2 Restaurants in a day... oh my tummy

I just came back from Brasserie 8 1/2 with my team. There are 9 girls in my team and the only guy is our VP, so we always get this girl's day out kind of lunch thingys planned out.

The decor is very sultry and swanky sexy, very open and air-y for a midtown restauant. It's one of those place where you'd take your client to impress them. They are in the basement of the building that hosts Bank of America IB, so that gives you an idea of where to got that business-ish sexiness from.

Food was good in my opinion. It's marked as French, but I'd say nothing on the menu surprised me. No snails, no ox tails. Off of the Restaurant Week menu, I had:
- Trout Tartare with horseradish ice cream (looks and tastes like salmon, had pine nuts in it, but overall, it was ok, I wasn't that bothered by the pine nuts.)
- Rissotto with rabbit confit and spinch (not a huge spinch fan, but there weren't too much of it. The rabbit confit, on the other hand, tasted just like CHICKEN! argh, why does everything have to taste like chicken!)
- Blood orange tart (had 1 slice of blood orange on top of the creme tart, triple berry sauce, and a piece of burnt marshmellow... I really like blood orange, but this is just a total false advertisement! 1 slice? what a rip-off)

I give it 6 out of 10. Rissotto wasn't cooked evenly and the rabbit confit, c'mon, could have done better. Oh yea, right in the middle of us eatting, I mentioned to my coworker that the rabbit doesn't taste like rabbit. She had the rissotto too. She's like, what rabbit? I'm like... the meat in the rissotto is rabbit. SHE THREW HER FORK DOWN and looked so shocked. RABBIT? what? I thought it was chicken!!! See, only if I kept my mouth shut until she was done. Oh well, then she proceed to pick out every single piece of rabbit out. Reminds me of my favoriate fortune cookie saying: That wasn't chicken. =)


Anyways, I still have another one to test out tonight. EN Japanese Brasserie in West Village. They are famous for their fresh-made tofu and yuba. It's made at 6pm, 7:30pm, 9pm and 10:30pm each night. Our reservation is at 6:30pm. But I hope that our waitter would take my request to give me only the 7:30pm tofu. The tofu is served warm or chilled. I will definitely get BOTH!

I don't see the Restaurant Week menu on their website, but they seems like the Omikase type - leave it up for the chef to choose your dishes. So you get an assortment of small dishes and get a taste of everything. I like-y.... =)






The second picture is the yuba sashimi. Yuba is the wrinkly film on top of a hot soy milk that's getting cold. I don't know what's it called in Chinese, but I'm sure we have it in China.


I wish I could just chew the food and spit it out, so I don't gain weight. Like the episode in Sex and the City, where Miranda's LA friend spits out the steak after chewing it.


Sat. night is trio-couple night. Judy, Hannah and I are the Jersey Trio, and now we have all boyfriends. So it's turned into a +1 night. Triple date, yay~


Have a fabulous weekend girls!