Looking forward to some reports!
Has anyone tried Aesops Fables in Chappaqua? I just found their RW menu and it looks interesting – https://www.aesopsfablerestaurant.com/restuarant-week-menu
We had dinner at Cafe of Love last night and it was pretty good. Two of us had their harvest soup and it was very good (I don’t normally order soup and probably should have gotten the salad instead). My daughter had the meatloaf fondue and it was cubes of meatloaf topped with gooey cheese and sauce. I had the salmon entree. It wasn’t a huge portion but it was nicely cooked – crisp on top and not overcooked. Came with a nice quinoa and veggie mix and sauteed spinach. My wife and daughter both had the “Oven Baked Chicken Poutine” which was just a huge breast of chicken over a pile of fries (no gravy or cheese curds, so it wasn’t really poutine, although there was a horseradish sauce on the chicken). It was good, but not poutine. For dessert my wife and daughter had the almond bread pudding, which they always have and I’m told it was excellent (no one shared any with me). I had the flourless chocolate cake and it was very good, although it was a little nuttier than I like. Disappointed that they don’t give you pickled radishes anymore. We were last there a year ago on election day, I still remember two girls at a neighboring table with their Hillary shirts. Sigh.
Going to American Bounty for lunch tomorrow, then Saltaire for lunch on Saturday. I currently have a reservation at The Cookery for dinner on Sunday, but I may give Monteverde a try instead.
Next week we’re doing Madison Kitchen on Tuesday, 121 for lunch on Thursday, Valley on Saturday, then Blu Pointe in Newburgh on Sunday (that was recommended by someone on CH over Farm to Table Bistro).
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Thanks. Reviews on Yelp aren’t particularly good so I decided against it. Similar reasoning for Cedar Street Grill, another Westchester Magazine recommendation.
The food at Cedar Street Grill was so good when they first opened, what a bummer
Many of the Yelpers seem to be complaining that the food had changed and gotten more expensive (apparently they used to have a bunch of different burgers, now just one). The WM article talks about a new chef that they brought it, I guess they were trying to go more upscale.
So maybe for a first-time visitor it will be fine, but if you’re a regular and expecting the same food you’ll be disappointed.
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My son and I went to Restaurant X today for RW lunch.
Our reservation was at 1 and about 3/4 of the tables were taken. The bar area was empty except for the host.
My son had the warm vichyssoise with crispy leeks and bacon and I had the burrata as our appetizers. He loved the soup and it was served correctly with the crispy elements presented alone in the bowl with the soup then poured on top. The portion was huge. It looked like many people were ordering it since we could see the soup pitchers being carried around the room.
The burrata appetizer was good, though the “roasted fruits” that were advertised on the menu to accompany the cheese were two slices of apples. I was hoping for something more exotic like persimmon. The burrata itself was creamy and fresh, though there was only about a large tablespoon of it on the plate. There was a side of warm grape tomatoes and red onions in a vinegar reduction that was okay but the onion smell was a little strong and the tomatoes a little flaccid, like it had been made at the beginning of the week. There was also a small pile of baby arugula and two thin slices of garlic crostini made from their baguettes that worked well with the cheese.
For mains, he had the brined maple-glazed pork loin with orange gastrique, farro with figs, and braised kale. I had the short ribs with mascarpone polenta and crispy Brussels sprouts. Both portions were enormous, especially for lunch. The orange gastrique was obvious but not overpowering. The texture of the pork was a little chewy but the overall flavor was nice. The farro was perfectly cooked with just a little bit of toothsomeness. The highlight of that dish was the kale, which retained a bit of its texture but not enough to make it tough. The judicious use of salt in it helped put the flavor over the top.
The short ribs arrived as a brick of meat about the size of my (adult) son’s fist. It was quite tender and fell apart with a bit of nudging. The polenta was lovely and smooth. The mascarpone added a slight sweetness and richness that was a good counterpart to the savory meat. I could swear I noticed some ground spice in the ribs (maybe nutmeg), but nothing that interfered with the rib meat’s beefiness. The sprouts were spot on. They must have been roasted at a high temperature because they became little crispy and caramelized nuggets with just a a hint of their normal cabbage-like flavor. Neither one of us could finish our entrees, though I ate every sprout before we had things packed up.
