the plaza food hall by todd english

When we were young, a food hall (or food court, as we call them in the Philippines) was akin to a culinary Switzerland—a place where my parents could take all the kids with dissimilar cravings and feed them without too much drama. All our folks had to do was give us money and we could get whatever it was our tummy desired: pizza, tempura, hamburgers, Mongolian stir-fry, halo-halo. And we could all still sit down at one table and eat as a family. But food halls in the Philippines are very much like their traditional American counterparts: usually located in a shopping mall and chock full of fast food stands—not exactly what one would think of as haute cuisine.

My view of food halls changed somewhat when I got to eat at Marché in Singapore some years ago (funnily enough, Marché actually hails from Switzerland). Built to give you the feeling that you are eating in a European market (or in some parts, a Swiss chalet), the ingredients are fresh and the food just-cooked.

Lately here in New York, the idea of what a food hall is has been turned upside down in my head yet again. In recent months, a few gourmet food halls have popped up in the city that are bears little resemblance to your momma's food court. Last night, I ventured with a big group of friends into The Plaza Food Hall by celebrity chef, Todd English. This food hall boasts eight specialty food stations as well as numerous gourmet delights to tempt any foodie shoppaholic.

My friend Jammy specifically requested the table in the demo kitchen when she made our reservation so our party of 7.25 (myself, three couples and a baby) had plenty of space to devour food in. Boy, did we need that space because we ordered quite a bit of food!

The Restaurant Week menu was available and seemed to be a good deal. The lunch menu includes 4 pieces of fried oysters with caviar creme fraiche, lemon zest and micro cilantro as an appetizer.

Add to that a Bianca pizza and a mini cheese cake for dessert and it's definitely not a bad deal for $24.07. For dinner, they change it up with half a dozen fresh oysters, and a choice between the Bianca pizza or roasted prime rib for the entree, plus the same cheese cake dessert. You could do worse with $35.00.

Seduced with the bounty of choices from the meat and seafood grills, the sushi bar, the dumpling station and the pizza station, we decided to order a la carte. My mom always tells me I shouldn't make decisions about food when I'm starving and she's always right. In a state of starvation, I went with the Food Hall Burger and its half pound american kobe beef pattie, fried onion, grilled bacon, roasted tomato and gorgonzola, all slathered in barbeque sauce.

It was good but the prime rib sliders, described in New York magazine as "piled with ribbons of tender meat, dripped with a rich Fontina dressing, and served on fresh brioche buns", probably would have been a better choice. Three of us ordered this burger and while it did the job, it wasn't the best any of us had ever had.

I didn't dwell on this too much though because the mac n cheese blew my mind. Is there anything better than macaroni, pulled pork and caramelized onions all slathered in melted aged cheddar? Ok lots of things are but none come to mind while you're dishing bite after delicious bite of this goodness into your mouth, I promise.

I had my hands full (literally) with my massive burger plus the mac 'n cheese so I didn't really get to taste everyone else's food. Consider the rest of the post as food porn. Coco and JM ordered the special: a flat bread pizza with pork belly bits, green onion and sriracha.  

Jammy and Sancho ordered one of their favorite pizzas: fig jam, prosciutto and gorgonzola on a rosemary crust.

There were a couple of rolls from the sushi bar on the table, too, but I haven't had a yen for sushi in awhile so I didn't try any of them. Thought they looked pretty (and yes, I'm sorry that's all I have to say about them). Mica had the lobster roll in the picture below while Jammy had the dragon roll further below. 

All in all, a very good meal. It's hard to find a chic place where one can eat good food at reasonable prices, get seated as a fairly large party painlessly and not be rushed out. So I'm grateful to The Plaza Food Hall for providing a bunch of high school friends and their significant others a great spot to catch up over a good meal.

The Plaza Food Hall by Todd English is located at 768 Fifth Avenue (at Central Park South), New York, NY 10019. Phone (212) 986-9260 for reservations.

cocktail hour: angel's share

One of the things that makes summer exciting: the profusion of bright and shiny new summer cocktail menus. As taken as I am with winter-perfect concoctions involving whiskey, egg and spices, there's something exciting about a refreshing tipple made with vibrant summer fruits. A couple of weeks ago, my cousin Melissa and I went to St. Mark's Place to enjoy the grilled goodness at Yakitori Taisho and then have some delicious cocktails at Angel's Share. Angel's Share is a speakeasy of sorts that's only accessible through the Japanese restaurant Village Yokocho. They have some truly exceptional Japanese bartenders that take their craft very, very seriously and I just love it there.

It was a humid Tuesday evening so I immediately gravitated to this summery drink: Watermelon Man. Made with organic cucumber-flavored vodka, fresh watermelon juice and a sprig of basil, it was deliciously refreshing and deceptively strong.

