New Year's Day

Kev and I went to Roberta's for brunch this morning. I like the idea of starting a new year with an old favorite and without a hangover. I had polenta with roasted carrots, watercress, and a poached egg, and he had the bee sting pizza. As we ate we watched the place fill up slowly, I enjoyed my coffee, and it felt so good to be back in that neighborhood again.

NYTimes Top 12 Restaurants of 2012

We have been to many of these places..

Gwynett St.
image from the new york times

Reynard

This first December weekend we went back to Reynard in Williamsburg to have brunch by the window. We had the Dutch pancake again, tried the sausage and egg sandwich, and the parsnip doughnut with bourbon maple dipping sauce special. After eating we walked around Williamsburg for a little while in the sunny and mild weather, visited Catbird where I proceeded to touch every object, Whisk, where I wanted to buy up all the bamboo spoons, AG Merch, where Kevin bought me an anchor bottle opener to match his cast iron mermaid one, and Mast Brothers Chocolate, where we each had a sample.

When we got back home we spent some time doing the leaves in front of the house while Madison was being walked around the neighborhood. She ran back with all her baby energy and ignored getting blown a bit by the leaf-blower.

After football and napping, our great day got better when Kung Fu Panda started and Kevin's dad made his famous pasta.

Cocoron

What a great place to discover for winter. This tiny noodle shop on the corner of Elizabeth and Kenmare serves three styles of soba noodles: cold, hot, and dipped (cool noodles with a hot dipping sauce on the side).

Kevin and I came here for the first time after yoga one Wednesday night. They have since added sake to the menu. We have since been back twice, and by now have tried a few appetizers and one soba dish from each category.

On Friday, we took two friends after happy hour. I loved my Mexican inspired dip, complete with jalapeños and blue corn tortilla chips. This will be a cold weather back pocket place, and when it gets warm again, the cold noodles are delicious and refreshing.

Gwynnett St.

Second time was the charm for this reservation. Kevin and I had planned to go to Gwynett St. in Williamsburg yesterday for an early dinner, but the 6:15pm seating time was made impossible by the scheduling demands of my too-long weekend afternoon nap.

I'd read about this in the New Yorker many weeks ago, and upon mentioning it to Kev, found that he'd heard chatter about it also. We found it interesting that although the menu didn't particularly excite, we'd both only heard good things.

After cooking a pasta lunch (and 2 days' worth of work lunch) during the day, I carefully lay down to nap and tonight we showed up 5 minutes early.

We loved the bouillon which was served with the dry ingredients in the dish and the broth poured tableside. What amazed was that the pig's head terrine melted into the broth and made it so wonderfully savory. There were crispy strips of pig's ear in there, and as Kevin said, happily surprised, the dish was "Wow, so porky."

steelhead trout with figs, sweet potato, tobacco roasted onions

roots: beets, picked radishes, walnuts & kale

bouillon: pigs head terrine, quince jelly, rutabaga 

blood dumplings: pig's blood gnocchi, parsnips & apples

Momofuku Milk Bar

It's an oft touched upon profession of amazement and respect that we love love love Momofuku Ko. We've yet to visit Ssam and Noodle, but Ko has our heart strings lassoed around its caviar egg and other such dishes. Plus, Kev is something of a wizard at scoring seats.

Anyways, one Brooklyn afternoon with an impending storm in the sky we parked far away from Milk Bar and went for a visit, running back through the wind and rain clutching a paper tote of 3 cookies: compost, corn, & confetti.

Gramercy Tavern

The place is Old New York as soon as you walk through its specially decorated foyer. Classic, sprawling flora, rich and lush, wonderfully straddling the line between late summer and early fall. Kevin told me, before he told me where we were going, that they employ an in-house florist. Great call. Great work.

It wasn't the kind of meal we could photograph, but our take home gift, an oatmeal cupcake "for breakfast" was something that completely picked up the rainy day I see outside my office desk. I think the clouds are parting.

It was perfectly light and perfectly sweet.