Brunch: Two Door Tavern - Williamsburg, Brooklyn - 3/8/2014

Her Take: I was really looking forward to having and enjoying another great brunch, but this time Two Door Tavern really disappointed me. I had come here once before for lunch with a couple of my friends and I liked it! But this brunch sucked, for lack of a better word. Nicky and I decided on this place and we saw that they had brunch for $15.95 with a complimentary mimosa, bloody mary or beer on tap; we both had the mimosa again because that it always the better choice (and hello, champagne is awesome). When we walked in we saw that it was packed and they told us we could either wait about 20 mins or have a seat at the bar- we do not like to wait for food so to the bar we went. We ordered our mimosas and I took 4,285 years deciding what to eat. I really was craving eggs benedict so I settled on that and Nicky ordered the breakfast burger. We waited for our food for quite some time and after finishing two glasses of water, making fun of people and wondering when our food would come, we finally got our dishes! Mine was cold, which was the first step to disappointment and then I tasted the eggs which were not only really, really, really runny and slimy, but they tasted like just vinegar. No like. I was really hungry so I kind of kept trying to make myself like it but I really couldn't. So I ate my side salad and some of the thickly sliced bacon with the parts of the English muffin that weren't drenched in slimy egg. I gave up trying because my appetite fled. Nicky enjoyed his breakfast burger so at least that was good. But I really did not like my eggs benedict one bit. I chugged my mimosa and just told Nicky that we'd have to go for froyo right after! And we did :)
Two Door Tavern you crushed my brunch hopes and dreams, I wanted to like you but you pushed me away. I will definitely not go back for brunch but I may give them a second chance on the lunch.
I don't recommend Two Door Tavern for brunch at all because I didn't think it was worth it. But if you ever do happen to find yourself in the hipster-packed pad, DO NOT ORDER THE EGGS BENEDICT.

His Take: I will start with this, we did not intend to do another brunch so soon.  We wanted to grab a lunch as this was the first Saturday in a while where the weather was nice enough!  I have been to Two Door Tavern before and I have enjoyed their dinner food.  Ariana and I walked in and were told that there was a 20-30 minute wait for a table or we could sit at the bar if we'd like.  We decided to take a seat at the bar and I was shocked to find a brunch menu.  We said what the heck and gave it a shot.  $15.95 for any entrée, a Mimosa or Bloody Mary, as well as a Coffee or Tea.  Ariana took forever to decide and we finally ordered, Me the breakfast burger and Ariana the eggs benedict.  My breakfast burger was a cheeseburger, with cheddar cheese, bacon optional, an over easy egg, on a toasted English muffin.  This breakfast at Two Door Tavern was delicious.  Cheeseburgers with an egg on top is quit tasty, and the toasted English muffin gave it that breakfast feel, much better than your standard bun.  The burger was cooked great and was nice and juicy.  They gave me the option of either mixed greens or an order of fries, and clearly french fries go better with a burger!  The fries were plentiful in a nice little bucket.  Ariana ordered eggs benedict with bacon.  Ariana really loves her eggs and I was disappointed when she told me that her eggs benedict were TERRIBLE.  She hated it.  She complained to me that her eggs were incredibly runny and slimy, and frankly they looked it.  For me, the meal was worth it and I would 100% order the breakfast burger again.  The bar is nice, had two screens.  Afterwards we headed to 16 Handles and got some froyo, and I am sure Ariana and I will give you more on dessert places like that in the future!

Sadly I do not think Ariana would go back to Two Door Tavern, but I assured her that the lunch or dinner menu would be better.  We ultimately may or may not return to Two Door Tavern but if you end up there, order the breakfast burger and NOT the eggs benedict.  Take if from us, were the experts!

