• Lenny’s rarely disappoints but the generic genoa salami, cappicola and provolone make their #2 Italian Style ($6.99 sandwich, $7.99 hero) a bad sandwich.  Extra points lost for jalapenos over banana peppers.  Stick with the G3 or Smoked Chicken Deluxe. 
• Todaro Brothers, an overpriced Italian grocery in Murray Hill, receives my ire because of their inconsistent pricing and careless attitude towards sandwich construction.  The roast turkey with lettuce, tomato, coarsely sliced Swiss and entirely too much mayo cost me $12 one time and $9 another. Absurd. Go here for humus, salads (great vinaigrette), cheese and sliced meats, but avoid anything that doesn’t have a set price tag. You want a good sandwich in Murray Hill go to Lamazou.

Buffalo Chicken sauce was the smell my nose registered as the cover came off the General Tso’s. Interesting I thought, trying to remain open-minded despite my disappointment with the serving size.

I have two requirements when it comes to Chinese Food Lunch Specials:

Bang for the buck and deliciousness

Once I had poured out the small container of generic, gummy fried rice and covered it with the slimy General Tso’s, the portion size was legitimate but the deliciousness was highly lacking.

After the success of ordering White Meat General Tso’s from China Gourmet, I went with the same order at Lucky Sunday. What arrived was an embarrassment. For $7.45 I received gnarled, bruised, and thinly sliced pieces of what might be white meat chicken if chicken at all. The pieces of meat in this dish were thin, greasy, and flimsy. I don’t even know if all of the chicken in this entire dish was equal to two of the huge pieces of white meat chicken at China Gourmet. This is an absolute travesty considering I can get better food and bang for my buck paying the same price at China Gourmet. Take a look:

Lucky Sunday

China Gourmet

There wasn’t even any broccoli in Lucky Sunday’s Tso’s. I don’t even need broccoli in my General Tso’s but I can deal, it’s what I’ve grown accustomed to and it makes me feel a tiny bit healthier. But peppers? Cabbage? Baby Corn? Get this filler material out of here. I want real chicken and I want more of it. It was so obvious that our white meat order was disregarded and that there was no thought put into this dish. I’ve never seen thin pieces of chicken in General Tso’s, it’s always hefty fried nuggets. This was pure crap. Even the eggroll was terrible, underfried and gummy.

As far as the dumplings are concerned, you can avoid them. We went with the Fried Sampler ($5.45), 2 chicken, 2 pork, and 2 vegetable. I received a half filled thimble of dumpling sauce (my own fault for not ordering more) and 6 decent looking dumplings. The meat fillings were edible but the veggie dumpling tasted pretty sour when teamed with the dumpling sauce. The actual dumplings were thick, gummy and overdone. Bad news.

To their credit, BOS & Lucky Sunday also sells Cantonese Noodle Soup and Vietnamese food through Pho V858-8, the name on a 2nd menu that was included with my delivery. In the end, it makes no difference to me because I will never order from Lucky Sunday again.

BOS & Lucky Sunday

Find out how a fromagerie can mess up melted cheese as well as what you should avoid at Artisanal, after the break.

Looking back at this excerpt about Fondue’s history, I shouldn’t be surprised that a restaurant calling itself a French Bistro managed to foil an originally Swiss meal:

“Fondue” comes from the French word “fondre,” meaning “to melt.” In France, “fondue” still refers to vegetables cooked down into a sort of puree to be served with meats. The kind of fondue that gave rise to all those once-unwanted fondue pots is fondue au fromage, or cheese fondue. It comes from the Swiss, who developed the classic recipe of melted Emmenthaler and Gruyere cheese flavored with a hint of garlic, light-bodied white wine, and a goodly dollop of kirsch, a cherry brandy. It’s traditionally served in an enameled cast-iron pot (or in a ceramic or earthenware pot) over a flame. Diners use long forks to dunk cubes of chewy French bread into the molten cheese.

Okay so the word for Fondue comes from the French, but the Swiss version sounds a lot more delicious: Two kinds of cheese flavored with garlic, wine, and cherry brandy? How could one go wrong.

