The Hot Chocolate at City Bakery

It's certainly super-thick (so thick that it conceals after 5-10 mins into a near-pudding), and looks delicious, it tastes very mediocre. The chocolate is flat and lacks those nice complex flavor notes that define great chocolate. Disappointing.

Tulcingo del Valle

I went to Tulcingo del valle, a homey little Mexican restaurant in Hell's Kitchen on 10th ave between 46th and 47th, the other day. The place has a deli-like, home-cooked, and family-run atmosphere. You order your food at the counter, and one of the workers delivers it to one of the very few tables located in the front of the store. A refrigerator section full of drinks has third-world favorites like Maaza (a mango juice drink) and the place also carries cookies and the like that are mainly sold in Mexico.

I ordered a Chile Relleno, and I first got chips and salsa. The chips were thin, tough, and crispy: not the giant, almost fluffy restaurant-style chips you see at a lot of places, but honest-to-goodness corn tortillas boiled alive in oil. And angry about it. But tasty.

The salsa was thin and a touch spicy. I personally prefer a chunkier salsa, but this was nice and authentic, no doubt.

The chille relleno itself was a giant couple of chiles fried in a batter. The batter was tender from the sauces that was poured on, and the whole thing was spicy and tasted a little of egg in the batter. Inside the chile was of course a cheese mixture, part melted, part powdered. The rice and beans accompanying were tasty but nothing special. The relleno was clearly the star of the meal.

This is a tasty, down-to-eart Mexican restaurant. It is reasonably cheap -- I paid $11 for my chile relleno plate, and, while not particularly healthy, will certainly fill you up. Indeed, I think with moderation the plate could serve two. I like Tulcingo, and intend to return.

Stars: 4/5

Bomboloni at the Dessert Truck

They're warm, deliciously rough from sugar on the outside, and filled with light, springy dough and hot cream on the inside. Yum. Another win for the Dessert Truck on University and 8th.

Lucali: Good, not Great Pizza

So I schlepped over to Carroll Gardens to have pizza with a friend at Lucali. This is a place that has gotten a lot of hype for having incredible pizza. Its main chef apparently studied Di Fara fastidiously before trying to imitate him in the artisan style -- Mark makes each pizza himself. And his devotion shows: he personally asked us whether we had enjoyed our pizza at the end of the night.

And it was good pizza. This is a thin-crust pizza, with the crust charred and crunchy. I personally enjoyed the crust quite a bit. The sauce, though, I found to be a little dim in flavor: not that it didn't have flavor, but it was a touch too sour for me. The cheese was decent but didn't have the addictive quality that the cheese, at, say, Grimaldi's has.

The restaurant itself is warmed by beautiful incadescent lamps and candles, and the service is friendly, though the wait was long -- 45 minutes. This was good pizza, but not as tasty to my palate as many others in New York (e.g. Di Fara's, Grimaldi's, or Patsy's).

Stars: 4/5

Jacques Torres Chocolate

After Grimaldi's, today, my friend and I got absolutely gluttonous and decided to check out the nearby DUMBO edition of Jacques Torres' chocolate shop. We split a Wicked hot chocolate, which is a hot chocolate with a bit of a chili pepper kick, and JT's French Kiss cookies (essentially chocolate chunk, except that the chunks are a little flatter and spread out more through the cookie).

The hot chocolate was tasty, but, to my mind: 1) too thin, and 2) not sweet enough. The chocolate itself was good. For this kind of not-as-sweet, "more civilized" version of hot chocolate, I would prefer La Maison du Chocolat. Though to both I would easily prefer the Dessert Truck's more sinfully sweet beverage of the same kind.

The chocolate chip cookies -- excuse me, french kiss -- was tasty. Large, flat, a little crispy, dense, and with a high chocolate-to-flour ratio, this is a decadent, buttery cookie that has a solid consistency. It is dark and rich. Let's call it a very good cookie, though it did not have the transcendental quality of the very best kind of cookie, in my humble opinion.

Stars: 4/5

Grimaldi's: Some Great New York Pizza

Today is the 2nd time I've been to the famous Grimaldi's pizzeria. I got there by way of trying to make it first to Di Fara's, which was closed, and then to Franny's, which was also closed (I thought I had called ahead but I made a mistake), and then to L&B Spumoni, which for some weird reason Google Maps placed in downtown Brooklyn instead of in Bay Ridge. Finally my starved friend and I landed on the hospitable foothills of the Brooklyn Bridge and begged Father Grimaldi for mercy. And it was given us.

The pizza in this packed place is superb, my 2nd favorite after Di Fara's. We were lucky and did not face a line, perhaps because we arrived late. The place is super-cramped, but the prices are reasonable and the pizza is fantastic. We ordered a large, well-done pie with half mushrooms and peppers. The only problem with the pizza was that, as even Di Fara's slices are sometimes wont to be, a little soggy near the front edge of the slices. Other than that, though, the slices are simply addictive. The dough is fresh, chewy, warm, and slightly sweet. The sauce is sparingly ladled onto the dough, but the simple sweetness of the tomatoes peeks through, and whatever spice combination they use is just about perfection. The buffalo mozzarella has real flavor, unlike the mozzarella at many places, and the peppers and mushrooms were super-fresh and spoke of summer abundance and ripeness. They clearly were sauteed or cooked properly before being laid onto this pizza.

This is some great New York food. Just fantastic.

Stars: 5/5

Shake Shack: Perfect as Ever

Went to Shake Shack yesterday for "brunch." This famous burger joint in Madison Square Park was nearly line-less, and it took me but a few minutes to get my shroomburger (a deep-fried mushroom treated as a burger), fries, and a concrete (frozen custard sundae) with caramel and pieces of apple pie in it. Everything was just wonderful. The shroomburger is easily the best "veggie burger" I've ever tasted, by a mile. The crisp outside reveals a melty interior, like they had somehow gotten the mushroom inside to talk to a movie star it had a crush on. The fries were crisp, but somehow had a substantiality and heft that a lot of crisp fries lack. The only downside was the shape, which reminded me way too much of cafeteria fries (they were of the thick rectangular stype with wedges pressed in). The concrete was divine: SS's frozen custard is certainly excellent and soft, and the caramel and pie took it to another level...

This is another amazing Danny Meyer place. I love all his restaurants: Tabla, Eleven Madison Park, and Shake Shack.

Stars: 5/5