Monthly Archives: January 2009

The Best Places to Eat in NYC

Posted on January 31, 2009 | 3 Comments

So, a month after it came out I finally got around to reading the “Where to Eat” issue of New York magazine. I like Adam Platt as a food critic and as a writer, but without a magazine paying for our meals, Corinne and I have very different eating-out habits.

Because of that, Corinne and I are presenting our very own “Favorites of NY” list. We’ve ordered it by food type, and encourage you to print it out when you come to New York and try it all! Here goes:

Favorite Pizza: Adrienne’s Pizza Bar (Financial District)(get the square pizza)
Favorite Mac and Cheese: Fresh Salt (By the Fulton Fish Market)
Favorite Steak: Sparks Steakhouse (Midtown East)(but we haven’t eaten at Peter Luger’s)
Favorite Burger: Shake Shack (Upper West Side; way more pleasant than the one in Madison Sq. Park)
Favorite Fries: NY Burger Co. (several locations)
Favorite Falafel/Kabob: Ibby’s (Jersey City) and Alfanoose (FiDi)
Favorite Kabob from a Truck: The meat truck by Kyle’s Office (featured in his Facebook profile pic)
Favorite Cupcake: Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery (Lower East Side)
Favorite Crepes: Creperie (LES and West Village)
Favorite Fondue: Artisanal Bistro (Murray Hill)
Favorite Dessert Fondue: Bourgeois Pig Cafe (East Village)(the regular fondue is amazing too, and a lot cheaper than Artisanal’s)
Favorite Sandwich: Lamazou (Murray Hill)
Favorite Chain Sandwich Shop: Lenny’s (several locations)
Favorite Italian Cafe/Speck Sandwich/Tiramisu: Barbarani Alimentari (by the Fulton Fish Market)
Favorite Diner: Deluxe (UWS/Morningside)
“Coziest” (Girliest) Diner: Penelope Cafe (Murray Hill)
Favorite Pancakes: Sarabeth’s Kitchen(Upper East Side)(lemon ricotta pankakes)
Favorite Potato Pancakes: Hallo Berlin (Hell’s Kitchen)(the German noodles here are killer too)
Favorite Waffles: Petit Abeille (several locations)(the flemish beef stew is super good too)
Favorite Salsa: Mexicana Mama (West Village and Greenwich Village)(the creamy salsa is amazing)
Favorite Tacos: La Esquina (SoHo)(the grilled corn is awesome too)
Favorite Fish Tacos: Pinche Taqueria (SoHo)
Favorite Goat Tacos: Cabrito (West Village)(no joke, they’re really good)
Favorite Gelato: Cones (West Village)
Favorite Cookies: Levain Bakery (UWS)
Favorite French Onion Soup: Le Bonne Soup (Midtown)
Favorite Chinese: New Green Bo (Chinatown)
Favorite Appetizers-as-a-Meal: New Green Bo (Chinatown)(The soup dumplings and scallion pancakes are amazing)
Favorite Thai: Wondee Siam (several on the West Side)
Favorite Pad Thai: Toons (West Village)
Favorite Indian: Ghandi Cafe (West Village)
Craziest Indian: Panna II (East Village)(it’s exactly as frenetic as its web site suggests)

We have a three-way tie for Favorite BBQ:
Hill Country (Flat Iron District) is an awesome dining experience, and the meat there is incredible. Def the best brisket in town, and the best place to bring a big group.
R.U.B. (Chelsea) has heart-stopping burndt ends and onion strings and pulled pork, and they serve RC Cola. They run out of stuff a lot, though.
Dinosaur BBQ (Harlem) has the best ribs, and the chicken wings are killer.
Everyone talks about Blue Smoke, but ignore them—we like all three of these places better.

That’s a huge list, but even so, I’m sure we left out a few good places (like sushi joints–I haven’t found one that really stands out). Feel free to add them in the comments.

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Posted in New York Stuff

We Work!

Posted on January 28, 2009 | 6 Comments

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Posted in Family Stuff

The Case for IE

Posted on January 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

Just posted a story on PCMag.com today about the best add-ons for Internet Explorer 8. Now, I know most of you are using Firefox (55.93 percent of you, to be exact). And I applaud those of you who are using Chrome (1.82 percent), Opera (0.3 percent), and especially the Playstation Portable browser (one guy, I’m guessing).

Further, I know that: 1) IE comes from the big, bad Microsoft Mothership; 2) It’s heresy to say anything bad about Firefox, ever; 3) Some things about IE make the lives of web developers a bit…difficult.

