Le Cirque

Another highlight from Restaurant Week was Le Cirque, which I think was the highest-rated “fine dining” establishment I’ve been to (thus why this had to take place during Restaurant Week). I love a good trashy burger and cheap brunches, but there is something exciting about going to a restaurant where you want to be sure you have your stilettos on. There’s a quiet murmur when you walk in the door, and you breathe it in and think to yourself, “This is elegance.”

My meal was tremendous: escargot with bacon and lentils (escargot!); salmon with a crispy, salted coating, served with vegetables and a smear of polenta; and panna cotta with blood orange gelee. K was underwhelmed by her meal, but I blame that on her selections — and the fact that she was disappointed by the service. Sure, it took us longer to get our food than both the tables next to us, and another year to get our check, but the way I see it, normally restaurant experiences go so quickly because they’re trying to cycle you out, and I like to really enjoy the experience I’m paying for. Also, good service is sort of lost on me. As long as no one’s spitting in my food or cursing at me, I’m good. And that whole bathroom attendant thing, where someone hands you a paper towel when you’re done washing your hands? Worst thing ever.

Le Cirque’s dining room was unique — it’s definitely got a circus vibe, but it’s in a classy, off-beat way, rather than kitschy big top tents in primary colors. My back was to the dining room, so I didn’t get to drink it all in thoroughly, but I was fascinated by the tiny, framed 2-D wire sculptures of circus motifs (monkeys and whatnot). And then the bathroom? Ohmygoodness, it was the most gorgeous public restroom I think I’ve ever seen. There was a gorgeous birdcage chandelier that sparkled in the corner, and the heavily lacquered door had a beautiful wood grain. Proving that a 5-star restaurant is all about the details, a circus ball sticker was affixed to the tail end of the extra roll of toilet paper to keep it neat and tidy. Hilariously, it took me several minutes to figure out how to flush the toilet (which — of course! — had a unique shape), because there was a large metal thing that didn’t look button-ish above the toilet that you had to push, and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. And, I didn’t have to tip an attendant for turning on the water for me at the sink. 🙂

Restroom Rating: [rating=5]

Starbucks: Coffee, Coffee Everywhere; So many Drops to Drink

Lately, I’m obsessed with caramel macchiatos. It used to be peppermint mochas, and then gingerbread lattes, but those are unfortunately holiday specials, so I usually don’t frequent Starbucks except in November and December – until now. These days, I find myself coming up with excuses to get Starbucks, and then remembering that it’s 10pm, and I probably shouldn’t be downing caffeine.  I’m not usually into hip places and fads (you don’t want to hear me go off about “Harry Potter”), and I’ve heard a lot about how delicious Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is, but I’m sold on Starbucks, heart and soul. Being lactose intolerance is a bit tough when it comes to coffee drinks, so I appreciate that Starbucks offers soy milk.

Anyway, on one of these Starbucks-fix trips, I naturally checked out the bathroom. There’s not much to say, which is probably why I spent so much time in this post detailing my usual Starbucks purchases. (Did I mention that, before I discovered the heavenliness that is the peppermint mocha, I had quite a thing for chai lattes?) But it was clean, and the tile work was at least semi-interesting – as opposed to the boring ol’ white at Ikea.  Most notable aspect? The custom Xcelerator hand dryer that’s wrapped with coffee beans. I enjoyed that. Details, details.

Restroom Rating: [rating=2]

Grand Sichuan: Szechuan Hot Pot-ty

One of my new favorite things to do in NYC is what I’ll call “meal activities” — and there’s more than just fondue. A couple of Frenchies introduced me to raclette (you melt cheese in this space-age device, and then smother meat, potatoes and veggies with it), and this past weekend, I experienced szeuchuan hot pot: think broth fondue, only with Chinese vegetables, dumplings, meat, noodles and, for the very adventurous, things like duck tongue.

I met up with a group of new people at Grand Sichuan in Chinatown — real Chinatown, where you’re not repeatedly asked, “Purse? DVD?” — so I not only got to have this incredible new eating experience, but I also got to make a few friends. I was the lame-o in the group that couldn’t handle the spicy broth (I coughed and started crying when I had just one bite!), so I had my own little pot of boring chicken broth, to which I added a few hot peppers, because it was just too boring. The meal was delightful: you dump whichever ingredients you want into the boiling broth, scoop them out when they’re cooked and create your own little bowl of Chinese food, topped with an assortment of sauces. I am definitely going back, and I hear that Grand Sichuan serves one of the best szechuan hot pots in NYC.

