Restaurant Review: Ayurveda Cafe

January 17, 2009February 6, 20153 Comments

Last night, I met my friends Shaina and Sharon for dinner at The Ayurveda Cafe, a vegetarian Indian restaurant on the Upper West Side. I first met Shaina and Sharon about two years ago when we all happened to be on the same Birthright Israel trip. (Have you heard of Birthright Israel?? If you have any Jewish in you, you are eligible to go on an all-expenses-paid 10-day trip to Israel — amaaaaazing.) I asked the waitress to take a picture of us at the restaurant, but we looked cold and tired, so I thought a peek at our Israeli adventures would be better.

Shaina and me riding a camel

Sharon and me on our tour bus

Anyway, the three of us went to this lovely restaurant last night. From the restaurant’s webpage: “Ayurveda is very clear when it comes to food. Sattvic (pure) food is needed to heal and maintain good health and must incorporate six tastes in every meal: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent and pungent. At Ayurveda Cafe we believe food cooked and served with compassion adds a powerful value to the dining experience. That power may be invisible to the human eye but it can be felt by you.”

Doesn’t it sound exciting already? Not to mention that those six tastes came all bundled together in the one dinner option, a fixed priced meal for $14 that included an appetizer, two vegetable entrees, lentils, bread, basmati or brown rice, salad, raita and dessert. Oh, and I forgot to mention that everything is unlimitied. Yes, they do free refills!

Since the menu is fixed price and changes daily, the proper names for the dishes are not listed. The only thing I can label for sure when it comes to Indian food is chicken tikka masala, so I will let the photos do the talking. Feel free to jump in if you know something official!

Our appetizer was these standard crackerish pieces:

With assorted herb-y, sweet, and onion-y chutneys:

I had one of the crackers with lots of each dip.

Here’s my dinner plate. Look at all the tastes!

back: yogurt raita and salad; center: sweet root vegetable stew?, salty/spicy potato stew?, lentils; front: black bean samosa-ish nugget and brown rice

I ate half the rice (probably about 3/4 of a cup) and everything pictured (though I ate around the potatoes in the middle dish). I took advantage of the free refills to get another salad and raita.

Dessert was a sweetened mash of chickpea flour called besan halwa. It tasted a little peanutty and had the grainy kind of texture that I love. I obviously opted for seconds on this, too:

bowl one

bowl two

And, of course, Indian food isn’t Indian food without the tray of “birdseed”:

I had several spoonfuls of these:

And then made myself a tasting dish (or two) of everything:

I brought home those cardamom pods (top center) for experimenting because I LOVE cardamom but have only used it in its ground form. I’ll have to look into what I can do with them:

Also, a little box with a “take one” message sat on what I’ll refer to as the restaurant’s “ambience table”:

the tall thing behind the tray of birdseed is the box

Inside the box were tons of paper fortune strips. Tell me mine doesn’t sound distressingly ominous: “A fear that captures our whole attention generates the repetition of negative images and affirmations. It holds within it the power to materialise itself into reality.”

Scary fortune aside, I left the restaurant feeling full of (ok, stuffed with) healthy and compassionate foods. And I stayed within my weekly entertainment budget of $20! I am officially a fan of The Ayurveda Cafe.

Restaurant Review: Creole (and a holiday party)

January 10, 2009February 6, 20153 Comments

My work holiday party last night was full of dancing and eating: two very complementary activities. If you think I could not possibly have been hungry after eating all of my packed lunch and snacks, my coworker’s corn chowder, and half a fruitcake, you’d be wrong! The party was at Creole, a restaurant in East Harlem. I was excited when I found out because any party at a restaurant is bound to feature food! Before the dinner buffet began, servers came around with trays of salmon croquettes and vegetarian black bean meatloaf:

I had two of each. The salmon croquettes were delicious — warm and crispy on the outside. The black bean loaf looked and felt exactly like a brownie. I was understandably disappointed when it did not taste like a brownie. In fact, the loaf tasted like a lot of nothing at first, except for a spicy burning that hit after the fact, so I only ate half a piece. But after dinner, the other half was still sitting there in front of me, and it jumped into my mouth. It tasted much better completely cold, so I had another.

The dinner was a buffet of all sorts of things. First, I covered my plate in a mountain of salad (mixed greens, shredded carrot, onions, tomatoes) and then topped it with a taste (ok, more than a taste) of everything that looked good. Clockwise from top left: baked chicken breast, collard greens, vegetarian jambalaya rice, and okra gumbo with shrimp (good thing I had so much practice with okra this week):

The chicken was moist, the greens were sweet, the rice was sticky and seasoning-packed, and the gumbo was a perfect blend of textures and flavors. In fact, aside from an overly, um, aggressive server during the dancing portion of the night and the restaurant’s policy of no to-go containers during a buffet (like I let that stop me ;-)), the experience was quite pleasant. If I had an income, I’d eat here again.

Between dinner and dessert (wait till you see the dessert!) was dancing. Some artistic action shots:

I love the colors in these photos. The restaurant had such a warm ambience.

So, with dinner (and fruitcake) successfully burned off (HA!), it was time for dessert: sweet potato beignets! They were warm and drizzled with chocolate sauce:

And just look at this gooey sweet potato interior:

I had two (whoops). But they were sooooo good. I wonder if I can figure out a healthy way to make them at home.

Anyway, I feel perfectly satisfied and not at all overstuffed. After events like this, people usually start offering me seats on the subway because they think I’m pregnant, but not last night! It probably helped that I only ate one plate of food … while there. I filled two more plates, but they went right into my empty lunch tupperwares and a plastic bag to bring home. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, and this girl is a student with no tolerance for starving!

