caught up in all the business of settling into our new place, I wanted us to have a date night at home.  At luck would have it, lobster was on sale at the local market.  We bought two, broiled them, and ate them with steamed broccoli, corn, and rice.  It was lovely.  But this wasn't the meal I want to tell you about.  It was the remnants from that meal that made a second meal.
I'm one of those strange people who likes the "torso" of the lobster more than the tail, and so we had tail meat leftover, plus all the lobster shells and little tiny leg pieces.  There is so much meat you can't get out of shellfish and it occurred to me that this might be an excellent stock base.  I combined some shallot, a little bit of onion, and all the lobster shell pieces into our new pressure cooker and 20 minutes later, out came an incredible seafood stock.  And while flipping through our pressure cooker manual, I saw a recipe for pressure-cooker risotto.  It was too perfect of an idea to let pass.


The seafood stock (with a little help from some butter and rice) became lobster risotto, studded with the pieces of tail meat.  It was heavenly.  That meal we didn't talked much, but we scraped our bowls clean, and afterwards we leaned back in our chairs and smiled at each other in the comfortable quiet of our home.
B. and I have eaten many, many meals together since then - some great, some ordinary; some memorable, some forgettable - but this meal and this memory I hold dear.

I will note that the picture I have doesn't look like the typically texture of risotto - not quiet creamy enough - but this is actually because we had a little problem with our pressure cooking allowing steam to "leak" out, which meant that we lost quite a bit of the cooking liquid.  The first batch of "risotto" was therefore more akin to stove-top cooked rice, but the second batch I made (which, of course, there is no picture of) was perfect, and the risotto had the creamy, dreamy, perfect texture.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Dinner with the Foodie Next Door: cornbread stuffing (aka cornbread dressing), sticky rice, herbed potatoes, rosemary Cornish game hens, Brussels sprouts with bacon, and the traditional teacup soup (the only part that is tradition is serving it in our teacups... the soup changes every year).

May you and your family also eat well and enjoy the sweetness of each other's company.  Happy Holidays, readers!

Mini Cherry Pies

Confession: I have never truly made pie dough from scratch.

I love to bake, but my thing is normally cookies and cakes.  If I made pies or tarts, normally I just buy a grocery store crust.  Is that terrible?

But then the other week I saw a recipe for mini cherry pies that you can make in a muffin/cupcake tin!  The recipe, which, of course, involved making pie dough from scratch, seemed delicious, and sweet dark red cherries happened to be sale at the grocery store, so it seemed like good time to try the recipe and to try my hand at making pie dough from scratch.  Also, miniaturizing desserts is a great way to make them easy to pack for lunch or even to entertain (no messy cutting and serving)!



I know cherry season is ending soon, but this recipe is perfect, even with frozen cherries or end-of-season bruised/not-so-beautiful fruit.  The cherry, vanilla, and rum flavors are classic, and this pie dough was a cinch to make and tasty just as flaky and perfect as I hoped it would.

Fresh Peach and Ginger Beer Cocktail

I am currently sitting in my apartment drinking a cocktail.

I rarely ever drink cocktails because, quite frankly, I don't like the taste of most alcohol.  This is very prohibitive to my drinking.  I love looking at the drink descriptions at bars and speakeasies, but most of the time when I actually taste the drinks, the vodka/tequila/rum/whatever hard liquor it is ends up making me wish I ordered a virgin.  Of course most of the time if you go to a bar and try to do that you'll get weird looks.  So this is why sometimes I find it's nice to just fix myself a drink to enjoy at home, while reading a book on the very comfortable couch that B. and I bought.

Recently I've actually been making a lot of these "mocktails" all thanks to the beauty that is my new hand held blender (also called a stick blender or an immersion blender).  Given all the wonderful fresh fruit that is in season right now, I've taken to making drinks built on various fruit purees.  While it's easy to use sparkling water as a base, I also love using ginger beer.
Ginger beer, generally, is not actually alcoholic, and in my experience, tends to just be synonymous with ginger ale (though I'm sure some experts out there will know be able to explain the difference, I shall not feign knowledge of things when I am truly ignorant).  I find that the slight "bite" and spiciness of ginger beer works as a great addition to all fruit bases.  One of the "mocktails" I've made is a lovely plum, ground cinnamon, honey, and ginger beer drink, which I think would be a great pre-dinner drink in the fall (maybe even before Thanksgiving?).  A summer-flavored mocktail I made had raspberries, lime juice, cane sugar, and ginger beer.  This was lovely, although I did discover an unpleasantly large amount of raspberry seeds in the bottom of my glass, which I did not consume.

