BY Clay Larroy
If you're looking to get away from it
all with a trip away from home, don't forget to
travel
smart. Regardless of whether you are traveling to a nearby location for the
weekend or taking a week-long destination vacation, you are always going to
benefit from some tips and ideas on how to make the whole process, more fun and
less stressful. Take time each day to alleviate stress
while traveling or vacationing and you will thank yourself for it when you get
back home. When
you want to plan a vacation contact me!
Today, New York City
Tomorrow,
Your Town
Restaurants
in the Big Apple set the food trends to follow
By Sherri
Telenko
For dinner later that day,
graduate from Soba to Sapa - a distinctively different Asian-inspired
experience in the city’s trendy Chelsea district. Take a cab to 43 West 24th
Street and watch for an unobtrusive street entrance that looks like a warehouse
door. Behind it is one of the city’s latest additions to a list of fusion
cuisine restaurants catering to those in the know. Named after an ancient city
in Vietnam, Sapa is owned by Brian Matzkow who hired Chef Patricia Yeo to
create a menu of modern French and Vietnamese dishes suitable for the North American
palate.
Rolls are an important part of Vietnamese dining, and they’re an
important part of Sapa’s pre-dinner menu. Start with a variation on the
standard vegetable spring roll and dip it into hot, sweet mustard. Add the
Cocoa and Peanut Glazed Spareribs for the table and you’ve set the tone for a
sweet and mild meal.
Main course selections include Cod Roasted in Parchment with
wild mushrooms and porcini-sherry sauce, Grilled Filet of Beef with fried
oysters and foie gras hollandaise, or the Dry Aged Rib-Eye Steak with gourmet
onion rings and stilton aioli (it takes a talented chef to upscale the onion
ring). All this should be enjoyed in the surprisingly spacious back dining room
complete with two semi-circular VIP booths screaming for a photo shoot. In this
room, you’re in the capable hands of professional staff, with the added bonus
of an exceptional wine steward.
Menu is not enough in New York, atmosphere makes or breaks a
place. Sapa’s award-winning interior design reflects concrete minimalism, taking
advantage of its 100-year-old converted industrial space. Exposed beams and
brick walls compliment the white urns and twinkling bare lights in the
floor-to-ceiling gauze curtain that separates the back from the middle dining
rooms. Here, slick urban loft blends with energetic club decadence that creates
an in-crowd place to be.
The front of house, unfortunately, is not as expertly handled as
the dining room, but perhaps that’s all part of the experience. Expect to wait
at least an hour for a table on the weekends (even with a reservation).
Cocktails flow along the 20-seat mahogany bar. Lounge with others on the
leather banquet seating or spool-like low stools. Here is where you’ll get the
best view of Sapa regulars: trendy groups of unwinding work colleagues, dating
couples out for the first time, and groups of amorous gay men vying for each
other’s attention. Sapa eludes the affluence of a boutique hotel, balanced with
a down-to-earth yet heavenly menu that’s worth the wait.
While Sapa in youthful Chelsea is a depot for disposable income,
David Burke & Donatella is rooted a neighborhood of old money. Across from
the exclusive 21 Club on the Upper East Side, this restaurant has jumped aboard
the revived dress code trend, and an air of stoic formality permeates its 133
East 61 st Street location. Overlook the surrounding staunchness and you’ll
experience a creative, contemporary and fabulously edgy menu that should be
saved for your last big night in NYC.
Called the Dr. Seuss of food by some, Chef David Burke teamed
with restaurateur Donatella Arpaia to open David Burke & Donatella in a
converted Upper East Side townhouse in 2004. This serious restaurant that doesn’t
take itself too seriously. Inside the typically NYC cramped dining room, any
stuffiness is undermined by lacquered table surfaces and a scarlet-red glass
sculpture in the center. Every night, the chef’s tasting menu is handwritten
(complete with doodles in margins) on cards and distributed to each table.
But design is only window dressing at David Burke & Donatella.
Food is the source of its superpowers. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish
- seafood is the rhyme with reason on this menu.
Start with warm Kumamoto Oysters with lobster, black truffle and
watercress, or the Parfait of Yellow Tuna and Salmon Tartars with Russian royal
ossetra caviar. Then, if you want to experience a revisioned age-old favorite,
select the Halibut T-bone with lobster dumplings. Or go for broke and order the
Lobster Steak with curried shoestrings, black honey and citrus fennel candy. If
Asian isn’t yet out of your system, also on the menu is Mustard Crusted Tuna
Teriyaki with a soba noodle nori roll, spicy tuna sticks and tapioca sauce.
Leave room for dessert is a command, not a suggestion. Despite the
to-die-for quality of the main course, the final faire is what you’ll tell your
friends about. Pastry chef Carissa Waechter matches Burke’s creative style with
various combinations of chocolate, coconut, butterscotch and fruits including
the Opera in the Park, a classic opera cake with a chocolate park bench, or
Vanilla Creme Brulee with a chocolate butterfly.
But the signature novelty is Burke’s own Cheesecake Lollipop
Tree. In the center of your table lands a metal ‘tree’ supporting tootsie
pop-like balls of candy-coated cheesecake on sticks. Pick off a pop and dip it
lightly in the bubblegum flavored whipped cream, and you’ll be rethinking food
combinations like green eggs and ham.
Dinners like this will also have you reconsidering stopping at
that hot dog cart on the way to the airport. New York City dining rooms are too
tempting to miss, so forget slumming with mustard and mystery meat while
strolling in Central Park. Drop your packages at the hotel and check out
instead what’s being served up today in NYC - and tomorrow everywhere else.
REFERENCE SITES:
“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody,
even one's own relations.”
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