The bathroom made me laugh. I mean, this is Chinatown, so you can’t expect much, but this one had two signs posted: one to tell you not to put paper in the toilet, and one to tell you turn the sink off. I hadn’t seen “no paper” signs since I was in Peru in the fall, so I felt like I was back in South America — only this time the sign was in goofy English instead of Spanish. I made the silly mistake of assuming that the sign meant paper towels and not toilet paper. Nope. I stuck my hand in the toilet to yank out the toilet paper that hadn’t flushed (ha, that’s a gross thing to admit, but I’m a good person AND a plumber’s daughter, okay?). The restaurant was right to post a sign about the sink; I turned the faucet, and the water still ran — you had to crank it hard to get the water to shut completely off. But, as I came back upstairs to our table, the amaaaaaazing aroma of szechuan hot pot was flooding my nose, making it all worth it.

The duck tongue, by the way, was not good. It didn’t taste bad, but it looked revolting, and it was like eating rubber with a bone inside.

Restroom Rating: [rating=1]

Russian Tea Room: Would you like some glitz with your borscht?

My roommate (we’ll call her K) and I are very different people, despite the fact that we’ve started dressing more and more alike since meeting 4 years ago. (Facts: Our glasses are from the same company, we both wear Asics running shoes and havw coordinating gym shorts, and we own identical blue shirts and brown skirts. Oh, and we recently bought the same earrings, although in different colors.) There are, however, two key things we have in common: we are both self-proclaimed foodies, and we are both ridonkulously thrifty. You can understand then why our favorite time of year is NYC Restaurant Week, which, fortunately for us and our foodie brethren and sistren across the five boroughs, is not one mere week but four, every day dripping in sizzling pancetta grease and gooey chocolate ganache.

The Russian Tea Room is our Restaurant Week staple — we look forward to trying new places each time, but we can’t pass up the opportunity to have to-die-for borscht and to-die-eleventy-times-for boeuf a la stroganaff (plus cheesecake!) for a measly $35, plus tax and tip. The first time we went, K gushed about her beef stroganoff for days; I’d had the chicken kiev — also delicious, but it didn’t have me gushing. I ordered the stroganoff this time, and let me tell you, it was like nectar of the gods. And this is coming from someone who hates mushrooms. Hates Mushrooms, with capital letters. I ate teensy tiny bites, savoring the tender short ribs, perfectly slathered with this creamy but brothy wonderfulness of a sauce. (I used to want to be a food writer; clearly, I am not cut out for that, no matter how much I enjoy food.) Now I get where K was coming from, and I’m going to crave that until Restaurant Week rolls around again…

Decor-wise, the Russian Team Room is over the top, and they know it. Their Google ad, in fact, says “Glitzy Decor.” You walk in and are practically knocked over, because it’s bright red and gold all over — literally all over. We sat in this massive half moon-shaped booth that traps you behind your table, and when it came time for me to check out the restroom, the bus boy gallantly rushed to our table to pull it out for me. He was sort of miffed that I’d tried to do it myself.

The food is phenomenal, and the service is impeccable, but the bathroom, despite its gold walls and gold faucets, was a bit lackluster. Sure, it was clean, and they’d at least tried by hanging artwork and installing gold trashcans in the stalls, but it looked like some tacky 1970s bathroom you’d see at a family-style restaurant in Florida. I guess that counts as “glitzy,” but I’d like to see a few matryoshka nesting dolls smiling back at me from the paper towel dispenser. Nevertheless, I will be back on the first day of the next Restaurant Week, so please have my bowl of borscht ready.

Restroom Rating: [rating=3]

brgr: When art imitates life (or, the dining room imitates the bathroom)

I have a friend who’s from France but currently living and interning in NYC for 8 months. What’s funny is that, in a lot of ways, he’s much more American than I am: he knows all the characters from “Friends” (I had to ask him who Joey Tribbiani was), loved Led Zeppelin before he knew all the English words, and is obsessed with hamburgers – so obsessed, in fact, that he once ate 6 in a week, and when he returns to Paris, he and his college buddy want to start a truly American burger joint, with trashy buns and free soda re-fills. Lately, he’s on a mission not only to find the best NYC burger, but also to do “research” for the restaurant that he hopes to open someday.

I’ve been running a lot lately and not eating enough protein to compensate, so when he invited my roommate and me to brgr (7th Ave., between 26th and 27th), I couldn’t resist the idea of greasy, beefy deliciousness exploding in my mouth, along with ample quantities of mustard, cheese and the requisite over-salted French fries. The brgr burger wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t rank it in my top 5. You weren’t able to specify how you wanted it cooked, so despite being pink inside, the patty was a bit tough. It was, however, loaded with some saucy, cheesy wonderfulness, the fries were perfect, and I liked that you could opt for a whole-wheat bun, or, if you wanted to drop 50 more cents, an English muffin to encase the 100% grass-fed beef. In sum, brgr is better than Burger King but doesn’t compare to the Burger Joint (which, unfortunately, I can’t write about in depth here because it’s so divinely dive-y that it doesn’t have a restroom).

brgr’s restroom, though? A totally different story. I forgot to take my camera with me when I went to wash the city grime off my hands before eating, and when I got to the doors of the two co-ed, one-stall bathrooms – labeled “carnivore” and “vegetarian” – I was quickly reminded to go back to the table to get it. This kind of goofiness makes me chuckle. Inside, the bathroom walls were covered with little round tiles in bright turquoise, orange and red, and there were huge mirrors above the sink and hanging on the door. I could have done that cool endless mirror thing, where you line everything up right and see infinite replications of yourself, but I was too giddy about the fact that brgr was proving why I should be writing this blog. You know why? Because the tile in the bathroom matched the round cushions on the seatbacks of the booths in the restaurant. Isn’t that COOL? My question is: what came first – the cushions or the tile?

