After a great recent meal at Bar Carrera, it occurred to me that this review should somehow incorporate the idea that the little things in life usually end up being the most important … I just wasn’t sure if I should reference Malcolm Gladwell or Good Charlotte. References aside, Bar Carrera is an example of little things done right. The diminutive Spanish restaurant and wine bar turns out excellent small plates from a tiny kitchen at the back of the room. The menu is relatively brief, yet well thought out, especially considering the limitations of the kitchen in back – not unlike one you would see set temporarily set up on 5th Avenue for a Good Morning America cooking segment. Despite the constraints, Bar Carrera is proof that doing a few things well is enough to keep people coming back … even if it’s just a handful of killer small plates. We’ll give Bar Carrera points for excellent food, a great wine list, and for reminding us of Muggsy Bogues, and we deducted a few for the douchey bar tender and lack of decent tunes.
You know that friend of yours who was really crazy in her twenties and went out clubbing every night, but then she got a boyfriend and sort of went off the grid, but now she’s single again and looking to party? Yeah, that girl goes to Double Crown like, all the time.
Double Crown is a bar and restaurant where people who have outgrown the club scene hang out. At least this crowd knows it and doesn’t still wait in line outside of Greenhouse on the weekends. Or maybe they do, but they just eat here first. Either way, the place is a scene, but one with pretty good food. The short description of the menu at Double Crown is that it’s Colonial Asian, meaning the cuisine that resulted from British expansion into Southeast Asia. We’ll go ahead and just call it Pan-Asian, and we had some dishes that were very good. It’s a bit on the pricey side for sure, but the cheaper things on the menu tend to be the better choices, and the $35 Sunday Nyonya Dinner is a good deal. As for the atmosphere, the room basically looks like a west side mega-club with better lighting, but it’s tasteful and doesn’t feel too kitschy. I’m pretty sure this restaurant is exactly what Shang was supposed to be, just with customers and food that doesn’t taste like poison.
Looking for the perfect downtown sushi spot to take people when you’re not the one paying the bill? Blue Ribbon is your joint. This slick, modern style sushi restaurant is one of New York City’s signature sushi establishments. I love the anonymous exterior, with little to no signage which signals to me that the food speaks for itself. It’s a great place to go for a late dinner (they’re open until two in the morning), but avoid it during prime time Thurs.-Sat. nights because it gets really packed. If you dare, we highly recommend grabbing a drink at the old-New York haunt Cub Room around the corner. I’ve always had great meals here but I’ve also noticed that the prices just keep going up. To conquer this generous menu, you really don’t want to hold back, so prepare yourself for eighty to ninety dollars a head if you’re really hungry. As we discussed in the beginning, the perfect place to go when you don’t have to pay.
As a true cheese-a-phob (that’s right people, aside from cheese on pizza and the occasional mild cheese sauce, I avoid the stuff like the plague), you can imagine my reaction to the suggestion of eating anywhere related to Artisanal, the Mecca of all things cheese. However, after some arm twisting, I found myself walking into its grand, high ceilinged, chandeliered sister restaurant, Bar Artisanal. Imagine my surprise to find that while it stays true to its namesake with an extensive selection of cheeses, Bar Artisanal offers an expansive variety of non-cheese options as well. So much so, that it took me multiple visits to taste enough of the non-fromage items to write a well rounded review. Both the food and the service can be hit or miss, but the good outweigh the bad at this small plates French bistro. I look forward to my next visit.
Wow. How did we not know that Kingswood is such a scene? There are so many single ladies circling that bar that it feels like a perfume-laden shark tank. There’s blood in the water and I’m scared.
A restaurant like this is the entire reason that we created a category for Action at the Bar, and we’re also going to tag this one with Drunk Hook Ups, because that’s precisely what’s going down post-meal in Kingswood’s basement bar. Now, a restaurant with a crazy scene usually means mediocre food (Abe & Arthurs), but a meal at Kingswood can actually be pretty great – though everything is a bit too expensive and i’m still not exactly sure how it’s Australian. I certainly didn’t see any Bloomin’ Onions on the menu. The burger is killer, some of the appetizers are excellent, and brunch is good, but at the end of the day, Kingswood is built for one thing – mixing it up with strangers. There’s a large communal table that makes up a good deal of the restaurant’s seating, and the bar in front is a rectangle, perfect for scoping and being scoped. We’ve had a few meals at the bar and have been lucky spectators to a many a game of “slam your wine and go talk to him”. This must be where they find all the girls for The Bachelor.
Feature: Infatuation TV: P.O.S.