And hey, I use Firefox every day on my Mac at home, and I write about Firefox extensions too, and the browser works fine most of the time. BUT, I really do like IE7 better than FF3. I haven’t done any kind of formal speed tests, but it feels much faster. It starts up faster, it loads pages faster, almost everything on the Web works with it, and I never get that weird system-resource suck with IE that I sometimes get with Firefox. And all the features I like about Firefox have IE add-ons that replicate them (the free IE7Pro add-on does most of them itself).

After a couple weeks with IE8, I think I’m sticking with the next generation of Internet Explorer as well. It’s not perfect, of course. It crashes on my Windows machine more than Firefox does on my Windows machine (but not any more than Firefox does on my Mac–it freezes up or crashes all the time and it drives Corinne crazy).

Anyway, I rarely hear my online friends and associates say anything nice about Internet Explorer, so I thought I’d share a different POV. What browser do you use and why? And Chrome/Opera/PSP users, please identify yourselves!

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Posted in Tech Stuff, Work Stuff

Obama, Annotated

Posted on January 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

As thrilling as it was to hear Obama’s inaugural speech today, I never get as much out of a good speech when I hear it as when I read it (especially when said speech is annotated by someone much smarter than me).

With that in mind, here’s a link to The Atlantic’s annotated version of today’s speech. Part I is good, though the annotation kind of peters out in Part II. I think it’s a bit more useful than The Washington Post’s version, which is chopped up to the point of being almost unreadable.

Enjoy!

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Posted in Random Links

Man, I am a Bad Blogger

Posted on January 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

It’s been an event-filled month for the Monson family, which I’ve responded to by NOT BLOGGING ANYTHING. Not sure why, but in any case, here’s the brief recap:

Spent 2.5 weeks in California with family—all the brothers, sisters-in-law, and nephews were there. Rob’s going on a church mission in a few months, so this was likely the last time we’ll all be in the same place for the next few years.

After that it was off to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. Tons of work, tons of fun, and I chronicled the whole thing for PCMag.com in a CES Photo Blog (pardon the formatting on the first few pics).

With the poor sleep, poor diet, and million handshakes of CES, it’s no surprise that I got sick just in time to come home to Corinne, and I’ve spent over a week now hiding out in our apartment as much as possible, trying to recover and stay out of the cold. You’d think that with so much down time, I’d be blogging my brains out. Guess not.

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Posted in Family Stuff, Random Links, Work Stuff

You Didn’t Even Know You Needed One of These!

Posted on January 6, 2009 | 3 Comments

You know you want one.

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Posted in Tech Stuff

The Heart of Rock and Roll is Still Beating (but you have to listen very closely to hear it)

Posted on January 1, 2009 | 1 Comment

Corinne and I were on opposite coasts for New Year’s Eve, so I tagged along with my parents last night to ring in the new year chaperoning a Mormon youth dance. For those of you who didn’t know, Mormons are CRAZY about dancing. Give a Mormon an empty basketball court and some streamers and you’ll end up with 500 kids jumping up and down to Kenny Loggins.

What amazed me about the dance (and about the radio, esp here in Vacaville) is how little popular music has changed since I was in high school. I thought the DJ last night was flat-out awful, playing the same music the DJs played at my own high-school dances (and they were old songs even back then)–Footloose? More Than Words? REO Speedwagon? I mean, come ON. And yet, the kids loved those songs just as much as the rare Miley Cyrus or Rihanna song.

It’s sad, because there’s so much great “dance-ish” music coming out right now. I’m sure the DJs are squeamish about playing T-Pain or Lil Wayne at a church dance, but why not throw on LCD Soundsystem’s “Watch the Tapes” or MGMT’s “Kids” or anything by Hot Chip?

The radio here’s the same. I listen to the “alternative rock” stations and I still here the same ol’ Matchbox Twenty songs they were playing 12 years ago. Heck, they’re still playing “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” and that song is 25 years old. When I was a kid, 25-year-old songs were called “oldies” and there were stations specifically for them. It’s strange that the soundtrack of my 18-year-old brother’s high school days isn’t that much different from my own–and he was born right around the time Nirvana released “Nevermind.”

As with dance music, there’s so much good rock music right now that could actually be called “alternative.” But you’ll never hear it on the radio. Sad.

Jeff, I expect you to fix all this when Obama makes you the dance czar. And in the meantime, keep posting your DJ setlists.

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Posted in Music Stuff