Team bonding at Aroma Kitchen & Wine Bar

Last night my team at work went out for a celebratory, blowing-off-steam dinner at Aroma Kitchen and Wine Bar in the East Village. Aroma is one of my "list" restaurants-- I read about it when it was opening years ago, well before I moved to New York, and I've wanted to go ever since. Well, last night my wish was fulfilled in the form of a lovely and memorable dinner.

One thing to note about Aroma is that it is tiny. The bar takes up almost all of the dining room-- you have to squeeze past it to get to the two or three tables (or the bathroom) in the back, and the handful of tables in front are dwarfed by the presence of the bar. That said, the space is endearing-- rustically decorated, with wine bottles lining the walls. Our table, in the front, was near enough to the open front door that we had a pleasant breeze with us the entire evening. Speaking as a person who is cold all the time, it was an incredibly welcome break from the over-chilled restaurants crowding this city.

My teammate M and I arrived first, so we had the privilege of ordering the wine. The Aroma wine list is hilarious, chock full of descriptions like "barnyard, wet forest, prunes" and "cassis, blackberry, bacon...happily feminine."

The wine list, with character

M and I ordered a gewurtztraminer ("citrus, sweet peaches, sharp acidity, long and perfectly balanced, superb with aperitivo or white meats"), and after we tasted it (delicious, with a beautiful color and a particularly interesting smell), one of the owners came by to chat a little bit about the bottle's winemakers-- a nice touch.

Gewurtz in good glassware

I asked for a bread basket, and while they brought it the rest of our party arrived. While they settled in, I gobbled down a piece of of the white loaf. It had a great stretchy crumb with large air bubbles and a crackly crust. There was a small dish of olives in olive oil to accompany the bread; the olives were fairly generic and the olive oil was serviceable but not mind-blowing. The bread itself, though, carried this course through-- I only wish there were some salt on the table to add to the olive oil. When we finished this small dish, they brought more bread without us asking-- well done.

The olives and olive oil tasted faintly of bacon. Is that weird?

We placed our orders, opting to begin with a mixture of personal appetizers and apps for the table. We drank our wine and nibbled on bread, and after a bit of a wait the appetizers emerged. Two members of our party went with the special soup of the day (part of a VERY lengthy recitation of specials for the evening), a mixture of pureed cauliflower and turnip. I think it was turnip-- it might have been parsnip; for some reason those two veggies are stored in the same part of my brain. Either way, the soup's orderers pronounced it delicious.

Some sort of garnish was in there. I don't remember what it was...

My manager, A, ordered gnocchi. It looked like baked mac & cheese and came in a delightful shallow ramekin. It contained sausage, white truffle oil, and a few cheeses, and the crispy crust looked especially good.

Gnocchi gratin

Of the two apps for the table, the one I sampled was the warm beets. It was a stack of beets with bits of spread sandwiched in between the layers surrounded by a drizzle of warm beet dressing and a few little fried spheres. From the menu description, I surmise that the spread was gorgonzola and fig jam, but I didn't detect any of the pungent bite I typically associate with gorgonzola (I really don't like bleu cheese, so I tend to detect it when it's there). Overall, that turned out to be a good thing, because I found this appetizer delicious. Strikingly sweet, but delicious. Although I am still puzzled by the little fried balls-- I ate one and it was empty, like a fried little ball of air.

The leaning tower of BEETS-a. Get it?

The final appetizer was the calamari. It's described on the menu as "baked stuffed calamari, almond, shrimp, capers, fennel, parsley," and sure, maybe that's what was in it. It looked like calamari egg rolls, and there were two particularly graphic garnishes with tentacles. I steered clear, but the others seemed to like it.

Pretty, but-- eew.

We finished the appetizers, and our genial waiter cleared the table. The wine kept flowing, and we waited-- for a while-- for our entrees to appear. But finally, there they were, all swooping down to our table at once after being lined up on the shelf along the wall. My colleague L ordered the black linguine, which was a striking dish dotted with halved cherry tomatoes, shrimp, and small circles of squid. This dish seemed bizarre, but L seemed to like it. I was faintly curious about what the black linguine tasted like, but let's be clear: not curious enough.

Verrrrrry interesting.

B, the final member of our party, ordered the ravioli. I believe it was termed pink ravioli-- and to be entirely honest, I have no recollection of what was in this dish, although it's clear there was a touch of melted cheese on top. This is why I usually try to bring a little notebook along-- the ol' memory, especially with recited specials, sometimes fails me.

The pink ravioli will forever be mysterious.