Here’s how:

NYC Food Guy and his lovely date ordered the Artisanal Blend ($24), recommended for 1-3 people, which contained 3 kinds of cheese:

1) Hoch Ybrig – nutty & washed in white wine

2) Emmenthaler – Swiss’ “oldest and most important cheese” according to Food Network.com, nutty and mello

3) Beaufort – a French cheese similar to Gruyere

Up close, the bubbling cheese mixture we received in a weathered red pot looked like this:

Now I’m thinking this still looks pretty damn good. I mean its melted cheese, how could you go wrong? Well the resulting flavor of these three cheeses becoming one was simply bland and boring. I realize we went with a rather conservative combination of cheeses and maybe my expectations were higher than they should have been, but still, IT’S MELTED CHEESE IN A POT! IT SHOULD BE DELICIOUS!

One reason it was nothing special goes back to that original excerpt from Food Network.com, specifically the part about “chewy French bread” or in Artisanal’s case, the lack thereof. The bread we received was some style of multi-grain with a charred crust. The flavor of the crust dominated, even through the bubbling cheese. The bread tasted as though it had been cut at the beginning of the day and was sitting in a cold room with nothing more than a napkin protecting it from going stale, which in actuality it didn’t even do. The bread was borderline stale. It wasn’t chewy, it wasn’t tasty, and it definitely wasn’t French bread. Pretty disappointing.

At the bottom of our bread basket we did find a few pieces of some white bread, which I found promising and promptly asked the maitre d’ for an order of that bread alone, which he happily obliged. Unfortunately, it also lacked any punch, arriving cold and borderline stale as well.

The bread comes free with the fondue but you have the option of choosing from several sides for an additional cost. We went with an order of sliced green apple ($3.50).

The apples were actually the best thing we dipped in the fondue. The texture and tart flavor of the apple combined with the melted cheese was delicious. NYC Food Guy’s mother has always been a fan of American cheese and apple but I haven’t had it in so long I forgot what a great combination cheese and apples really are. It kind of makes you want to ditch the French Bistro and go to the diner for a slice of apple pie with melted American on top.

Sadly the apples went rather quickly and in the spirit of spreading the love, I decided to try the Hanger Steak Beef Tips ($10.50) per the recommendation of our waiter who truly provided good service.

***Here’s a tip however if you do venture to Artisanal and order fondue and entrees: The wait staff will not bring your entree until you’re finished with your fondue, so if you don’t want to abide by this rule then let your wait staff know.***

Back to the beef…

Hanger Steak is a tough steak known more for its flavor than its texture. It’s best enjoyed when served rare or medium rare and cooked quickly over high heat. Now I realize it’s harder to moderate the cooking of individual beef tips which cook through quicker than an entire filet, but still, get it right. Artisanal’s steak tips were more medium well than medium rare resulting in tough, sinewy, chewy pieces of meat which like the bread, failed to truly enhance the fondue experience. Specify how you’d like the steak cooked.

Now to rewind a bit to the pre-fondue part of the meal.

The first thing I noticed on the menu was the Basket of Gougeres ($8.50 for about 8/$11.50 for a larger order). NYC Food Guy first read about these Gruyere-infused pastry cheese puffs in former NY Times food Critic and present day “Gourmet” editor Ruth Reichl’s book “Garlic and Sapphires.” The thought of melted cheese bubbling out of balls of airy Choux pastry is one that still tantalizes and as one of the simplest pleasures of French cuisines, I expected Artisanal to validate my salivation.

Unfortunately, I was wrong again.

The Gougeres were anything but oozing. The pastry was soft and airy but the cheese had coagulated and was no longer melted, it was as if I had chopped up pieces of cheese and merely placed them inside. There was no harmony between the pastry and the cheese and as this was the first bite I took at Artisanal, I was disappointed but I thought it could only get better, especially with the Onion Soup Artisanal ($11.50) on the way….

Now I’ve had a lot of French Onion soup in my day and for $11.50 I was expecting to be wowed. I will always shell out for something delicious and as my waiter described the 4 cheeses and 4 kinds of onion in this “really good” soup, I was naturally anticipating a delectable experience. Wrong again.

Now before I tell you why this soup was so disappointing, let me first tell you what it contained: Gruyere and the three cheeses present in the fondue as well as red onion, green onion, leeks, and shallots.

