The whole cheap, sugary, kid cereal thing didn't appeal much to me, but I was in the area so finally decided to stop by and try it (especially given all the hype with the Spot collaboration), and I'll just say I'm really glad I tried it.
I tried the Cocoa Matcha swirl (collab with Spot Dessert Bar), which was a blend of matcha ice cream and Cocoa Puffs, topped with more Cocoa Puffs and brownie bites. Delicious. I guess I forgot how good Cocoa Puffs are. Too bad this particular flavor ends Nov 30, but now I just might have to go back and try some others.
I've been waiting forever for the burnt sugar babka soft serve, and it finally came out yesterday...so I feel like I should include a quick review of that.
Sadly, it was not what I was waiting for. The soft serve itself was good, but there was a powdery sea salt topping that was strangely sour, and it did not go with the soft serve at all. I was also hoping for more babka, but it was essentially dehydrated and crushed babka, so if you didn't tell me it was babka, I would've had no idea. I'm not sure that worked well as a topping either, since it didn't have the usual amazing qualities of fresh babka and lacked the crunch of other cookies or wafers (if that was the intent); instead, it was just kind of hard and burnt tasting.
Calle Dao dinner menu and food are much better than brunch. This location is also much larger and nicer than the original locale.
Items that I liked:
- Mapo maduros -- delicious sauce, and can't go wrong with maduros. I was expecting it to have more heat (like mapo tofu), but it was still really good as is.
- Pato frito (orange glazed duck over fried rice) -- didn't look too picturesque, but the duck was so flavorful and tender, and it went well with the fried rice. Could've used more duck to rice ratio, but overall good.
- Spiced goat neck -- also tender and saucy and good, although note you have to eat around bone (kind of like oxtail), so portion size is again smaller than expected.
Other:
The appetizers we tried were fine but nothing special (shiitake spring rolls, pan fried dumplings), and dessert overall was underwhelming, sadly. The bunuelos were good, but nothing special about the flan, and the matcha tres leches had a strange texture.
The rice noodles themselves are done decently well, and the classic Guilin noodle was very flavorful and had plenty of goods, be it meat, peanuts, or pickled vegetables. The purple yam pancake was also delicious, with a slight crunch from the sesame-coated, pan-fried exterior balanced with the chewy glutinous rice cake (mochi-like) interior and sweet purple yam filling.
Unfortunately the good ended there for me. If other appetizers, we tried the shrimp shumai and the salt and pepper calamari. The shrimp shumai was really underwhelming and might as well have been from a the frozen supermarket section, and the salt and pepper calamari was incredibly salty.
We also tried the hot and sour beef mifen soup, which actually had similar toppings as the classic Guilin mi fen, but I personally didn't like the hot and sour soup, which was definitely on the sour side of the hot and sour spectrum.
I suppose if you were to come, stick to the rice noodles and skip the appetizers, and only get the hot and sour if you like hot and sour soup.
I trekked all the way to Astoria on a weekend with subway construction woes just to try Chip, and I'm happy to report I didn't regret that decision one bit. I like how Chip is focused on just making cookies (instead of offering a bunch of different things) and is focused on doing that one thing well.
It may not be fair or right, but so many people try to compare all good cookies to NY's gold standard, Levain, and I can see in particular why there are a lot of Chip-Levain comparisons, as both are fat (and not flat) cookies that have a slight and subtle crunch to the bite before the ooey, gooey, chewy center takes over. Chip does offer some more unique and seasonal flavors though, and their current model is to have 4 flavors a day and rotate each day.
When I went, the flavors of the day were chocolate chip walnut, s'mores, triple chocolate, and oatmeal apple pie. The chocolate chip walnut was a delicious classic done just as well as Levain, as was the triple chocolate, which was nice and chocolatey without being overwhelmingly rich or sweet. The s'mores cookie tastes as good as it looks, and I was pretty excited by the gooey apple pie filling that came oozing out when we broke into it. All of the flavors were good, and I was surprised that the cookies were still warm when I had them an hour after I bought them. The only slight negative was that the oatmeal apple pie cookie tasted a bit dry the next day, but overall super enjoyable.
