A New Year Brings New Restaurants!

After a week spent in gorgeous Mexico in an all-inclusive resort with terrible food, I could not wait to get back to my city and it's amazing restaurants. You would think that even in an all-inclusive resort in Mexico, they would at least have good Mexican food? I was mistaken. Tired of eating guacamole and chips for 7 days straight I cabbed my way to the meatpacking district last Saturday for a girls night out at Abe & Arthur's - the new meatpacking hot spot. Arriving for our 9pm reservation, every table was filled but the hyped up bar scene that I keep on reading about was quite empty. It was probably due to the frigid temps or that 90 percent of New Yorkers were en route back to the city from whatever warm destination they spent ringing in 2010.

Anyway... we were taken to our table upstairs near the 2nd empty bar and more full tables. Our waitress was great and brought our martinis quickly while suggesting top sellers on the menu. We decided on the tuna tartare tacos and the goat cheese and beet salad as appetizers. Both were adequate size with the tuna tartare coming with 6 mini tacos and enough tuna to fill them all and the salad had good sized pieces of both cheese and beets.



For our main course the three of us shared the branzino (sea bass) and a filet. The filet was cooked to perfection and we got two side sauces with it. The Abe & Arthurs steak sauce that was a little like A1 but sweeter and a mustardy sauce. The branzino was a good size and the filet was 14oz. Both were great entrees but nothing that made me say "this is the best ever!"



For dessert it was a tough decision between the french toast bread pudding and the carnival for 2 which came with ricotta doughnuts with 3 dipping sauces and a mini funnel cake on the side. We chose the carnival mostly because our waitress told us the doughnuts came on a ferris wheel and the dipping sauces came in mini ketchup looking bottles. They were your usual fried doughnut hole with strawberry, chocolate or caramel sauce but the presentation was cute so that got points from me.




For being such a hot spot these days, our service was great! Our waitress wasn't too pushy and she wasn't MIA either. She was honest with her suggestions which I also liked. I enjoyed everything that we ordered and thought they were all really good, but for the prices it should have been better. The amount of food that we got should not have been as pricey as it was, even for New York City. But I'm glad I got to experience what all the hype is about!

Happy New Year to everyone - I hope that it is healthy and happy and full of good food!