Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Restaurant Week at Hakkasan NYC

According to USA Today, Manhattan has over 3,500 restaurants. Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx seem to have about 1000 restaurants to pile on top of that. Factor in the street carts and the pop-up dining scenes and you've got well over a walloping 5,000 choices to peruse every day.

How's a girl to choose?!

Enter: NYC Restaurant Week. A glorious two week period that comes around twice a year where hundreds of restaurants sign up to offer a 3-course lunch or dinner for a set price. Some of New York's trendiest, hardest to book restaurants open their doors and exhibit some of their signature dishes for often a fraction of what it would cost on a normal evening! It's the perfect reservation for those restaurants you really have been dying to try but just haven't found an occasion to dress up and get out the door.

I really dropped the ball last year with my reservations so I was more than prepared this time around. We ended the week with dinner at Hakkasan, an Asian inspired restaurant known for its phenomenal dim sum. Hakkasan has outposts all over the world, and even has a club sharing its namesake in Las Vegas! The New York restaurant opened in 2012 in midtown and I've been itching to get to it ever since. (To be honest, it wasn't my top choice of restaurants to book for NYCRW but I knew my Vegas-loving boyfriend would have a blast so I popped us into a reservation for two)

It was well worth the wait.

We started with a Hakkasan Steamed Dim Sum Platter and a Crispy Duck Roll with Sesame Prawn Toast.

The Steamed Dim Sum Platter came with one har gau (a traditional shrimp dumpling), one scallop shumai, and one Chinese chive dumpling. Luckily, Tim is allergic to scallops (which is truly tragic because scallops are delicious)........so more for me!!


Har Gau, Scallop Shumai, Chinese chive dumpling
I absolutely love dim sum. It's been a favorite of my family's for as long as I can remember. The Crispy Duck Roll and Sesame Prawn Toast was not as exciting. I would get the Dim Sum platter a hundred times over!


The ambiance of Hakkasan is really fantastic. It's absolutely enormous and so unassuming from the street. You walk in through a heavy door and follow a path down a blue lit hallway to a glowing white front desk where a few beautiful model-esque women stand in matching outfits waiting to take your reservation and lead you to your table. Once you check in you're led through a maze of walkways with ornamentally cut-out walls through which you can peek a glimpse of couples mozying up to each other in the dark corners of the plush velvet couches that surround the tables.

We ordered the Grilled Chilean seabass with Chinese honey and the Sanpei Chicken Claypot, a Hakkasan favorite! 

Sanpei Chicken Claypot with Thai Sweet Basil
One thing that I really have to commend Hakkasan for. One of the biggest complaints about Restaurant Week is that waiters and staff tend to be rude to customers ordering off the prix fixe menu since they are not paying full price. Maybe they're short with you, don't check back on your meal, I've heard hundreds of horror stories! That couldn't have been farther from the truth at Hakkasan. There was someone waiting to refill our water at all times and the amount of attention shown to us rivaled that of some of the nicer restaurants I've been to on normal nights. 

We finished the meal with Coconut Panna Cotta with Pistachio Gelato and this other absolutely wonderful dessert that I just cannot remember the name of! It was like a Chinese dumpling filled with warm, oozing chocolate floating in a citrusy liquid. It was so yummy! 

Coconut Panna Cotta with Rum Roasted Pineapple and Pistachio Gelato
I'll spare you the picture of the chocolate dumplings. It just didn't come out well at all. I'd rather have you imagine what a warm chocolate dumpling looks and tastes like. 

The meal ended but we couldn't leave without having a drink at the glamorously long, glowing bar. We snagged two high chairs and looked around. Couples on dates, groups of friends chattering excitedly over pink sky-high martinis garnished with all sorts of fruits. We started our drinks innocently enough with a Chinese Mule and a Bodhi Blossom.

Chinese Mule: Spring 44 vodka, Hatsumago junmai sake, cilantro, ginger, lime, and ginger beer
Bodhi Blossom: Brooklyn gin, raspberries, ginger, rosemary, lemon juice, and Champagne 
As a young person in NYC it's surprisingly tricky to balance wild nights out against romantic fancier dates against regular pajama nights spent in front of the TV binge watching Netflix. And with the amount of activities going on in every corner of each of the five boroughs, it's wonderful when you do find a balance, even if it's just for one weekend. 

I was so beyond excited to spend a nice evening at a restaurant we had both been dying to try with a guy who's just absolutely fab. Dinner was wonderful. The food was spectacular. We babbled along in true "too-happy-you-make-me-want-to-puke" couple's fashion that I love and sidled right up next to each other at the bar. How could we end the evening after only one drink?! 

It was then that something absolutely insane caught our eye. It was happening down the bar from us and it seemed to be a wine decanter filled with smoke. After finding out it was one of Hakkasan's best selling cocktails, we mutually agreed with just a glance that we would be ordering it as well. 

Behold, the Smoky Negroni.

I'll let you make your own caption
How do you even begin to describe this apparatus? I hope it's just as apparent to you that it was not up for debate whether or not we would be ordering one of these magnificent structures. This was an adventure in and of itself. It is made up of Ransom Old Tom gin, Carpano Antica Formula vermouth and Campari. It's poured into the decanter and then the bartender takes a "hand held smoking apparatus" to infuse the drink with smoke from hickory wood chips that have been soaked in Grand Marnier. It tasted like a mix between an orange and a piece of firewood.

We ordered The Hakka to go with it and honestly it needs no mention. There was just no comparison to the Negorni monstrosity. It was also too sweet for my taste. 

The Hakka: Belvedere vodka, Mizbasho junmai ginjo sake, coconut, passion fruit and lychee juice
The Smoky Negroni: Gin, Vermouth, Campari with Grand Marnier soaked hickory wood chips smoke infusion
I had just the BEST evening at Hakkasan with my boothang. Do people still say boothang? They should. Everything from our first step in the door to our last sip of the orange firewood concoction was spectacular and I left one very happy girl.