Ye Olde Tavern Manchester, VT

Olde it was, but Tavern it was not. The Ye Olde Tavern was set in a beautiful colonial house. The entrance was narrow, and each of the rooms were decorated slightly differently - cream tablecloths instead of white, and maybe red flowers instead of yellow. It felt much more formal than we expected, except that everyone sat next to mountains of ski gear.

The Pegu: Gin, Cointreau, and lime juice. I wasn't driving.

Cranberry fritters with maple syrup butter: 7/10 They were a little heavy, but the maple syrup butter was so good, and had such a lightness to the taste, that I was more eating the butter with fritters than the fritters with butter.

Venison sausage in raspberry sauce 9/10: The sauce wasn't too sweet, and who doesn't love a hearty Vermont sausage? The meat was on the gamier side, but it fit the whole rustic country theme.

Lobster Mac and Cheese: 6.8/10 This was not quite a 7 because the pasta was slightly overcooked penne... suboptimal. But the cheese and lobster were better incorporated than some of the places that we went to in Maine. The flower was a pretty touch but was very out of place...

Prime rib: 6.8/10 Nothing was wrong with this dish... but the meat was just cut a little too thickly, and it  wasn't seasoned quite enough. Maybe I've just had too much Lawry's. Also what's up with the tiny slivers of golden beats and snap peas?!

Ye Olde Tavern was a nice homey restaurant. The dinners were a pleasant break away from fast food and waffles, but overall, it was nothing too amazing. We've been to a few local joints (such as the Hatchery) that has pretty good food, but we haven't found a great dinner place in Manchester Vermont yet! The search continues the next time we ski there... probably in a few years.

El Toro Blanco... hot new restaurant- off night?

El Toro Blanco is supposed to be really good, but maybe I went on an off night or had a weird lunch, because the foods were perfectly cooked, but many tasted bland. The people who recommended El Toro Blanco love sauce much more than I do and my fellow diners shared my concerns, so I'm guessing that the sauce station was unmanned that night.

Guacamole 9/10: Delicious. It was creamier than any guacamole I've had, which makes me think that they added something. Also there was a hint of smoked pepper. The dipping sauces came in 3 flavors: burn-your-throat, tomatillo, and soupy-salsa.

Tamale 5/10: It's a struggle finding the perfect tamale. This one was on the sweeter side and much more moist than most tamales, but it was much too decorated. It was hidden underneath the mountain of sauce, and once you strip the sauce away, you find a soggy sweet cornbread.

Special steak taco with melted cheese 10/10: Best dish of the night. It came sizzling hot with warm taco shells in a little box. The balance of sauce and cheese was perfect. The cheese wasn't too oily, and the salsa on top wasn't too acidic.

Empanadas. 5/10: Not a good sign that I can't remember the protein inside. The sauce tasted like princess sauce: ketchup, mayo, and maybe a hint of barbecue. Come to think of it, maybe it was short rib...

Fish, Shrimp, and Al Pastor tacos. 6/10: All three of these had perfectly tender protein, a nice balance of meat to veggies, something crunchy and bright, and NO SAUCE. With a dollop of sauce, these could be 9/10. So sad.

Flautas 6.5/10: Once again I've forgotten the protein. I think it was shredded duck. The flauta was nice and crispy under all the decorations, which was a pleasant surprise.

Corn 9/10: I love mexican corn. I can't believe they'd charge a $10 premium to cut the corn off the cob, but I just can't help myself. Also they cooked some onions and mixed it in, which makes it extra good. Perhaps I'll grill this myself and blog about it one day.

This dish did make me realize that they were using particularly sweet corn, so maybe the sweetness of the tamale was just a result of the corn.

Grilled lobster 8/10: Difficult to eat, but delicious. Grilled lobster is almost always overcooked, so I've given up on docking points as long as it as a hint of smoke but no charred pieces where I can taste ash and metal (you'd be surprised how hard it is to get that balance).

Steak 7/10: No complaints here. The melty cheese with either green tomato or tomatillos slices inside was quite delicious, but none of the mains were as delicious as the corn!

Apple pie empanadas with caramel and ice cream 6.5/10: They tasted like fried apple pie. It was good, but nothing new. The whole thing was a little too sweet for me, and even though the other empanadas didn't have a flakey crust, this one absolutely should.

Tres leches cake 8/10: Tres leches cake was my favorite dessert until I made it for xmas one year and read the nutrition facts on the ingredients. Oops! This version was very good because they used marshmallow fluff on top, which tastes different from the cream-based everything else. It also gives a certain lightness to the otherwise physically and calorically heavy dessert.

Overall El Toro Blanco's a solid restaurant. I'll have to go back to find out if I visited on an off night someday. It was good enough, and the food was varied enough, that I'm willing to give it another shot.

The ambiance was great - it was fun and lively without being too loud. The waitress offered us tequila shots for dessert, maybe she should should have offered those as appetizer. The blog post would be a little different then...

Fast Food on the way to Skiing... and Waffle Cabin!

