the good life.

everyone has their own version of the good life. mine just happens to include dinner at ai fiori which just so happened this past friday night, and the place did not disappoint. the decor definitely reflected its food, modern yet traditional italian fare, and it is definitely my favorite michael white restaurant to date.

pictures are a little out of order for formatting purposes. the flowers in the last picture should really be first since i got them before dinner, (thanks, i appreciate.. haha) and the amuse bouche before the egg.. and the wine before food.. but i digress. [ignore my poor photoshop skills. if only i could do the food justice!]

table decor | uovo slow poached egg

nuits st. georges charmois

squash shooter amuse bouche..but i don't really remember.

ostriche poached wellfleet oysters

trofie nero | gnochetti

self-explanatory.

creepin'.

bouillabaisse

astice butter poached lobster. on par with le bernardin lobster??
i totally forgot what this one was called..
torta di olio olive oil cake with an amazing espresso gelato.
sgroppino grapefruit
sgroppino spiced pear
petit fours
bar at ai fiori
flowers :)

pretty wonderful meal. only slight hiccup at the beginning when i had trouble reading the menu.

"cominciare/pasta or risotto/pesce or carne/dolce" [for a four course prix fixe]

who wouldn't confuse that for only three courses? i think i repeated "why would they make you choose between meat and dessert??" like five times until the waiter had to come over to clarify. as he said, "it's just a part of my job." i also happen to be retarded

bouley (the faux polaroid version).

i want a polaroid camera. i just love the warm tones (even if it's only because it's expired film) and how they always elevate an otherwise mundane scene into something.. more. seriously, what other camera can make a cup of coffee look so artistic? empty, full, half drank/drunk/sipped(?), spilled all over the table, two cups of coffee.. yup, i have seen my share of coffee polaroids. it gets fancy.

and i have drawn 5 easy steps to take a good polaroid. all you need is*:
1. a random, unassuming scene - otherwise you'll seem like you're trying to hard. these old cameras can only handle so much in their frame.
2. natural light.
3. some semblance of composition, but this isn't necessary because polaroid=instant cool.
4. go to a recent, poor college grad's apartment that will most likely be filled with no furniture. jackpot! "minimalism" and anything old and worn-down (like the polaroid camera) work best for these pictures. it's character!
5. all else fails, find a hipster. flannel shirts and plastic frames picture well.
n.b.: just the fact that you own a polaroid probably means you're into photography and cannot in good conscience waste the ridiculously rare film on stupid shit. (that or you have a lot of money & time to spare. in that case, see #3-5.)
and voila! awesome polaroid.

*just kidding. i'm just a hater who wishes she had a polaroid sx-70. i'm sure there's a lot that goes into a nice polaroid photo. see here.

so here's my homage to the sx-70 i will never own, but i'm ok with that, haha. plus, i just wanna see a fancy dinner processed in that 'roid-y way..

[i wrote this intro before i actually processed the pictures.. and damn, it was a lot harder than i thought. i just assumed i could make everything really, really yellow/faded, which did notttt work out. i didn't want to overprocess them, but then it didn't look polaroid-y enough, then i tried that, but then it just looked too photoshopped/clearly not a polaroid........ergh. i mean, they kinda look polaroid-y.. or at the very least, you can sense that there was a semblance of an attempt to achieve that look.]

i am also missing like five dishes, but whatever. i give up. i gave up four pictures in actually haha. FRIDAY.

asian-girl-foodie-stereotype.

i'm sure we're alll aware of the asian-girl-foodie-stereotype. the one that says that asian girls looOoooOoove food, love to take pictures of it, love to talk about it - "have you had the fried mac&cheese at cheesecake factory???? it's sooo goood!!" (real example.) yeah, you know what i'm talking about, and they always happen to be the tiniest girls you know. i don't know why or how this stereotype was relegated to asian girls specifically, seeing as food plays important role in a lot of cultures, but i've learned to deal with it. although i think i fall more into the fatass category, the difference being - i see food, i eat it, end of story. regardless, i take pictures of my food from time to time too.. i mean, why do chefs bother to work so hard on presentation if you're just going to eat it right away? and really, who doesn't love food?? and you take pictures of things you love, right??? rhetorical questions, but if you're a dummy, the correct answers would be: to remember it via photos, NO ONE, and yes unless you have no heart, respectively. pictures are especially important to me since my head is where memories go to die. no matter how beautiful the presentation or how sublime the flavor profile, i will inevitably forget it the next day. [one notable exception being Marea's fusilli and Corton's tasting menu - i didn't bring a camera or take pictures with my phone, and i still remember some of the plates.. amazing!]

