Chef Name: Eder Montero & Alexandra Raij

Type of Meal: Spanish Tapas

What we Ordered: Here’s the Menu

Láminas de Setas - Oyster Mushroom Carpaccio (from the daily specials)

Solomo - house cured pork loin, roasted green pepper

Txipirones en su Tinta - Squid, served in its own ink, with white rice (from the daily specials)

Lengua - crispy beef tongue with mustard española, cornichons

What we Drank: Txakolina Rose & a Spanish Beer that we can’t remember the name of – sorry!

Favorite Dish: The Squid was outstanding, but watch out – the squid ink splatters!  The ink was a little more “liquidy” than it first appeared and the slightest flick of the fork sent black squid ink all over my white coat.  I surprisingly wasn’t very upset – I think I subconsciously felt that I deserved it for daring to challenge New York to keep my white coat clean – but fortunately the bartender was prepared with a “Tide-To-Go” pen and all was resolved.   But back to the dish…the squid were well cooked – not too chewy – and the flavors were kept simple.  If you are one of many people out there who are slightly frightened to try squid ink, I assure you that it is nothing to be scared of, with the exception of potentially staining your teeth (or white coat!).  That being said, I would advise against trying squid ink on a first date to prevent a blackened smile, but otherwise, you should give it a shot! The flavor is quite mild with a hint of seafood and saltiness. The squid were “bite-sized” (for lack of a better term), making it easy to eat without a knife.  The beef tongue was pretty awesome as well – crispy and salty – a great ending to the meal!

Least Favorite Dish: The Solomo was nothing special.  The green pepper was pretty dominating, which may be great for some, but it was a little much for me.  I ultimately picked around the pepper and ate only the pork, which was good, but nothing to rave about.

Other Comments: Would I go back to Txikito? Yes.  Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes.  This is a very small and casual dining space.  It is great if you’re in the area, wanting to stop for a quick bite of some respectable cuisine (by the way, they don’t take reservations).  The food is unique, culturally authentic to the Basque region, and is made for sharing. The menu is thorough, but the specials board is what I found to be the most intriguing.

Restaurant Name & Location: Artisinal Bistro, 2 Park Avenue, New York, New York, 10016  (Entrance is on 32nd Street between Park & Madison Avenue)

Chef Name: Terrance Brennan

Type of Meal: Dessert Cheese & Wine

What we Ate & Drank: Here’s the Menu

Sinful Experience Cheese & Wine Flight

CHEESE:

Délice de Bourgogne (Cow, France)

Robiola a Due Latti (Cow/Sheep, Italy)

Langres (Cow, France)

WINE:

Bourgogne Aligoté Olivier Leflaive 07

Riesling ‘Vom Schloss’ Graf Hardegg Austria 08

Fréderic Lornet Crémant du Jura Arbois France NV

Holy Cheese & Wine Flights

CHEESE:

Sainte-Maure (Goat, France)

Pont l’Évêque (Cow, France)

Tête de Moine (Cow, Switzerland)

WINE:

Sancerre Domaine St. Laurent ‘La Croix’ Loire 08

Riesling ‘Ingle Vineyard’ Heron Hill NY 07

Pinot Noir Wyatt California 08

Favorite Dish: Sinful Experience was a flight of rich and creamy cheeses.  Ya know, the kind that you typically have to force yourself to “put down the knife, and step away from the cheese before your waistline gets hurt”.  The wine varietal pairings were appropriate, but the specific wines were not great as they were a bit flat.  Washed rind cheeses are typically a little too pungent for me, but this Langres was quite nice! It was dense, rich, and a little more complex than the others.

 Least Favorite Dish: The Holy Cheese flight was just not my style and simply poor ordering on my part.  They were much firmer cheeses that carried a much stronger bite than the Sinful Experience flight.  Of the 3 cheeses, I enjoyed the Tête de Moine best.   It was sharp and nutty and served in its most authentic form, sliced with a Girolle creating thinly shaved cones of cheese.   The Sainte-Maure was my least favorite.  It was very intense, with the exception of the very center which remained soft and rich.  As this cheese matures, it becomes more dry, hard, and dense.

