And we're off: Fork eases us gently into Philly

After the big move down to Philly, my mom stuck around for a couple of days to help me get set up. Thanks Mom! And so of course we made time for some meals, including Saturday night dinner at Fork.

It's a welcoming dining room with a vibrant open kitchen, and especially when it's 100+ degrees out and it's air conditioned inside, Fork feels like heaven. The vibe is casual and slightly eclectic, just on this side of "fine dining."

To start, we were offered a choice of three breads. Mom took the fruit and nut with a devilish look on her face, and she gobbled it down. Mine was a multigrain roll, and it was hearty and studded with all kinds of yummy seeds that I gracelessly picked off the top.

Fruits and nuts inside

Yeah, this is a terrible picture, but you get the idea

To start, we split the baby lettuces salad. This was very simple, with two fried balls of lemon ricotta- surprisingly lemony, and a nice touch. Sadly, the leaves themselves were a touch oversalted, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Lettuces, y'know.

For her entree, Mom went for the halibut, with parsley-garlic puree, wax beans, and parisienne potatoes (essentially little potato balls sauteed in butter). She enjoyed it, noting that the fish was well cooked and not dry at all. I do also applaud the kitchen for putting a textbook golden-brown sear on that puppy. Check it out:

Pretty fish

My entree was the pickled beets and garden vegetable salad. This was decent, but it didn't blow my mind; the vegetables (beans, radishes, beets) and tangle of micro-greens were fresh, but there wasn't anything particularly special about the dish. Every now and then, I'd get a bite of pickled beet, and the burst of vinegar was the tastiest thing about the dish.

There are veggies under there

On to dessert. We debated going elsewhere for ice cream, but instead we decided to stick it out at Fork-- which may have been the wrong choice, given that pastry doesn't seem to be the restaurant's forte. Mom went for the malted chocolate cream cake, which packed layers of flourless chocolate cake, caramel mousse, and malted vanilla cream, all enrobed in chocolate ganache and paired with blackberry gelato. This got the job done-- it was chocolatey, after all-- but the plating seemed to be a bit of an afterthought.

I guess?

I went for an order of salted caramel gelato, which came with a cocoa nib shortbread cookie. The gelato was mild and sweet, which was good, but it was the shortbread that was the surprise winner: crumbly, sugary, and buttery, all interspersed with little bursts of bitter chocolateyness from the nibs. I could have gone for just a plate of those cookies, frankly.

Welp, it's gelato. Plus cookie.

So all in all, Fork was decent. We agreed it didn't blow us away, but I'd certainly return if the opportunity presented. So therefore I award fork my inaugural Philly three OS rating, with an eye toward many more ratings to come.

Fork
306 Market Street, between 3rd and 4th Streets
215-625-9425

Ruby et violette ushers in a new phase of existence

Readers, you know that I am nothing if not honest. On Life With Food and Drink, I give you the truth, the honest truth, nothing but the truth, so help me (restaurant) God(s). And so here's another bit of unvarnished truth: I've made a mistake. A huge mistake.

I've lived in Hell's Kitchen for almost four years now, if you include a summer before I moved here officially. And all that time I've been erring. Badly. Because here's the situation: Before last week, I'd never been to Ruby & Violette, a little cookie and ice cream shop a mere TWO BLOCKS from my apartment.

What a fool I've been. Sure, it's unassuming, a tiny sunken storefront that looks like a cross between a '50s soda shop and Alice in Wonderland's living room. There are a couple tables and a counter, and that's it. Except that's not it: Behind the counter lies some of the (if not THE, point-blank) city's best ice cream.

The concept behind Ruby & Violette's ice cream is cookie dough-- each flavor is packed with chunks of their creative cookie dough concoction. And by chunks, I do mean chunks, each a bit bigger than a Starburst and just as chewy and dense. Oh, and there are large chocolate chips in most of the flavors too.

I tried the Friday Night Foosball flavor, with peanut butter ice cream and Chex-mix packed cookie dough and some Chex mix pieces sprinkled in throughout. It was a rich, peanut buttery blast.

Oh, and each taste is like three bites in itself

But my first taste, and my ultimate selection, was First Kiss, a caramel ice cream with dark chocolate chips and hunks of sea-salt-flecked dark chocolate cookie dough. The caramel flavor of the ice cream was cool and pure and perfect in combination with the incredibly rich cookie dough and the snappy dark chocolate pieces. One scoop of this is enough to fill the hungriest belly.

A tall cup and a classy-looking silver plastic spoon

Oh, and if they happen to offer you a "taste" of their brownie while you're waiting, don't turn it down. It just may be damn near the best brownie you've ever tasted, fudgy and melting, simultaneously rich and light, a texture alchemy that doesn't seem possible.

