Hudson County Restaurant Week Food Diary: 3Forty Grill

RER 1.30.13

And so began Hudson County RestaurantWeek,  a wonderful time of year. This winter round began January 28 and runs thru February 8th, plenty of time to check out the plethora of local gems throughout the growing and changing county. As mentioned here, the food celebration takes place twice a year, during the times when restaurants slow down, because of the weather or the season. The event is meant to help boost business, and get different people and even regulars through the door.  It is an extremely exciting time, with a list of almost 40 participating venues, across four or so cities, this restaurant week is far less daunting than  the same kind of event in New York City.  Even though the list is not as large, it is still difficult to decide where to go and what to taste. We try to pick places that we have not been to before or places that we would like to see in another light. Stay tuned for more of my Hudson County Restaurant Week Food Diary…this is just the beginning.

Wednesday, January 30, 8ish pm:  3forty Grill, Hoboken
This was going to be our first stop in celebrating Hudson County Restaurant Week, and yes it is a celebration (how is discounted food not?!). We landed on 3Forty Grill, because we wanted to stay in Hoboken that night. We both never have eaten there before, but firsts are always fun. I had been there once before for the lounge, so I had no idea what to expect.

When we arrived around eight, the place was almost packed. We could see all the full tables through the long window on the backside of the restaurant. The full tables, the dim light and table cloths made us anxious but also more excited; we could feel the trendy atmosphere from there.

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 Once inside, we had no wait for a table, ours was one of the maybe three unoccupied ones left and the others were reserved. The hostess gave us our menus and politely explained about the $35 three-courseprix fixe for the Restaurant Week. This smaller prix fixe menu featured items from the restaurant's regular menu, which is a great way to display and highlight the vision of the place. And this separate menu was relatively long and involved, giving more than just three options for each course.

To start on our prix fixe adventure we ordered the warm Brie and bacon bruschetta appetizer, as well as well as the fritto misto (delicious but not that interesting; included calamari, clam strips and fish, fried in a salty and flavorful batter). The bruschetta was gorgeous, delicate and stately at the same time. The wide and shallow plate held three over flowing pieces of toasted bread, rubbed with warm garlic and oil, topped by tangy warmed Brie, sweet frangelico infused grapes, toasted almond slivers, bacon and dainty microgreens. The plate was heavily drizzled with a sweet and tangy balsamic reduction, which brought out the sweetness in some of the elements. Though lovely to look at, the bruschetta was impractical, as they did not hold together and toppings never failed to tumble into our laps. But the taste was layered, though almost too much. The crunch from the almonds was pleasant and almost necessary to counter the smoothness of the cheese and the juiciness of the grapes, however, the flavor did not blend well. Both appetizers were sizable, considering two more courses were on their way.

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Our main courses were kind of classics, mildly modified, geared to a level of refinement, but all the elements reminded me of home. I had the braised short rib that sat atop a heavy mound of rich mushroom risotto and lemon infused spinach. The plate was smeared with a mixture of meat juices and truffle cream, and topped by the oddly alluring mushroom chips. This dish was hearty, classic, comfort and flavors all rolled into one, featuring mushrooms in the spotlight, followed by decadence. This risotto was one of the best ones we have had out, creamy, luscious, cheesy and perfectly cooked. It was a stellar base for the fatty hunk of short rib, soft from slow cooking and time. The curveball was really the mushroom chips, thin, crunchy and chewy all at the same time. They tasted like mushrooms, but somehow transformed and addictive. The deliciousness, creaminess, meatiness, and mushroominess, made the spinach unsavory and obsolete.

The other main, chicken medallions with parmigiano string beans, bacon whipped potatoes, and sweet and savory corn pudding, was not nearly as delicious. The best part of the plate was the salty and fresh string beans. We loved the combination of cheese and crispy freshness of the beans (yea, not the bacon...sadly). All the other elements were either dry (chicken), lifeless (corn pudding) or too bacony (is that a thing?).

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Dessert was also less than spectacular, though simple plating made them look beautiful. The warm baked apple crisp topped with caramel gelato sounded good in theory, but the brown sugar pastry was too buttery to the point where it tasted meaty. The combination of the elements could have been good, the melting gelato fused it all together with a sweetness to battle tartness. Just some of the proportions were off, making the flavor profile tumble into unfortunate depths. The old fashioned butter cake was just that, settled in a pool of Nutella chocolate sauce, sweet and meaty from the hazelnut notes. It was made light and fun with super fresh strawberries and a bunch of whipped cream. But it was not really anything special.