Date Night: La Nonna - Williamsburg, Brooklyn - 3/5/2014

His Take: Being the catholic followers we are, and today being Ash Wednesday, no meat for us.  Not  a great day to choose to go eat out at an Italian restaurant, but you can never go wrong with Italian food.  Ariana's family opened an Italian restaurant in our neighborhood and she told me "let's go to La Nonna tonight!"  We headed to La Nonna around 7:15 and got a table.  Ariana again reminded me "NO MEAT" which made ordering a little difficult.  To go with our no meat edict, I found the menu at La Nonna a little too small in their selections.   They had a good selection of fishes but other than that I found the menu a little lacking in the pasta choices.  Especially the classic pasta choices you would find at a typical Italian restaurant, La Nonna is an incredibly beautiful restaurant.  It has an old Italian feel and the décor is great.  I left Ariana in charge of ordering the wine, and she picked a Primitive that was excellent.  You know us by now, wine with dinner is pretty much the norm.  I told Ariana that I wanted to take our time with dinner tonight and I have to say La Nonna was incredibly accommodating.  I did not feel rushed one bit.  We ordered our appetizers first without ordering our entrees.  We started with the Salumi & Formaggi, but we told them just bring the cheese no meat!  The provided a few different cheeses, and the parmigiano (MY FAVORITE) and burrata, which if you have not tried burrata you most certainly should.  We also ordered a grilled pizza with cheeses and truffle.  The pizza was also amazing, and being that I had never had grilled pizza before, I was impressed!  We stuffed our faces with appetizers and decided to order our entrees.  Ariana ordered a salad (rabbit food, I promise you, I will never make a salad my entrée, this I vow to you our faithful readers).  She loved her salad which was great.  I ordered a special which was Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe.  The waiter informed us that Cacio e Pepe was a traditional Roman Dish, and I was intrigued.  Simply put Cacio e Pepe is spaghetti with pecorino romano cheese and cracked black pepper.  This sounded like a dish I would love and I have to say, it was good.  I was disappointed though.  The dish definitely needed MORE cheese.  But the spaghetti was well cooked and a good size portion, just lacked the kick of it needed to be a cheese dish.

To close, I enjoyed our meal at La Nonna.  I was not wowed by any means, but it is definitely worth going to for some good Italian food.  I would go back and try more items off the menu.  Their wine selection was great. 


Her Take: Ash Wednesday. No Meat. This Wednesdate thing isn't gonna work out. But we make it work ;) My cousins on my dad's side opened up a new restaurant on the north side called La Nonna Ristorante and I had yet to be there. I told Nicky "hey darling lets go to La Nonna tonight" "sure honey" so we went! (and that is sorta how our conversation went)
We arrived and the place is beautiful and we were greeted so nicely; I haven't seen them in a while.
They sat us down and I quickly looked at the wine list because it was one of those days. Nicky told me I was in charge of ordering any bottle of wine that I wanted so I went with the juicy Primitivo which turned out to be awesome. As I said before, it was Ash Wednesday so we couldn't eat any meat (because we are good Catholics) so for appetizers we ordered the Salumi & Formaggi - hold the salumi- only had the cheeses which were four different cheeses: parmigiano, pecorino, goat cheese, and burrata, and it came with a spicy jam. SOO yummy and we also got the Pizza Tartufata Alla Griglia which is grilled pizza with grana padano, aged fontina and fresh truffle (which was way too big for just us, but we tried to eat it all anyway) and it was delicious, might have been my favorite part of the meal, besides the wine!
For entrée I ordered a salad (how girly of me I know) because it sounded really refreshing and im a sucker for blood orange reduction; I had the Rucola e Pere salad, which is arugula and pears with gorgonzola, caramelized pecans and blood orange reduction. It was very good and a nice size.  Nicky ordered the special of the night, Cacio e Pepe (translates to cheese and pepper), which is actually a traditional Roman dish consisting of spaghetti, cracked black pepper and pecorino Romano cheese; that's it! a very simple dish. I wasn't too crazy about it which was unfortunate because I really love this dish; it was lacking flavor, didn't taste like cheese, only pepper and Nicky even put extra cheese! Kind of disappointing. We were really full because that pizza put us over the edge, so no dessert for us! (especially no dessert for me because I gave it up for lent!) But Giovanni, one of my cousins, gave us two espressos on him to complete our meal. We took our time there which was nice, we spent about 3 hours just talking and sipping on our wine and the service was excellent! No one bothered us or tried to rush us! Very important!! I would like to go back to try their meat dishes and give their pasta a try. Just a heads up: they have a lot of fish on their menu!!

