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!