What I ate in New York

Now that my Christmas and new year blog posts are done and dusted, I thought it was about time I wrote another blog post about New York.

January feels as if it's dragged on for about a hundred years, and it genuinely feels like a lifetime ago since we experienced the magic of New York during the festive season.

We really love eating (shock horror) so we researched lots of places to eat before we went and plotted all the possibilities on a Trello board. We also added a few must-do-again restaurants to our list after falling in love with a few on our first trip to New York six years ago.

If you know me at all, you'll know that my days are always structured around food whether I'm at home, in work or on holiday. We started every day with a classic American breakfast which usually kept us full until mid afternoon, then we'd have a snack and a hot drink before going out for dinner a few hours later.

After reading the title of this post, I know you all just want see some food photos rather than scrolling through my ramblings. Your wish is my command...



Breakfast 

We ate breakfast at our hotel on the first morning. It was a good breakfast but was very expensive, so we decided to eat at Tick Tock Diner every morning for the rest of our trip. It was only a ten minute walk from our hotel, and we had a bonus view of the Empire State Building from our table if we were given a window seat. The pancakes at Tick Tock Diner are my absolute favourites, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm salivating just thinking about them.

Fast food 

One of the many excellent things about New York is the sheer amount of places where you can eat on the go. There's a huge variety of cuisines to choose from to suit every possible dietary requirement and appetite. Our most difficult decision was figuring out how to try as many places as we possibly could during our trip without over-eating and making ourselves sick.

We discovered a place that sold huge pizza slices for two dollars on our first afternoon so we promptly went there for our first snack of the holiday. Obviously you can't go wrong with a pizza slice for two dollars, so we visited a couple more times before the end of our trip.

We couldn't go to New York without getting a takeaway cheesecake to eat in our hotel room over three days, so we made sure we went to Junior's to get the biggest slice of cheesecake I've ever seen. True to form, it did last three days. 

The next two snacks were absolute must-dos after our last trip. The best hot dog I've ever had from the food court in Grand Central Station, and a giant burrito from Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Lastly on the snack front, no day in my life is complete without a hot chocolate stop. Although we tried to go to coffee shops we wouldn't find in the UK for the most part, I did succumb to a Starbucks one afternoon when I had a sugar low and was freezing cold. 

Dinner 

We'd scouted out all the restaurants we went to for dinner on TripAdvisor beforehand and they definitely lived up to the hype.

My favourite find was Bareburger on 46th St, and we ate here on our first evening and our last evening. If America does one thing really well, it's big fat burgers. And just look at the size of those onion rings! There are lots of sweet potato fries hiding under there too which were equally as delicious. 

After trying Junior's last time we visited New York and rating it as our best meal of the trip, we absolutely had to visit again. The photo makes my meal look a bit beige and bland, but I can promise you that it wasn't. However, I will grudgingly admit that it was far too big for me to eat the entire thing. 

Pure Thai, a little hidden gem on 9th Avenue, was another firm favourite. We would easily have walked past it without a thought if we hadn't looked it up on TripAdvisor. It was a tiny little restaurant with fewer than ten tables so we were lucky to get seated without a booking. The food was so simple but SO TASTY, and the service was fantastic. 

We splashed out on an expensive meal at K Rico Steakhouse, a few doors up from Pure Thai. We had three courses and a couple of glasses of wine, and it was well worth the price. The waiter helpfully warned us that the desserts were big enough to share, so I didn't eat that entire slice of cheesecake myself (just in case you were wondering). 

I well and truly miss New York and its amazing food, and I'm absolutely starving after writing this post. Have I inspired you to try any of these places if/when you visit New York? Let me know! 

Restaurant Review: The Smoke Haus

I thought I'd take a break from writing about my wedding and honeymoon as I felt like blogging about what I know best... food!

It's been a while since I wrote a restaurant review as we were too busy in the few months before the wedding to visit any new restaurants. We therefore made it our mission to visit a few new restaurants once we got back from honeymoon. After having a quick chat about what kind of food we fancied in our first new restaurant, our first choice was... The Smoke Haus.

I love a good burger and I was very excited about having a big American meal as I'd banned myself from eating such calorific extravagance before the wedding. I love the freedom of not needing to fit into a wedding dress any more! However, I should probably bear in mind that I still have actual clothes to fit in to before I go too overboard...

We turned up at The Smoke Haus at around 3:30pm and were seated straight away. It's a no-frills restaurant with very stark decor, but it still manages to look impressive and inviting. And it's MASSIVE. It actually looks like a posh warehouse inside, but it really works!