Terrific ramen import from Tokyo. The noodles were good, but the broths were the real winners. We tried the classic tonkotsu and the spicy tan tan ramen. The tonkotsu broth was very rich and milky and flavorful, yet it did not taste heavy. I was even slurping the broth on its own, and normally I find ramen broth too heavy to drink as soup. The spicy tan tan was just as good, if not better. The ground pork and spice added more depth and complexity, and I was also slurping away at that one.
For appetizers, we tried the potato salad with snow crab and the okonomiyaki. I would not normally order potato salad, but the waitress recommended it, and it was indeed delicious without being overdressed. Okonomiyaki in general is one of my favorite foods ever, and it was pretty exciting for it to be served still in the skillet. That said, the deep dish skillet meant it was a tall and fat okonomiyaki, which meant a chewy/fluffy inside. It was good, but I personally am more used to flatter and crispier/less doughy okonomiyakis, so it wasn't my favorite stylistically (but again, nothing against their preparation...just personal preference).
I'm already looking forward to going back to try more items.
Part steakhouse, part Korean BBQ...what's not to like?
We got the Butcher's Feast and tacked on a few other items. The steak was definitely very high quality. With the exception of the galbi, all of the steaks are seasoned only with a bit of salt tableside before going on the grill. Galbi is normally one of my favorite K-BBQ items, but while good at Cote, I enjoyed the other cuts much more -- no need for marinade and extra sauce when the steak is such good quality. Like other K-BBQ places, there was lettuce and the thick paste/sauce (ssam-jang) on the side, and while I normally enjoy making lettuce wraps, the steakhouse quality of the meats made it seem almost wrong to add heavy sauce and/or make a lettuce burrito out of it. My only gripe on the meat would be the serving size isn't that large -- another reason why our table practically ignored the lettuce wraps, as the lettuce leaves were large, and there was just enough of each cut of meat to sample and savor, and it would've probably taken the entire per person serving to have a passable amount of meat to lettuce ratio (and then you don't have enough left to taste the meat on its own).
I was a bit worried we'd leave hungry after we devoured the meat, but then the stews and rice came (and we also got the wagyu kimchi paella and jan-chi somyun), and we were quite satisfied after that. Both stews were good, but the highlights were definitely the add-ons. The paella was a deliciously flavorful and crispy kimchi wagyu fried rice, and the jan-chi somyun didn't look like much, but one bite was enough to win over the entire table. It was a light broth and complemented all of the other heavy foods well, and the angel hair noodles were so soft I'm not sure I really chewed. Highly recommend.
As a side note, we also ordered the Korean bacon appetizer, but that was the most underwhelming. Not bad, but really not that standout either, especially in comparison to everything else.
Overall a wonderful meal, and I look forward to coming back.
We got the $180 omakase with both the uni and toro tastings, and while the sushi (and other dishes) were good, it was really not that standout considering the price and the many other amazing sushi places in NYC.
The sushi is prepared very traditionally, and no special sauces are used (I am perfectly fine with that). The quality of fish was decent but not mind blowing, and unfortunately the selection of fish we had was pretty ordinary: medium fatty tuna, salmon, sea bream, scallop, pike mackerel, snapper, white shrimp, uni, ikura, half roll of tuna with pickled daikon, tamago, and anago.
I was initially most excited by the prospect of uni and toro tastings (the whole reason I decided to come here), but those were disappointing. The uni tasting we had were from 2 different regions of Hokkaido, and the dish was presented with some seaweed so you could wrap it on your own. On the plus side, it was a worthy tasting in the sense that you could definitely taste the difference. However, I didn't love either uni and have had better uni at many other sushi restaurants. The toro tasting came with 3 small pieces of toro -- a medium fatty toro, a seared medium fatty toro, and a fatty toro. All were decent, but again, nothing too memorable, sadly.
Of the other dishes, the most memorable was the hot course -- normally a piece of grilled miso king crab, but we were also offered an option to get a foie gras chawanmushi, so we opted for one of each (crab and foie gras) so we could try both. The foie gras chawanmushi had beautiful presentation with caviar and gold leaves, but the foie gras itself was a bit hard and not as soft and creamy and buttery as I was expecting. (Normally I forget foie gras is liver because it's so soft and buttery, but in this instance, the texture was very much like liver.) The miso king crab was delicious and my favorite item of the night, but each piece was pretty small.
Overall, nothing was bad, but we were expecting much better given the price, the reviews, and other experiences at similarly priced places.