Brownie bite

I just spent the last four years without this ice cream, and now I have a whole heck of a lot of catching up to do. Don't make the same mistake I did.

Ruby et Violette
457 W. 50th Street, near 10th Avenue
212-582-6720

Mail-order frozen cake? Yes, please

It's a long story, but I'll skip to the punch line: for various reasons, I found myself ordering a "world-famous" 7-layer caramel cake from Caroline's Cakes last week. Yes, don't ask. The important part is that a huge, 13-pound frozen cake arrived at my door, and I had to taste-test it. Sometimes life is hard.

First things first: Plop the sucker on the counter for 2-3 hours to let it thaw. And prepare your apartment to be filled, slowly but surely, with an intoxicating caramel aroma that grows ever stronger as the caramel esters become airborne and float along your apartment's air currents toward your nose (or something). Seriously: your kitchen, and if you're a Manhattan-dweller the rest of your small apartment as well, will smell buttery and sugary and positively delightful. Resist the urge to drop everything you're doing and plunge face-first into the cake.

Unveiling the beast

When the time was right, I unwrapped the thawed cake and cut myself a slice. It cut cleanly and prettily, revealing seven thin layers of yellow cake smothered in caramel frosting. I didn't exactly have high hopes for this confection, despite the delicious smell, but I took a bite, and ohh, it was scrumptious. The cake itself wasn't spectacular; it's pretty standard vanilla/yellow cake with a bit of a dry and spongy texture, probably due to the freezing. But that really doesn't matter, because the frosting was outrageous. It's ever-so-slightly grainy, like a good fudge, and it tastes like the best melt-in-your-mouth caramel you've ever had. Not overly buttery or sugary, it strikes the perfect balance and comes together in a sweet, sweet bear hug for your tongue.

Pretty, no?

Suffice it to say I was pretty blown away. And the best part is that, at least in theory, you can refreeze and rethaw this cake as many times as you want for up to 6 months. I'm skeptical about that, but I was skeptical about whether this cake would be edible in the first place, and I'm thoroughly converted on that front. So maybe I have 19/20ths of an enormous cake slowly refreezing in my freezer. We'll see how that goes.

Caroline's Cakes
Available for shipping

Ice cream saves the day

On an epically bad day last week, I needed ice cream. That's really all that needs to be said about why I ended up at Holey Cream, desperate for as much cold stuff as I could stuff in my face to numb what had gone on earlier. Fortunately, I encountered two very kind employees who plied me with as many samples as I could handle, and then once I chose, piled a "small" cup high with as many scoops as it could hold, bending the rules to fit two flavors in one cup.

I ate all of this. It required both spoons.

My choices were Heath Bar and a Caramel Turtle flavor. The flavor profiles were fairly similar: creamy vanilla ice cream accented with crunchy caramel notes. The cream was clearly premium, rich and smooth and filling and fattening. And as the caramel flavors melted and anesthetized my tongue, I inwardly blessed the person who invested ice cream. Thank you, whoever you are (were), for providing me a cost-effective way to drown my sorrows in sugar and saturated fat. Amen.

Holey Cream
Ninth Avenue and 53rd Street
212-247-8400

Shake Shack redeems itself

After our disappointment with the dessert offerings at Eataly, BL and I were marooned on 5th Avenue and 23rd Street with nothing sweet in sight. We peeked around the corner to see if the Van Leeuwen truck was parked in one of its frequent spots-- it wasn't. What to do, what to do? Figured we might as well check out the only thing that came to mind: Shake Shack.

Now, as you know, I've had mixed experiences with Shake Shack custard, but I'm always the optimist when it comes to frozen treats. Plus, I figured, the line would be too long, and we'd have to go elsewhere anyway. Well, the regular line WAS very long, almost snaking its way out of the park entirely-- BL was discouraged-- but I pressed forward to check out the B line. The B line WAS no line. Honestly. One person sneaked his way in there in front of us, but we waited approximately 30 seconds and were at the window, ordering our dessert.

BL chose the daily special custard, grasshopper. The woman at the register described it as "chocolate mint," and I was expecting regular mint chocolate chip. But what emerged looked smooth and chocolatey; I took one bite and it tasted just like an Andes mint. Damn, I thought, that's good, and I'd tweaked.

Simple in looks but complex in flavor

Turned out, however, that this time around, for the first time, I HADN'T tweaked. My concoction, a cup of half-vanilla, half-chocolate, with caramel sauce on top-- was good. Nay, delicious! I gobbled it down, the caramel sauce sparse but flavorful, the vanilla and chocolate mixing and complementing one another like the best of black & white cookies.