Melissa picked the Velvet Scene, a drink apparently conceived by pastry chef Chika of Chikalicious. This effervescent drink contains Tanqueray gin, fresh kiwi and fresh grapefruit juice made just from the sweet pulp, all spiked with a bit of honey and lavender.

The most memorable drink of the night, however, was the Cheek to Cheek, which had us so intrigued that we didn't want to share. It starts out typical enough for a cocktail: white rum, muddled berries, fresh lemon juice and white cranberry juice. But then Vincotto is added in—slow-cooked, non-fermented grape reduced until its sugars have caramelized. And then comes balsamic honey, yoghurt and mascarpone foam, and suddenly you're in dessert territory. Is it a cocktail masquerading as dessert or vice versa? I don't know, but it is decadent and delicious.

If my evening at Angel's Share was any indication of how the rest of the summer will turn out, it's gonna be a sweet, sparkling and deliciously tipsy one!

Angel's Share is located at 6 Stuyvesant St., 2nd fl, New York, NY, 10003.

cocktail hour: clover club

I find that a very well-made cocktail can be as satisfying as a delicious meal. So when I read about the first ever NYC Cocktail Week going on from June 15-29, I was beyond excited. Adding to the anticipation was the fact that some of the city's best cocktail bars are participating: Clover Club, Death & Company, Employees Only and Lani Kai. The deal is that you get two cocktails plus an appetizer for just $20.11—pretty sweet considering most specialty cocktails at such establishments run from $12-16. The event benefits City Harvest's fight against hunger and The Museum of the American Cocktail's efforts to preserve mixological history—and I do so enjoy drinking for a cause!

The problem is that what I love about going to these cocktail bars is the experience of perusing extensive cocktail menus or in cases when there is no menu, spilling obscure cravings to the bartenders and waiters and allowing them to surprise me with something incredible in a glass. This doesn't necessarily lend itself well to the restrictions that understandably come with Cocktail Week's prix-fixe arrangements.

I trekked over to Brooklyn one Thursday night to join my cousin Melissa and her boyfriend Ben for cocktails at one of their favorite spots: Clover Club. We went there brimming with excitement at the prospect of Cocktail Week but our hopes were quickly shot down when we were told that the special menu was only served before 7PM and after 10PM. We asked to take a look at the menu, nevertheless, to see what was being offered. On Clover Club's NYC Cocktail Week menu:

COCKTAILS (Choose two)
New York Sour
Bulleit Rye Whiskey, lemon, orange juice, red wine
Cloister
Tanqueray No. 10 gin, herbal liqueur, grapefruit, lemon juice
Hotel Nacional Special
Zacapa 23 Rum, apricot liqueur, lime juice, pineapple juice
Jack Rose
Applejack, lime juice, grenadine

APPETIZERS (Choose one)
Crisps
All right, so they are potato chips ...
but they are tossed in duck fat and
served with a truffled crème fraiche.
Deviled Eggs
Classic deviled eggs, served three ways:
topped with smoked paprika & garlic breadcrumbs,
crispy bacon croutons and mushroom duxelles.
One of each. 

These drinks and snacks sound lovely enough but once I browsed through the extensive cocktail menu, so many wonderful things jumped out at me and I realized that I would not have been happy sticking to the abridged Cocktail Week menu. There were so many intriguing drinks waiting to be tasted and I didn't mind paying a few extra dollars for that privilege. For my first drink, I chose the signature drink, the Clover Club, and with my first sip, I fell in love. Any place that has an egg white in its signature tipple is clearly my soulmate. The Clover Club contains gin, dry vermouth, lemon, raspberry syrup and egg white, and is oh so very delicious ...

I can't recall what Ben's drink was but it was bright, refreshing and perfect for a humid summer afternoon ...

After tasting Ben's excellent drink choice, I thought I'd follow suit for my next drink. Ben ordered the Barrymore Room off the menu and I did the same. This was definitely my kind of drink with rye whiskey, an egg white and some mysterious but delicious friends comprising the drink. I seem to be embroiled in a love affair with rye whiskey and egg these days (I recently had a particularly delicious concoction in Milk & Honey involving rye whiskey, champagne and an egg yolk! LOVE.). It's out of control.

For her second drink, Melissa chose the Blush Baby, which seemed very promising with its mixture of rum, demerara syrup, lemon, blackberry, raspberry and rosé wine. From the look of it, you expected a drink just bursting with berry flavors ... but it tasted kind of watery. It was just okay.

For his last drink, Ben ordered the much maligned and mistreated Mai Tai. If you've only had this in, say, a Cancun all-inclusive resort which shall remain unnamed with an odd fellow named Greg, you'd probably hate the stuff. At its worst, a Mai Tai will contain cheap rum, artificially-flavored juice and that godawful darn sweetener. Over at Clover Club where the ingredients are legit, the Mai Tai sparkles with rum and fresh lime juice and makes you just want to lay out on a sandy beach somewhere with cocktail in hand.