anyway, this really long ramble was really just supposed to serve as an introduction, albeit a shitty one, to my pictures of food!! but i'd thought i'd switch it up a bit by not necessarily showing pictures of the most composed dishes because those pictures practically take themselves.. i don't want to play too much into my stereotype! most of them are fuzzy anyway because i was too excited to eat..

ps. i've gotten a lot of feedback saying that i write just like i talk (e.g. "i can hear you talking in my head."). so for those of you that don't know me, now you do, hahaha. i ramble. a lot. and i love conjunctions and commas.. that's just how i think!

pps. the chocolate biscotti from il cantuccio is also divine. there is always a lovely white-bespectacled lady who is more than willing to dole out free samples! and they don't use any butter or oil in any of their baked goods.. crazyy!

cupcakes, wine, and rocco.

this particular meal was five months in the making. it wasn't particularly epic or anything, but my friend and i just happen to have very "flexible" scheduling mentalities.. it's probably why we get along so well. i don't know what took me so long to make it here as it focuses on some of my favorite things in life: cupcakes and wine. apparently, this place was named as one of the "best cheap date spots" in nyc, which was very apparent by the fact that my friend and I were the only non-couple there. i thought this place would be a lot more gimmicky given its name, but it resembled more of a quaint cafe that just so happens to specialize in wine/beer and cupcake pairings. as a cupcake aficionado, i was initially overwhelmed by the wide variety of cupcakes they had to offer, but when i finally whittled down my choices to a few some ten minutes later, the waitress informed me that they only serve their four signature cupcakes daily and rotate their speciality cupcakes on a daily basis. i was mostly relieved but a little irked that i had spent some much time choosing a cupcake...s. naturally, given their wide-ranging cupcakes combinations, i ended up with the  craziest of all combinations: 'pure' (vanilla buttercream/vanilla cupcake) - i don't deal well with stress.

i'm glad i finally made it, and i can finally cross it off my never-ending list of places to try in nyc!

i haven't posted pictures of rocco in a while. he's going to be four months this friday! they grow up so fast!! these are some shots from the first week i got him. 

lush.

the title of this entry refers to both my inability to hold alcohol (well, i am asian!) as well as the interior decor of mary queen of scots, a scottish-themed bar located in the LES. i went there for a 3-course scotch and wine pairing on yesterday, and much to my surprise, each course was paired with a complementary glass of scotch AND wine.. plus a complimentary 10 year old scotch to start. i downed my first glass of scotch like i would a shot of tequila (ah, remnants of my college days..), and the night quickly spiraled downward thereafter. i kid, i have learned a few things since college, one of them being that i should/need to pace myself - slight slip with the first glass of scotch though. for the most part, i enjoyed the subsequent six glasses of scotch and wine at a more leisurely pace, but that could probably be more attributed to my recently developed affinity for photographing glasses of whiskey (scotch especially, bourbon glasses always seem too difficult for me). i just love the their rich caramel color and the glasses they are served in, and it doesn't hurt that i always find myself sipping a glass in swanky settings. too bad i often find myself in some rather embarrassing angles attempting to capture all of these elements. the table-level shot  that i love so much required me to sink really low into my seat.. to the point where my shoulders almost touched the bottom of the seat. i only managed to get that picture because i was pretty tipsy and didn't give a fuck. good drinks, good food, good night. too bad every wednesday couldn't be the same.

10 year old arran malt to start the night..

the arran malt (pomerol cask) / foie gras with cranberry chutney

i wish i got more shots of the interior, but i was sequestered in the corner as any lush should be. oh well, friday tomorrow!

woes of a failed food stylist.

love food. can't style it for shit. my failed attempts at styling my breakfast this past weekend still sting.. a lot [see below]. blueberries proved to be especially finicky and munching on them now only serve as little blue reminders of my dream-crushing experience. the odd stares from other diners and my ridiculously awkward positioning were all for naught! i either looked like an anorexic pushing around her food and/or binge eater continuously going up for more plates... or someone whose never been taken out to a restaurant. at least my poorly styled food still tasted good and was enough to console me in the end.

self-styled.

fancy-pants continental breakfast at wall & water

see all those dishes in the top photo? that's the result of many failed plated attempts. at first, i just put whatever i wanted to eat on my plate, but that's not always picturesque as my cravings are pretty indiscriminate.. especially i'm put in front of tables full of breakfast goodies. my first plate was filled with smoked salmon, cocktail shrimp, blueberry muffin, croissant, and some orange slices. my second plate [center] was a little more cohesive but not too picturesque either. my impatient nature did not do me any favors in completing my vision. i was hungry! some five plates later, i gave up and began working on cleaning up my set (by that i mean eating all the food).

