Spanish-Canadian Solitude: Navarra

While I've gotten over being the only vegetarian at most dinner tables, I've still never enjoyed traveling alone. No doubt there are times when one needs to be by themselves, but I definitely do not feel that way when being away from home. Whether it is for work or pleasure, I try and avoid solo travel as much as I can. Besides walking around and having to visit places by yourself, the additional major side effect is that you end up needing to make dinner reservations for one. Not only does it make for a very quiet dinner, it usually puts a big crimp in the ability to try "everything on the menu". Notwithstanding, there will always be times when circumstances necessitate such travel and I found myself heading up to Ottawa on one such occasion a few weeks ago. Making the best of the situation, I scoped out Ottawa Magazine's 2012 list of top restaurants and landed upon Navarra.

The Simplicity Of Spaghetti: Scarpetta

My childhood was very conflicted. My parents loved to travel and explore new places, and they loved taking us everywhere too. Before the ripe old age of 12, I had already been to Australia, Bangkok, Switzerland, Mauritius, London, Hong Kong (twice), Singapore (thrice) and even 2 different Disneylands (Paris and Orlando). And yet, wherever we went, we always ate Indian food. There was no exploration when it came to matters of the stomach. There was always an Indian restaurant waiting to be found in a city and somehow, we always found it. If it hadn't been for my uncle AK, I would probably have left Switzerland never knowing what fondue was. The one exception to the rule, however, seemed to be for Italian food. Pizza and pasta were somewhat tolerable to my dad, and we always looked forward to the respite it provided from the cuisine monotony, creating an everlasting bond with the food. Yet, it almost got to a point that when my food horizons were finally expanded, new Italian restaurants were one of the last few I wanted to try. Still, it is always hard for me to say no to a great bowl of pasta and luckily for it, Scarpetta has a few.

Gorging On Atmosphere: Junoon

I've been inundated with restaurant recommendation requests recently. Whether for my sister's visit to London or a friend's mother's to New York, it seems I have become some what of a human restaurant guide. To be honest, I enjoy handing them out, so its really not a complaint as much as an observation.  In fact, the very point of starting this blog was to share my restaurant experiences with the aim of people trying them out. However, even before the origin of this blog, I was always asked about Indian restaurant recommendations by colleagues and friends alike. While this poses no problem when it comes to London, which has some of my favorite Indian restaurants of all time, they are few and far between in New York. Most Indian restaurants here dollop oodles of cream on practically everything on the menu and seem overly reliant on the popularity of their chicken tikka masala. So anytime a new Indian restaurant opens in New York, I am eager to try it to see if it will break the mold and actually represent the art of good Indian cooking to this city. My uncle had pointed me to an article about the recently opened Junoon, and when RC wanted to get us all out to celebrate our win in the recent Cricket World Cup, it seemed like an ideal location.

Birthday Vegetables: Dovetail

My birthday is my favorite day in the year. It's the one day where I get to speak to everyone I care about and yes, it makes me feel very special. I even mentally check off all the people that I expect to call me that day and invariably, I am never disappointed. I've known people who don't like to advertise the fact that it is their birthday; I, on the other hand, am telling everyone who cares to listen! There's not much to complain about, especially when friends go out of their way to make it even more special for you. This especially came through when I asked my friend KF to surprise me with a restaurant at her offer to take me out for a birthday dinner, resulting in her inspired choice of Dovetail.

Getting In Early: Ciano

In all my years of eating, I don't think I've ever actually been out to a restaurant's opening weekend. There almost always seem to be teething problems associated with any new restaurant so I think my lack of experience owes as much to not knowing early enough when a restaurant is about to open as it does to my not wanting to deal with cold food and sloppy service. Recently, however, my friend AO took care of the first part of the equation and got us a reservation at Ciano. The early reviews of chef Shea Gallante and the restaurant sounded promising enough for me to overcome the second half of the equation and we headed down to Gramercy for another of our regular group dinners.

The Other Side Of The Bridge: Saul

I'll admit it - I'm a Manhattan snob. Any invitation I received to go out to an outer borough was usually followed by a response that went - "I don't go to (insert your favourite outer borough here)!" Outside of going to the airport, there just never seemed to be a good enough reason to leave the confines of the "main" island. That particular view of mine, however, has been changing and especially when it comes to Brooklyn. No disrespect to Queens, the Bronx or Staten Island, but some recent experiences in Williamsburg (an amazing little speak easy and a pub crawl among them) have made me much more receptive to the idea that some trips out to Brooklyn might be worth it after all. Recently, JW threw out the idea of trying out some of the restaurants there and after some debate, we decided on Saul for one of our regular group dinners.