restaurantgirl

Never mind the price of gas, has anyone else noticed the cost of honey-roasted peanuts has recently doubled from $1 to $2.  Call it Central Park inflation, the increase only effects vendors around or in Central Park.  "Do you know how much it costs to rent this cart?" a disgruntled cart Nuts 4 Nuts owner grumbles at me.  "$75,000 a year." 

Apparently, this leaves Central Park vendors no choice but to raise the price of peanuts.  Curiously enough, almonds & cashews have remained at a steady $2, coconut $3. 

Thus, I'm offically proposing an official citywide boycott of all $2 honey-roasted peanuts on two accounts.  I ask you: how much could it possibly cost to roast nuts in sugar syrup?  My second point of contention: the glaring deception that these second-class legumes are coated in honey, when they actually bathe in sugar water.  Let's band together on this one, ladies and gentlemen.  Sure, they're just peanuts.  But what's next?  Pretzels, hot dogs, ice cream, umbrellas?  The possibilities are frightingly endless.  And yes, it will be hard to resist the urge - especially for me - but we must stop the street cart madness.  An official Restaurant Girl ban is in effect.

Until we eat again,
Restaurant Girl
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3.22.07

Celebrate World Water Day on Thursday at one of 290 participating restaurants by paying just $1 for a glass of tap water (refills included).  All proceeds go to Unicef's Tap Project, which provides safe water supplies to over 90 countries worldwide.  Besides, NYC's tap water tastes far better than designer water anyway. 

150 West 57th Street (between 6th & 7th Aves.)
(212)581-7100

The Russian Tea Room's phone lines officially opened at 9 AM this morning to accept dinner reservations, starting November 3rd.  At 2 PM this afternoon, I was able to snag a table for two people at 8 PM opening night.  I called back again and tried for 6 people at 8:30, but apparently they can't handle parties larger than 4 on opening night.  However, they could do a four-top at 8:30 (someone should call & grab it). 

Gary Robins (formerly of the Biltmore Room) still is in the process of designing a "pan-European menu", primarily Russian, with influences from every country that touches Russia's borders, from Asia to Sweden.  Hmm, sounds like global cuisine to me.

Until we eat again,
Restaurant Girl

In a souped-up 25-foot Airstream trailer, fashionably decked out by domino magazine, Beringer has decided to take their vineyard on the road - literally.  With chef David Frakes in tote, one of Napa Valley's oldest vineyards is embarking on a six-week road trip across the country to share their wines and the chef's gourmet cooking with America. 

Beringer kicked off their first "urban picnic" on October 10 in NYC, where they set up camp in Gramercy, offering up impromptu wine & food pairing lessons as well as an interactive Merlot & Chardonnay wine tasting (my favorite was the $16 2004 Chardonnay - surprisingly rich & complex for such a well-priced bottle).  There was even a quick cooking class in the Airstream's tiny dining lounge, courtesy of talented David Frake, who once cooked in San Francisco's prestigious Ritz Carlton Dining Room.

Making pit stops in Chicago, Austin, LA, and San Francisco, Beringer hopes to raise Napa Valley wine awareness.  For the months of October & November, Beringer Vineyards will offer %20 percent off any of their wines purchased online, and donate $5 to Meals on Wheels for any Napa Valley label wine purchase (mention the "How to get to Napa Valley" campaign).      
Until we eat again,
Restaurant Girl 

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Some people dream of winning the lottery, world peace, or moving to a desert island.  Me - I dream of food.  My dreams came true at this week's Fancy Food Show, a culinary utopia of free samples & digestible inventions.  Over 100,000 exhibitors flocked to NYC from all over the world - Italy, Australia, Spain, and even Iceland (who knew they cornered the market on?)- to let us sample their goods. 

From coffee to tea, all things fair trade and organic reigned at this year's food show. Speaking of which, organic and fair trade chocolate tasting may well replace wine tasting with the Outstanding New Product Winner: Chocolove's Chocolatour Tanzania Vintage 2005, and the entire Chocolatour vintage line of cocoa beans from different vintages & regions from all over the world (Granada & Java). 

Designer bottled White Tea intends to give Snapple a run for its money, boasting high levels of antioxidants, natural sweeteners, & less than 30 calories per serving.  Best of all, brands like Inko's come in the hottest flavors, including lychee, apricot, honeysuckle & blueberry - $1.59 per bottle.  Last but not least, salt has officially been touted as this season's couture condiment, a color and flavor to match every food under the sun.  Seeing as I'm partial to Peruvian pink (sea salt that is), I'll be dining on lots of well-matched heirloom tomato salads, found at Salt Works.

While the Fancy Food Show handed out Awards for:

• Non-food Specialty Item - "If You Care 100% Recycled Aluminum Foil"
  

• Outstanding New Product - Artisanal's Premium Cheesecake

• Outstanding Beverage - Ineeka's Spearmint & Lavender tea

I've come up with a few of my own Restaurant Girl Awards:

Non-food Specialty Item -
Butter Boy: Meet my new boyfriend.  When I spotted this little guy, it love was at first sight.  Perfect for barbecues or just the kitchen table, Butter Boy was born to butter corn - more than kid friendly, he doubles as a butter holder, content to spend the night in the fridge.  He's apparently got a Butter Girl girlfriend, but we’ll see just how long that lasts now that I’m in the picture.  Until then, Butter Boy retails for $6.99, $12 for the couple, sold on Amazon. 