This particular cocktail that I am sharing today combines the classic flavors of peach, vanilla, and ginger, which to me are all the things that should be in a good peach pie or cobbler.  It captures the quintessential elements of summer in a glass.  If you are so inclined to add alcohol to this, vanilla rum (aka vanilla extract in the making; see my previous post) also is a delicious addition.

In order to make this, if you don't have an immersion blender, go ahead and pull out the big guns; you can easily double this recipe and make it in a normal blender.  If you don't use all of the fruit puree, you can save it in the fridge for another day; it will keep for at least 3 days.

 Fresh Peach and Ginger Beer Cocktail

makes two martini glasses (easily scaled up as needed)

2 peaches
1-2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or regular granulated sugar
splash of vanilla rum or regular rum (recommended: Bicardi Gold Dark Rum)
1 bottle of ginger beer (recommended: Reed's Extra Ginger Brew)

The ratios here are just suggestions.  I like my cocktails a little fruitier than some.  The amount of sugar you need to use will also depend on how ripe and sweet your peaches are.
For each of my cocktails, I used about 3 tablespoons of peach puree (that's a little less than one peach), 1/2 tsp of vanilla sugar, 1 tsp of rum.  Shake this in a cocktail shaker with some ice and then pour into a martini glass.  Top with ginger beer.

Optional: if you're feeling extra fancy, omit the sugar in the cocktail and instead just rim your cocktail glasses with some sugar.  (If you don't know how, this video is short and great.)


Now that you have this idea though, you can run wild with it!  Combine any fruit purees of your choosing, some ginger beer (or sparkling water), and an alcohol of your choice for a great cocktail.
And, before I go, I'll share one last little trick with you: if you want an easy way to clean your stick blender without risking cutting yourself, just fill a cup with some warm water and a few drops of dish soap and blend for 30 seconds, then rinse.  Presto!
Happy Wednesday!

Homemade Vanilla Extract with Rum

Recently, I decided to make homemade vanilla extract.  Because I enjoy baking, I can easily go through about 5-7 bottles of vanilla extract a year.  Each 2 ounce bottle costs about $3 in the grocery store.  When you think about what you're buying and how easy it is to make, the cost of store-bought extract is actually pretty high.  Also store-bought vanilla extract doesn't always provide as much flavor as I would like.  Sometimes I increase the vanilla in my recipes because I just want a deeper flavor profile.  If anything I just said rings true for you, homemade is the way to go.

So how do you go about making vanilla extract?  The process is fairly simple.  I should have done it a long time ago.  All you need is some vanilla beans, a glass container, and some rum/vodka/bourbon.

I actually decided to make homemade vanilla extract because I found a very nicely priced vanilla bean supplier online who had good ratings.  The company (who is not paying me for this and does not know I am writing this) is called Beanilla.  The are predominantly a vanilla bean supplier, though they also sell other products.  Currently, they are having a sale on Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla beans; you can buy a package of ten for $8.95, which, if you've ever looked at buying beans in stores or online you know is a great deal.  They also have free shipping right now for vanilla beans and they have a coupon code SAVE10, which gives you 10% off your order.  When I saw this, I had to order them.

I got my beans in the mail, vacuum packed, within a few days.  And they even slipped me an extra bean (accidentally, I assume), so that I got 11 vanilla beans for $8.05!  When I opened the package the beans were fragrant, moist, and very plump.  They were the highest quality vanilla beans I'd worked with in a long time.  The last time I bought vanilla beans at a grocery store in France, they were rather dried out when I worked with them.

The "recipe" for vanilla extract is very simple.  You just need to take your beans and split them in half.  Using a knife to scrape the seeds (actually called "caviar") from the pods and then add both vanilla seeds and the scraped out pods to a large glass container.  I used a bottle that I bought from Ikea for $3.99 (I'm listing the price here because again, this is far cheaper than anything you can find online).
 
Now everyone has different ratios that they suggest.  After much reading, I decided that I would use seven vanilla beans (one of which I scraped out the caviar from and used in a cherry compote), and about 4 cups of dark rum.  Many people use a much higher vanilla bean to alcohol ratio, but they also expect their extract to be done in about 6 weeks.  I am fine with letting my extract takes it time to reach maturity.  Also, vanilla beans continue add flavor as long as they are submerged in alcohol, so many people re-use their beans to continue making extract.  I simply started with a more dilute mixture and will wait longer, probably 9 weeks, before testing my solution.  This is what it looks like for now.