Although I was adamant from the beginning that I wanted a big fat burger, I still drooled over the other sections of the menu for ten minutes. Meat, cheese and carbs galore! I eventually decided on a Baby Bertha as it was the smallest burger on the menu and I didn't want to overstretch myself too much. Yes, I can show some restraint sometimes when it comes to food, believe it or not.

However, I did have a sneaky suspicion that it might be messy... the kitchen roll on the table was my first clue. How many times have you been in a restaurant and worn a hole in your serviette because your food is inexplicably messy and they've only given you one measly napkin? The kitchen roll is a fantastic idea!

Our food didn't arrive for half an hour or so, but in fairness the restaurant was pretty busy. In the meantime, we listened to some excellent tunes such as Ash, Foo Fighters and Bon Jovi. The Smoke Haus has an iPhone app where you can choose the music on the jukebox yourself and broadcast it to the entire restaurant! I absolutely love this interactive touch and think it's something more restaurants should adopt. Unfortunately, neither of us has an iPhone so we happily listened to other people's music choices which were very satisfactory. 

When my burger arrived, I immediately knew why the kitchen roll was an absolute necessity... 

More civilized people might have cut up their burger with a knife and fork from the very beginning, but I'm not really one of those people. My eagerness to eat my burger 'properly' resulted in needing to use approximately 11 pieces of kitchen roll. Although I wasn't a big fan of the bacon in my burger, everything else was amazing. I was unsure about the cheesy sauce when I ordered this burger but it was quite mild yet tasty which suits me perfectly. The burger itself wasn't the best I've ever had, but it's certainly in my top twenty (I've eaten a lot of burgers in my time). Even the coleslaw on the side was delicious, and the chips were lovely and moreish as I would expect from any American-themed restaurant. 

We weren't content with just one visit to The Smoke Haus within a month, so we visited again a few weeks ago. This time, I decided to go for the chilli dog. Ta-dah!

Another massive meal... the chilli was very spicy so I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as I enjoyed my burger, but it was still excellent and a LOT of food. 

Would I recommend The Smoke Haus to others? Most definitely, especially if you love big fat burgers as much as I do. It's very reasonable considering the sheer amount of food you get and I really love the relaxed atmosphere. The staff members are all chatty and efficient, and it's a very family friendly restaurant. They also have a bar with lots of choice and an extensive dessert selection, although I've never drunk alcohol or eaten dessert there. I'm always too full... can you blame me after seeing these photos?

The restaurants stationed in this particular Cardiff city centre location always seem to fail and covertly go into administration... we're keeping our fingers crossed that this won't happen to The Smoke Haus!

Have you been to The Smoke Haus yet? How many pieces of kitchen roll did you get through? 

New York #7: Food!

I love food. This is not news. Consequently, I was massively excited about sampling the food in New York. The food was amazing when I went to Florida last year, so I was expecting great things. My boyfriend was calling me the paparazzi as I took photos of all my meals (and desserts!), but it just had to be done for blogging purposes. I ate cakes I wouldn't dream of eating at home, and some mahoosive main meals too.  Thankfully we did lots of walking to burn off the excess calories.

So here's a summary in photos of what I ate throughout the week... don't judge me!

First night - Chicken and broccoli pizza slices at The Bread Factory

Breakfast at the hotel on our first morning - the bacon and the 

apple and cinnamon cake thing were especially tasty!

Cheeseburger and onion rings at Juniors - my favourite meal!

Carrot Cake Cheesecake from Juniors. It took me three days in total to finish this!

Hot dog from Frankie's in Grand Central Station. 

Baked beans, bacon bits and barbecue sauce.

Thai Green Curry from a little Thai restaurant in the Hell's Kitchen area

Cupcakes from the Crumbs Bake Shop - mine is the 

Cookie Dough cupcake on the left

American pancakes with strawberries from the Tick Tock Diner

Pepperoni stromboli from the Villa Kitchen in Times Square

Steak burrito from Chipotle Mexican Grill. My first burrito!

Giant chocolate chip cookie from The Bread Factory

Oreo Cake Tower on our last afternoon... Sadly, I couldn't finish it all

Don't panic, I (miraculously) didn't come back 5 stone heavier. My favourite meals were the American pancakes from Tick Tock Diner, the cheeseburger and onion rings from Juniors, and the carrot cake cheesecake from Juniors. Can you recommend any other restaurants in New York?