And that’s how we wound up at Fish Kebab. 

Since I’d been eating at home right before he arrived, I wasn’t all that hungry and decided to just choose a bunch of things to nibble on.  Pita came with our mezze platter. 

Hummus, which was perfectly tasty but nothing mind blowing (I LOVE hummus, and have a favorite brand and all). 

The mezzes: from the front left clockwise, babaghanoush, tzatziki, garlic-potatoes, stuffed grape leaves, and … mmm… taramasalata.  I’m not a big eggplant person, so that dish was mostly ignored by me, but the tzatziki was very creamy and tangy… the potatoes were a bit of hit or miss with me, a little too stiff to be a dip and a little odd eating just like mashed potatoes.  The stuffed grape leaves were okay, and the taramasalata… oh, my.  I won’t say it’s the best ever, but I really liked how fishy this dip was, you would not mistake this for anything but a cod roe dip.  So good – I couldn’t stop stuffing this in my mouth.  We requested more pita, a request that was met happily. 

We also ordered a half dozen raw oysters because I was just feeling it.  I enjoyed these – super fresh, and super tasty, not like the ones I’d had earlier.  Shucked properly too, no need to pull them from the shell… ahhh. 

DLS ordered the seafood pasta, which sounded glorious.  Both of us assumed it would be mostly seafood tossed with the pasta, maybe clams and/or mussels in the shell, but when the server came over to put a bib on DLS, we both realized how wrong we were.  I took a couple of cute photos of him wearing the bib, but I don’t think he’d appreciate me putting them on the blog… so I won’t, boo   In any case, he seemed to really enjoy his pasta, though I declined to try any – half a lobster, mussels, shrimp, I think even scallops in there… maybe he’ll (finally!) comment and share his thoughts on something? 

As I said, I wasn’t particularly hungry, so I chose just the New England clam chowder.  The bowl was huge! and quite tasty.  Very smoothly creamy – mine sometimes comes out a bit lumpy, probably from my tendency to brown my roux, filled with lots of veggies and big chunks of clam.  I really enjoyed my soup, and didn’t feel any remorse at being unable to order a more substantial meal – I thoroughly enjoyed everything  I ate!

Yvo says: I’d initially worried this place wouldn’t still be there since it’s been literally over 11 years since I’d gone, but it’s clear why this place has survived the test of time: fresh seafood, a wonderful staff and just good food.  You can’t beat that.  The owners have a few places – this, the Shish Kebab place, a little market across the street, and a bunch of places that all sell this type of stuff – the little market sells the mezze we ordered individually by the pound, and even little mini picnic packs to take to the lake nearby to eat a nice picnic lunch… yes, we talked about that, you know how goofy I am!… Love how adorable it is.  Full disclosure: the same owners have or had another restaurant in the Source Mall, which is where I threw FeistySis’s baby shower for her first child… and I loved it, they were easy to work with, the price was awesome and the food was good (served buffet style), just a great overall place. 
highly recommended if you’re in the area

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2012. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DLS, hummus, taramasalata

I didn’t take a picture of the outside, and I don’t know that I’ll be trying to send y’all to this place anyway.  Mine.  Go away.  Well, no, also because it’s far from any public transportation, and when you see what I ate… well… yeah. 

Headed over to spend time with my family recently, and I was greeted with “We’re going to Old Country Buffet, yee-yee!” when I walked in the door.  Ok, off we go in the car – I don’t even know how to get there, to be honest – and arrived at a ridiculous line.  But we waited, and eventually we were seated…  at a southern food buffet.  Guys, did you read that?  SOUTHERN FOOD.  ALL YOU CAN EAT. 

Help.

My first plate basically said “get what you like, because you know what you’ll be eating next!” so I got my standards of “whatever strikes your fancy” – some salad just because, some seafood salad even more just because, mac&cheese, fried pieces of fish, fried potato slices, tartar sauce, and of course… tortilla chips with liquid cheese.  Liquid cheese, you complete me… and fill in my arteries with your gooey goodness.  So far: the fish wasn’t that good.  The mac&cheese was pretty good.  And the chips were as expected.  I’m not going to talk about the other stuff.  Ugh. 

My next plate was the star of the show, the fried chicken: a thigh and a drumstick, and some mashed potatoes with both kinds of gravy – country and regular brown.  I like country gravy.  The brown was too salty and too… heavy.  Obviously I liked the mac&cheese as I got more.  And the chicken?  Solidly delicious, artery solidifying.  Seriously good stuff.  It tasted like homemade, and I mean that in a good way – it wasn’t amazing, but it was just like I’d make at home.  YUM.  Juicy, moist interior, and crisp skin on the exterior.  I was sold.  Nothing else needed to be eaten for the rest of the meal. 