Outstanding New Dessert -
Chef Hilly’s Kitchen Dirty Chocolate: Remember the good old days when your biggest problem was rescuing an oreo from the depths of a glass of milk?  You can relive your childhood with this gourmet drink blend, loaded with real bits of homemade chocolate chip cookie, that nostalgically sink to the bottom when added to milk or coffee (hot or cold).  Pick a flavor – dirty french vanilla, dirty chocolate or dirty chocolate mint (think liquid thin mints) - and if you’re not a cookie fan, every flavor's available cookie-free, $1.25 for a single-serving pack. 

Outstanding Beverage -
Numi Tea -  Forget store-bought flowers, Numi teas are the perfectly drinkable centerpiece.  Designed to blossom when added to water, these organic flowering teas, handsewn into precious bundles or rosettes, are destined to be the center of attention in any glass teapot.  Numi's green, white, and black teas come in 9 different flavors - jasmine pearl, lavender dream, midnight peony - & five unique designs, are available at Fairway, Lifethyme, Sur La Table, & Numi Tea, four blossoms for $ 5.95.

More fancy food finds to come next week...
Until we eat again,
Restaurant Girl

Some of us just aren't morning people: now you can say it with toast, using one of six interchangeable kitschy design plates from Pop Art Toaster.  So whether you want to toast Happy Birthday or the phrase "Luv U", you can communicate via bread and you don't even have to put two syllables together.

Don't beat around the bush with the Stupid Art Toaster ($24.95), which comes with four interchangeable design plates that declare, "I'm toast", "Chicks Rule", "Boys are Smelly", & "Drama Queen".  There's even a Pop Art Toaster of fewer words with two plates ($34.95) - "Bite me" & "I'm hot" - short and to the point - both available at Broadway Panhandler. 

Oh, and it's never too early to start shopping for Christmas gifts ($24.99) - the Christmas Pop Toaster with images of Santa, Snowman, and X-mas stockings!

In the not so distant (toast) future, we may witness the end of burnt toast on Planet Earth.  Inventables Studio has designed a innovative transparent toaster that allows you to watch your bread cook to perfection.   Unfortunately, this puppy is still a work in progress - the glass doesn't currently heat up enough to toast the bread through, but designers are  furiously working away to fix this glitch.
                                                                                  

                            ***Hotel Restaurant Week: Jun 10-16***

Pretend you're a tourist or just a lady or lad who lunches & embark on a culinary getaway without leaving the city during Travel & Leisure's "Go to a Hotel Month" Restaurant Week.  From June 10-16, you can indulge in a three-course prix fixe meal for $35 per person (sans alcohol of course). Participating restaurants include:

The Alex Hotel
(212)867-5100
lunch & dinner

The Carlyle
(888)767-3966
lunch

The Peninsula
(800)262-9467
lunch & dinner

Hotel Plaza Athenee
(212)734-9100
lunch & dinner

The Warwick Hotel
(800)223-4099
lunch & dinner

The French may just start a revolution on American soil with their innovative new wine packaging that renders a cork obsolete.   French Rabbit packages their vintage-dated French wine (it actually tastes good) in Tetra Packs which will change the way we drink:

• Lighter than glass
• Holds 2 more glasses than a normal bottle of wine
• Easily screws shut
• Squeeze air out after every use & reseal
• Lasts up to seven days in the refrigerator
• 100% recycleable packaging
• 50 cents from each package goes to a habitat for wildlife fund in Ontario

Pick your poison -- French Rabbit features Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir & Merlot (my favorite was the Merlot;), $12.95 each.   

Stove Top Table

After standing in painfully fashionable footwear all day, the last thing I want to do is hover over a stove and pretend I know how to make dinner.  Now I can kick off my shoes and cook right at my Cook N Dine table.  It's like your own Korean barbecue, only the center of this futuristic stainless steel table conveniently sinks into a concave bowl to catch simmering sauces when heated (goes up to 430 degrees).  As if dinner never happened, the table reverts to a flat surface.  Now I just pray they invent a robotic chef that can cook for me.  A girl can dream, can't she?

Got camel's milk?

Forget about soy milk, a camel latte just might be the newest addition to the Starbuck's roster.  The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization has recently been pushing for the sale of camel's milk to Western countries, including America and Europe.  Why?

• 3 X more vitamin C than cow's milk
• 10 X more iron than cow's milk
• Lower in saturated fat than cow's milk
• Richer in vitamin B than cow's milk
• Richer in vitamin D than cow's milk
• Acts as an aphrodisiac

Consumed regularly by many Arab countries, camel's milk tastes saltier than cow's milk (think mozzarella cheese).  In an interview with BBC News, FAO expert, Tony Bennett, says, "The potential is massive.  Milk is money."  In fact, experts estimate that camel's milk could be a ten billion dollar market (little stock tip;). 

Who knows? Some day in the not so distant future, we could live in a world with camel ice cream and cheesecake.  Yummy...

Until we eat again,
Restaurant Girl