Food and Drink Articles

New York City is a very exciting proposition all with great nightlife, luminous neon, classy restaurants and bars and the clubs. NYC is among the most thrilling cities in United States which actually never sleeps. This city offers a wide range of top class restaurants which are famous all over the world. New York restaurants remain open throughout the day and night. It allows all the guests to enjoy the appetizing food along with the family and also with friends. You will get all kind of food in the menu which ranges from the cheapest food to the priciest of all. The food in New York is very well known for its superb mixture of the eastern and the western flavors along with the wide assortments of the culinary enjoyments. The foreign visitors and also the local public keep coming to the restaurants in New York City as they are excellent in serving and the taste can not be compared to any other restaurants throughout the world.

Some of the greatest restaurants present in New York City are as follows:

Brasserie: It is a very well known restaurant especially known for its party circuit because of its stylish late night food staple. This restaurant has been inspired by the French restaurants which offer superb food of all flavors and kinds. It has a very active and all the assortment of drinks which makes it a perfect place for all the food lovers who wish to try something new every time which is very classy and stylish.

Bond Street: It is a known Japanese restaurant in New York City. It has very limited things to show off in front of the people but the range of food is simply amazing. This place serves all the freshest sushi style food in New York along with the Nobu.

Daniel: New York culinary well known personality Chef Daniel with the impeccable credentials has this restaurant on his own name. Formerly, he headed the Chef group of Le Cirque. This superb world class bistro offers sumptuous dishes at the time.

New York has been blessed with great night life along with superb night clubs, bars, attractions, shopping centers and most interestingly a great range of restaurants which tops the list in the entire world. Thus, if you are an actual food lover and wish to taste the best range of food, then New York City is the best place for you.

I eat dead animals for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between. I eat them awake, asleep, while driving - I’d eat them in the shower if I could get away with it. Few things are better than having your food look back at you, the entire head, roasted with a frozen grin; while someone saws off a slice of cheek and passes it around the table.

Once I went vegetarian for six months straight. You know what I ate? French fries, cake, bread, cheese pizza - everything that was neither meat, nor vegetable. Without that muscle, that fat, and sometimes the crunching bones, legumes just didn’t give me what I needed, what I craved. Vegetables don’t properly get stuck in my teeth. Muscle fibers hang on for dear life, wedging themselves between molars to avoid that final acid digestion. Sure I can fill my stomach with plants but I won’t be satisfied. I’m a freakin samurai and something needs to die in order for me to feel content. (Well… only when I lose my Zen.)

Green Sprout does not serve meat.

Sure, their menu ’says’ beef, or chicken, or fish - but no. Green Sprout does not serve meat. So go ahead, order your orange chicken. Order your sesame beef. Order as if they actually do serve meat. Pretend like the fake tofu is going to give you that feeling of dead animal. Pretend like the texture is going to come close, as if tofu could ever mimic meat from the best rice fed cows drunk on saki.

Give up. Make your vegetarian girlfriend happy for once and actually go to a ‘vegetarian’ restaurant. Oh, when the food arrives after a short wait, take that bite. Push the vegetables aside and go for that fake meat. Come on, it can’t touch the real stuff, why even pretend? Just get it over with. Pop one of those chik-pattie wannabes into your mouth and move on.

Okay, I’ll admit it, the fake meat is pretty good here. It’s so good that it doesn’t even taste like meat. In fact, considering that many vegetarians are vegetarian not for ethical reasons, but because they just don’t like the taste and texture of meat, this is perfect - for them. Sure it’s not kobe beef, or free range fowl, or Alaskan wild salmon, but that’s okay. We’re giving the wildlife a break today.

Come here often enough and they’ll remember you. Something Green Sprout has over Top Spice and Ru-Sans (the other two restaurants above and next door) is that the people here will get to know you if give them a chance, if you want to know them. Overhearing the server talk to the other tables, half of the menu should be off limits. Stick with the basics. Stick with stuff you’ll find at nearly every other regular chinese restaurant. The fake meat here is made up of different types of tofu, prepared in several ways using simple tricks such as freezing, and drying and switching with pork (in my dreams). Giving it less of a tofu texture and more of a… meat substitute texture.

Green Sprout is an odd restaurant to me. I understand what they’re doing, but why do it? I just don’t get it. But don’t get me wrong, the food here is good, I just wish it had been something that could fight back. Pigs can fight back right? Chickens? Salmon? Sure they can. Um. Nevermind.

Review Summary: 4.2 out of 5

Green Sprout

1529 Piedmont Ave

Atlanta, GA, 30324

(404) 874-7373

What you see - Located on the ground floor of the prestigious Sheraton Chola Hotel in central Nungambakkam, bang opposite Kalpa Stree and Kalpa Druma, this Chinese cuisine restaurant is around 1,500 square feet in size. Around 16 wooden tables, round and square, two seater as well as larger ones, are well arranged here. Maroon and pale yellow cushioned wooden chairs surround these tables, while striped couches run along the entire length of a wall.

