Maze by Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel, Manhattan.

It is Restaurant Week in New York (January 24th till February 6th). What is Restaurant Week you may ask? It's an occasion that happens twice annually, where participating restaurants, usually mid to high class, lower their prices to a standard price for the given time period. This Winter's Restaurant Week prices are $24.07 for Lunch and $35 for Dinner.

For this event, I've chosen to dine at my culinary idol's participating restaurant. The Maze by Gordon Ramsay is located at the London Hotel between 6th and 7th Ave, 54th Street in Manhattan. The 'screaming chef' is highly noted for his exceptionally exquisite dishes, as well as being the star of the  TV series, Hell's Kitchen. Gordon Ramsay has earned 12 Michelin Stars over the years, placing him the world's 2nd for most Stars.

Up ahead are ALL of the dishes offered for the Restaurant Week event. Get ready for some food porn!

Photo credits to Alvin

Pre-Starter

Lightly salted '???' Bread with butter.

Not bad really, beats any bakery near me, that's for sure. It also goes well with the squash soup further down this post. (They provided 12 slices for my table)

Appetizers

Hubbard squash soup,
ragout of braised duck, black truffle

This, I would say is probably the best dish I've ever tasted in my life. The squash soup was seasoned perfectly. And in addition to that, the hints of spiciness in the soup worked really well with the braised duck and truffle. The duck, honestly, blew me away. It was simply immaculate. The combination of the two ingredients made this dish fit for a king. Tres Magnifique.

Marinated beetroot, ricotta, pine nuts,
Cabernet Sauvignon dressing

This sweet, yet sour creamy goodness was the prettiest of the dishes we had. The beetroot provided the sour delight, the ricotta changes the acidity to a nice gentle sweetness from heaven before the dressing kicks in for the wine aftertaste. I'm not much of a fan of the taste of wine, but this was an exception. It lifts the flavor.

Butter lettuce salad with Pommery mustard vinaigrette
tarragon, pickled red onions

I did not sample this dish. Sorry, was too busy 'gluttonizing' on my squash soup. What I'm assuming though, would be that it'll be pretty acidic, obviously due to the vinaigrette and pickled red onions.

Entree

Roasted Amish chicken breast,
braised red cabbage, bacon, thyme jus

The Amish chicken, oh my god, the chicken! It melts in your mouth with it's juiciness engulfing your pallets with its spot-on seasoning. The best chicken I've ever had! All those Peking Chickens in those fancy restaurants around here or in Malaysia's 5 star hotels rate no where close to this. It's an experience I can't describe since I only sampled a small amount from a friend. I did not have enough to fully analyze it. But I tell you this, there is no need to analyze, it's flawless.. This chicken's life was definitely not wasted. =)

Classic bouillabaisse Marseilles
with fennel garlic crouton and sauce rouille

The bouillabaisse may be the entree with the least portion, but this seafood delight is packed with absolute flavor. The gravy is infused with the taste of mussel and clam, and that my friends, is the key to this dish being as delicious it is. See, it's not all about having 10, 20 fancy ingredients in efforts to make it taste good, but giving the main ingredients its say on your tongue is perhaps best.

Aged 10 oz. rib eye, sautéed broccoli rabe, country bread

 This beats Applebee's 50:1! I don't know what's in that sauce, but it's minty and yummy. The mid-rare steak cuts as smooth as butter, or a little rougher, but smooth nonetheless. The bread is lightly salted, and could be applied with optional butter, but it being so good, it deserves the 'You can even eat it on it's own' title, and not Gardenia. The broccoli is salted with what seems to taste like salted fish. Not sure if it is, but it does taste like it. Anyways, the steak was tender, juicy, and well seasoned.

Carnaroli risotto of sunchoke,
Honshimeji mushrooms and mascarpone

My risotto! Reason why I chose this was because I simply never had a risotto. It's a famous dish that's always cooked up in Hell's Kitchen, and I'd like to have tasted it, which I did. It's a creamy dish. The rice was interesting, I love it's texture. It has a little crunch, a feedback, but not undercooked. The mushrooms don't really compliment the rice as I hoped it would, but it went well with the cheese topping. It's an overall good dish, but I prefer the Amish chicken though. =)

Dessert

Valrhona chocolate fondant with green cardamom caramel
sea salt and almond ice cream

Now, 5/6 of the party ordered this for dessert, including me. There's only 2 choices, and majority chose the fondant because it sounds more attractive. Seriously, would you go for Custard, or a Fondant(pronounced Fon-Dohn, with a Frenchy accent)? Fondant sounds high class, even though the dish is somewhat a souffle. But in my opinion, the dessert started off delicious, the sea salted almond ice cream was exquisite. The chocolate fondant however, it started off great, but down at the bottom consists of the green cardamom caramel, which is gingery, and I don't really like ginger. So, sadly to say, that was a turn off for me.