Fast food might be cheap, full of preservatives, and commercialized (I mean it's a hundred billion dollar business), but sometimes it's savory and keeps you alive during long car trips. There's also something to be said for the ability to create the same taste over and over again and have the food to be tasty enough that people keep going back.

Since I didn't grow up with fast food, I don't crave it very often, though sometimes curiosity gets the best of me. Here are my favorites:

Arby's: I visited my first Arby's at the age of 23 or something. It was a bit of a revelation. Mass produced deliciously seasoned curly fries!

Sauce dispensing machines... with horseradish? really?!

You need quite a bit of sauce to make the sandwich work, but then again so do most restaurants. Who the heck cares that you had to pump it out of a plastic bag hidden in a tin box.

Roast beef with cheese on onion bread. Not bad, and it costs less than the taxes at a lot of dinners!

Hmm ice cream. It tastes the same as a lot of overpriced ice cream in expensive restaurants... but with Hershey's fudge.

Dunkin Donuts: Apparently a lot of Americans wake up to this. I found out that they have this vanilla chai tea that's absolutely delicious. I don't really drink caffeine, but I'm willing to drink something that tastes like sugary milk with some cinnamon spice!

Nice view eh?

And then I had these absurdly awesome hash browns!! They're so good!

And then I got this disgusting sandwich. WTF is that inside?! did someone paint a yellow circle on my egg white? It makes me so sad that people eat this. I'd rather pay up and get Finagle Bagel with real bagels and real eggs. (but I'd still get the tea and hash browns!!)

It wasn't all fun and expedient billion dollar franchises. A lot of Vermont ski resorts have the Waffle Cabin, which deserves a cult following of its own. They have perfected the sugar waffle... and we had to wait at least 15 minutes for the dude to finish his tinkle break.

But I got my perfect waffle. The batter is somewhere between donut and cake. A patina of crunchy sugar is cooked into every nook and cranny. My teeth hurt and my stomach longs for it as I type. I paid them a lofty 75c to drizzle that baby with chocolate syrup that usually ends up on my face and clothes.

It was a great experience and all, but it's not for the health conscious. Then again, most fine dining isn't for the health conscious either. Great restaurants cook the food in butter and oil too, friends; they're just clever enough emulsify/foam/otherwise hide it marbled or soaked into meat and fungi.

mMMm...Hand Meat Pie at home

Apparently this is also called a Pasty Pie, but I prefer the name "Meat Pie."

It involves a crust (I like store bought puff pastry), and a delicious meat filling, which can be whatever you want.

I was in the mood for a beef and potato filling because no store I know of sells shredded duck. Potatoes are a great addition to the meat pie, because the soft starchiness makes the inside of the pie taste fluffier.

Step 1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Step 2. Cut veggies. The key is to dice everything finely so that you get nice even bites.

I used onion, shallots, carrots, and potatoes.

Step 3: Add beef and season! We added tomato paste, worchester sauce, paprika, a dash of cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste.

Let it all cool!! and make sure that it's not too liquid, or the dough will be soggy. You can dump out the excess liquid or just tilt the pan and let it drain to one side.

In the meantime...
Step 4: Roll out pastry dough

Step 5: Stuff it.

Step 6: Seal it. I sealed it with little egg.

Step 7: Poke holes on top with a fork or knife so that the dough doesn't split open while cooking. If you want, you can brush the top with some egg and sprinkle some chunky flavored salt on top.... whatever you like.

Step 8: Throw it into the oven at 400 degrees and cook for 10-15 minute until browned.

Step 9: Eat!! Don't burn yourself. These come out smokin hot.

Someone told me that he could eat 4, so I made 4, but here we are after 2... completely stuffed!

Brooklyn Fare's coveted menu

Cesar Ramirez does not allow photos or note taking in his acclaimed 3 Michelin star restaurant, Brooklyn Fare. Even after being named the best restaurant in NYC by many, only a single Danish blogger has posted the full menu (so my lazy google searching tells me).

I'm morally opposed to this strict and secretive practice, especially when so many restaurants that are on par with (if not better than) Brooklyn Fare allow note taking. I will only take this post down if someone gives me a good reason to.

Here's the 23 course meal that I had at Brooklyn Fare. By a conservative estimate, I'm missing at most 2 courses... and that just means that the courses were not memorable.

First, a crash course on the fish dishes that I did not bother to paint over and over again:

At least 4 dishes were a thin slice of fish paired with an even thinner circular pickled crunchy "vegetable", usually a tuber, in a pool of citrus sauce and a beautiful little flower on top. Everything but the sauce was put together with tweezers (and a lot of sweat and concentration).

Without further delay:

1. Kabocha squash with orange and yogurt foam 9.5/10: The squash and orange puree could have been a little smoother and less hot. Otherwise an amazing start!

2. Japanese butterfish 9/10: I was really amused by the orange theme with a mini marigold-like flower here. The serving dish was kind of pretty with little circular holes. Circles were another theme. A third theme was also started with dish - citrus-ness.

3. Knifejaw with cucumber and cucumber blossom 9/10: Each fish was slightly different, but honestly with a few glasses of wine, it all started meshing together. This dish was still early enough that I enjoyed it immensely.