Both A and M ordered the chicken involtini. It was stuffed with pesto, mozzarella, and proscuitto, and it came with a yummy little cake of potatoes and what tasted like leeks. This was a large portion of chicken, and it came with an attractively browned exterior. The potato cake was delicious; I had a small bite of it. Both A and M seemed to enjoy this dish.

Chicken 'n' potatoes

As for me, well, I ordered a salad (obviously). On the menu, it's "Satur Farms organic mesclun, beets, radishes, ricotta salata, basil, mint," but I ordered it without radishes (not my favorite). A requested on my behalf to replace the radishes with "extra everything else," and our waiter agreed to "supersize" my salad. All in good fun, except the salad was pretty small when it arrived. It was basically some mixed greens with a few shavings of ricotta salata on top. I didn't detect much basil, and only at the very end did I get a bite of mint-- a good thing, because too much mint in a salad is a weird thing.

If this is supersized, I'm not sure what the regular portion looks like...

We all gobbled up our entrees, and the overall consensus was that the food at Aroma was very good. But, of course, we weren't finished-- the most important course of any dinner remained ahead. Once the entree dishes were cleared, we waited another fairly long time for the dessert menus to come. The dessert options were sparse, but all except M found something appealing. We placed our order and commenced another slightly-too-long wait for the desserts to come.

L got the pistachio creme brulee. It looked good; he said it was fine, not extraordinary but not average. It had the nice crackly crust that's key to all good creme brulees, though, definitely a positive sign. It also came with a small thin cookie sticking rakishly out of the creme.

Creme brulee, the most fun dessert to make EVER

A ordered the ice cream and sorbet sampler. We tried to decipher what the flavors were; I nailed down the sorbets (raspberry and cantaloupe) but couldn't figure out the last flavor was. The waiter claimed it was vanilla but it most certainly wasn't-- of that, at least, I am sure. The scoops came perched on top of the same type of thin florentine cookies, which were good but would have been tastier if they were thicker.

Raspberry, cantaloupe, and miscellaneous frozen treats

B ordered the vanilla bread pudding. It looked good enough, and he ate about half of it. While I wisely remembered that eating an entire order of heavy and rich bread pudding is generally not a good idea for me, I did try a bite of this after he was finished. The best way I can describe this dessert is... gross. It tasted moldy. Truly. It tasted as though the bread were moldy. Eesh. Mind you, I don't think the bread actually WAS moldy, but it tasted... off.

How do you make a dessert taste BAD?

As for me, I ordered the gianduja panna cotta, with homemade nocciola gelato. This dessert was beautifully plated on a long, thin rectangular plate, with the two main players at either end and two hazelnuts in the middle. The panna cotta itself had a good nutella flavor and a jiggly texture. The gelato was also delicious, and I happily polished it off. This dessert was clearly the winner among the bunch, but it definitely wasn't one of the best desserts I've ever had (see my post on Finale for that). From the small list of desserts to the solidly average execution, I'd say that it's clear the dessert course isn't Aroma's focus. It would be nice if they could step up their game here-- it could bring the whole experience up a subtle but all-important notch.

Three forms of delicious hazelnut flavor

We had a great team dinner at Aroma. The restaurant is clearly a labor of love of its owners, and all the staff there greeted everyone as old friends (it was plain that this was a neighborhood restaurant with a faithful group of highly appreciated "regulars"). Only a few factors prevented Aroma from becoming a genuine five-spatula place, the dessert course being one. Another, which, granted, was in keeping with the authentic Italian atmosphere, was that they don't have Diet Coke (M's dessert of choice). All right, but in NYC, you've gotta have DC. Finally, we tried to pay with an Amex card at the end and they didn't accept it-- irking, certainly, but something that showed Aroma was more in the small-time business than in the game for a huge audience (something they couldn't handle capacity-wise anyway). All in all, though, Aroma had delicious food, a truly friendly and accommodating staff, and a great atmosphere. It would be the perfect place for a date or just a low-key, tasty meal. And for that, I give Aroma Kitchen & Wine Bar four out of five Offset Spatulas.

Five Napkin Burger watch!

I've decided that Five Napkin Burger, a new burger joint that's coming in on the block of 9th avenue between 44th and 45th streets, is going to be one of those restaurants that I feel invested in. This makes no sense, of course, because I don't even eat burgers. In any case, it's been plywooded for a long time, but as of yesterday, the signs are up, and a peek inside reveals a large number of chairs. I'd give it a few weeks till opening, perhaps?

Lunch, dinner and late night... that's promising

It's "An American Bar & Grill." Sure, cool.

A peek inside-- looks like a bar at the back; diner-style tiles on the walls

And lots and lots of chairs.

You'll definitely hear more once this place opens...