Cocktail Week or not, I thoroughly enjoyed my evening at Clover Club. Admittedly, the Clover Club would be quite a trek for a Manhattanite and I'm quite sure that even a serious cocktail enthusiast from Manhattan would rather squeeze into one of the tiny cocktail bars in the city for a tipple rather than trek out to Brooklyn. I live in the Financial District, however, which is a skip and a hop to Brooklyn so I am much more inclined to come back for more. I thought that the Clover Club's expansive digs dressed in vintage sofas and leather booths were a nice, relaxing change from Manhattan's lilliputian bars where you sometimes have to battle for seating space. The existence of this gorgeous bar with even more gorgeous drinks definitely adds to Brooklyn's ever-growing draw on me.

Clover Club is located at 210 Smith St between Baltic and Butler Sts, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (718-855-7939)

wanderlust: the 8 restaurant, macau

I love dimsum. I love the mayhem of it: the little Chinese ladies pushing around metal carts loaded with dumpling- and bun-filled bamboo steamers; the aggressive and usually elderly women who accost the pushcarts before they even reach their tables to ensure they grab the best stuff first; and the way the pushcart ladies shove those steaming parcels under your nose, demanding you decide right now whether you want this or not. It is pure heaven for me to spend a weekend afternoon surrounded by this madness because it means I get to eat one succulent dumpling after another until I am dizzy from sheer gluttony.

The Eight Restaurant at the Grand Lisboa in Macau is quite different from the dimsum experience I'm accustomed to. For one thing, this Cantonese/Huaiyang cuisine-focused restaurant boasts of not just one but two Michelin stars. It is housed in one of the most over-the-top and opulent casinos in Macau, with sleek and modern interiors by famed Hong Kong designer Alan Chan. No little ladies with pushcarts here—but over 50 types of dimsum are, in fact, served in these luxe digs during lunch.

The restaurant takes its name from the number considered most auspicious by the Chinese because it sounds like the word which means "to generate wealth." The Chinese consider the number 8 so lucky, in fact, that they started the Beijing Olympics at exactly 8 seconds and 8 minutes past 8PM on August 8, 2008. So it's no surprise that a casino such as Grand Lisboa would pick this lucky number as the name of its most heralded restaurant.

My in-the-know friend Tamara picked this place when I told her I wanted to eat really good Cantonese fare. We came to 8 Restaurant right after swan-diving off the Macau Tower so the first order of business was getting some celebratory drinks. I was stunned when they brought us the wine list.

I was so intimidated by that list that I choked and ordered a beer instead! Next order of business was to get some food inside our grumbling bellies. We quickly devoured the standard dimsum favorites we ordered, like steamed shrimp dumplings and siu mai:

We had some spring rolls, which are always delicious ...

... these spring and summer rolls were phenomenal. Our server recommended this and it totally blew us away. Basically, they've taken a crisp fried spring roll and enveloped it in a layer of soft rice flour wrapper. The wonderful textures just take this roll to a whole other level of deliciousness. I would jump off another tower just to have one right now.

After the dim sum, we got down to serious heart-palpitating business. We had roasted goose, which I was really excited about. Roasted goose is a dish I associate with vacations to Hong Kong because my family and I used to bring an entire roasted goose back to the Philippines every time we took a trip to Hong Kong. We love it that much and this one lived up to my expectations.

Because we do love us some pork, we had to have barbecued suckling pig. I love the perfectly crisp skin, which is attached to the tender meat by a very thin layer of fat. It is served with these cute little rice cakes at 8 Restaurant.

Finally, there was some pigeon, which had been poached in homemade soya sauce. Tender and delicious, albeit freaky for Westerners, I can imagine.

Michele and Tamara were generous enough to treat us for lunch so I don't quite know how much our meal cost, but according to Tamara she was surprised at how reasonable the prices were considering the restaurant's 2-Michelin star status. So if you find yourself in Macau jonesing for some solid Chinese food, definitely pay 8 Restaurant a visit. The food is excellent and the decor jaw-dropping—no pushy ladies but an experience to remember, nevertheless.

The 8 Restaurant is located at the second floor of the Grand Lisboa. Phone (853) 8803 7788 or visit the website for reservations.

beer chronicles: birreria

Oh beer, how I love thee. Let me count the ways.

