Thank you so much for patiently waiting for gracenotesnyc to update and upgrade our blog (I say “our” as if I have employees…nope, just the best volunteers out there!). There are a ton of great upgrades to the site - some are obvious, others are not (especially to those of you that subscribe to the blog through RSS feed and don’t have an opportunity to come to the site). Here’s what we’ve been working on for the past two weeks:

General layout of gracenotesnyc:

The layout is a little more spiffy now; I started out with a basic background but it was time to upgrade. People mentioned that they wanted to see categories, which were a little difficult to find before, so my “tech team” fixed that problem and made a whole side bar of categories based on location and food:

So if you’re ever looking for a place to go for brunch, just click on it and it’ll lead you to all of my posts on brunch foods.

Another feature that allows you to search: archives. If you’re interested in reading entries from a specific month, just click on the calendar:

Finally, the upgrade that I’m MOST excited about: RATINGS. I’ve named them “Grace Faces,” since, you know, the ratings are based off my face and my name is … Grace:

Ratings go from 1 Grace Face (meaning the restaurant sucked) all the way to 5 Grace Face’s (meaning you should book a reservation ASAP). If the place is REALLY bad, there’s a SPECIAL face:

That means you should RUN in the opposite direction of the restaurant!!

I’ll post another entry about Grace Faces soon and I’m working on adding Grace Faces to older entries. Hope it was worth the wait!

I have exciting updates to the website that will be revealed later this week (if my tech guys aren’t too busy!). After the website changes, I’ll post the 10 restaurant reviews that are sitting in my queue!

Grace

Paradise Moon, located in Newport on the Levee, is a pan-Asian restaurant I visited the first time I went to Cincinnati. I was there for a Procter and Gamble event and really enjoyed the food - we had an assortment of appetizers and other dishes and everything was pretty good (this was back in 2004). Since I was recently in Cincinnati for work, I thought it would be fun to visit the place again - Vikkie and I drove to Newport on the Levee (which is technically in Kentucky but the drive is only 10 minutes) and we decided to eat at Paradise Moon, even though it was completely deserted (the first sign that we should’ve left).

We started off with an appetizer of cold noodles:

I took one bite of the noodles and immediately knew that the meal was going to be sub-par, at best. The noodles were overcooked (were the cooks Asian? If they were, their mothers apparently didn’t teach them how to cook noodles) and the sauce was simply soy sauce. We should’ve cancelled our order all together, but since we ordered sushi, we decided to stick it out.

I ordered the spicy tuna roll and tuna with crab:

For both of the rolls, the fish wasn’t fresh, the nori was too soft, and the rice wasn’t even sushi rice (I think it was just regular rice with too much water used when preparing it so it just stuck together).

Vikkie didn’t have a bad experience with her rolls (they had some weird names that aren’t worth looking up online):

But I tried a piece and didn’t find it appetizing.

Seriously, you can buy better sushi rolls at a freaking WHOLE FOODS. Also, it was pretty expensive (around $15/roll) and the fish definitely wasn’t fresh. If you’re in the area, definitely skip out on Paradise Moon - the food’s crappy and it’s definitely not worth it!

I spent the past week in Philadelphia doing client work (I’m headed back tomorrow morning and will stay until Thursday night). We didn’t get to go out to elaborate meals every night since we were working late hours, but we did go to Doc Magrogen’s Oyster House last Tuesday night for some drinks and dinner:

It’s located in West Chester, Pennsylvania (about 12 miles out side of Philadelphia) and there’s outdoor dining, which was perfect for my work team since it was a cool and breezy night. We started off with oysters (4 different kinds):

The oysters weren’t bad, but they didn’t taste incredibly fresh, either, so I didn’t finish them all. A while back, I went to New Orleans with my family and we ate so many oysters that I got really sick, so now I’m really careful when I eat oysters that don’t taste fresh (yes, I know it’s odd that I still eat them even though I thought I was going to die when I was sick in New Orleans). I still think the Pearl Oyster bar in NYC has great oysters (and basically EVERYTHING).

Next, we moved onto cheese fries:

No ordinary cheese fries…NOPE…these were fries doused with fondue (well, Doc Magrogen’s take on fondue). The cheese had bits of scallops, crab, and lobster (supposedly) although all I tasted was scallop. They weren’t bad, considering I had been sitting at my desk for 9 hours without food (shocking, I know!).

For my main entree, I ordered a medium rare filet with crab:

I’d have to admit that I was pretty disappointed with the steak. Usually, when you order a medium rare, it’s still red/pink in the center, right? Well, mine was completely cooked through and very tough, too. The waitress forgot about all of our orders and all of our steaks were overcooked. I was so hungry though, so I ended up eating most of the steak (doused with A-1 sauce since the crab sauce was too creamy).

Overall, not a great restaurant, but I suppose there aren’t that many offerings in West Chester, Pennsylvania after 9PM (although, I have to admit, I absolutely LOVE the grocery store Genuardi’s, where I end up going for lunch everyday. They have a large salad bar (and it seems fresher than most grocery stores) and also lots of hot food options.

Hope everyone enjoyed their middle of the week Independence day celebration! New York had drizzly weather and I missed the fireworks, but I had an indoor picnic and enjoyed lots of corn, raspberries, strawberries, watermelon, blueberries, and this wonderful sandwich I created:

What’s in it and how did I make this masterpiece, you ask?

First, the ingredients:

1. One loaf of organic ciabatta bread
2. One ripe avocado
3. Jalepeno pecan pesto
4. One ripe tomato
5. Two balls of fresh mozzarella
6. 1/4 lb. smoked turkey

First, prepare all of the ingredients that need to be cut (avocado, tomato, and mozzarella). I’d save cutting the bread for last (otherwise the filling may become a little dry/stale). Cut up all of the ingredients, remembering to slice the mozzarella, avocado, and tomato very thinly so you’re not opening your mouth as wide as you can to take a bite. After everything is cut and prepared, cut the ciabatta bread and put a thin layer of jalepeno pecan pesto as the first layer. The jalepeno adds a little kick to the sandwich since all of the other ingredients are mild. Then begin layering (I layered keeping colors in mind so there was some variety in presentation, but it’s not necessary - you can layer any way you want to!).

We were going to pack the sandwiches and picnic on Roosevelt Island, but since the weather was so dreary, we had an indoor picnic instead. The sandwich would be even tastier if I had a panini grill, but for now, eating the sandwich cold is just as good. It’s an easy to make sandwich that’s very transportable!