Leaving hungry from Taste of Times Square

The bro and I hit up Taste of Times Square this evening. Unwisely, he was starving when we arrived; we took one look at the ticket lines and decided that purchasing food wasn't in the cards for the night (unlike the 9th Avenue Food Festival, you have to buy "tickets" to purchase food at Taste, a ridiculously stupid system in my opinion). So instead of shopping for food, we attempted to walk west through the festival to get back to our apartment. What we saw along the way is below.

The entrance at Broadway and 46th

The Chop Suey booth... not too big of a line here. And they tried to ply me with fliers when I stopped to take a picture...

Ladies vending "cheesecake lollipops" at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone

Really good looking Turkish food at Dervish

Street fair sushi. Not so sure this is a good idea.

One of the many musical acts providing entertainment for the masses

The M&Ms booth was mobbed-- because they were giving out free M&Ms. We ultimately left the fair with four fun-size bags of M&Ms, and nothing else.

The Applebees booth, selling chocolate cake. This one's for Zach at Midtown Lunch.

John's Pizzeria. Seemed pretty standard.

This unconventional African band was enthralling the crowd.

This strawberry shortcake was by far the best-looking item on offer in the whole fair.

The Rivage bread pudding looked creatively plated but actually not that great. More like soggy slices of French toast than bread pudding.

At the Bourbon St. Bar & Grill booth, they were offering Buffalo Alligator (like Buffalo Chicken, but alligator).

I spoke to a woman who ordered the Buffalo Alligator-- she said it would have been good if it were hot and crispy, but since it wasn't, it was... "interesting."

Guac at Toloache. Looked great.

Blinis at Firebird. These poor men must have been sweating buckets.

Along with a novelty blow-up NY Giant, Tonic was offering chili-lime edamame. Uh....?

I'll end with a pictorial reminder of why we didn't end up eating anything at the fair. This is the ticket line at the west side entrance. It snaked all the way around the corner onto 9th avenue.

The line. About a billion people long.

Overall, the Taste of Times Square was distinctly "meh." Unless there's a large posse of roving ticket vendors or a healthy scalping market next year, I don't think I'd return.

An excellent adventure back in time at One if by Land

When I graduated from college last spring, our close family friends gave me a gift certificate to the restaurant One if by Land, Two if by Sea as part of my graduation gift. As OIBL has the reputation of being one of the most romantic restaurants in NYC, I'd been saving up the substantial gift certificate until I could take a serious boyfriend or date. Since said "boyfriend" hasn't materialized about a year later, I finally said screw it-- I want to go. So I decided to take my most faithful dining companions, my brother and his good friend from college, J. As the same trio that took Ethos by storm, we we ready to trade up to a serious "fancy" restaurant.

Apparently, OIBL is notorious for being THE site to propose marriage. One of people I work with went one night and witnessed two marriage proposals over the course of the evening. As such, we all placed our bets on how many proposals we'd see during the night. Since it was a lovely evening in early June, I put my chips on 2; J chose 1; and the bro, ever the pessimist, chose 0.

My brother and I arrived first. The facade of the restaurant has no sign, just a large carriage-house door with a small placard revealing the number "17." It was approximately 113% humidity outside, so we didn't linger, but the precious entrance definitely did set us up for what we had in store.

You just KNOW that this is it

Once you enter the restaurant, you're overwhelmed with the sense that this is, indeed, a "nice" restaurant in the traditional sense. There's dim lighting coming from grand chandeliers, white tablecloths and candles, yellow roses on every available surface, and a man playing a grand piano near the front of the bar. (Note: near the very end of the evening, the pianist played "Groovy Kind of Love," one of the songs my dad used to sing to me when I was little. I think OIBL might get an extra spatula just for that.)

A view from the bar

Since our party was incomplete, the hostess directed us toward the bar, where the bro and I sat for a few minutes before J arrived. Once we had gathered ourselves together, we were led to our table, a large round four-top in the center of the front dining room. From our perch, we could see up to the mezzanine dining level and out to the external garden. There's really no way my descriptions could do this place justice-- from the colonial paintings on the walls to the exposed brick to the carefully composed and gently lighted ambiance, OIBL is gorgeous. It really does feel like the carriage house it once was (built in 1867 to be the carriage house for Aaron Burr, our waiter informed us).

The view of the GORGEOUS external garden area from our table

But after all, we weren't here just to take in the atmosphere. So we turned our attention to the menus. I looked over the wine list first. For an upscale and relatively well-respected restaurant, their wine list is strikingly short, with an even smaller selection of whites (not necessarily surprising for a meat-heavy menu). And, I'd add, it skews very expensive. I ordered a 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, which was about $65 and was one of the cheapest bottles on the list. Were it not for my gift certificates, this would certainly be a true splurge meal (and even so, it wasn't cheap). When the wine arrived, it had the most delicious smell, and it tasted vibrant and mouth-watering. It seemed a bit high in alcohol, but once the rich food arrived, the acidity certainly helped wash everything down.

