Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

This past weekend, we celebrated the 4th of July at...The Melting Pot in Red Bank, NJ! The Melting Pot is a fondue restaurant, but the way Alex described it to me, it also had an aspect of Asian-style hot pot. Huh?  Do you...cook food in boiling cheese? Turns out there are cheese and chocolate fondue courses, and the entree really is like hot pot, but in a selection of broths.  We had a four-course dinner with lots of poking and prodding and bobbing in broth and it was a load of fun! First, we shared a Classic Alpine cheese fondue course, which was Gruyere, Raclette, and fontina cheese with white wine, garlic, and lemon juice.  The dippers included bread, grapes, cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots.  The cheese fondue was prepared table-side by our server (who embodied the qualities of a good waitress: loud, enunciated well, and knowledgeable).  Though it was a little too strong in the wine department, it was fun to dip the bits in the cheese. ...

If you're ever in Edgewater, New Jersey, chances are you are there for one thing and one thing only: Mitsuwa Marketplace.  As an Asian person living in New York City - with its three distinct Chinatowns (maybe more, depending on how you parse), Koreatown by Herald Square, and even a little Japantown near St. Mark's Place - I find Asian markets to be old hat so I'll be honest, I wasn't thrilled or eager to visit Mitsuwa, a Japanese market across two rivers from my house.  I can go down 86th Street and have two Chinese supermarkets within a block of each other. Mitsuwa impressed me, though!  It was definitely the cleanest Asian market I've been to.  The aisles are wide and bright, and none of the packaged foods looked dingy or sketchy like some often do in my local markets.  There wasn't an extensive butcher or seafood section, but you can probably find a section for everything else in your Asian dietary needs: tofu, dried fish, snacky-snacks. The biggest ...

Tonight, I had dinner with Frank Sinatra. For real! Cold Antipasta Hot Antipasta We had dinner at Leo's Grandevous (rendevous on Grand Street apparently).  It is a popular neighborhood Italian restaurant that has been serving Hoboken for more than 70 years, and its theme is unanimously and undoubtedly all things Sinatra. When you first walk in, there is a long stretch of a bar, but after you take your eyes off the shiny bottles of alcohol, you see the exposed brick wall...which is actually sparse once you realize that every spare inch of wall is decorated with photos and posters of Ol' Blue Eyes, as well as other famous patrons (Joe DiMaggio signed a photo on the wall!).  There is even a jukebox in the corner that plays his music.  I don't know if I've ever seen a real jukebox before!  We sat under a plaque with a dairy maid and holding a Samuel Adams beer banner, and a surfboard with Sinatra's face on it.  I'm not sur...

Happy Curry Week!  Twitter says it's National Curry Week, but I'm not really sure what nation they're talking about.  I'm just going to assume it applies to the U.S. To segue into our curry-themed post, I love and hate all-you-can-eat buffets.  Love: you can eat as much as you want, and usually a huge variety of food that you can't order at a regular sit-down restaurant.  Hate: I usually forget to wear my fat pants. I particularly love Indian buffets. My life before going to London must have been pretty bland because I didn't eat Indian food then.  In London, we happened across this Indian restaurant, Humaira Tandoori, with £5.95 Saturday buffet dinners.  I really enjoyed the nights when a big group of our friends would fill the middle table of their cramped dining room and compete to see how many plates we can each put away and waiting eagerly for the servers to refill the naan.  Since then, my taste buds have embraced a much wider variety o...