Ah, right, she-who-shall-not-be-named told me the chicken was really good with the cole slaw.  This is southern cole slaw: chopped fine, lots of mayo and lots of sugar.  Sweet and very creamy.  Yeah, it cuts through the grease of the chicken… ahem. 

So my next plate was two chickem thighs and um… that’s a bowl of chicken/country gravy.  Yes, yes I did.  I took pieces of the skin, of the chicken, sometimes together, sometimes not, and dipped it in the gravy and ate it like that.  I don’t wonder the reason I can’t lose weight.  I know.  And its name is GRAVY. 

The aftermath.  Are you grossed out right now?  Cuz I’m not.  I’m just hungry.  Hahaha. 

So, yes, I had four pieces of fried chicken and more food.  You should see what FeistyMom ate…

Some fruit once I was stuffed completely on fried chicken and needed to relax a bit. 

And once I’d relaxed enough, I had some soft serve swirl in a cone.  That’s right.  That’s how I do. 

Even better?  She-who-shall-not-be-named mentioned how good the chocolate chip cookies are when they first come out.  Every time I walked by, there were none to be had, though I saw them behind the counter of desserts, just waiting to be made, waiting to be served.  Damn.  But just as I was about to leave, I wandered by and saw that a whole tray had come out.  I grabbed two, and my brother-in-law grabbed two for his wife, and we munched happily on the still piping hot cookies – so hot that we smushed them a little by accident – as we walked out into the very chilly night. 

I guess the best part would be the price: it’s about $10 an adult for dinner.  Yeah, seriously. 

Sometimes I wonder why I bother going to places in Manhattan…

…then I remember all the variety and the likelihood of me being 300+ lbs. if I lived closer to Old Country Buffet.

Yvo says: Great bang for your buck, undoubtedly, and many options from which to choose.  The fried chicken and gravy combo, however, is definitely the one I’ll return to again and again and again… sigh.  /swoon – wait, that was actually my heart stopping. 
recommended

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: all you can eat, buffet, fried chicken

I’ve never kept it a secret that I do enjoy chain restaurants; I appreciate what their purpose is, and respect when they achieve that purpose fairly well.  Some don’t (Crapplebee’s, I’m looking at you: you served me a bad salad.  Seriously?  How can you make a salad BAD?!  Don’t dry the greens enough and leave them outside or something so they wilt.  Geez.), and some do.  One that I’ve been to a good handful of times in my life now that consistently hit the mark is Charlie Brown’s, a cute “steakhouse” style establishment that boasts inexpensive meals, a location really close to FeistySis’s house and child-friendly atmosphere (which means it’s often a contender in suggestions where to go with the family that she can bring the kids, and often wins due to those two latter qualities).

On this occasion, Snorlax actually suggested we visit for their seafood feast (limited time, I think it’s over now).  He sent us menus, which boasted… omg… is that… LOBSTER THERMIDOR???  Yes.  Yes it is.  Now, a quick story: I have a list of things I’d like to eat.  Lobster thermidor AND lobster newburg are both on this list (two somewhat similar dishes), but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere – though lobster newburg is still on the menu at Delmonico’s, it’s listed at $49 – so when I saw lobster thermidor on the menu for Charlie Brown’s, I knew exactly what I wanted. 

One of the nice things about Charlie Brown’s, for those of us who are super fatty inclined, is the fresh farmer’s market salad bar.  Basically, with some meals, or with a small surcharge (around $5, I believe) for other meals or non-meals, you get unlimited servings from the buffet. 

Tons of options – small marinated grape tomatoes with pearl mozzarella balls, green beans, marinated mushrooms, hearts of palm…

hummus, a fresh corn salsa style dish,

dressings, the various toppings for your average salad, breads, butter, and chicken liver pate (!!!)… it’s a very generous salad bar from which to build your salad. 

I grabbed a bunch of different things, not wanting to fill up too much, and found myself pleased with all of it.  Well, the hummus was only alright, but everything else was fresh, bright-tasting, and a great way to whet my appetite. 

I even went back for a second plate.  Yum.

The entrees started to arrive.  FeistySis ordered the whole lobster with corn on the cob and sweet potato fries, which arrived on a separate plate.  I was munching from that for a while, those were tasty.  I know she liked the lobster a lot – she said it was really sweet.  I didn’t try any though, busy with my own dish. 

FeistyMom and Snorlax both ordered the surf & turf, feeling lazy and uninterested in the work associated with cracking open a lobster to eat.  I know they were both pleased with their choices as well!  FeistyMom commented how full she was afterwards as well. 

