JG Melon: it is what it is, which is great

Took our son last Friday for a late lunch. We ordered 2 rare burgers and cottage fries. The burgers came out in 3 minutes flat! And they were fantastic. Many times rare burgers fall apart as you eat them, not this one. It stayed intact from first to last bite. Delicious. The cottage fries had zero salt and tasted a little flat.

In and out pretty quickly; still a top burger to eat if you're on the Upper East Side.

Loring Place

[2 visits]

• Grandma pizza is fantastic
• Burger is delicious.
• But as to be expected via Dan Kluger, the vegetable dishes are the best part of each meal. I had this broccoli salad that I'll be attempting to create and recreate at home.
• Hummus and radishes are lovely. Actually the radishes were the highlight.

Loring Place is comfortable restaurant for anyone loving creative vegetable dishes OR taking a group of risk-averse eaters out for dinner.

Mu Ramen

[I no longer try to make time for proper reviews. Just bullets now.]

• Unnecessarily loud
• Bright with voluminous incandescent light bulbs that heat up the restaurant
• Spicy Miso Ramen - Everything about the dish was excellent. Addition of corn was great.

Bottom line: Mu Ramen is nice ramen if you happen to be at PS 1. This is not worth traveling for.

2019 Restaurant Wish List

A little space to notate the new restaurants I hope to visit this year and a few that I feel deserve a second look.

New to me in 2019? Hopefully:

1. Adda - seems everyone's raving/gushing about the lamb and food's fieriness.
2. Bamonte - One of my favorite 2018 experiences was taking the kids to Queen. Such honest food and such a welcoming environment. I'm hoping/expecting the same here.
3. Berber Street Food - both read reviews reminded me that I'm ignorant about so much of northwestern Africa. Beyond bistella and djoloff rice, there's a lot more for me to learn.
4. Casa Enrique - More new-to-me Mexican dishes please. 
5. Frenchette - Does anyone not like this place? And the wine list is only natural?
6. Le Coq Rico - A $140 baeckoffe? Sign me up!
7. Loring Place - I'm a sucker for a grandma pie and two decades ago I worked for the chef here.
8. Lowerline - I get too little of the gumbo, jambalaya, red beans dishes. 
9. M. Wells Steakhouse - So many years, every year I'm going to go and well, I don't go! I need a 9pm flight from LGA to incent me to eat here at 6:30!
10. Mu Ramen - my ramen intake has waned as I make more and more ramen at home. 
11. Okonomi - Also so many years of saying I'll go and not going. They even serve weekday breakfast!
12. Randazzo's - see #2
13. Tama - Filipino food gets too little of a place in our home rotation. I need to experience more to make sure
14. Zyara - Sandwiches of all sorts can be great but something vegan and Arabic? Sign me up!

Places to visit again

1. Chez Ma Tante - we had a lovely meal here in the summer of 2018 that included two wines I wish I recalled; because they were delicious.
2. Faun - a random 2019 partial family outing led us here where we experienced really delayed service and incomprehensibly good pork
3. J.G. Melon - it's been 20 years!
4. LIC Market - after two 2018 visits, this may be my favorite new restaurant in New York. I've even started replicating their dishes at home.
5. Ugly Baby - the food was delicious on a record-cold December 2017 night when I went with a self-purported foodie who then turned a nose up at offal and non-primal cuts. The cold and company made concentrating on the food difficult.

Dirt Candy

So I didn't have to go it alone. My favorite client was in town and able to set aside the time for an 8-course meal there. No need to go into detail aside from everything is vegetable and everything is innovative and thought-provoking. Nearly everything is delicious. My favorites may have been the desserts which included a Japanese eggplant foster! Some things were a little too cute; like the mini robata grill with peppers grilling over binchotan. Clever yet with little impact on the peppers (which were delicious on their own). Long live Dirt Candy.