The Side Door @ Beacon

It’s a Wednesday in Midtown, and I’m bored with my usual rotation of lunch options. Time for a new place! Beacon, the restaurant, has been around a long time, of course. Its burger, while it’s $19 on the dinner menu, is rumored to be excellent, thanks to the wood fire used to grill everything. So when Beacon opened Side Door — literally a side door to the right of the main entrance — and offered a $10 lunch special featuring the burger? Yeah, I was there.
For your ten dollars, you can get either a burger — with or without cheddar [...]

Vegas Gluttony: Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Earl of Sandwich

Everyone has their rituals when they go to Vegas.  Mine is to run to the roulette table and place $20 on 27 until it hits.  Well, I only do that if it’s my birthday.  Which, okay, was only once.  It took two tries to hit, by the way, so I walked away from the table $700 richer. 
Anyway, the point is, HB’s ritual is to get a tea latte from The Coffee Bean (referred to as Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf) every day that she can. 
So, shortly after we landed, dropped our luggage off at our hotel and freshened [...]

Birthday Week: Tealuxe, Boston

Boston & I have a very terse relationship.  I don’t like Boston.
Boston doesn’t care.
Despite knowing that, I decided to give Boston one more chance.  So when I decided to take a last minute birthday trip, Boston was still on the list of possibilities; I had my eye on trying Toscanini’s since reading about their burnt caramel ice cream on Serious Eats.  (I was in the midst of this caramel kick; salted caramel hot chocolates, salted caramel ice cream, …) 
Boston won out over Philly (where I’ve been about a million times – it’s really rather close to NYC) and DC (where [...]

SF 2k8, Day 5, 6, 7 & 8: Lodging – Vintage Inn

After I’d finished my late lunch at Plaza Garibaldi, we packed up everything and bid farewell to San Jose, then began the surprisingly low-traffic drive up to Napa Valley.  Yountville, Napa Valley, to be exact. 

This is less a restaurant review than a hotel/lodging review – which I’ve done before, if the hotel offers breakfast, and this one did – so bear with me. 

Also, this is where I profess my love and affection for BF.  See, this trip was his gift to me for our 5 year anniversary.  One of the long standing roles I’ve had in this relationship [...]

Podunk

When a friend suggested we go to Podunk for our monthly dinner, I laughed.  I thought you know, big-city-folk, Podunk is the middle of nowhere, perhaps she was making a commentary on the recent poor quality of our restaurant choices for the past few monthly dinners.  But apparently, someone with a great sense of humor (owner Elspeth Treadwell, presumably, whom we spoke with) decided to name this quaint tea shop Podunk. 
Podunk, as you can see from the business card (which is an almost exact rendering of the front of the shop), is an unassuming and charming little place to hang [...]

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