From the lobby, a corridor of small shops and showcases displaying miniature Chinese figures and tea sets, flanked by silk banners with Chinese designs and the framed silk Cheongsams leads you to the place. Ivory walls, ceiling fans with four blades and carpets blend with the sparkling white Chinese silk tablecloths and matching napkins that would not look out of place in a commercial for detergents.

What you get - Courteous and prompt service by the maitre de and the hostess near the entrance see you to your table. The menu is a wonderful mix. Appetizers like Deep Fried Lotus Roots in chilli and honey sauce, Fried Beancurd (soya paneer or tofu) in Chashao Sauce cost Rs. 300 per dish. Spicy n Numb Prawns (Rs. 675), Crisp Fried Squid in onion and garlic sauce (Rs. 425), Chougqing Chilli Chicken (Rs. 425), Pork Spare Ribs with barbeque sauce and Pork Steak comprise some of their must-try spread.

Main course dishes include Egg and Shrimp Paste Fried Rice and Yangzhou Fried Rice in vegetarian and non-vegetarian variations. Dim Sum like the Prawn and Carrot Su-mai (Rs. 450) and Sliced Tenderloin with fried noodles also tempt you. They have Chengdou style fried rice with pickled vegetables as well. Dessert consists of Honey Noodles with Ice cream (Rs. 275), Sesame Banana with Ice cream, Date and Coconut Pancake with Ice cream and Milk Pancake with Ice cream.

Our verdict - If you don’t mind spending on good Chinese food then this is the place to go to. The portions are large and service is prompt.

Oistins Fish Fry is an institution in Barbados, and is frequented by hundreds of locals as well as tourists alike. Oistins was originally a weekend affair, but nowadays you will find it buzzing every night of the week. For those of you that have never been to Oistins Fish Fry in Barbados, it is an open-air fish fry, where you will find over 50 stalls selling virtually every variety of fish that you can imagine, cooked in every possible way.

I have personally being to Oistins Fish Fry countless times, and I have never had a bad meal once. Friday night is the busiest night of the week, with Saturday night being ever so slightly quieter.

Oistins is better than ever, as it has now returned to it’s original home after being upgraded. This was my first trip to Ostins since I moved here at the end of June. I was intending to go on Friday night after I had enjoyed a few cocktails, but just as we were about to leave, visitors arrived and our plans were changed.

We headed down to Oistins about 7pm and parked over at the huge car park across the road from it, just beside where Ostins was when it was being upgraded.

I knew where I was heading to first and that was for a wee appetizer, I had driven or walked past Oistins numerous times, since I arrived and had noticed the stall for one of my favorites. I just had to have a few fish cakes from The Legendary Fish Cakes stall and believe me they are delicious. The only downside to the fishcakes is that they are so hot, that you have to wait about 10 minutes until you can eat them.

Finding our next port of call wasn’t going to be so easy, we wondered around for about 10 minutes searching for our regular stall, without any luck. We then bumped into my wife’s cousin who dragged us into a rum shop and bought us a few Banks beers, which washed down the fish cakes perfectly.

I must admit the Banks Beer in this rum shop were chilled to perfection and were sliding down real good. So I bought one for the road and it only cost $14 for 4 bottles of banks, a real bargain. Just as we were about to leave the bar, a local good looking young girl dressed up to the nines, walked into the bar for a few seconds and brought loud cheer from the locals as she left.

As soon as we stepped out of the Rum Shop, we miraculously arrived at the stall we had been looking for called Uncle Georges. It was only about 8 o clock and the queue wasn’t too big, which was good news, because those beers had built up an appetite.

As usual they had 3 different fish to choose from, Kingfish, Marlin and Swordfish. During the 10 minutes it took to get served I managed to changed my mind 3 times as to what fish I was going to be having. I eventually settled on Swordfish, which was served with baked potato, salad and tartar sauce. I just wish they would share the secret of the marinade that they use on their fish, because it is unbeatable. It is maybe a simple meal, but for me it is as good as anything you will get in one of the many fancy restaurants that you find in abundance in Barbados. The best thing of all is that it only cost $25 and the amount of Swordfish that I got was huge, there was more than enough left over for my lunch the next day.

We eat our meals on a table facing the stage, so we could watch the very talented band playing, as we appreciated the ambiance and buzz of an evening at Oistins. It is truly an unforgettable and truly enjoyable Bajan experience, which I shall be attending on a regular basis. I ended the evening with a Pina Colada, which was made to perfection and was so much better than those I had to suffer at a fancy hotel I was staying last year!