 Pizza Tartufata alla Griglia

 Cacio e Pepe

Rucola e Pere

Brunch: Libation - Lower East Side, NY - 3/1/2014

Her Take: I've been wanting to go for brunch with my beau for a while now, but he isn't crazy for breakfast, but I totally am, so we HAD to go! My cousin, Carolina, came for the weekend with her friend Marcello and we went out Friday night, stood at a hotel and decided to go for a nice noon brunch that Saturday. We chose to go to Libation because we were originally thinking of going there that Friday night, but we saw they had bottomless brunch for $28 so WHY NOT! I made a reservation for 12(brunch is from 12-4) and me being the "early bird" that I am, I forced everyone to be ready by 11:15 so we would get there early, and we did.. so early that they place wasn't even open yet. (oops *blushing face*) Anyway, they finally let us in and they sat the four of us at a small, round, elevated table that was right on top of the bar, with barstools (with no backs) as our seats. That kind of disappointed me because I wanted to be comfortable. I saw they led all the other reservations upstairs, which seemed nicer, and they sat everyone else at tables with comfier chairs! wtffffff... but we realized it was probably because we made a late reservation. The place itself is nice with three floors and a long bar; it is a sports bar/club at night. We all ordered mimosas, so our waiter, which was also the bartender, brought us a carafe of mimosas. The mimosas were a bit watered down, which I understand why they are because if you're drinking for 4 hours, you don't want to be super drunk on champagne. Our waiter was really friendly and a good seller, he explained the food so nicely we were drooling at the table. I ordered the Texas French Toast which came with fresh fruit, bacon, candied walnuts and lots of powdered sugar. It was delicious and much better than I expected! Nicky and Marcello ordered the Steak and Eggs (which is $4 extra)  and Carolina ordered the Huevos Antonio, which were soo yummy! We had about 5 carafes of mimosas and Carolina and Marcello ordered Bloody Marys which were good as well. We were feeling buzzed, but definitely not drunk! We decided to leave early and our waiter was a little shocked that we weren't staying until 4, which I assume everyone (but us) does. The Brunch was soooo much better than we all expected, especially for 28$ a person! I would say it was definitely worth it and would go back, make a reservation earlier and actually STAY till 4! I love brunch, and it definitely tastes even better after a night of drinking!
Remember to make reservations!! Check out their website :)

His Take: So as Ariana said, I am not really a breakfast guy but when you tell me BOTTOMLESS drinks are involved, WAKE ME UP!  So yes the time police, Ariana, woke us all up bright and early and had us at the door before the place even allowed people in.  We headed to Libation, a place I have heard of before, but never for their brunch.  The brunch goes from 12-4, and the doors do not open (literally the doors are locked) until 12!  We were literally the FIRST people at the door.  Luckily Ariana had made a reservation.  We were the first to be seated and about a half hour into us being there the place was filled up.  Music was great they play it loud enough to enjoy and sing along, but low enough that you can hear your company.  I was not to fond of our seating arrangement, because we were one of the last of the reservations, we sat at a round table literally against the bar.  We sat at stools with no backs so that was a little uncomfortable at times.  The great thing about where we sat was our waiter, Sean, was also the bartender so our drinks kept coming.  Literally Sean was on top of his game and our carafes were never empty.  Sean would top off our drinks and come with a new carafe.  We enjoyed our Mimosas, and the other couple we were with tried the Bloody Mary's.  Sean did a wonderful job with the drinks and was every helpful with the menu, and what he liked!  I kept it simple and ordered steak and eggs, which I was excited to try, because I had not had steak and eggs in a long time.  The steak and eggs were excellent, and came with sides of fruit and potatoes.  I kind of wish the steak was a little but bigger, but after eating the entire dish, I was really happy with the amount of food.  Ariana's French Toast looked absolutely amazing, and the piece I had, was very tasty.  Ariana's cousin ordered Huevos Antonio, and they looked kind of cool to.  She enjoyed it, and Marcello order the steak and eggs (copy cat) and threw some cheese on there for good measure.  We drank and drank and drank some more, and after about 3 hours we were ready to leave.  Sean was shocked that we did not want to stay until 4!  I later found at that after 4, the place turns into a lounge/club and people stay and party, presumably still buzzed from their Mimosas or Bloody Mary's.  Finally a great thing about Libation, the brunch was $28 a person, which you literally can not beat.  Sean also told us that for an extra $15 a person, you can have the open bar option, which includes everything but top shelf liquor. 

 Mimosas

 Nicky's Steak and Eggs

 Ariana's Texas French Toast

 Carolina's Huevos Antonio

 Marcello's Steak and Eggs with Cheese

 The Goodlookin' Bloggers

Carolina and Ariana

Pizza Challenge

Ok so Nicky and I are super Italian and can eat pizza all the time, ok it probably doesn't have that much to do with being Italian maybe it's just cause we LOVE PIZZA! But then again, who doesn't?

We were thinking about doing a Pizza Challenge, where we try all the pizzerias in our neighborhood (Williamsburg, Brooklyn) and expand into the city and rate them all to see which places have the best (or worst) pizzas!

Yes? good idea no? GREAT! Cause we think its a delicious idea :-D

We will start this soon!!!! YAYYYYY!!!

Ps this is me making a pizza...

