more food blogging, with photos this time

Wow, it's been nearly a month and a half since I went to these restaurants! Time flies...

My sister loves Japanese food and is a huge carnivore. When we were teenagers, she and I, along with two of our (girl) cousins, out ate my brother and three of our (guy) cousins (also teenagers), at a Korean BBQ buffet. We do love that kalbi and bulgogi.

Anyway, I digress. Since my sister was in town for a couple of months, I seized the opportunity to take her to Alexander's Steakhouse, which I knew she would enjoy. I made an effort to order all new appetizers, but stuck to the dry-aged New York steak for my entree.

Photos and comments follow:

The amuse was a steak tartare. It was deliciously seasoned, and I'm a sucker for raw meat, so I liked it very much.



We ordered two appetizers: "popcorn" lobster, and a rack of lamb. The lamb were yummy, but my favorite was the lobster. The chunks of lobster were generous and it didn't feel greasy at all. I went pretty easy on the aioli sauce, though.





The New York steak came with fried (almost tempura) veggies on top, which I liked very much. The steak was as flavorful and tender as I remembered, and of course I had to order the truffled fries again. Those fries must have crack in them; I can never stop eating them until they're gone, and then I want more.



I also had a bite of the porterhouse which someone else at the table had ordered, which came with a giant scoop of some kind of flavored butter, but I still liked my steak the best.

We ordered two desserts for the table: apple empanadas and pear tart with "raspberry Zinfandel sorbet". I liked the presentation of both desserts, and the apple dish was fine, but what I really loved was the raspberry Zin sorbet. It almost tasted fizzy, if that makes any sense at all; really unique and delicious. The gelee cubes were fine but I think I'm getting tired of fruit gelee.





Anyway my sister did like Alexander's very much, as I predicted, so I'm glad we made the time to go there. Now I just have to wait for my cousin to come back from New York so we can go again. She's an even bigger carnivore than my sister...

About a week afterwards, I went to Postrio for the first time, to celebrate a friend's birthday. When we walked into the restaurant it was pretty empty, which worried me a bit. But, I guess we had an early reservation (6:30pm), even for a Sunday night, because by 7:30pm it had totally filled up.

After looking at the menu (for only a very short time), the four of us chose to have the tasting menu for the table, which turned out to be a good choice, as there was a lot of variety and a good amount of food.

The amuse was a very generously portioned mushroom soup. It was nearly as big as a cup. It was well-executed and all, but not all that interesting.

The first course was "tuna two ways": tuna tartare wrapped in tuna tataki. The tartare was oily, almost like poke, and the tataki was seared lightly enough that I didn't mind that it had been cooked, which is really saying something. It was served on a smudge of nori (seaweed) sauce. I *love* nori; I'll eat a whole can of it in an hour, while watching TV. Anyway, the tuna was creative, attractively plated, and hit several of my favorite flavors, making it easily my favorite dish of the evening.



Next up was a lobster risotto. I've had some really good risottos before, as well as some great paellas, and this one just wasn't quite up there, as far as texture. It had good flavor, but too soupy (although I think that was on purpose), and the rice wasn't as soft as I would have liked. The lobster itself was fresh and tender.



The next course was supposed to be snapper, and everyone else did have the snapper, except me. I can't comment on the taste myself but people seemed to enjoy it.



As usual I asked for a substitution for any cooked fish dishes, which was a good thing because I ended up with venision, which was *delicious*. Of the three meat dishes, I most preferred the venision; it wasn't gamey but did have a nice subtle extra flavor to it that neither the beef nor the duck had. It was prepared medium rare (almost rare) and was extremely tender, and the sauce was a great accompaniment; strongly flavored but not overwhelming. My only complaint was that the little cubes decorating the sides of the plate were unremarkable, taste-wise.



After the venison came the duck, which was served with some berries, a pearl onion, and polenta. I am not a fan of polenta so I didn't eat much of it, but it was pretty good as far as polenta is concerned. The duck itself was yummy but not as tender as the venison.



The next dish offered a choice of Kobe beef (with a supplement) or venison. Since I had chosen the beef, the chef had cleverly given me the venison in place of the snapper, so at this point I had the beef and everyone else had the venison. I shared bits of the beef with everyone else so they could try it, and it was quite tasty, but amazingly, I still preferred the venison. I was probably also a bit biased because the accompanying radish was too creamy for my tastes. The green beans were excellent, though.



At this point we were served a "cheese plate". I guess when I hear "cheese plate" I expect to have more than one type of cheese, because I was a bit disappointed with this particular course. The cheese itself was fine, but didn't really stand out, and the preparation of the apricot (something about drying and rehydrating with some other liquid, I believe) sounded a lot more impressive than it tasted.



Luckily, we were soon onto dessert, which was a "whisky chocolate cake" topped with "Bailey's ice cream", accompanied by hazelnuts and caramel sauce. I was happy with basically every word in that description, and I was not disappointed; both the whisky and Bailey's flavors were very much present but went quite well with the chocolate and caramel. I especially liked the texture of the crumbly bottom part of the cake together with the almost mousse-like chocolate-y part.



They should have stopped there. Unfortunately, they then brought out a plate of biscotti and brownies, neither of which were particularly impressive.



I had a bite of each and decided that was enough. I was quite full, anyway.

Overall, I thought the restaurant was worth a visit, but at least for me, the courses were a bit uneven. I was very impressed with dishes like the tuna and the venison, and much less impressed with the risotto and the cheese plate. I'm glad that the dessert was good, though, as we left on a pretty high note. It was a nice time, anyway.