Saturday was my birthday—the big 2-3. Jim, my sister Janel, and her husband Rob took me to the Bronx Zoo. We got to witness the gorillas at their feeding time, where they were both entertaining and eerily too-human. I had a fantastic and memorable time.
After the zoo, we went to the Gotham Bar and Grill on 12th Street. We sat at a bar table before a beautiful room of billowing curtains and gorgeous china. Jim and I dined at Gotham last year and were wowed by their pasta, which changes daily, so all four of us ordered the offering of goat cheese ravioli. The dish was too salty, but it worked with the goat cheese. As long as you didn’t have too much broth in your spoon, the bite of ravioli tasted great. I used my two buttery dinner baguettes to soak up the rest of the broth, offsetting the saltiness.
For dinner, Janel and I ordered steak with onion rings, Jim the soft-shell crab, and Rob the lobster tail. All of the entrees tasted delicious. Each dish had a flavor set of its own. My steak was tender, sweet, and tangy, with a mustard custard (like very light and creamy mustard butter). Our onion rings were closer to onion doughnuts—fluffy, fried dough with fat onion slithers in the middle. 5 onion rings sat on the plate, though I could only eat 2.
Jim’s soft-shell crab tasted great, though I am still unaccustomed to eating anything with a shell on it. The creamy, citrusy sauce that went with his crab was a perfect accompaniment. My overall entree favorite, though, was probably Rob’s lobster tails. I mean, seriously, they were good.
Dessert shined that night—my favorite part of the meal. We had chocolate birthday cake, a brownie “sundae” with almond ice cream and black cherry syrup, a mint chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream, and a dessert that involved raspberry ice cream, peanut butter ganache, chocolate, banana, and pineapple, and reminded me of fancy PB&J.
One glitch, however, was the thyme and lemon ice cream. The citrus pierced my tongue and the creamy thyme flavor, which dominated the ice cream (it wasn’t vanilla with a hint of thyme) made me want to throw up (just a little bit) in my mouth. We kept telling ourselves that it had to be an acquired taste, that someone out there probably loves it, but on further thinking, I don’t think so. Maybe it was a shock value thing, but I can not believe that anyone could actually enjoy that ice cream. Luckily, the cake that went with it was phenomenal. Rich and creamy, but still light and fluffy (not spongy) we joked that the cake tasted like chocolate clouds, delicious chocolate clouds.
Another plus of Gotham Bar & Grill is the generous drinks they pour. The single scotch was more like a triple, and the shot of amaretto I had with dessert almost filled the drinking glass. We left very pleased, and quite buzzed.
Caviar and Codfish 