Menu and roses

The traditional menu option is a prix fixe-- 3 courses for $75. Since they didn't have a vegetarian main course, I asked for two veggie appetizers, and not only did the waiter oblige, but he offered to price them a la carte. That ended up being very useful, cutting the cost of my meal by about $20 or so. Once we had placed our orders, we were off.

First up: bread. Instead of a bread basket, OIBL upped the ante with a separate bread GUY. This man, after my own heart, approached the table with a tray of five different selections of bread: foccacia, olive bread, 7 grain roll, dinner roll, and peasant white slice. Both J and my brother chose the dinner roll, while I went with the seven grain. The triangles of sweet butter that accompanied the bread were the perfect spreadable consistency. The 7 grain roll was dense and studded with oats and nuts. As I told my companions, if I ate the entire roll I would be both full and happy-- it was incredibly good but definitely filling. I ate about a quarter of it; this evening was all about rationing my appetite. As for the dinner rolls, when the bread man made his second visit to the table, J chose the dinner roll again, and when my bro chose the 7 grain to branch out a bit, he said the dinner roll was better. Again, I'd be happy with a bread and butter tasting menu, so the meal was off to a great start.

7 grain--so satisfying

Dinner roll with butter waiting

Then came the amuse bouche. I love the tradition of amuse bouches-- it's just a great little surprise, and often the dish is one of the best of the meal. This particular occasion brought us a small glass of beet gazpacho atop a bit of wasabi tofu cream, accompanied by a tapioca crisp. The flavor of the gazpacho was intriguing-- sweet (from the beets) layered on top of a pronounced tomato flavor. The cream didn't add too much to the equation, but the tapioca crisp was very interesting. It had the texture of a shrimp cracker but the flavor of a hint of lime. Upscale Tostitos, anyone? The amuse was very good but I didn't finish the whole thing-- again, this was a marathon, not a sprint.

A beautiful layered composition...with a mutant chip

The amuse was whisked away by one of the small army of bussers and runners. Our waiter came by to chat between courses-- he gave us a bit of the history of the building, which was very interesting, especially to someone who grew up in an early antique farmhouse. Despite claiming to be "nervous" after watching me taking notes and snapping pictures, he did an expert job walking the line between aloof and overly solicitous. We felt well taken care of and attended to.

Soon the appetizers arrived. My brother chose the buffalo rib eye, small slices of rare buffalo on a bed of ramps sprinkled with slices of pear that looked like french fries at first glance. The plate was not only visually appealing but, according to its consumer, "off the charts" in flavor. The bro awarded the sauce on this dish alone six Offset Spatulas.

Sliced buffalo ribeye with trompe l'oeil pears

J went with the sauteed gulf shrimp with carrot and hearts of palm. The large, pink shrimp rested on top of dollops of orange and yellow sauces; with the orange from the strips of fried carrot, the dish looked pleasingly tropical. While I obviously did not try any of the shrimp (or any of the meat/fish dishes, for that matter), I asked for a taste of the fried carrot, having just had fried carrot a week earlier. It was scrumptious-- it looked like bacon but tasted like a sweet potato chip. When J left a few extra strips over on his plate, I quickly stole them away. With the plate cleared of shrimp and veggies, J pronounced the dish "magic."

It's like Florida on a plate!

For my appetizer, I ordered the salad of spring vegetable crudite. This lovely dish came as a bed of piquillo cake, which tasted like a red-peppery polenta, crowned by paper-thin shavings of various spring vegetables and accompanied by a dot of roasted red pepper puree and few demure curls of mont enebro cheese. As I tried to refrain from shoveling it in my face at an unladylike pace, I attempted to record what veggies were present. I counted frisee, radish, carrot, zucchini, asparagus, and ramps before I had eaten everything and had to stop counting. This was an incredibly creative and tasty take on the typical vegetable salad. The piquillo cake was especially delightful, and I very much appreciated the care that was obviously taken in putting the dish together (also evidenced by the somewhat alarming number of fingerprints surrounding the composition on the white plate...).

Veggies with weeping red pepper puree

Close up on veggies from the back... and the cute little curl of mont enebro cheese on top

And with that, the appetizers were done. The plates were cleared and we had a few moments to reflect on how good the food was-- and I'll reiterate at this point, it was seriously, seriously good. We were well on our way to a top-ten meal contender.