The disappointment mainly stemmed from the mediocrity of it all. The cheese on top wasn’t any more delicious than what you’d find in a diner at 4AM, and on top of that, the diner would probably provide a bowl twice the size. My favorite part of French Onion soup, the grilled Swiss cheese sandwich floating in the middle of the oniony brine, wasn’t even present in Artisanal’s version. The bread I found under the top layer of melted cheese seemed to dissolve as soon as my spoon touched it and it had what seemed like no cheese attached to it. While there was some cheese floating around in the soup, there’s nothing like cutting into a delicious chunk of cheesy grilled French bread, something Artisanal did not offer.

The lovely date I mentioned earlier ordered the Fish Du Jour, a piece Sea Bass on a bed of black lentils ($27.50), but almost didn’t eat it because it never showed up, a result of the aforementioned tip NYC Food Guy provided: If you’re eating fondue, make sure you tell your waitron, as Anthony Bourdain calls them, that you want your entree as soon as it’s ready. Regardless, the skin was left on the fish, which my date didn’t like though she did enjoy the black lentils. Overall, it was a very mediocre dish for near $30.

And that mention of mediocrity really ties a nice tight bow on what turned out to be an overpriced, over hyped, and overcrowded (our table for two was a mere inches from the neighboring tables) meal. I’ve heard good things about Artisanal’s grilled cheese, served only at lunch, but after eyeing their ordinary-looking French Fries, I don’t even think I’ll go back for that. To give you a final taste of how cheated I felt, here’s a snapshot of a bill for a job poorly done. I feel bad for the wait staff because they were quite attentive and helpful, it’s just a shame that the kitchen failed to back them up.

Artisanal Fromagerie & Bistro

2 Park Ave (b/t Park and Madison)

New York, NY 10016

(212) 725-8585

As seasoned bargain-hunters and lovers of everything Szechuan, a few friends and I decided to check out The Cottage last Friday night — a Chinese restaurant on the UWS that supposedly served unlimited wine with dinner. The Cottage (a ridiculous name for a Chinese restaurant) sits at the corner of 77th & Amsterdam, just a few blocks away from another Chinese restaurant with all-you-can-drink wine, Silk Road Palace. I went to “the palace” years ago when I was still underage, but I do recall that the speed and ferocity in which they continued to refill our empty wine glasses was incredible; at no point during the meal did we have fewer than two full carafes of wine on the table. So fast-forward to last Friday night, and let me walk you through the dining experience at the “other” all-you-can-drink wine restaurant, The Cottage.

8 pm: Two friends and I enter the restaurant, and tell the woman at the desk we’re going to be five people. She gives us an attitude, and refers us to another Asian woman, who writes our name down on a list, telling us we can’t be seated until our entire party arrives.

8:15pm: We ask the woman if we can have some wine while we wait to be seated (Silk Road Palace gives its patrons wine while they wait). Woman does not even consider this feasible and immediately replies “No” as she hurries away.

8:25pm: We see open tables, ask the hostess if we can sit down, and tell her we’ll order appetizers while we wait for our friends to show up. She says, flatly, “No.”

8:30pm: We tell the woman our friends won’t be joining us, and politely tell her we’ll take a table for three when it frees up.

8:33pm: Our friends call back and say they’re now going to come, so we tell the woman to switch it back to a table of five. She is clearly NOT happy with this, and acts like this is the world’s biggest inconvenience…like her sole job in life as a hostess isn’t to accommodate groups of patrons who want to eat dinner in her restaurant.

8:45pm: We discuss leaving The Cottage and going to Silk Road Palace, since we’re all starving and absolutely despise the hostess.

9:10pm: The hostess tells two men seated at a table by the door to leave, taps my buddy on the shoulder, points to the table, and says, “GO, GO, GO!”

The waitress comes over, we order our food, and she brings us one carafe of white wine. We ask for another (we’re five hungry and thirsty adults looking to get our night started!), and she says “No, finish this one first.” We finish it within seconds (literally), and call her over to refill it. We also ask her to bring some noodles and duck sauce, to which she responds “OK.” We never saw those noodles, or any duck sauce.

They bring out our appetizers within five minutes, but no wine. I’m not gonna lie, the scallion pancakes and steamed dumplings were delectable. We asked again for more wine, the woman nodded, and didn’t bring us more wine as requested. When the busboy came to clean up the appetizers, we asked him for more wine. He brought another carafe, and then we proceeded to watch the lady in charge scream at him in Chinese, basically destroying this poor guy’s life in front of the entire restaurant.