As for my lobster thermidor, well… 

I was a little surprised; now that I think about it, I’m not sure what I was expecting.  It tasted fine, nothing really extraordinary – though I wasn’t really expecting it to be.  I don’t know.  I know that I was just excited to see this dish on a menu, any menu, and didn’t take into account the place offering it, while good, might not necessarily go to the extreme steps necessary to create the dish “authentically” (the recipe is pretty involved, which might be why I never see it on menus).  So it was tasty… but I still want to have lobster thermidor using the genuine recipe! 

My steak medallions, which I hadn’t wanted in the first place, were a lot smaller than I’d expected as well. 

But they were cooked to my specification of medium rare.  I thought mine lacked salt, but everyone else said their dishes tasted perfectly salted to them.  I chalked it up to my enjoyment of saltier things. 

Yvo says: Charlie Brown’s is a place that knows who it is and is proud of that: a chain restaurant offering inexpensively priced food for people of all ages – I usually see a lot of seniors enjoying their senior specials (if I’m there earlier in the evening) and lots of families with children enjoying a casual dining establishment with something for everyone.  Will it win a food snob’s heart?  Unlikely.  But you know what?  This girl eats what she wants, and spends time with her family any way possible.  I call this tasty and fun.  You can call it whatever you like… but if you go, also look for coupons in the local paper or online, because this meal was made about $20 cheaper using coupons from the newspaper and online in tandem   Very awesome!
recommended inexpensive casual dining option, especially if you have young children in tow

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chain restaurant, lobster, Steak

Remember when I mentioned that Fresh Direct facility tour and dinner… and I won a tour of the local farms from which Fresh Direct sources a lot of its local produce?  I finally went on that tour, and got to meet Jeff Rottkamp of Fox Hollow Farms.  He showed us around and explained a lot of the finer nuances of running a farm, things that would never occur to me – why would they? I don’t know the first thing about running a family farm! – and just amazed us with his knowledge.

Here’s a shot of Jeff picking Sungolds. 

You don’t know what Sungolds are?  I didn’t know their name until that day, but they are probably the best cherry/small tomatoes I’ve ever eaten in my life.  These deliciously sweet tomatoes burst in your mouth with the amazing sweetness of a million suns.  I ate these, still warm, fresh from the plant.  That’s an experience I will never forget in my entire life. 

One of the interesting things that I’d never think about is how this intensely hot weather that we’ve had this summer could affect the crops drastically.  Apparently, pumpkins for Halloween (carving and/or just display) need to be started months ahead of time, but because the weather has been so hot and humid, they grew faster than normal and are already huge.  So huge, in fact, that some of these will certainly go to waste before they can be bought or somehow used.  How sad! 

After our first farm, we set off for lunch at Love Lane Kitchen/Cafe, the most adorable little place that I believe uses a lot of local ingredients.

I ordered my standard bottle of root beer.  Boylan’s.

I’d brought FeistySis along for the tours, and she ordered the fish tacos, one of the specials of the day.  I discovered she apparently has a thing for fish tacos, so anyone have recommendations for fish tacos in Manhattan?  It would be a nice gift to take her out for fish tacos in the city, take her away from the kids sometime… ;P

Opened up.  Luckily, my sister is totally open to sharing, so she split her tacos with me and I split my dish with her.  Though I ate this second, I really enjoyed the meatiness of the white fish, the juiciness as well, and the toppings – a creme (I am not sure if it was sour cream, it didn’t seem like it) and guacamole, and some sliced radishes.  T’was very delicious. 

I ordered the lobster roll; probably why my sister was more than happy to share with me!  

Lots of lobster, a bit of celery, mayo, on a buttered hot dog bun…

Mmm, lobster.  Yummy!  Pretty good, lots of lobster and hard to eat, per lobster roll norm  

Our amazing Fresh Direct hostess, Emma, ordered the shrimp salad sandwich, which I think she enjoyed, though I didn’t get a chance to ask her how she liked it. 

Our next stop was Paumonk Vineyards!  Beautiful day for our excursion.

Gorgeous farmhouse-like building for tasting.

Lovely touches inside welcome you to the tasting room.  We had a lovely, grand ol’ time tasting a bunch of Rieslings and whites, meeting the family behind Paumanok – they are so friendly and knowledgeable and the matriarch was adorable! – FeistySis even wound up purchasing 4 bottles of Riesling.  People, that’s huge.  I’ve never known her to really drink much wine, so 4 bottles (okay, one was for me! thanks again! ) is a huge commitment to that wine… (It was really good.  On the sweet side, but that’s how I like my wines.) 

Our next and last official farm visit was the Satur Farms, which provides many of the high end restaurants in New York with their salad mixes.  Speaking with Paulette, who runs the farm with her husband, I was blown away with the passion in her voice and the extreme love with which she spoke of her farm.  It was really inspiring talking to both Paulette and Jeff, who each have very different ideas and methods of running their farms, but both are intensely passionate and dedicated to their farms.  Simply amazing. 