Other Comments: Artisinal will not stand out as a highlight of our “restaurant crawl” in New York.  Though Artisinal is a full service restaurant, since we were simply there for some post dinner fromage, we sat at the bar.  The ambiance seems outdated and the service was poor.  We were served by a bartender who gave us bottom of the bottle, flat wines and seemed as though he had never tasted or seen a cheese in his life.  He had to ask to borrow our menu in order to tell us what he was serving and even then it took him 3 tries to get it right.   Phew – hurts to relive that!  Needless to say that I do not highly recommend this to you and I will not be returning – have checked it off my list.

For regular updates about our other NYC restaurant adventures, follow us on Twitter (#whereiskeeper) and Facebook!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Locanda Verde

377 Greenwich St
New York, NY 10013
ph: (212) 925-3797

Chef Name: Chef Andrew Carmellini

Type of Meal: Sunday Brunch

What we Ordered: (Here’s the Menu)

Scampi & Grits

Soft Scrambled Farm Egg Crostino

Uovo Modenese

Wood Fired Uova Al Forno

Almond Coconut Semifreddo

Banana Walnut Brown Butter Cake

La Fantasia di Cioccolata

Lemon Tart

What we Drank: Huckleberry Bellini, Bicicleta, Gin Gin Mule

Favorite Dish: Our favorite dish was the Uovo Modenese! The tomato hollandaise was awesome, and the grilled bread served with the dish was a great addition.

Least Favorite Dish: The Scampi & Grits were nothing to write home about.  The shrimp were a little on the “fishy” side, and the portion was very small.  The polenta was pretty nonexistent, but to be fair, the sausage was very good!

Other Highlights:  Locanda Verde was a great environment for a casual group brunch in Tribeca! When the weather gets a little warmer, there is a fantastic courtyard in the back for larger parties, and they will also open the doors and windows in the main dining room.

For regular updates about our other NYC restaurant adventures, follow us on Twitter (#whereiskeeper) and Facebook!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Beginning Sunday March 21, 3 Keeper Collection Couples are taking a Spring Break together…but separate. For one week, we’ll be splitting up to take the New York restaurant scene by storm. Seven days + 6 people + 3 meals a day (at least!). While some may think it’s crazy to leave Austin during SxSW, we feel confident that we can make it worth-while. You may call it a “Restaurant Crawl” (with certainly a few Pubs in the mix), an Austinite’s NxNE Food Fest, or even the foodie version of the Amazing Race, but whatever you call it, it simply boils down to a lot of good food!

Since our tight knit group tends to live vicariously through each other anyways, we’ve done our best to ration the restaurants to attempt the seemingly impossible task of conquering the epicurean wonders of New York. Kinda like “I’ll give you Tuesday lunch at Babbo if you let me have Monday dinner at Sushi Yasuda”…“Deal!”

We’ll be hitting well known favorites like Le Bernadin and Momofuku, new hot spots in town like Nate Appleman’s Pulino’s Bar & Pizzeria, and some highly recommended new experiences for us like Marea and Locanda Verde. Please don’t be offended if we miss your favorite NYC cuisine – there just aren’t enough hours in the week – but on that note, if you have a “must try” suggestion, send it our way because we still have a few meal slots open!

Throughout the week, we’ll be twittering (#whereiskeeper) and Facebooking about all of our stops and taking as many pictures as possible, so be sure to follow us for the highlights. As time allows, we’ll be posting “reflections” on many of the restaurants here on the blog (I’m careful not to say “reviews” because we’re no experts – just some Texans who get an absurd amount of pleasure out of a great dining experience). We’ll share where we go, what we order, what we like/don’t like, what we drink, and anything else that seems fitting – plus some photos (where permitted). So Stay Tuned!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Does this look like a kitchen tool to you?  

Here in the Keeper Kitchen we see- and taste! - a LOT of food. Did you know that we test the recipes in each cookbook before they are published? Because of this, we spend plenty of hours outside the kitchen scouring the aisles of the local grocery stores and markets for ingredients (we could probably navigate the aisles blindfolded by now).  We have just about every cooking tool imaginable to the home cook, and a ridiculously well stocked pantry of spices and staples. Needless to say, we spend even more time inside the kitchen testing, and through this process we find plenty of hits, misses, adjustments, recommendations, revelations and “mmmmmmmmmm”s along the way.  Now don’t get us wrong, we aren’t complaining because getting to cook this often ain’t a bad gig, but it does make for some interesting stories and hard work.