Desserts were okay. My son had the creme brulee (as usual) and I had the dark chocolate timbale. The creme brulee was accompanied by four strawberry halves, two of which were well past their glory days. They looked as if they had gone moldy and the kitchen washed the mold off and served them anyway. The creme was fine and the brulee was done well, but the oddly extraneous tuile cookie placed on top was flavorless except for being sweet.
The timbale was fine. It had a mousse texture and was a little too sweet for something advertised as and appearing like dark chocolate. Creme anglaise filled the plate and there were two lonely raspberries and a couple of small swirls of raspberry coulis to counteract the sweet-on-sweet flavor profile. It definitely could have used some more coulis. There was a tuile “X” on top of the timbale which deserved a bite from one of its arms, but no more than that.
Service was rather attentive, especially the lovely woman serving water.
The meal overall was a very good deal and we have no qualms recommending it.
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Great review! Thanks for posting! Overall it sounds good for the money!
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@MisterBill I’d be really annoyed if I ordered chicken poutine and there was no gravy or cheese curds! How disappointing! What did the description say? Thanks for posting!
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Well, they did tell us that it was just chicken on a mound of fries, so we weren’t expecting gravy.
Kitchen Sink Food & Drink in Beacon has their menu posted. I’m not real impressed but I’m posting it anyway – http://www.kitchensinkny.com/newyearseve/ (they seem to reuse their NYE page for RW).
We’ve been to Restaurant X for HVRW and I was also disappointed in the burrata appetizer. Sounds like lunch is a great deal since you likely got the same portion you would have gotten for $10 more at dinner!
We went to American Bounty at the CIA today. Overall, it was very good. Our server was from China, she told me that with the elevation of dining in the big cities in China, there is interest in getting formal training (I am paraphrasing, but you get the idea). I actually noticed many more Asian students than I’ve noticed in the past. The service wasn’t the best we’ve had, my wife thought it looked like the students/servers were running around a lot more than usual. I know that it took a while to get our food and the service wasn’t particularly attentive.
I discovered last year that the lunch and dinner menus at American Bounty are completely different (with the exception of desserts) and the lunch menu was much more interesting to me, with both rack of lamb and duck breast. Also, oddly I got bigger portions at lunch than I did at dinner. I asked one of employees about it last time and was told that the class professors create the menus, and they are different for lunch and dinner. The lunch person is more old school, with large portions. The dinner guy is more modern, with smaller portions.
Anyway, we started with a Cannellini ricotta ravioli, which I’d seen posted on their Instagram account here – https://www.instagram.com/p/BatdaamAXeX/?taken-by=americanbounty . What I got didn’t look anything like that, and was somewhat disappointing. My wife ordered the baby beet salad, and it was much more impressive. The Parker House rolls were excellent, as usual (we ended up with an extra set to take home).
For entrees, I ordered the Rack of Lamb. It was a very nice portion for lunch, 4 ribs. They actually included the ends that had been cut off on the plate. Unfortunately, whoever was in the butcher shop today deserves to fail the trimming class because there was more fat on it than I’ve ever seen on rack of lamb served in a restaurant. Fortunately, once cut away it was excellent. It came with two huge tortelloni which I didn’t try but will have with the lamb leftovers for lunch tomorrow. My wife had the steak, which wasn’t as large a portion but was 3 decent size pieces. It came with the smallest carrots you’ll ever see. She didn’t have leftovers but said it was excellent.
For dessert, they had a limited dessert menu with just 3 choices. Fortunately, one of them was the chocolate tart and it was EXCELLENT. It was served with tea ice cream with an apricot puree on the plate and the whole thing worked really well.
Anyway, for $23 for a 3 course meal it was an excellent deal. I’ve learned not to expect perfection at the CIA and the service you receive is going to vary from student to student. It doesn’t bother me as much as it does some people, so long as the food is good. I would have preferred a friendly server, it seemed like she was surprised that I wanted to talk to her and learn about her background (I always do this at the CIA).