1. I am one of those people who, at the end of a long and tough day, finds solace in an ice cold brewsky.
2. After running 26.2 miles over the course of 5 hours last November, I stood for about 2 more so I could tip back a couple of the good stuff.
3. I'm quite positive that the sight of a well-stocked beer aisle or a bar tap with a large variety of brews makes my eyes twinkle far more than the Barney's shoe sale rack.
4. I was once the hostess at Loreley, a German beer garden in the Lower East Side. While it may have caused a bit of confusion among patrons who did not expect the hostess to look like an anime character, I had mad skills at handling highly inebriated folks. And I got to drink a lot of delicious German beer.
5. I find it very difficult to take a man who doesn't drink beer seriously. The sight of a man sipping a fruity drink beside a girl chugging a beer (a tiny one at that) is just sad.
6. At any given time, I will most likely have more questions for my server about the beer selection than today's specials.
7. If I ever became filthy rich, the only thing I'm positive I'd want in my dream home is a wall full of taps with all my favorite brews.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. I love beer. So it recently struck me that it's been a serious oversight on my part that my beloved brewsky hasn't received some special love on my blog. Well, all that changes starting now with my new section, Beer Chronicles. With beer spots spreading in New York like an epidemic, I'll have lots of excuses opportunities to drink up and share my favorite finds with you.

To kick off this new section, let's start with the hottest, newest beer spot on the island: Birreria.

Birreria is the crown jewel of the Italian marketplace behemoth that is Eataly. I'd been wanting to try it but the first time we came to Eataly, it wasn't open yet. Last Monday, I was wandering past the Flat Iron building carrying a bag of groceries and thinking about what a beauty Manhattan is during the golden hour when I realized a friend of mine from Manila was standing right on the street corner. Paolo convinced me without too much arm twisting to join him and some friends for a brew and some chow at Birreria.

It was surprisingly busy considering it was a Monday night. We had to line up and check in with a host at the ground floor, who took down the size of our party and a cellphone number they could text us at once there was a table ready. We got the text about half an hour later and finally got on the elevator which would take us to the rooftop. Once there, it turned out our table still wasn't ready and we had to hang around a bit more. Finally we were seated and again, a bit more of a waiting game for a server ... for beer ... a long wait for beer.

But once the beer and food arrived, all memories of waiting seemed to vanish. We started with a delicious brew recommended by our server, a Belgian-style brown ale aptly named Raison d'Etre by Dogfish Brewery. For $20, we got a carafe of the good stuff, which fills four of their glasses up to ye high.

This was my first time to try a Dogfish Brew and I have to say, respect! It's a complex beer, with fruity notes and caramel-like sweetness coming from beet sugar and raisins, but with a shade of bitterness to round out the flavor. It also packed a pretty strong punch at 8%. I liked it a lot. As much as I love beer though, this plate utterly and completely stole the show ...

That, my friends, is the most succulent and flavorful piece of pork shoulder I have ever sunk my teeth into. Beautifully marbled with fat, braised in beer to tender perfection, sweetened with a dash of apricot jam and given an extra kick with the side of mustard, it is pure bliss in a bite. At first, I was taken aback that such a tiny plate was priced at $19 but after tasting that stuff, I'd say it's worth every penny. I would come back to Birreria over and over and over and over again just for this. Apparently, Birreria gets its pork from a farm in Iowa where pigs are raised in the wild and fed clovers, grass and herbs. If this is what happy pigs taste like, then run free my dears.

The cotechino sausage that we ordered was really yummy as well but nowhere near as transcendent of an experience as the pork shoulder. This, I think, is a tad overpriced at $19. I mean, come on.

We sampled a few other beers, one of the most memorable being the Palo Santo, which we had to order since it's practically named after our visiting friend. This beer is serious business with an alcohol content of 12%. Also a Dogfish brew, it is an intense, unfiltered brown ale swirling with flavors of caramel, vanilla and good old Paraguayan Palo Santo wood—the material used to create the wooden brewing vessels used for this beer. Good stuff but so strong that they will only serve you half a Teku at at time for $7. The boys liked it.

We finished the night off with the Baladin Al-Iksir, a solid Belgian-style brown ale primarily fermented using whiskey yeasts. Lighter than a Palo Santo but rich and intriguing, nonetheless, I found this to be a great introduction to Italian beer.

Overall, I really enjoyed my Birreria experience. And because I have absolutely no ability to stay away from life-changing pork and a beer selection with depths that need to be plumbed, I will surely come back. It's probably not for everyone. I would say don't come here if all you're after is the view (the Empire State building view is a tad obstructed by the mechanisms for a ). And it's probably not the place for you if what you're looking for is that communal, lager-sloshing, Oktoberfest-type beer garden experience. Birreria is definitely more of a restaurant with an impressive selection of beer than a beer garden that happens to serve food. But if the thought of savoring an exotic selection of craft beers and top notch food makes your heart skip a beat, then this place is for you. Take it from the sign below, which sums up what this place has to offer quite nicely:

I, for one, can't wait to get back on that roof! Thanks for the treat guys!

Birreria is located at Eataly, 200 5th Avenue (entrance on 23rd Street), New York, NY 10010. Reservations for parties of 6-12 persons will be accepted beginning July 1, 2011. Phone (212) 229 2560.