 

 

 

I love pizza. - Ariana

Restaurant Week: Bann - Hell's Kitchen, NY - 2/26/2014

His Take:  It's Restaurant Week here in NYC.  Restaurant Week became so popular here, and so many restaurants are participating that they extended it and it is actually 3 weeks!  Basically a lot of participating restaurants are charging $38 a person, and each person gets to choose an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert.  Ariana and I decided to take a look at the list on nycgo.com/restaurant week and pick a place.  This led us to Bann, a Korean restaurant in Hell's Kitchen.  We had never heard anything about this place before but we figured what the heck!  Little did I know that Bann is a Korean BBQ place which I have been itching to try!  We walked right in, with our reservation of course, and just let the hostess know we were interested in doing the restaurant week special!  Off we were to our table with our select menus (clearly a smaller version of the full menu) and voila! I saw the little BBQ grill at our table!  I was giddy at the chance to try and cook my own Korean BBQ.  Immediately Ariana and I decided that for appetizers we would order 2 different things this way we could try them both.  I ordered the pork spare ribs that were basted in a soy chili BBQ sauce.  These ribs were absolutely delicious!  Very meaty, just enough spice and everything nice! They were cooked to perfection.  Unfortunately the portion was too small!  I feel like this was because of the restaurant week special, but I definitely would like to come back and get a full serving of these ribs! Ariana ordered beef rib eye in steamed buns, and these things were also incredible.  I think the buns were the best part!  She'll get into those more but I enjoyed every big of our appetizers.  On to the main course,  Ariana ordered some special short rib of the menu (no surprise!!) and again these were so good.  Hers were in a ginger sauce.  Now on to the fun stuff!  I ordered the Korean BBQ short rib at the advice of the waiter, and boy was he right.  They fired up my grill and showed me the best way to cook those bad boys!  I was given about 15-20 pieces of short rib to cook on the grill however I wanted!  Accompanying both our dishes were salads, white rice, and different veggies to put along with it.  The restaurant week menu selections for a dessert were either carrot cake or a banana pudding!  We just ordered both and gave 'em a shot!  I, personally, thought the carrot cake was ok but then again, I am not a huge fan of carrot cake.  The banana pudding was very good, and I hope you don't take this as an insult, but it reminded me of a banana Now and Later candy, which is also delicious!  No alcoholic beverages this time, sodas did the trick.  I mention this because drinks were not included with the restaurant week specials, but feel free to order as you please.

Ultimately I plan on returning to Bann in the near future!  I want to try the full menu as soon as possible, and I want to Korean BBQ again!  I enjoy cooking just as much as I eating!  Ok maybe eating more, and I could really go for another serving of those ribs.  Head over to Bann and enjoy!

Her Take: I had received an email from Open Table about Restaurant Week (which is actually 3 weeks Feb 17-Mar 7), and I thought to myself  "hm, this sounds like a really good deal" so I told Nicky about Restaurant week: Lunch is $25 a person and Dinner $38 for 3 courses (including dessert!) He said let's try it! So we went online and started looking at all the restaurants that participate in Restaurant week; cuisines of all types from African to Korean and New American to Continental (whatever that is!) so we narrowed it down to: Korean, Mexican and Italian. The one that stood out the most to us was Bann because the menu looked so appetizing that our mouths started watering just thinking about the food! DONE! I made the reservation through Open Table for a Wednesday night! We took the C train and it left us right down the block from it, it was perfect. Once we walked in we thought that the place looked really nice, and considering it was a Wednesday night, there were a bunch of tables! The place was perfectly lit and nicely set up. We asked for the Restaurant Week menu and as they sat us down, Nicky noticed the mini grill in the middle of the table and got sooo excited because he had been wanting to try Korean BBQ for so long! (I guess he didn't pay as much attention as I did when we read the menu online where it CLEARLY said Korean BBQ) But yes! We started with the appetizers: Nicky got the baby pork ribs with soy chili BBQ sauce and I got the beef rib eye with spicy daikon on steamed buns. Each appetizer came with two so we had one of each and they were delicious and not to mention the perfect amount. My buns were so airy they looked like little pancakes that were folded in half and stuffed with thinly sliced rib eye and daikon, which is sliced radishes with spice, I loved it! Nicky took them out of his steamed bun. For Entrée I got the beef short rib (I know right?) braised in a sake ginger soy glaze, which was cooked so perfectly that it melted in your mouth and the glaze was so yummy I put some rice in my dish and let it soak it all up; my dish was excellent. Nicky got the Korean BBQ short rib, which came with a generous amount of pieces that he grilled himself (cause who doesn't wanna cook their own meal when going out to eat?), this was also very, very good. The waiter brought us a bowl of rice to share, ginger dressed mixed salads each, a small bowl of more daikon, a small bowl of kimchi, a small bowl of broccoli and a dish of mixed veggies. It was a good amount of food for the price, I'm going to be honest I expected less! After finishing our awesome entrees they brought us out our desserts: Nicky ordered the carrot cake, which was decent even though he didn't touch it at all, and I ordered the banana sabayon, which was a banana custard that came with a sesame cookie and strawberries; I thought it was very good and Nicky said it tasted like a banana now and later (which it actually did.)
We left the place fully satisfied and content with our meal, we enjoyed it very much and we are definitely going to go back to try the full menu! Only negative I give Bann is that the service wasn't the best, the waiter wasn't as attentive as he should have been. But all in all I give Bann 4/5 stars!