Oh, and there were no additional charges for any dishes on the lunch menu. There are some on the dinner menu. Bocuse has on their lunch and dinner menus, and Caterina has LOTS on their lunch menu ($5 for steak, I never checked their dinner menu but I’d imagine they have then as well).
BTW I got really upset with Opentable today. I had enough points (2000) to get what I thought was a $20 voucher, which I planned to use at lunch today. So I cashed out and went to print it, only to discover that you now have to use it to make a new reservation. Well, American Bounty was fully booked for lunch so I could not make a new reservation and I wasn’t going to chance cancelling my reservation and hoping that it would become available to book again with the certificate. All of the other places I have OT reservations at for the remainder of RW only offer $10 for my voucher, and even the brewpub pop-up restaurant at the CIA which we checked out while we were there and were thinking of trying only offers $10. Fortunately the voucher is good for a full year so I guess if I go back to AB for HVRW in March I’ll be able to use it then, or maybe I’ll find another restaurant that gives you $20 that I want to eat at. But I’ll have another 2000 in points by March and I’ll bet they will only allow me to use a single certificate on a reservation. Anyway, just a warning for anyone with Opentable points.
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Group of 4 of us went to the Cookery last night for dinner. Wow is all I can say. I’ve never had a bad meal there and this was no exception. DH and I got different things so we could share each other’s meal. We tried Radiccho Salad and the Dougnut for our apps. The salad was good, but the doughnut was great. Crispy pork with just a little heat from the chili sauce and bbq flavor from the onions. The dougnut itself was yeasty with a sweet cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top…worth the trip alone! For our mains I had the pork osso bucco and DH had the bronzino. The pork was an entire shank, I was expecting more of a tail end. It was delicious. It was crispy on the outside, almost like it had been deep fried and the inside just fell apart. And the polenta, I wanted to lick the plate! DH’s fish was cooked perfectly with crispy skin. The red pepper sauce was thick and rich and complemented the fish nicely. For dessert We shared the stickabutta pie and sticky date cake. The pie was way to rich and sweet for me. It needed vanilla ice cream or a whip cream to cut the sweetness. The cake, also was very sweet, but the ice cream cut that. Overall a wonderful dinner, and I would highly recommend it!
DOUGNUT
smoked pig head, bbq onions, chili maple, basil
MARKET FISH (Bronzino)
red pepper emulsion, farro caponata
PORK OSSO BUCCO
crisp, creamy white polenta, apple mustard, vincotto
Thanks for the review of The Cookery. What’s that hanging off the end of the Branzino plate, the tail?
I was disappointed with the dessert selection on their menu. They have a new pudding in a can that’s not being offered, and I always liked their chocolate polenta and that isn’t being offered, either. As for the Stickabutta pie, we often bring some of it home to eat either later that day or the following day.
I meant to post my American Bounty pictures. Here they are. The lamb photo isn’t as good as it should be, but you can see a piece of fat hanging off the end of the piece on the left. Also, the bones on the lamb were really strange… sort of cut and square rather than thin and long. Anyway, the good news is it tasted good.
Here’s Cafe of Love. You’ll see that the horseradish sauce is drizzled over the fries as well in the “Chicken Poutine”, although there wasn’t that much of it. I didn’t get a photo of the Almond Bread Pudding since we’ve had it before (and my daughter started eating it before I could get a picture).
Yes, it was the tail, the my DH loved and gnawed on like a dog! As for desserts, the chocolate polenta was on the printed menu.
Interesting… I still have a dinner reservation there on Sunday night although I’ve been thinking of switching to Monteverde instead. Such decisions…
I think I’d stick with the Cookery. I still need to get there. Have you heard anything about Monteverde?
I have not heard anything first-hand about Monteverde. Reviews on Yelp seem to be good. My daughter was there for a wedding a few weeks ago and said the cocktail hour was better than the entree, which I find is pretty typical for catering places.
And that may be the problem with them as a restaurant, It really is more of a catering place. We went there a few years ago - before the last iteration, and the view was great, the place pretty but there was a wedding going on at the same time. I can’t remember exactly what we had but some was fairly good some not so much. Have you been to the Cookery before? I really want to go but still have to make it. Lately, I hate schlepping from Northern Westchester down county, but I think it will be well worth it!!