One handle of Bicardi Dark Rum (1.75L) cost me $21.39.  I used about half of this, so let's say that was $11.  The 11 pack of vanilla beans cost me $8.05.  I used 7 of them, so that comes to about $5.  The bottle that I bought was $4.  The total cost of making this thus is roughly $20.
That may seem a bit high for now, but again, I can continue to use these beans to make more vanilla extract afterwards.  Also, I used high quality ingredients that will impart far more flavor into my baked goods later on.  I imagine this could also be used to make some pretty amazing mixed drinks.
Hopefully this project turns out well!  I'll give updates as more time passes.

Cronuts - a food trend that the Foodie Next Door had to try

 Anyone who keeps track of food fads or reads the news regarding trends in New York City (or in the USA even) should know about Dominique Ansel's Cronuts.

The cronut craze has literally swept the nation.  Bakeries in big cities like LA, DC, and Chicago are taking note of the huge success of this new baked good and selling knock-off creations called doughssants, cray-nuts, and doissants.

So what are these things?  They are hybrids: half-doughnut, half-croissant.  A flaky, deep-fried pastry filled with sweetened cream, rolled in sugar, and glazed.  And apparently something about these creations has them in high demand because even though they are selling at $5 a pop, people have been lining up outside Dominique Ansel Bakery in Soho for up to 3 hours to wait for theirs.  The cronuts are so popular that people start waiting around 5 or 6am and the bakery sells out each morning within a couple hours of opening, even though each customer is limited to two cronuts.  Cronut popularity is such that people have started scalping theirs for $20-40!

Still on vacation and now happily settled into our new apartment just 20 minutes outside of Manhattan, B. and I decided to give up some precious sleep one morning and see just how good these things could be.  We woke up at 4:45am, took the train into the city and groggily got in line.  We decided to do this on a weekday, just to make sure we weren't standing in line just to have them sell out before we got to try one.  This ended up being a very good plan, because when we got in line, there were only about 20 people or so in front of us.  The line quickly got longer though, and stretched around the corner and down the block as it got closer to opening time.

When the doors opened at 8am, Dominique Ansel himself came out and allowed a wave of people inside.  Of course, as luck would have it, B. and I were at the exact cut off point and so we had to wait outside.  But then a girl from the bakery came out with a tray of fresh, hot madeleines.  Each person in line was allowed to have one.  It was so nice, especially after a long wait.

At last, we were allowed inside.  The line moved quickly and efficiently, as the cronuts are pre-boxed and almost everyone knew exactly what they wanted.  Because of the new limit of 2 cronuts per order, B. and I split up so that he could order two and I could order two.  I was afraid this might be a bit excessive, especially since that total order came to $21.78 (post-tax), but in the end I'm glad we got that many.

There was space at a table in front, so we sat down to eat ours right away.  B. saw how good they looked and declined my offer to split one, saying that he wanted his all to himself.

The first bite immediately showed the complex texture of the treat.  The fried, sugar coated exterior gives ways to a pleasantly chewy interior, much like a yeasted doughnut, except that it has an airy quality to it.  On the second bite, I got some of the filling - vanilla crème and blackberry jam.  The jam had some acid to it, which perfectly balanced the sweet and fat of the cronut.  The glaze was very sweet (clearly the ingredients were mostly sugar and very little actual flavoring) and a bit of an overkill since there was already a sugar coating.  The cronut is very filling.  You can definitely feel the calories from the butter of the dough and the fat from the frying.  If it hadn't been for the very long wait, I don't think I would have been able to eat an entire one.

Overall, we both enjoyed our cronuts, but the price tag is a hefty one.  I'd never pay more than about $2.50 for a croissant, and a doughnut needs to be really good for me to consider it worth $3.50, so this cronut cost significantly more than I'd be willing to pay for its parents.  The cronut also didn't have the flakiness I would expect from something that is supposed to be half-croissant.

Would I like to eat one again?  Sure.  Would I like to wait 3 hours in line and pay $5?  No, thank you.


Dominique Ansel Bakery
189 Spring St (between Sullivan & Thompson)
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-219-2773

Hours: 8am to 7pm (Monday to Saturday)
            9am to 7pm (Sunday)
Closest subway stops: Spring St (C-E) or Prince St (N-R-W)