4. King salmon with trout roe 10/10: For both taste and presentation, this is the first dish that truly stood out. A dollop of creme fraiche was hidden between the thin pastry cup and fish.

5. Grouper with pickled turnip 7/10: Similar looking to previous fish courses, and the taste was completely overpowered by the lemony sauce. There was a green sauce on the bottom that I could only taste briefly before the citrus took over.

6. Black river Russian osetra caviar 7/10: Eh. There are many other places where I can get osetra caviar. The dish lacked creativity... although it looked like there were only 3 ingredients: caviar, creme fraiche, and a pastry shell... but I could have sworn I tasted something sour and sweet like a pickled onion on the bottom.

7. Red trumpet fish with pickled daikon 7/10: Another similar fish course. It was starting to get a little repetitive. I remember the pickled daikon having a red ring and tasted closer to raw radish.

8. Golden eyed snapper with burdock root and shiso 8/10: Tasted more or less the same with a little more herbal flavor from the burdock root. The thinly shredded (and fried?) pieces on top added a new and exciting crunch.

I remember the last time I was at BK fare, there was crunchy stuff on half the dishes and nearly cut my mouth. This time, the inclusion of crunch was much appreciated and used on fewer courses.

9. Red sea perch with gelee of sake 10/10: I knew this was going to be a great dish the moment the bowl was set down. The bowl was a soft dimple, like a thick round piece of white dough with a soft depression in the middle. The red trumpet fish was raw, but the skin looked as if it had been charred on a grill, and tasted distinctly smoked. I. Love. Sea Perch. It's so soft and insanely good. The sake gelee were thin clear circles - as light as plastic wrap. They were carefully draped over the fish with tweezers.

This was my favorite dish, and the start of my favorite 3 course sequence.

10. Hokkaido sea urchin with truffle and brioche 10/10: Another favorite of mine. You'd think that piling truffle on sea urchin would be overkill. It kind of was, but in a roll-your-eyes-back great way.

11. Snails with garlic sabayon and crispy shallots 10/10: The advantage of sketching instead of taking photos is that I can pretend to cut the dish in half and show you the inside of an otherwise boring picture of foam and little dots of red crispy shallots. The dish was very french with a green pesto-like sauce on the bottom. The sabayon really helped wrap the flavors together and let the flavor last on the tongue without leaving a heavy film of butter.

12. Young snapper 4/10: The token fried dish. I remember distinctly a fried dish burning my mouth during my last visit, so I was careful to give the fish extra time to cool. Once again, it was under seasoned and kind of boring looking.

13. Sea urchin and caviar 7/10: I vaguely remember the sea urchin being cut up, and the dish tasted a little smokey. Not a good sign that I can't remember much else.

14. Japanese red snapper with scallion 7/10: This was the first cooked course. It was a bite of very tender fish, but nothing really stood out as particularly innovative. The skin was blow torched to extreme crispiness, but it was almost too hard. The sauce was sweet and tangy.

15. Fluke with crispy kelp 7/10: I liked the cooked fluke more than I like most raw fluke... but I don't really like fluke in the first place. I find the fish pretty boring, maybe I'm missing some taste sensors oh well.

16. Shiitake mushroom and mackerel with crispy ginger 6/10: I have no earthly clue what this course tasted like. All I know is that it was the last canapé.

17. Turbot with peas 10/10: As great of a turbot as I've ever had. The young pea shoots/vines/flowers were tender and delicious. The baby peas were perfectly cooked and sweet.

18. Duck with mushroom puree and baby carrot 8/10: I do love duck. This was nothing special. the carrot didn't add much, but was delightfully miniature. It almost looked like a small pepper with its bright red to orange gradient.

19. Prime rib 8/10: Once again not very special. It was well cooked and seasoned, but I've had better. There were small orange balls in the sauce that were delicious like tiny sweet and sour flavor-packed berries.

20. Cheese course 7/10: Better than last time! But still kind of boring. I think it was from California this time, and there was something light and crusty like a super thin crouton on top. It came with a light vinegary salad.

21. Milk chocolate with cocoa powder dessert 8/10: It looked like a tiny loaf of bread, but I think it was actually foam that was flash frozen, so the spoon cut through it like fluffy ice cream or the softest cake ever, and it tasted like air. Super creative, but just not strong enough in flavor.

22. Chocolate ganache cake with maple ice cream 9/10: Delicious. tasted and looked exactly like its description.

23. Chocolate mousse with yuzu 8.5/10: I would have given this a higher score, but there were way too many pieces of yuzu rind on the bottom, and the extra bit of sourness doesn't fit my palate.

Petit fours weren't great, but at this point, I was satiated, happy, and not bloated. That's all I could ask for.

This meal was much better than the previous one I had at BK Fare, and that's a great thing. Is this the best restaurant in NYC? Maybe. It would definitely be between Brooklyn Fare and Le Bernardin, and with the new innovations to this lengthy menu, I might agree with all the magazines this time.

My only request is that they bring back the egg course!! Forget the 2nd uni course, and let's have some perfectly scrambled eggs with caviar, and perfect scrambled eggs are *not* easy to make.