Would have liked more caramel, but what was there worked

So what did I learn from this experience? While I might not jump at the Shack's vanilla custard straight up, when it's paired and doctored with more flavorful elements, it's quite a good conveyance. This visit made me a believer.

Shake Shack
Madison Park, 23rd Street and Madison Avenue
212-889-6600

Struggling at Landmarc

This past weekend, AV had a good friend from college in town. Since I had not yet met said friend, our big plan was to meet up for dinner at 7. When I called around 3:30 to confirm the location, the two of them seemed to be, shall we say, neck-deep in wings and beer at a bar on the UES. So suffice it to say that the planning of said 7PM dinner did not go... smoothly? I'll spare you the details; let's just fast forward to 7:30, when the three of us gathered at Landmarc in the Time Warner Center. Me: exhausted as all get-out. AV and ER: struggling.

Since Landmarc doesn't take reservations, we were fortunate that there was no wait for a table for three. We collapsed into a table that seemed to be smack in the middle of the restaurant's jet-stream, so AV and I sat shivering for the entirety of the meal. Well, I shivered, and AV eyed the door to the bathroom across the room should an a-la-minute escape be necessary.

We managed to discover the menus, which are folded pieces of paper tucked into the napkins on the table. Our server was friendly and accommodating, and she put up with our antics quite well. After vehemently declining the offer of drinks, we placed our order. A runner then brought a bread basket. ER noted that the bread was not warm. True, but it did come with room-temp (read: spreadable) butter and a bottle of olive oil on the table; given that I wasn't hungry, I took a couple of bites for research purposes, and it was definitely solid sourdough, the type you tend to see frequently around town.

Bread in a basket

We talked, mostly sharing amusing stories about AV while he sat gamely (and rather palely) absorbing the abuse. Our server popped by to let us know that our food was almost ready. And then it arrived. Starting with the poor battered males at the table, AV had ordered an appetizer portion of the Saturday pasta special, which was pasta bolognese. He said it was pretty good, but honeslty I think any carb-based food at that point probably would have done the trick. The only negative of note was that the server offered parmesan, which we all know AV loves, and their response to an eager "yes" was a tiny metal dish of powdered parm-- about two teaspoons' worth. Seriously??? That just won't cut it.

Pasta pre-parm

ER had gone with the Landmarc burger, which one of the reasons we ultimately chose Landmarc as our destination. He had asked to add bacon, a request eagerly accommodated. Sort of. The burger earned raves all around, despite the fact that the pickles crowning the overflowing mountain of accompanying frisee were not nearly pickled enough. The bacon, however, made its appearance in the form of bacon crumbles tucked in another tiny metal ramekin (pernicious little bastards, those) buried under the greens; ER didn't notice it until he was about 3/4 of the way through his burger. Landmarc, listen: if you're gonna add bacon to a burger, it's gotta be strips. I may be a vegetarian, but even I know that crumbles won't cut it, especially if there's not cheese on the burger for the crumbles to stick to. Nonetheless, bacon debacle aside, the burger was a winner.

See that tiny bit of metal peeking out next to the ketchup? Yeah, that's the bacon.

My choice (again, I wasn't hungry, so don't shoot me) was a side of sauteed spinach. This was a pretty small portion for a $6 side, and it came strangely swimming in liquid, which I suspected was chicken broth. Given that I didn't specify that I was vegetarian, I didn't necessarily hold it against Landmarc, but rather instead of inquiring about the liquid and making an obnoxious scene, I gulped the spinach as quickly as I could and then sat with it roiling in my stomach for a while. The spinach had slivers of pretty raw garlic and rings of what looked like shallots in it. It was salty. Not the most successful spinach I've ever had, but then again, I'm not sure anything would have wowed me given that I wasn't hungry.

Meh

At this point, when we were all done, another basket of bread landed on our table, right in front of me, as though it were the entree I had ordered. Whaaa?

No matter. When the bill came, a generous handful of homemade caramels also arrived-- I gulped about four of these in succession, because they were creamy and buttery and just the perfect thing to settle my stomach.

So what's the verdict on Landmarc? Well, I'm not quite sure we gave it a fair shake. Given the sorry state we were in, I don't think even Daniel would have wowed us. I've also been to the Tribeca location a while ago, and it provided a good time. I think, given the data points I have, that Landmarc is a solid place. The burger is good, the other food is hit or miss. But they have a cotton candy machine-- evident in the huge poofs of cotton candy making the rounds in the dining room as elements of dessert courses-- and how bad can any restaurant with a cotton candy machine be? Landmarc is a solid three Offset Spatula restaurant, not mind-blowing, but I'd return if the circumstances merited. And maybe next time I'm not hungry, I'll just skip right to the dessert course.

Landmarc
10 Columbus Circule, 3rd floor
212-823-6123