After we left Paulette, each a box of mesclun mix richer, we took a small detour and made an unscheduled stop at Briermere Farms, where our hostess had informed has waited the most delicious pie ever.  I paused to snap this photo because I am obsessed with elderflowers… and here are elderberries. 

Rows upon rows of freshly baked goodies.  Mmm nommy.  Interestingly, I later discovered that um, my CSA actually gets its fruit share from Briermere.  Hehe. 

More pie! 

Fresh peaches and cream pie, or, heaven.

Close up of the pie.  FeistySis actually bought the pie, but generously gave me a nice slice.  Unfortunately, before I could eat it, I got pretty sick, and so I wound up not eating very much of it (I took bites here and there, but my stomach was never ready for it ), but what I did manage to eat was amazing.  I’m not even sure what kind of “cream” that was – it wasn’t custard or whipped cream, but some cross between the two; airy and light, deliciously, delicately sweet, just… awesome!  The peaches on top were sweet to melting, although my mother managed to eat a sour one and then decided she didn’t like the pie (more for me, fine!).  Hehe.  It was good.  I need to go back and get my own entire pie and eat my way through it.  (No, I never wonder why I’m fat, I really don’t anymore.) 

The whole day was incredibly informative and inspiring, to learn all about the various methods of farming, and to really see first hand just how important it is to support our local farmers and produce.  Thank you again to Fresh Direct for hosting me on this trip!!!  FeistySis and I had a really great time, and we really learned a lot. 

PS I am still dreaming about that pie.

Love Lane Kitchen
240 Love Lane
Mattituck, NY 11952

Briermere Farms
(check website for how to get there)

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: lobster rolls, pie, tacos

You know how much I like Sripraphai, so when I heard they opened up a Long Island location, and close-ish to where my sister lives, I had to check it out.  She took me there for my birthday actually, which was fun because I honestly can’t remember the last time we had a meal together, just the two of us – we usually roll with the fams, y’know?    (And yes, that means this meal was in October sometime…) 

I started off with a Thai iced tea, which, to my surprise, my sister never had before.  It was pretty standard (ie, yummy!), and she liked it enough as well. 

Since I’d so loved this last time, I chose to start with mee krob, the noodle-candy-nests topped with shrimp.  Delicious!  My sister really liked this as well.  And I did wind up buying a box of just the noodles to take home (you can buy just the noodles in clear plastic boxes near the register for $4 and change), and stuck it in salads, ate it plain, put it everywhere and it was so good, not nearly as sticky as the kind they serve you, which is fine.  (I dislike sticky things.) 

I also really wanted shrimp cakes, so we had these.  My sister said they were good but reminded her of a Chinese dim sum she’s not that into – but I can’t even wrap my head around that.  I mean, freshly ground up shrimp mixed with spices/seasonings, then lightly breaded (panko crumbs?) and deep fried, hello?  It’s just so fresh and bouncy and delicious… especially with the sweet dipping sauce.  YUM.

FeistySis also ordered tom yum goong or whatever it’scalled (it wasn’t exactly that on the menu).  I tried some and was surprised to really like it – I’ve never had it, actually – but I loved the medley of flavors going on, all working to create a happy harmony of sour, slightly spicy, and just overall delicious. 

I wanted to try something new, so we ordered the roasted duck salad, which was good, but nothing unique.  Eh.  I like the duck salad from Thai Pot better, though I can’t remember what’s in it, and it’s definitely more expensive than Sripraphai’s. 

We also ordered the crispy watercress salad, which was, per usual, lovely and delicious.  Crispy deepfried greens… what’s not to love?

FeistySis opted for a curry noodle dish, which she made me try a teensy sip, despite my protestations that I am allergic to coconut – which was in this dish – so I should not have some.  It was very fragrant and very coconutty.  That’s all I can say about it, really, except that she really liked it. 

Last but not least, my decision to get something ‘different’ led me to the house special pork chop… which was slightly too sweet for me, and not all that interesting beyond its mostly-cooked-boiled egg.  Don’t get me wrong – it was perfectly tasty – but basically a pork chop fried and then chopped up over rice, doused in a sweet sauce.  With what looked like pork Chinese sausage spread throughout as well.  Meh.  I think I’ll stick to the noodle dishes I like next time. 

Yvo says: FeistySis was extremely happy with the meal overall – and yes, that was all for just two people, but we both took home leftovers and enjoyed them over the course of a few days (maybe less for her, since she has way more people in her house than I do) – I was also extremely pleased with the meal.  Despite this being their second location, I found the quality remained the same between the two locations (or close enough that I couldn’t tell any big difference).  Yum!  I am definitely thrilled to have a location super close to my sister, and I know she is as well – she even said she’ll take our mom there…
recommended

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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