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Think Coffee: Well, I thought I sort of knew coffee…

Coffee was never my cup of tea, along with other grownup things like beer and, well, tea, with the exception of coffee-flavored ice cream, which I loved to eat with my caffeine-loving grandfather when I was growing up. I’ve started drinking daily cups of coffee or tea at work to give me something to look forward to at 11 a.m., when I’m starting to get hungry and it’s too early for lunch. But this stuff I’m drinking comes out of foil pods, and I add powdered creamer and Splenda to it, so I’m not suprised when people tell me that it’s the furthest thing from real, good coffee. I fooled myself into thinking that, because I’ve occasionally had a cup of black coffee, I can handle anything. Well, I ordered a macchiato at Think Coffee, which is a real-deal coffee shop in the stomping grounds of NYU students, and they gave me this tiny, tiny cup with the strongest, most vile tasting liquid I’ve ever ingested. Ohmygoodness. Someone needs to tell Starbucks that they’re tricking unassuming people into terrifying coffee experiences by selling super sweet and delicious “macchiatos.”

I wish I’d ordered something else, because Think Coffee did seem like the place to get delicious brews that would blow that pod junk I’m used to drinking out of the coffee pot. The bathroom experience, however, did not disappoint. I asked the guy I was with if the bathroom had character (Me: “I have a strange question, but I have a blog about public restrooms…” Him: “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me sit down…”) Graffiti-covered bathrooms are some of my favorites because, once you’re past high school, people scribble more than “Call Joe 345-3250” or “Heather is a !@#$%” (I can’t believe I just typed special characters in place of profanity; how comic book-y.) You often find interesting gems, such as the ones in Think Coffee:

“End Israeli apartheid!”

“A piece of nostalgia: Eat me.”

And my favorite, scrawled on the world’s least powerful hand dryer with black permanent marker: “Slow as molasses.”

Coffee shops have a frenzied yet muffled vibe that I enjoy, so I won’t write off Think Coffee, but next time, I’ll stick with something normal — like, I think coffee might be a better pick.

P.S. While writing this, every time I typed “coffee,” it came out as “cofee.” Hmm. Perhaps I don’t know coffee at all.

Restroom Rating: [rating=1]

Affinia Hotel, Chicago: This Could Be the Picture that Started It All

Two years ago, when I was unemployed (wasn’t the recession fun?), I followed my then-boyfriend to Chicago for a business trip, where we stayed at the Affinia Hotel. His company didn’t know about this, so when we had an awkward run-in with one of his co-workers in the lobby, my ex told him that he met me at a bar the night before. Classy.

But what WAS classy was the hotel. I am totally a Motel 6 kind of girl – give me clean sheets, clean towels, a semi-comfortable bed and a shower, and I’m good. So I was a little overwhelmed by the coffee table books lying around in the lobby, and the Aveda lotion and shampoo in the bathroom (I hoarded the lotion; again, classy – but hey, I was unemployed!).  I distinctly remember walking into the bathroom and being blown away. Look at the color of the walls! And they glisten! And that huge mirror! (I have an admitted thing for mirrors; I currently have three in my tiny bedroom that just barely fits a full-size bed and a dresser.) And the lighting was so glorious that my Smashbox high-definition makeup actually worked. I had also just gotten a new camera for Christmas, so it seemed right for our bathroom to have a little photo op.

I took a total of about 10 pictures during our whole week in Chicago. And one of them was of our bathroom. I think this blog was clearly meant to be.

Restroom Rating: [rating=5]

Flatiron Lounge: Why I’m Using Tumblr

My friend Rich invited me out for drinks the other day at the Flatiron Lounge (37 West 19^th St.), where I met his coworkers: the Tumblr staff. I was excited to tell them all I’d recently started my own blog – but I felt sheepish telling them I was posting on Blogger. Well, they were all so awesome  and so much fun (and my blog is still quite young), so I decided to make the grand switcheroo over to Tumblr.