But first-- the entrees. J ordered the American loin of lamb, which came with eggplant, goat cheese foam, and some sort of caviar essence. This plate was also creatively composed, and it came with a large eggplant chip as a garnish. J devoured the lamb, pronouncing it phenomenal. As J and my brother traded bites of each other's dishes, the bro asked who the chef at OIBL is. J replied, quite aptly, "God."

So many things going on with this lamb...

The bro ordered beef wellington, which came perched on a mixture of ramps and asparagus (I snuck a piece of asparagus and it was so, so good. How do they make asparagus taste that good?). He couldn't get over how delicious it was; in particular, he raved, the crust was "out of this world."

Such a glossy, appealing crust

For my entree, I ordered another vegetarian appetizer selection, the wild mushroom and parmesan crumble. When they brought this dish, I thought they had made a mistake-- it looked like dessert. But no; while it was surrounded by a thin ring of pastry crust, the "ice cream" on top was actually a scoop of chantilly cream, and the crumbles below the cream were parmesan, not brown sugar. As I took forkfuls of crunchy, savory parmesan, creamy, light chantilly and the savory mushroom mixture inside, I couldn't get enough. I slowed down sufficiently to offer bites to J and the bro, but by the time it occurred to me to try to incorporate the dots of reduced balsamic vinegar around the edges, the food was gone.

Ceci n'est pas un dessert

Wow. Time for a brief breather. Our minds were blown-- and while our waiter told us we could linger as long as we wanted before dessert, we had hit our stride and plowed on. While we were all absurdly full at this point, we had been watching mouth-watering sweet creations emerging from the kitchen all evening long, so we couldn't turn down dessert. We placed our orders and tried to rearrange the contents of our stomachs to make room.

The desserts came out a few minutes later. The bro ordered the chocolate tart with salted caramel ice cream. The tart had a molten interior and was incredibly, incredibly rich. He could only manage a few bites; I took a taste, and J gamely tried to pick up the rest, but we still ended up leaving about half the tart on the plate.

Pretty standard but oh so rich

J had ordered the macadamia baklava. While this was probably the least visually appealing dish we had over the course of the day, I had several bites of it and it was very good. The phyllo was crispy and redolent of hazelnuts, and the honey mousse or nougat on the bottom was light and sweet. I do love honey, so I thought this was a great dessert. As a table we ended up polishing this one off.

Not the most beautiful, but I swear it tasted divine

Personally, I ordered a dish of ice cream-- not creative, I know, but I wanted to end the evening without my stomach exploding (and also knew I'd have a bunch of tastes of the boys' desserts as well). I had two scoops of vanilla and one of salted caramel. The vanilla was good but standard; the salted caramel was an interesting flavor-- very salty on the foretaste, but it mellowed into a nice caramel flavor as it melted in your mouth.

Ice cream. That's all.

Just to make things interesting, they also brought a complimentary plate of petit fours. Ohhhh boy. At this point it was just a challenge-- one which I (probably foolishly) took up eagerly. There was a bed of peanut brittle (extravagantly good-- as the bro said, he would have been happy with an order of peanut brittle for dessert), a chocolate chip cookie, a sugar cookie, a fruit gel (or "fruit snack," in my brother's parlance), a brownie bite, and a small fruit financier. While the bro took care of the fruit snack, I tucked away the financier, chocolate chip cookie, half the brownie, half the sugar cookie, and most of the peanut brittle... all in combination with my ice cream. Now, these were small bites, but come to think of it I did eat a striking amount of dessert last night.

Oh god. I really ate pretty much all of this.

So-- there we were. We had eaten probably all we could have eaten; if there were more courses, we likely would have given up. As we sat back, fat and happy, in our chairs, refusing the offers of coffee or tea and waiting for the check to arrive, we gave up in our quest for sighting marriage proposals-- the one young couple in a table near us had already left, sans engagement ring (thus, the brother wins this particular betting go-round...). It's probably clear by now, but this was a truly special, incredible meal. The food was spectacular; the service added much to the equation-- and they didn't skip a beat with our "unconventional" party (every single other table in the restaurant was occupied by couples, or combinations of couples). And the carriage house atmosphere, which could have crossed the border into cheesy, instead felt like a welcome Colonial respite from the humidity and activity outside. While due to budgetary constraints OIBL is not a restaurant I would return to on a regular basis, it's a perfect special-occasion place. And on that note, I'd encourage you not to reserve OIBL for romance. The three of us had a great time celebrating my graduation, and the food was just as good without a diamond ring at the end. For providing a lovely, memorable evening, I hereby make OIBL my first Manhattan five-OS restaurant.