Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

Opening Act I ♥ NY.  I love New York's Restaurant Week! Today, we headed uptown for lunch at Smith & Wollensky.  I've heard about this famous steakhouse from a coworker who often brought family members here to lavish them with birthday dinners.  This, along with Peter Luger, is reputed to be one of New York's best old-school steakhouses.  I hear many new steakhouses are gaining prestige, but it was certainly fun to visit an institution, at a discounted price!! (Restaurant Week: now - February 10th; Mondays - Fridays; $24.07 lunch and $35 dinner prix fixe 3-course meals!!) When we arrived, we were greeted by a host downstairs who sent us upstairs to a second host.  Then, we were led quickly through the dining room to a table in the back.  Everything flew by so fast that I hardly had time to soak up the atmosphere, but the rooms were generally wood-accented and traditional. Although I read some reviews on Yelp that blamed the service st...

They say there's always room for dessert... We tried out a dessert place on St. Mark's Place called Spot Dessert Bar tonight, thanks to a swell Living Social deal and a glowing recommendation from Serious Eats: New York. Their menu was pretty extensive, covering savory and sweet food.  I was also really impressed that their menu's photos reflected what the real food looked like, and not just stock images.  Everything looked and sounded incredible.  Our Living Social deal covered $20 worth of goodies, and with macarons on the menu, we obviously knew we had to try those.  Dessert was the Yuzu Eskimo and five macarons. The Yuzu Eskimo was a beautiful, artfully arranged plate with fanned out slices of ice cream on top of a bed of crushed Oreo cookies.  On the side was a raspberry foam and a strawberry.  It looked almost too pretty to eat!  I imagine really fancy restaurants serve dessert on par with Spot Dessert Bar's, at least on plating design...