All in all, we had a fun time, eating, chatting, and calculating what our meal would have been had we not gotten the Restaurant Week menu. The food was pretty good, warm and somewhat inspiring, but the portions were large and worth the price. The atmosphere was not as stiff as I first thought it was going to be, and in the end almost inviting. I would really like to try out some other things there in the future, so apparently participating in Hudson County Restaurant Week did the job for 3Forty Grill.

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BIG brunch punch : Sabrina's Cafe

JAR 1.11.13

We were supposed to have a third, but it was once again a party of two. My sister was going to join us for brunch. It was all planned, and then it was not. She even picked the place we would indulge in. When she could not go, she told us to still go, saying something about hearing it is the best.

So we went.

Sabrina’s Café (one of their locations) is a sweet little place in uptown Philadelphia, near to the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel campuses. The restaurant shares the ground floor of what was a University building. It once was a large Victorian home, many twists and turns and rooms. Some of this could have been modernization and re-purposing, but it felt old and lived in.

The menu had some of the classic brunch essentials, like french toast, scrambled eggs and omelets. But it was the daily specials sheet that had some of the more interesting offerings, from the savory end to the sweets. Because of the number of items on the regular menu, and that brunch special menu, it was extremely difficult to decide. We, like always, called on our server for help.

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I ordered a breakfast wrap, filled with fried white fish, scrambled eggs with black beans, topped by a pineapple salsa and a mound of sour cream. The spinach wrap was almost obsolete. It was impossible to pick up like a sandwich or a wrap, so the tortilla was aesthetic, binding for something that could not be contained. I was not thrilled with the seasoning within the brunch wrap. Some spice (Cumin maybe) did not blend well with the rest of the flavors. The white fish was breaded and fried. I believe it was one of the spices that was in the breading that put the whole dish off kilter for me. The fish on the inside was perfectly cooked, flaky and moist, but its crunchy exterior felt one sided. Black beans were burrowed within the fluffy scrambled eggs, formed like an omelet and folded complexly to fill the spinach wrap. The eggs, though, were a little over cooked to me, brown and almost dry. They were fluffy but flavorless and lifeless.

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The plate was definitely overwhelming.  It was a lot a lot of food. On top of the giant breakfast wrap, there was a healthy mound of hash browns on the plate. These were delicious. The potatoes were just crisp enough on the outside, and just soft enough on the inside. Each cube still had some of the skin on it, and large enough to be almost two bites. There were translucent strands of sautéed onion weaving throughout the potatoes. It was nice and salty, seasoned, and hearty. I wanted so badly to focus my belly on the wrap, the eggs and the fish, but my fork kept returning to the hash browns.

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My dining companion also opted for one of the special breakfasts, called Leo’s King Size Brunch (most of the dish names had some association to astrology and the horoscopes). This was a complete mix of the midday meal and breakfast. This lion sized meal included two poached eggs, a fried pork cutlet, and a resounding mound of root hash. This was all drizzled with a mustard mushroom gravy. It is even a mouthful to say. When I first looked at the description of this meal, I was not sure how all these disparate elements could combine and be cohesive. I had never really thought of eggs going well with pork, and pork going well with rutabaga, or mushrooms going well with mustard, but somehow, in the end it worked.

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Each of the different parts was just as delicious on its own as with the other components. The poached eggs, though beautiful in concept, were a bit over cooked, thus limiting the delightful over spill of runny yolk. We were imagining the deliciousness that would have ensued had the poached eggs been just right. Runny yolk mixing with the colorful hash, coating the different roots and marrying the gravy… but it was all a dream.

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The cutlet was much more tender than it looked, as the outside was crunchy and brown. The meat almost melted in the mouth and was flavorful, instead of grey and bland. Somehow the mushroom mustard gravy vanished on the meat and amongst the cubed root vegetables, though a mushroom would appear here and there, but no precise taste of the sauce was present to me. The rainbow of roots was just as delicious as the regular hash browns served at Sabrina’s café. Though some of the roots I was not enjoying, the combination and mixture was innovative, colorful, and hearty. These roots were just the right base for a king sized meal.

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Because of our need to try it all, we ordered yet another menu item, this, though to share. After discussing our concern and qualm with our server when we were initially ordering, she eased our worries, and gave us a half order of the stuffed french toast. We were unsure about it since we were ordering other things, but she told us that the stuffed french toast is the reason why people come there. And she was right, it was pretty delicious. But, I am not sure if 1. I could eat a whole order on my own voluntarily and 2. If I really needed to have it again. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious—two thick slices of Challah, eggy and custardy, fused with a heavy dose of sweet cream cheese filling, topped by a fair dusting of powdered sugar, rounds of banana and sticky sweet syrup. But like most everything else, it was a lot.