The Flatiron Lounge has a veritable book of $13 cocktails, and some of them aren’t for the faint of heart. topherchris had one called Teen Rebellion (or something like that), and he (almost) had us convinced that the orange bitters was in fact a finger. I ordered the delicious Ichabod’s Courage – bourbon, pumpkin puree, egg white and some kind of syrup and bourbon – which tasted like drinking pumpkin pie with alcohol in it.

I liked Flatiron Lounge a lot – the music was quiet enough that you could actually converse without screaming, which is always a plus when you’re making new acquaintances. Amusingly, all of the décor was bolted down, including the tables, the lamps on the tables and the pillows on the benches. The bathroom was nice – they were trying to have a French / 1920s type of theme, and they succeeded with circular mirrors and black-and-white prints. I got caught doing my restroom reconnaissance work when I took a picture of the “Men” and “Ladies” signs (they were pretty light boxes). “Umm, nice picture,” a guy said. And an interesting discovery: men’s rooms are not always the same as women’s rooms. topherchris offered to take photos in the men’s room, and there wasn’t any artwork on the walls. Hmmm… Does this prove the theory that men are from Mars and women are from Venus? (Do they still sell that book?)

Thanks, Rich (and Tumblr!), for a really awesome, spontaneous night!

Restroom Rating: [rating=3]

Ikea: Spare Necessities

My roommate and I simultaneously decided that it was time to grow up and stop living as if we were in college, because neither of us has been in college for quite some time. I no longer need to carry my shampoo and body wash to a communal shower each morning, so why do I still have my cute little plastic shower caddy at the foot of my bed? I’m the queen of cheapness and practicality, yes, but there comes a time when, well, it’s time to invest in something more pleasing than plastic. Not so long ago, I still had the naïve belief that one day I would wake up and be a grownup; my whole life would have changed; everything would be easy, magical, and I’d have a proverbial house with a white picket fence, and perhaps a minivan and 2.3 children. Instead, one morning I woke up and realized that that’s not how life works – if I want to be a grownup, I have to make myself into a grownup, step by step.

And so, Ikea, where the still-not-fabulously-wealthy twenty-somethings go to buy their first pieces of hardwood furniture. Isn’t it fun to fulfill stereotypes? We subwayed it all the way to Red Hook in Brooklyn (why is it called Red Hook?), and survived a cold wait for a long, meandering bus ride to Sweden’s gift to mankind. Ikea’s furniture is generally sleek and spare, but that didn’t prepare me for their nuts-and-bolts-and-nothing-else bathroom. I felt like I was at a rest area on the interstate – sure, it was clean and all, but it wasn’t inviting. And it didn’t scream Ikea, you know? They have all of these adorable room setups throughout the store, including cute little bathrooms, and then you use their actual restroom, and it’s an industrial, antiseptic box with a toilet and stainless steel trashcan. The only sign that gave away that this was, indeed, the Ikea restroom was an ad posted in front of the toilet for shelving units. Even the blue “women’s restroom” sign on the door wasn’t Ikea blue.

It wasn’t the type of restroom to write home about – only to blog about, I suppose – but I still love Ikea, especially after all the furniture’s been delivered, built and set up in the living room. I also got rid of that shower caddy.

Did I mention that my favorite Christmas present came from Ikea? It’s a fluffy puppy that I got at a white elephant party. His name is Walter.

Restroom Rating: [rating=1]

Stop & Shop and Take a Potty Break

I lived on Long Island for three years after college, and it’s a proven fact that I’m perhaps the only non-native Long Islander who loves it there. I miss my cute little town, the Manhasset Bay, my spacious apartment, my 12-minute commute, the accent I started to get (but have since lost), being 20 minutes from three malls, 45 minutes from NYC and 45 minutes from the beach…and a million and one other things, including Stop & Shop and my eye doctor. My eye doctor is, in fact, so awesome that I still make the trek out to Long Island every year or so to get an updated prescription (check out Eyesite in Sight in Port Washington).

Fortunately for me, my eye doctor’s office is located in the same plaza as Stop & Shop, so while I’m waiting for those drops to dilate my eyes so he can see waaaaay back to my retina, I head over to pick up some stuff I can’t get in Manhattan: Classico Florentine Spinach and Cheese pasta sauce, and 24-pack tubs of freshly baked Stop & Shop chocolate chip cookies (for $3.99!).

I’m generally not one to use restrooms in supermarkets, but when you’ve spent over an hour getting there (subway, LIRR, 1.5-mile walk), sometimes you just gotta go, especially when you drink as much water as I do (8 cups a day really does do a body good, and gives you lots of opportunities to check out public restrooms). Stop & Shop’s restroom was a true example of a bathroom that catches you off guard by being more than you’d expect. It was neat, clean and well lit – and between the potted tree in the corner and the gorgeous earth-toned tile, I felt as if I was in a garden in Tuscany instead of a Long Island grocery store. Okay, not really – only in a “when you’re here you’re family” Olive Garden type of way.

Restroom Rating: [rating=3]