vs.

not self-styled.

farm egg at blue hill stone barns.

notice the difference in plating? i was beat by an egg!! an egg.. a very, very delicious egg. i also have photos of soup that look better than my blueberries.
but alas, even the pros are off sometimes. oh michael laiskonis, it looks like poop!

dessert course at le bernardin.

the best thing about food is that is doesn't have to look good to taste good. regardless, i suppose i shall leave it up to the professionals for now.

PS. can you tell i got lazy with this post? all my pictures don't match (hence, they're small.)

scenes from the weekend.

weekend checklist - 4.5/12 [1,2,4,11,12]. not bad? .5 for number 12 since i only finished listening to "the king of limbs", but i didn't get around to listening to much else. not sure what i think about the new album yet, but it's radiohead.. so, by virtue of that fact, it can't be bad. overall, pretty successful weekend since i managed to cross something off other than number 1 and ventured out of manhattan (i mean getting out of the apartment is a pretttty big deal for me, way bigger deal since i finally set up a seamless web account). biggest/only accomplishment? managing to get all the way to long island city for a truly delicious, memorable brunch at m. wells. not sure if a place like this could exist in the manhattan and retain its old school diner charm..

L to R: reservation notepad, diner countertop, brown sugar cubes, bench outdoors

roaming around LIC while waiting for a table

ok, no pictures of food because i was starving after waiting nearly an hour and a half for a table. just FYI, the brunch of gods includes: unlimited coffee for $1.50, fresh OJ, seafood cobbler (biscuits, bechamel, gruyere, and seafood), bone marrow and escargot, bleu cheese salad, beef tongue, steak tartare (raw filet mignon AND raw egg yolk - it was amazing), and a graceland cupcake just to end on a sweet note. then visited the 5 pointz graffiti wall and the MoMA PS1, which included some poignant photography/installation exhibits - although i spent half my time the museum digesting food rather than attempting to interpret the exhibits. obviously digesting a really heavy meal sucks the life out of you, so i pretty much thought my day was over after that. however, i made it all the way back to manhattan, perked up with a cappuccino at knave, picked up the cutest glitter flats at j.crew, trekked back down - allll the way down - to financial district and then made it out AGAIN to dinner in midtown. i know, crazy (italics necessary). convivio never disappoints me for a good meal, so i couldn't resist - but it was under heavy consideration. now that i think about it, my new glitter ballet flats (and a hermes tie-donning dinner date?) was probably the only reason i made it out the door.

cuuuuute, riiiiight? who wouldn't go out if you had a pair of those in your closet?!

so that was saturday. pretty productive i must say.

the rest of the weekend pretty much went downhill in terms of productivity from there and consisted of a lot, a lot of this:

sunday morning at kaffe 1668

maybe next weekend?

one last shameless picture of the cutest puppy ever. i attempted to take him on his first walk on sunday, but i just ended up holding him while i walked around the block because he was too scared, but it's okay because he's a diva just like his momma. :)

<3

the cookie blog that wasn't.

banana peel hot chocolate [city bakery] / assorted boylan sodas

i initially wanted to start a cookie blog to document my one true love, cookies! then have the blog picked up by saveur/gourmet/food&wine magazine and roll in the $$$ because we all know that bloggers are moneymakers. i made some serious headway into trying the best cookies in the city, but who would remember to whip out their phone to snap a quick pic? the cookie is gone, and my hands are usually buttered and chocolatey at that point. ordinarily, i would've restarted my cookie odyssey, but abnormally snowy weather set in and a subway fare hike got it the way. whoever said love conquers all obviously didn't have to deal with nyc slush and expensive, unreliable nyc transit. so i guess my inaugural blog post shall be dedicated to my undying love of all things sweet. if there's one thing that anyone knows about me, it's that i eat an unconscionable amount of baked goods. cookies, muffins, cupcakes, croissants, brownies, etc. are always fair game for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner, all day, every day. this is especially helpful when i'm eating on a budget (like now). there is no better value for your money per calorie.. except maybe for bagels. it's truly unfortunate that my baking abilities are not on par with my consumption abilities. i can't even imagine the amount of money i could save baking cookies en masse..

it definitely felt like an awkward first date writing (and rewriting) my first entry, so i'm just gonna get this over this and keep it short and sweet.