Part of not being wowed at every meal here has to do with money. New York is a great city for food... if you have money. Hands down, you could probably get better meals in the $18-25 price range here than anywhere else. But as the price drops, the quality does too, at least in Manhattan. I have yet to find a Gloria's or Alejo's or whatever-- the cheap, delicious hole-in-the-wall. Last night (thanks to my mom's "Valentine's Day treat"), I threw money aside for a bit.
I hit up Billyburg again (3 times in a week-- a tad excessive, even for me), this time for Diner, a restaurant I heard about from a friend and was dying to go to. It's an old diner converted into a new diner but with totally un-diner-y food. It's in the shady part of Williamsburg (as is everything else that's good in this neighborhod), but looks cool on the outside. The inside looked pretty cool also-- it really had that old-school diner look. This city has atmosphere down, and the same could be said for this place, but I wasn't sure about the food.
We were seated relatively quickly, and our waitress came around and sat at our table. She greeted us, then explained that the menu consisted of a rotating list of "specials." She pulled out a pen and started writing on the paper tablecloth. She listed each appetizer (which didn't sound too fancy), then got into the entrees: a vegetable risotto, pollack, some other fish, duck, chicken, and a T-bone steak. She started writing down prices at the duck ($30), meaning everything else was probably under $25. It was an interesting way to introduce a menu, and my friends and I really liked it.
I ordered the pollack (which I found out was in the cod family of white fish) wrapped in bacon, over a bed of lentils. As we know from Top Chef, anything wrapped in bacon is a winner; this dish was no exception. The first bite was a bit too salty, but it was tasty. Then the next bite hit, and it got better. The cod was perfectly cooked, not too dry, not too moist. The bacon was nice and crisp (and not as salty as the first bite, go figure), and perfectly balanced the fish. By the fifth bite, it was as close to ridiculously awesome as it could get. I can't think of a better fish dish I've had.
We decided to order dessert because it sounded so good-- a chocolate mousse over some sort of meringue cookie concoction. The waitress brought it out and it looked good, but nothing spectacular; things changed after the first bite. The mousse was rich and smooth; the meringue was sweet and crispy on the outside, but it melted in your mouth. We fought over who got to take the last bite. For a med student, this was all a bit pricey ($34 with tax, tip, etc.), but I didn't regret anything.
This was probably the first meal that I felt the need to blog about. I think that says it all.
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