Date Night: Game Night, Cousin's House 2/21/2014

Her Take: I love game nights, I could play games allll day every day! But, for some reason, no one ever wants to (maybe cause I always win and they're sore losers? the world may never know), so when Nicky's cousin invited us to game night, you know I was all up in there! Anyway, we brought 3 bottles of wine to his cousin's girlfriend's house and when we got there they took out Cards Against Humanity which was a lot of fun; it is like apples to apples (which I don't like too much) but its better haha! It's super fun and everyone gets a good laugh. Of course I was good at that game ;) I won the best answer a million times obviously! Next we decided to play Heads up which is an App and it is basically charades and getting the person with the phone on their forehead to guess the word, once again this was a lot of fun! Watching guys dance the cha-cha and doing kung fu was the highlight of the night. Lastly, we played cranium, which is my FAVORITE game!!!! Nicky and I were on a team for this one and we won!!! (is that a surprise? noooo) all the other couples started hating on us because we were winning all the club craniums and bonus rolls which got us into the brain and made us win before anyone else was even passed the 2nd brain stop. HA!!! We're amazing, what can I say, we're a smarty pants couple! ;)
We finished playing games around 2:45 AM!! We didn't expect it to be that late, but it was a lot a lot a lot of fun! I'm so glad we finally had a game night!

Game nights are a fun, easy and cheap substitute for a date night; If you feel like staying home and not spending any money, reach over for some board games and reach out to some friends (and tell them to bring some refreshments ehem *wine* ehem) and be prepared to have a fun-filled date night in!!



His Take:  GAME NIGHT!!!! Who doesn't love a game night?!?!?!?!  So my cousin invited us over to his girlfriend's house, along with 2 other couples (4 couples total) for some wine and games.  We played 3 different games, Cards Against Humanity, Heads Up, and Cranium.  Let me tell you, couple's game night is fun!  Ariana and I love playing games because we love battling it out head to head to see who the smarter one is (ALWAYS me, DUH).  First up, Cards Against Humanity.  This game was new to me, but it was absolutely hysterical.  I had never heard of this game before but I am glad we played.  This game was every man, or women, for themselves!  Basically each player takes a turn reading a black card, and the remaining players take a turn each placing a white card in the center.  The person reading the black card is not supposed to know which player put each, and reads them one at a time.  Now it is up to the reader to determine the "best" answer.  You can already see how this game goes!  For example, my cousin read "When I took ecstasy ______ became _____" and the winning answer was 2 midgets shitting in a bucket and puppies.  Clearly the answers were hysterical and we literally laughed all night!  On to Heads Up we went, which is an iPhone app ($.99).  This game is charades with a twist.  Each team has 1 player choose their own category, and their remaining team mates have to get that player to guess as many answers right as possible.  There a many different categories.  We played this game guys versus girls, and us guys kicked ass!  My favorite category was All The Right Moves, which basically is your team has to do the various dance moves that come up, and the 1 player must guess the dance moves in order to score!  Lastly we played Cranium.  This game we played each couple as a team, and I don't mean to sound cocky, but any one, ANY ONE who wants to challenge Ariana and I in this game, BRING IT ON.  We absolutely owned everyone in tis game, like ran circles around the competition!  Cranium is a fun party game that includes, sculpting/drawing, acting, and general knowledge or "factoids."

I will end with this, us 4 couples went through quite a few bottles of wine, but we were never short on laughs.  We literally laughed all the way through the night.  Grab your friends, couples or not and play any type of games.  I fully endorse game night for a simple nice and easy date!  Wine and games? COUNT ME IN!!