Why I Love Restaurant Week or a Night at Mesa Grill…

So, before I go off on the amazing dinner I had last night, I need to briefly tell you about my Saturday spent at the Siren Music Festival at Coney Island. I would skip it, but I had an arepa, and as I said in my first posting, I am on a mission to try all the arepas in nyc. The one at Coney Island is actually from the same company as the ones served at the International Food Festival, only more disappointing. They were making new ones on the griddle when I got there (I thought I would be getting this uber gooey sizzling one cooking away happily on the griddle as I approached the counter), but instead they served me one that had been staying warm in a heater in the back. It was two corn pancakes with mozzarella as the filling. The cheese was not particularly gooey and the corncakes were saltier than I remember. Although, compared to other amusement park food, I think it was a tasty and unique choice. While my dinner was not particularly worth noting (except for the fact that I had an arepa versus another type of food), I do recommend seeing the Scissor Sisters live. They were awesome.

On to Mesa…It is restaurant week, and being the foodie that I am, I had to check out a swank nyc restaurant that I might not get to (and certainly would not be able to eat three courses at) without some sort of deal. I went to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill (http://www.mesagrill.com). After this eating experience, here is what I have discovered. I don’t understand why I can’t make a dressing and companies can’t bottle a dressing as good as ones that are made at certain restaurants. My dinner started with an amazing salad. To be fair, it actually started with an excellent house margarita and some tasty bread, but my first official course was a salad. This salad was tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Now, I pride myself on being a good cook, but this dressing was fantastic…not too much balsamic or overly oily, no sharp flavors, but whatever was in the dressing made one beautiful salad topper that was able to make the entire dish. The salad also had one cm square corn chips mixed in adding an extra crunch. I love when dishes not only taste good but also have a complex texture, especially when it is a dish as simple as a salad. This one had crisp lettuce, crunchy corn chips, smooth kidney beans, gritty chickpeas, chewy tiny blocks of cheese, and salty olives (I recognize that is not a texture, but clearly the olives were in the salad to make it the right amount of salty so that is how I will describe them).

My entrée was the star of my meal. I say this is as it should be, although my friend, slightly disappointed by his dessert, said he is always up for an excellent dessert (a fair statement). Okay, so my Yellow Corn Crusted Chile Relleno was unreal good. The corn bread crumb crust was super crunchy and golden brown. The chile added a little spice that was countered by the cubes of beets that were mixed with smooth creamy goat cheese and stuffed inside the chile. You couldn’t really taste the beets except to recognize that they were the ingredient that held the flavors of the dish together, adding just the right amount of sweetness and turning the goat cheese into this beautiful pink color to contrast with the dark forest green chile and the light brown casing. So pretty… Really, the beets were brilliant. Who would be creating a new dish and think, ‘I know, if only there were cubes of beets inside the chile, it would be perfect’? But someone did, and this makes me happy.

As I mentioned earlier, dessert was not the star. It was fine. I ate it because it was sweet and tasty enough. Blueberries were involved. The point is you should eat at Mesa Grill, and feel free to skip dessert.