 Vanilla custard with citrus fruits
brown sugar oats and mandarin sorbet

Ah yes, the word which lost to the fondant, the custard. I should have chose this. I sampled it, and the  sweet and acidic mix of the custard and sorbet went incredibly well together. The nuts were somewhat hard (That's what she said!) according to my cousin, Alvin. But everything else complimented each other well.

Bill for 6

USD208.61

Final Say

"Orgasmic!" 9/10

"Look at Chester, he looks like he's about to cry," Ryan Chong, after I had my first spoon of squash soup.

Food for thought - Morning breath

According to sources, morning breath is caused by millions of bacteria eating the dead cells in our mouth.

Does that mean that morning breath is the smell of death?

Think about it.

4 Things good about handphone cameras.

Well BBoyrice told me to start shooting people and objects with my 50mm 1.8
and I would agree that I don't use it as much as I hoped I would.

So this CNY, I shall only use the 50mm for candid and people and objects.
Wish me luck and all.
Shall post the pics up when I am done with it.

Anyways, back to the topic then. These days where everyone seem to own at least a digital camera, the handphone camera is pretty neglected.
It is pretty understandable since digicams are sharper, faster, more options and all.
Just be aware that phones these days have pretty cool camera apps that would give you a little more options to shoot with.

These pictures were all taken from my phone with different effects. I think its a lomo app. Not very sure but here is why you should play around with it

• The limited space for the picture forces you to decide on what to snap as your subject. So you would learn how to compose pictures.
• The different effects gives more expressions to the pictures. Even the simple black and white would give it certain pictures more emotions.
• It is faster and more convenient than pulling out the camera at times. 
• Way way cheaper than buying a camera or a lomo. 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37613&id=123713251015820

Hope you like the pics.

YJ

My transition/ photo gray lenses review.

Recently I changed my spectacle lens as it was a while back when I changed it and well, I kinda chipped it but that ain't the case.
Anyways since I suffer from astigmatism, which means - any form of light glare, I would feel it more and I would squint more.

So, after wearing transition lenses for about a week, in tropical weather, in blazing under the sun conditions,
what do I think of it?

Here's what I think is good about it.

• Its less painful on the eyes
• Its pretty handy to reduce squinting
• Don't really need to change between shades and glasses
• Because the change is pretty slow at times, you wont notice the change. 

But here is what I don't like about it

• Doesn't change as fast as I want it to be, it takes about 30seconds to a minute before it starts to change color.
• Its super overpriced. Unless you know the owner of the shop or there is some massive discount, on usual days, its bloody expensive.
• It doesn't work when under a shade. Which totally sucks for drivers like me. My best solution, I have this cheap shades which cups on perfectly over my specs. Doesn't fit closely but doesn't fall off as well. Still does whats its made for. 

My view for it is, transition lenses are for "lazy" people. Instead of getting a pair of shades with power or getting a pair of contact lenses, which I have a pair btw, just not very into the whole eye poking thing, a transition user would just walk around in the sun hoping and waiting for the lens to change color. 

My iPod Shuffle 4th Generation Review.

I got my hands on the Apple iPod Shuffle 4th Gen. recently and at the first glance I thought it was a joke.
Since it looked exactly like the 2nd Gen. one, till I checked the Apple website to confirm.

It makes sense really. Look at the iPhone as well, a slight upgrade and they call it a new model.
Exactly like how car makers add little details on cars and call it a facelift, then charge more for it.

See that little middle button at the top? Thats new. 

So after fumbling around with it, I decided to test it out with the Sennheiser headphones I got. Since certain mp3s and phones tend to be a little underpowered with headphones.
I will admit, I was really surprised.
The sound driver on the Shuffle is pretty powerful thus being able to deliver quite a punch on my headphones. Sadly tho, there ain't anything new with the Shuffle besides having the Voice Over feature. The design of the Shuffle is still pretty easy to use but then its still pretty easy to press the wrong button.

I rate thee - 7/10

Having a Shuffle is good at times but lacking the ability to choose songs does suck.

JLYJ