Our main courses came out soon after that, and once again, our wine glasses were empty. I ask the hostess for more wine as she passes our table, and I literally get waved off as she acts as if this is an absurd request. Completely appalled and fed up, I lean over to the empty table behind us, and take the half-full carafe that was left there, filling up my friends’ glasses. This got the attention of the lady in charge. She comes over and tries to take the carafe out of my hand, but I pull it back and finish filling our glasses. We tell her if she isn’t going to bring us wine, we’ll get it ourselves. Then she tells us “no more wine.”

Uh oh. No she di-innt! We say, “What do you mean? This is all-you-can-drink, and we’re not even finished with our main course, please bring us more wine.” She tells us the place is not in fact unlimited wine, and that we are mistaken. Wow. Wow. Wow.

I tell her ”the only reason we came here is because of the unlimited wine, stop lying to us and treating us like crap, this is absolutely atrocious.”  My buddy tells her he called the restaurant earlier in the afternoon and asked if it was all-you-can-drink wine with dinner, and the woman he spoke to said flatly, “Yes.” The woman tells us if we want more wine, it’ll cost us $15. We tell her to bring us more wine, and we’re not paying for it. She begrudgingly abides, and tells us this is our “last one.”

In awe, I get the phone number off the menu, go outside, and call the restaurant. I ask, “is this the Chinese restaurant that serves unlimited wine with dinner?”  The woman responds, “Yes! 77th and Amsterdam.” Haha, you just can’t make this up.

We received a bill of $58.50, left them an overly generous $1.50 tip, and headed to our next destination.

The people who run this place are rude, mean and unaccommodating, making for one of the worst dining experiences I’ve ever had in my life. The food was good (and cheap), but if you want to get drink copious quantities of free wine on the UWS and grub on some Chinese food, Silk Road Palace is where it’s at. I will never step foot in The Cottage again.

NYC Food Guy felt like a matador while walking around Times Square Saturday night, dodging hoards of stampeding tourists blinded by the flashing red lights of NYC. I was only in the area by pure necessity, scheduled to work at my real job; no self respecting New Yorker would venture to these parts in December. NYC Food Guy was feeling perturbed enough to not make the 3 block “trek” to Lenny’s for a sandwich to accompany my Katz’s chicken soup. Instead, on the recommendation of a co-worker, I went over to Backstage Deli on 49th St. b/t 6th and 7th Ave. (next door to Bella Napoli) where I had one of the worst sandwiches of my life.

That orange, yellow stuff in the middle, that’s actually lettuce & Russian.

I know Backstage is only one block before Lenny’s but I’ll admit, I got my hopes up at the thought of finding another reliable option in the barren wasteland that is Midtown food. I should have known the minute I walked in and saw nothing but tourists that this was trouble. I should have ran for the hills when I saw the handfuls or pre-cut Turkey and the uncovered hero rolls sitting on top of the counter. But I didn’t. I wanted to believe my friend.

What I ordered: Oven Roasted Turkey, bacon well done, melted cheddar, lettuce, tomato, and Russian. It was all ice cold by the time I got back to my office, the cheese had turned hard, the bread even staler. I tried to revive it with a couple of seconds in the microwave, that only made it taste worse. Awful.

What I got: Pre-cut pile of Turkey ripped up and spread around stale hero, Swiss cheese, fatty undercooked bacon, yellow iceberg lettuce, end of tomato slices, watery Russian.

Redeeming factor: A small bag of Lays Original was thrown into the container with my sandwich; these chips became my dinner.

Other disappointment: The pickle I ordered was dry and tasted funky. My friend ordered a burger and when I saw it, it looked like the most generic defrosted on the grill beef patty and worst of all it was served with Hunts Ketchup, blasphemy to ketchup eaters.

***In summation: Stale hero roll, pre-cut turkey, the wrong cheese, no regard given to well done bacon request, old gross lettuce, and as you can see from the picture, the construction of the sandwich is comparable to something made by a blind person, no offense to blind sandwich makers. Everything Backstage Deli could have done wrong, they did.

NYC Food Guy will NEVER go to Backstage Deli again.

Backstage Deli

148 W. 49th St. nr. 7th Ave.

(212) 398-0581