The taste combination we doubted but then loved the most?  

Chef Monica Pope’s Beet Brownies – The beets threw us off a bit, but we stood corrected when they turned out to be the best brownies we’ve ever tasted!  I guess that is why she gets invited to Top Chef Masters and not us!

Beet Brownies with Molasses Caramel Sauce & Meringue Pecans

The most difficult technique we’ve had to break down into steps for our subscribers?  

Typically things like homemade pastas and gnocchis.  Each chef has a slightly different method, but regardless, making these from scratch and shaping it into the different types is an involved process.  It can be difficult to put something that requires so much work of the hands into concise but descriptive enough words for someone who may be trying it for the first time.

Homemade Gnocchi

The most interesting non-cooking challenge we’ve faced while recipe testing?  

Resurrecting a chef’s defunct hard drive to retrieve some irreplaceable recipes! This was truly a test of getting the Taste from the Technology! The chef will remain unnamed, but we can promise that the cookbook is even better than before now that the rescued recipes are in it (see photo “evidence” at the begginning of this blog – can you guess which chef?).  

For continued updates on the trials and tribulations in our test kitchen, follow us on Twitter and Facebook – you just may be inspired by something new that we uncover!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

For a taste of these videos, take a look at How to Trim an Artichoke by Chef David Bull.  Chef Bull told the Keeper Team, “If you’re anything like me, the task of trimming artichokes is daunting and tedious.  From my experience in restaurants when I’ve had to trim cases of artichokes at once, here is a quick and simple technique to help you out.” This video, among others, can be found in Chef Bull’s Crisp Sea Scallop with Artichoke Ragout recipe. 

For other similar “how-to” videos and general recipe demo videos, check out recipes like Pan Seared Lobster with Citrus-Onion Confit, Beef Tartare with Fried Oysters, and Chocolate Almond Silk Tart.

Also, Bull’s Eye on Food is announcing the release of Chef Bull’s famous Pepperoni Soup (or as many people call it, “Pizza Soup”) recipe! The Empty Bowls event in Dallas benefiting the North Texas Food Bank was a huge success, raising a total of $164,102 in just two hours!  He prepared this soup for event attendees and was blown away by the response – so naturally, he wanted to share this Bull family recipe with his cookbook subscribers. Enjoy!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Sunrise in Piedmont

Sunrise in Piedmont

We decided to take advantage of the entire time left, starting with a jaunt to Monforte for breakfast.  After breakfast we shopped and bought pasta, vinegar, wine, and confections. We had enough time to go to Barolo to find a shipping box for the lovely Barolo wines that we had selected to take home.  As we finished our shopping, we imagined our upcoming visit with Roberto Conterno, the winemaker and owner of Giacomo Conterno.  We were greeted by Roberto and his assistant, Erica, who would provide any needed translation.

View from Conterno

Our group of 5, including Russell Hone, Rusty Staub (of The Rusty Staub Foundation), and Peter Wasserman, were seated in the wine tasting library, where Roberto shared some magnificent wines, 2007 Barbera and 2005 Barolo from the bottle.    

Russell Hone and Rusty Staub get ready to enjoy the Conterno Tasting!

Rusty Staub and Roberto Conterno

Then we took a tour of the pristine wine cellar and had a cask tasting which included a 2002 Barolo that Roberto felt was one of the best ever for Conterno, despite the poor reputation of the vintage. 

Wine Cellar Tour and Tasting

For lunch we traveled to Serralunga where we had a simple and pleasing meal from the varied menu. We were impressed with the knowledgeable owner and good wines. 

Charcuterie Plate

Steak and Potatoes

Vitello Tonnato

Pasta with Broccoli

Sausage and Potatoes

Atichokes and Potatoes

After a tasty lunch Russell and Rusty went back to Villa Carita. The rest of the group , lead by Peter Wasserman, went to Alba to continue shopping.  We had a full car of lovey Italian products! After a long day we ended it by going to La Morra for our farewell dinner at the bistro. We had lots of laughs, great food, and good wines, holding on to great times in Piedmont.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.