My loot, getting ready for the fridge at home:

salad, chicken, shrimp gumbo, collard greens, and salt water peppermint taffee!

salad, chicken, shrimp gumbo, collard greens, and salt water peppermint taffy!

Solo performances:

salad leaves

collard greens, chicken, shrimp gumbo

salt water taffy!!! (party favor)

I had four pieces of taffy on the looong commute home (whoops again).

I know this is the post that never ends, but I have one more thing to report. This was waiting for me when I got home:

It’s my Polar F6 heart rate monitor, a Christmas present from my stepdad’s family. Yayyyy, I can’t wait to try it! I was planning a 5-mile run today, but it may end up having to be Sunday if we get the predicted eight inches of snow. Grrrrr, winter is messing up my half marathon training plans …

Restaurant Review: Blockheads (plus endless rice)

January 7, 2009February 6, 20151 Comment

Tonight, I met my friend Sarah (great name, by the way) for dinner at Blockheads, a Mexican restaurant on the upper east side. Mexican food is SO easy to make healthy … but it’s also easy to make very unhealthy. I was glad Blockheads was a model of the former. I ordered the “No-Dairy Burrito” — similar to my eggs vs. egg whites thinking, I am not opposed to dairy products (quite the opposite, in fact!), but you can’t control quantities when it comes to restaurant-sized servings. I’m generally a plate-cleaner, so I might as well make sure the fat I’m eating is the healthy kind.

My burrito came in a whole wheat tortilla with brown rice, black beans, and soy cheese. Because I asked the waiter to “Super-Corn it” (yeah, I felt stupid saying it then, too), it also came with guacamole, tofu sour cream, and roasted corn salsa inside. It was ENORMOUS:

As expected, I cleared every last crumb. Candlelit cross-section:

My burrito was delicious! Something about the tofu sour cream reminded me of ricotta, so it was almost like a perfectly rich mexican lasagna, yummmm. Sarah ordered the rice and beans burrito, but it was a little too beany for her liking.

The waiter tried to convince us that we wanted margaritas and flan, but we stayed strong and asked for the check. With the check came some mini rice pudding samples, on the house. Here are the rice puddings on a candlelit date with each other:

Sarah’s not really a fan of rice pudding, so I ate both :-). While the pudding was a nice gesture on the restaurant’s part, it tasted suspiciously like Kozy Shack. Sarah mentioned that the last time she ate there, the complimentary dessert was chocolate pudding. Now, far be it for me to turn my nose up at free dessert … just thought it was worth mentioning that Blockheads may have a special relationship with the commercial pudding industry.

Lunch Addendum

I successfully downed every bite of the lunch and snacks I packed today (when do I not, really?), even the emergency backup mini muffins (they only lasted until 9:30 am). More importantly, though, I had another exciting day of sampling delicious Dominican food, courtesy of my coworker Belkis. She shared some of her homemade rice and beans and a bite of some type of overnight-marinated beef — probably the tastiest bite of beef I have ever eaten:

I really need to learn how to cook this way!

Restaurant Review: Garage

January 4, 2009February 6, 20154 Comments

Because I saved so much money by going home to MA for 10 days, I decided it was ok to splurge on a restaurant brunch with the “Comm Girls”: Q, Gina, Di, Feld, and Kate. We all studied communications together at NYU. There used to be more of us, but they’ve fanned out across the country and could not fly in from, say, Athens, GA (hi Wife!) to join us today. We ate at a restaurant in the West Village called Garage where we were serenaded by live jazz music:

I will get my complaints out of the way first:

1) This was a fixed price brunch that came with a choice of bloody mary, mimosa, screwdriver, or orange juice. I did not want any of those. I wanted tea, especially after my tragic tea-less morning. I had assumed it would be no problem to order tea in place of one of the above-listed “complimentary” beverages; after all, if they’re willing to hand out free alcohol, they would surely be willing to hand me a cup of hot water. But they were not. The tea was going to cost me $3.00! I passed.

2) The food, though yummy, was cooked in too much oil. Oil does not look pretty in photographs.

3) No substitutions were allowed. So, even though I fiercely despise potatoes, they had to be delivered on my plate in a big oily lump. I was not allowed to replace them with a few simple pieces of lettuce. Gina tried to help me with my mission of eliminating food waste, but even she could only manage a few bites.

4) When the bill came, half of us discovered that ordering our omelets with egg whites cost $2.00 extra! An egg white surcharge is standard in many restaurants; however, advance notice of the surcharge is even more standard. We felt deceived.

Onto the food:

Q and I both ordered the Farmer’s Market Omelet with egg whites. (I have nothing against egg yolks … when I cook for myself. Restaurant omelets, however, often contain lots of oil/butter and three eggs! I like my eggs one at a time, so it’s safer to order the whites when I’m out.) Description from the website: fresh-roasted zucchini, tomatoes, asparagus, eggplant, and yellow squash, tossed with goat cheese and served with brunch potatoes and your choice of toast. Yum!

The omelet came with a pile of potatoes (which we’ve discussed already), a slice of whole wheat toast (though mine only had half a slice, hmph!), and one itty bitty wedge each of watermelon and orange for garnish (but I ate them, of course):

Kate ordered the Farmer’s Market Omelet with regular eggs (not pictured), Feld ordered the Applewood Smoked Bacon & Vermont Cheddar Omelet, Di ordered the Spinach & Mushroom Omelet with egg whites, and Gina ordered the Famous French Vanilla Bean Soaked French Toast (with sliced fresh bananas and homemade chocolate sauce!):