Chopbiscuit on the road dining review - Workin' NYC

Editors note: Sorry for the lack of sophomoric banter on here lately. Sometimes work and life just get in the way of bogging, ya dig.

A Yankee game and a lollipop tree?

 I was able to make it down to the Big Apple this weekend, thanks to my birthday present from my wife, Red Sox - Yankees tickets. Outside the world of food, I'm a bit of a sports fan and a huge Yankees fan. Unfortunately the Bombers lost miserably and my wife had a bit of a smirk the whole time. She is a Red Sox fan, so thank god for other commonalities we have!

We rode the train in on Saturday morning and decided to hit David Burke Townhouse for brunch. David Burke Townhouse is the flagship restaurant of the celebrated chef  and has been serving interestingly pieced Modern American Cuisine in an elegantly refurbished Upper East Side space since 2003. According to the website, The restaurant's design is inspired by the bold colors and lacquered surfaces on the 1930's, yet it has decidedly contemporary aesthetic. Upon entering David Burke Townhouse, guests will feel the glamour and sense of fun in the lounge with its sleek white gloss, stone bar and whimsical art installations. The volume of color and drama is turned up for the main event, the dining room, where a striking color palette of chocolate, vanilla and lipstick colors prevails. 

It's been a place I've always wanted to visit, so Katie was nice enough to spend the afternoon diving into his culinary circus. 

What I absorbed:

We both went the with three course Prixe Fixe since we were pretty hungry from the train ride in. I ordered the Burata Mozzarella, Hanger steak and world famous cheesecake lollipop tree. (That felt weird typing as a straight man) All three items were decent and had great taste. The cheesecake lollipop tree was more theatre than appealing to my hungry stomach. When the waiter brings it out, you feel as if a Ruby Tuesday waitstaff has just wished you a happy birthday during a lonely trip to Lockport, NY on a cool winter's eve. Extremely inappropriate and campy. One item that did "punch me in the face" with flavor was Katie's pretzel crusted crabcake with tomato orange chutney and poppyseed honey. It was freakin' insanely delicious. Since it was brunch, of course I had a spicy bloody mary to wash down the food shenanigans. Meh, it was ok but I would rather have ordered an $8.00 strawberry mint iced tea that Katie drank. 


All in all, it was a decent experience even if the "Eastern Block" waiter may have said two complete words to us. The service pretty much blew - sorry Sergey Israntoicvah or whatever your name was. It's ok to say hello to your guests. Best experience of the restaurant - free Peanut Butter peanut brittle on the way out. Dinner that evening we hit up Yankee stadium and were encompassed with $10 watered down draft beer and shitty burgers and limp fries from the poor man's Johnny Rockets. $100 dollars later your full, sans a buzz and angry that the Red Sox crushed the Yanks. Boo.

What type of financing do you offer for a 20 oz.?

The next morning we considered hitting the world famous Balthazar, but a one hour wait and pregnant wife nixed that, quickly. We ended up eating at a little breakfast nook in Soho called Le Petite Cafe. It was warm, simple and quick. That's basically it. During our morning walk we hit one of my favorite coffee joints, Gimme coffee. They have a few locations now in NYC, so it's nice to have a little piece of Ithaca, NY in the Big Apple. For lunch we decided to hit up the Shake Shack, but before that we hit up Eataly. If you've never been and you love food - put it on your bucket list. This may be one of the best food retail experiences I've ever seen. Picture a Whole Foods Market on steroids with a design approach of an Apple store. Simply an amazing experience and one I will make sure I dive into in the near future. We bought some bread for our train ride home and took in the sights, smells and sounds of a world class food experience. 

"We cook what we sell and we sell what we cook"

Like I stated previously we ended up at the Shake Shack at Madison Park with of course, a burger and a shake. I chose the Peanut Butter shake which was insanely Peanut Butt-ery. In the world of burgers right now, In and Out is still my favorite, but Shake Shack puts out a pretty good beef patty.  As always, a trip to NYC is a great food experience and I can mark this one as one of my favorites.