Honestly, it was a great brunch spot, busy, friendly and satisfying. The portions were large, the combinations were different and varied, and the atmosphere was homey and quirky at the same time. Unfortunately, my innovative and interesting sandwich did not match its potential for me, and it makes me think that I should just stick to the basics if I ever visit Sabrina's Cafe again (which I would... mostly for a half portion of the stuffed french toast).

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MangiaMore: OUR take on Tuscan soup

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Ever since stumbling on the Refinery29 detox soup recipes like the Sweet Potato Squash Soup and the Super Green and Bean soup that we tried, I have been soup obsessed. And I am pretty sure that I have said before, that I am not a soup kind of girl. For some reason I have always thought them plain, limp, and not particularly filling. And I'm sure as you have been able to infer, I can eat. But this new breed of soup, this good for you kind of soup, has opened me up to the hundreds of options that the soup staple offers.

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Yes, there have been many occasions that I have had soup, and many times because I had to, soup is what's for dinner. You must be familiar with that, food forced upon you because that's what mom or dad or whoever made, and that is your only option. I have had various bean soups, hearty with pork and meat, as well as corn chowders floating with potatoes and tiny red pepper slices. I have even had hot pumpkin soups, spicy with curry and cooled with sour cream....all at my mother's table.

Maybe I have liked soup all along, because I can not honestly remember not participating in soup dinners. Perhaps my only complaint would be with the skinny ones, the wet ones with no meat and bones. I never believed, and still have a hard time believing that soup on its own can serve as a full meal...unless it is the full package.

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So on this soup binge, I opted for the less cleansing and healthy variety, first introduced to me in London by one of my lovely flatmates. This soup is the Tuscan soup. For the longest I could not remember the name of the soup, and continually called it an Italian Wedding soup (which incidentally has some similar components, mainly meat, broth, and a leafy green). But after foraging through emails around two years old, I found the correct name of the soup I was lusting for, Tuscan soup.

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The recipe is easy enough, just browning some hot sausage links with some chopped onion, mixing that goodness with your chicken broth in a large pot, followed by the addition of cubed potatoes (we chose red potatoes). Then allowing the lovely mixture to boil until the potatoes get soft. Throw in the spinach, cook that to wilt. And then adding the evaporated milk once the cooked soup is removed from the heat.

See easy. That is one of the things I have discovered as of late with soups. There is not always a ton of work involved, but the flavor and heartiness achieved is very high. Because I often lean towards heavier, meal like soups, we made some random, yet thought out additions. 

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1.kale I really love the dark leafy super food, and so does my boyfriend, so somehow it manages to find its way onto our dinner plates quite frequently. Sometimes we roast the kale in the oven and add salt and enjoy the crispiness while other times we cook it like collards, slow and long. We had no problem throwing the green into this Tuscan soup in addition to the called for spinach. Spinach and kale, even when lightly cooked have completely different textures. The kale did not wilt and become as soft as the spinach, even though we added it first. Its curly resilience countered the smush of the earthy spinach nicely. It was one of the only things in the soup that had a crunch to it, which in many minds seems contradictory to the connotations of soup. But that crunch was necessary, making some spoonfuls not slurps but something to chew.

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2. roman beans To add heartiness, more protein and depth of texture to our interpretation of the soup, we added in a can of rinsed roman beans. These little beans kind of look like white cannellini beans, yet they are doused with a darker red like color. Their flavor is not quite as mild, a little meatier and nuttier, but deffo a great add on to the soup. These beans too added some more fun texture to the already mixed soup. The legumes were smooth and creamy like the boiled potatoes, and their skins added something different to the soup.

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Overall the soup was not as delicious as I remember. The combination is a dream; fatty and spicy sausage, luxurious and decadent, like the evaporated milk added at the end; the earthy and thick spinach,very vegetable tasting; the cooked potatoes, soft and smooth, heavy. I love all the elements and components that the soup entails, even our special additions of kale and roman beans, but somehow it fell short. We added salt, pepper, chili powder, some garlic powder, to season the limp broth. The potatoes really did not absorb any flavor,even though they were cooked with the added seasonings, and I think that their blandness was overwhelming, and muted the other ingredients unfortunately. Despite that, I would chow down on this soup again, and even figure out a way to remedy the pitfalls (maybe use stock with some sodium). Cooking is experimentation and in a way self-discovery. I sure learn more about myself every time, what I like and don't like, or what I rather not admit I actually do like (ahem, soup).

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