Looking forward to eating at Wings over Somerville. Since leaving Cleveland, I’ve missed the specialty wings restaurants like Quaker Steak and Lube and BW3’s. Too bad Wings over Somerville doesn’t sell beer. That would make it perfect.
Their grand opening is this upcoming Monday, I believe.
Okay, despite what some of you die-hard Dunkin Donuts coffee drinkers might think, their coffee is terrible. It lacks body.
If you are forced to go to Dunkin Donuts for some reason and want to get a decent drink, try their Turbo Hot. It’s their coffee with a shot of espresso added. It gives the normally watery coffee some oomph and at least makes it drinkable. But the Turbo Hot is $2.20 or so for a medium, which makes it much more expensive than a regular coffee at Starbucks.
Some people mistake me for being a pure tech guy. I think I’m different from most guys who claim to be into electronic gadgets. For me, it’s not about the specs; I could care less about the number of megapixels or gigabytes. I’m more interested in the use cases. I am also more excited about user interface innovation than pure technical innovation.
Anyways, all this to say that I like having nice kitchen tools (despite their low-tech nature) that have innovative user “interfaces”. But not necessarily the stuff everyone raves about (e.g. Wustof knives, All-Clad or Le Creuset pans, etc.). Here are some of the tools I really like:
- Screwpull corkscrew: I’ve never seen anyone use this type of corkscrew before. I found out about it from Wine for Dummies. Many manufacturers make this type of corkscrew. The one I have is the Metrokane Velvet Corkscrew. This type of corkscrew is the one that is most highly recommended by Wine for Dummies; they actually criticize people for spending more than they need to on an obnoxiously large and expensive corkscrew like the Metrokane Rabbit.
- Benriner mandoline: This is a necessity for any Korean/Japanese kitchen. I guess a lot of companies make them but the one you’ll find in most Korean kitchens is a plastic one made by Benriner. However, I get freaked out whenever I use it because it’s extremely dangerous (you can easy slice off part of your hand if you’re not careful).
- Pampered Chef Hold ‘N Slice: I’m not a big fan of their business model but I really like this product. I almost sliced off a fingertip while chopping onions a few years ago (had to go to the ER and get stitches); this tool has taken away all my fear in chopping vegetables.
- OXO Good Grips i-Series Swivel Peeler: When smack and I were dating, I’d always get frustrated when I had to cook at her place. One reason was because this was a household with four women and they didn’t have a vegetable peeler! When they had to peel vegetables, they just used a knife. How barbarian. Anyways, when we got married, we added a nice peeler to the registry (the one I had was getting rusty).
- Zeroll Ice Cream Scoop: This is a superior ice cream scooper to the scoopers with the lever that you find in most kitchens. Those always seem to break easily. The Zeroll with never break and works well.
I recently started a wine club at work. I have people sign up to bring in a bottle of wine once every 5-6 weeks or so. Each week, there is a different theme (e.g. last week was Chardonnary, this week is Pinot Noir). It’s a good opportunity to learn more about wine and to get people in different departments to talk to each other.
One recent comment I received that validated my initiative was “Friday wine club is the thing I look forward to the most during the work week.”
As I’m learning more about wine, I still can’t get myself to spend over $10 on a bottle. I go to Trader Joe’s and see literally hundreds of bottles under $10; so what’s the point in spending more? :) Yeah, I know, I won’t be considered a true wine connoisseur until I have knowledge of more expensive wines. Maybe when I’m rich…
New York City is now my second favorite city in the US after Chicago. I love cities. I love the urban life.
We did lots of eating.
Friday night
- pizza in west village
- guinness at some bar near the apt.
Sat
- dumplings at Rickshaw Dumpling Bar
- dumplings and fried tofu at mandoo bar in manhattan koreatown
- bagels at Ess-a-Bagel on the west side
- beer at Heartland Brewery in Union Sqaure
- cannolis in little italy
- mexican beer at some place in the east village
- LOTS of tea at teany (formerly co-owned by moby, but not anymore)
- sausage, sauerkraut, potato pancakes, german beer at lederhosen in west village
sunday morn
- breakfast at grey dog cafe
- mini eclair at some italian pastry shop
It was a good trip overall. We didn’t really have a plan; basically just wandered around manhattan looking for anything interesting to eat and/or drink.
Observations/Thoughts
- most stuff in nyc is more expensive but especially so in times square; restaurants were a lot more reasonable in other parts.
- none of the italian bakeries we went to did made-to-order cannolis like they do in boston’s little italy. i guess boston does beat new york in something. :)
- i lived out my ideal city scenario on sunday morning when i walked out of the house with just my collection of key fobs (including the citicard paypass) and the house key. went to work out at nysc, took an extra jog around the west village, then went to CVS and paid for my gatorade with my paypass. yes! yay for a barcoded, rfid’ed, cashless society.
One of the top reasons for going to Montreal is poutine. I found a great website with reviews of the best Poutine shops:
http://www.montrealpoutine.com/reviews.html
Here are some pictures of Poutine that I’ve had in the past:
 | nerD on Swallowing my pride |
| nerD on I forgot the camera |
 | knufflebunneh on I forgot the camera |
 | d®ew™ on Let the competition begin |
 | Peter on What is Model-View-Contro… |
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