Milk Street Cafe Opens Today on Wall Street

I attended a press event a couple of weeks ago for Milk Street Cafe, a famous Boston food hall and caterer that's opening today at 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. Everything I ate, from sushi and non-dairy desserts, to English Pea risotta and bruschetta was made in house in one of their three gigantic kitchens. Milk Street is positioning themselves as a Kosher Eataly with less groceries and the ability to cater to even the most doctrinaire vegan (OK, maybe not the most doctrinaire vegan, but nearly everyone else with dietary restrictions).

I doubt I'll go for lunch, since I'm lazy and it's a 10 minute walk from my office, but I'll definitely return for the Intelligentsia coffee being served at the espresso bar.

Good choice Milk Street, that's my favorite.

Milk Street Cafe
40 Wall Street
New York, NY 10005
(212) 542-3663

Kajitsu: Hope Springs Eternal

Despite some recent traction, vegetarian cuisine, let alone vegan, has always been a tough sell to the vast majority of Americans. However, a few select restaurants thrive by embracing this cuisine, capturing a loyal following along the way.

One such restaurant is Kajitsu. Specializing in shojin cuisine, a traditional style of cooking originally eaten by Japanese Buddhist monks, they're producing some of the freshest most delicious food in all of New York. This honor is due large in part to the restaurant's talented Executive Chef, Masato Nishihara. With an extensive background in both kaiseki and soba, Chef Nishihara trained at several prominent restaurants in Japan before finding himself in Manhattan's East Village. Constantly innovating, Chef Nishihara creates an original kaiseki-inspired menu each month, never repeating a single dish. This creativity is but one detail that has helped earn Kajitsu two Michelin stars in 2011 and brought shojin cuisine out of relative obscurity and onto the culinary map.

Chaating it up at Bhojan Vegetarian

I've always despised the large helping of self-righteousness that sometimes goes along with vegetarianism and its ilk. Yet in the past year I have been making an effort to eat less meat, certainly not out of qualms about eating animals, but out of a growing sense that I should be more conscious about what I'm eating and how it got to my plate. In doing so, I've been eating a lot of Indian food, which is one of the few (if only) cuisines that does not leave me missing meat.

Lately I've been craving chaat and other Indian snacks, which are often vegetarian.  The urge was especially strong after recently reading about a delicious looking Indian grilled cheese sandwich from Mumbai Express in a post by Joe DiStefano on World's Fare. Unfortunately, Mumbai Express is way the hell out near Great Neck, and it would take a group of people (and perhaps a car) for the proper motivation to make the arduous trek.

Then I read about Bhojan, a Gujarati Kosher vegetarian restaurant serving chaat (and the vaunted cheese sandwiches) that just opened in Curry Hill. It is also run by the owners of Chola and Tadka, two of my favorite places in my neighborhood for Indian. I instantly planned a lunch for the next day, and wanting to try a variety of dishes (certainly not out of any sense of "friendship"), I rounded up my roommate (henceforth known as "The Quaker") and the DAsian to make the 10 minute non-trek to 28th and Lexington.