I really don’t like restaurant week. Has anyone else noticed how it’s a fake deal? The menu usually doesn’t offer the restaurant’s signature dish, AKA the one you want to order, and has bland choices like field greens salad or chicken breast. And, I don’t know about you, but I don’t normally order three courses when I go out to eat, so I end up spending more than if I had just split an app with my friends and gotten an entree. But now let me tell you how I really feel…
Despite my reservations, when my friends suggested we check out a place for restaurant week, I agreed and immediately set out to find the most appealing menu. And, with only a few days notice, the place that could accommodate my party of 6. Yerba Buena in the West Village won (plus, have you seen their cocktail list? Irresistible.).
My choices that night were the tamale to start, roasted suckling pig for my main, and a Latin pastry with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
The fab tamale photo skills of Chrissy Tully
<3 suckling pig <3
I was torn between the suckling pig and the seafood stew, but luckily my friends ordered the stew, so I was able to eat both!
seafood stew with clams, mussels, calamari, shrimp, fluke, scallops, and more!
The tamale and dessert were only okay, but the suckling pig, with fingerling potatoes, olives, kale, and salsa verde, and seafood stew, with shrimp, fluke, clams, mussels, and corn, were really delicious (again! contributing to my theory that I didn’t need to spend $35 for the other 2 courses!).
Yerba Buena is also a really beautiful restaurant. Would I go back on a normal night? Probably, yes, to split the guacamole with friends and try a new entree. And definitely, yes, to work my way through that cocktail list.
Yerba Buena, http://www.ybnyc.com/media/yerbabuena.html, multiple locations in NY
i totally agree with you about restaurant week. i can’t lie, the concept is so damn fabulous… i mean, $35 for your app, entree and dessert!? how fantastic! I actually don’t enjoy prix fixe meals at all — even if they are at the best restaurants! this new years eve i was at Colicchio and Sons for dinner and their menu was prix fixe only! i have to give them credit, they were a well-oiled machine in the kitchen… food came out at a good pace etc etc. the sad part was, the food wasn’t all that great, you could tell that that stereotypical special focus that you would get at such a high-end restaurant on any other evening wasn’t exactly put into my dishes on new years eve. so sad. if shake shack can make an insanely delicious assembly line for food making, then why can’t a restaurant like Colicchio and Sons master it? (i know, my comparisons of types of food and restaurants are very far off from one another). haha