Technorati Tags: article, fish, seafood

After a while, it gets hard to try new diverse types of food. I’ve probably already tasted some kind of dish from almost every culture in the world (I said almost!). Italian, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Lebanese, etc… One cuisine I’ve heard rave reviews about but I never had the liberty of trying was Ethiopian food. The idea to eat Ethiopian food probably would never have occurred to me if I haven’t heard other people raving about their cuisine.

Jump for more pictures and details!

My girlfriends and I decided to meet up at Makeda’s Ethiopian Restaurant in downtown New Brunswick, NJ for restaurant week. That’s New Brunswick restaurant week! This is the first year they started this for the New Brunswick area and I am so excited! I rounded up 3 of my girlfriends and headed over to Makeda’s to try our first taste of Ethiopian food.

My first impression of the restaurant was very nice. Dimly lit and romantic setting. Modern but with hints of African culture. Full service bar and art was hung around the restaurant. Always a plus!

After a round of Mango Margarita’s and carefully reading the menu, we were ready to order!

Although we had 3 appetizers, the leftovers of this string bean salad was the only picture I remembered to take. Whoops!

My friend and I shared the meat sampler. It has a combination of chicken, beef, lamb, shrimp, beans, potatoes and their special bread to wrap it in. Oh my god this was SO AMAZING!!! If you are a meat lover I highly recommend this platter if it is your first time there. They give you so much food!!! The menu says it is good for 2 people, but I think it’s more like 3. There were leftover’s galore after we ate so much we were going to implode.

My friend Soy ordered the Assa Wat which is the Filet of South African haddock, lightly w/Makeda spices, white pepper, & sea salt, simmered in a key wat sauce. Oooooooooh sooooo gooood! I actually think taste wise, this was best dish of our entire table. The fish was cooked wonderfully to achieve a beautiful flaky yet flavorful taste. Amazing! Another dish I HIGHLY recommend.

And the last dish my friend Amy ordered was the Shrimp Wat. Tender jumbo shrimp, sauted w/white pepper, sea salt & Makeda spices. Also AMAZING. Similar flavors as the others but with shrimp instead. You can’t go wrong!

Dessert came with our pre-fix of course.

Royal Champagne. DELISH.

Mango Sorbet.

Champagne Pineapple sorbet. If you are a fan of sorbet, this one is the one for you! I was kinda said I ordered the Royal Champagne cake instead of this because it was so delicious!

I topped off dinner with a nice hot cup of joe. Ethiopian joe. It was an odd flavor, infused with ginger and other complex ingredients. Not sure if I liked it. I definitely didn’t hate it. I must try again to fully acquire my taste buds!

All in all this was a FANTASTIC restaurant experience. Service was good, food was AMAZING. And Ethiopian cuisine ended up being as badass as everyone hyped it up to be. I highly recommend this cuisine and this restaurant as I hear it is one of the best Ethiopian restaurants in the country. I give this place a 9/10!! I WILL BE GOING BACK to try their other dishes!

Anyway till next time, Peas out everbody!

Technorati Tags: ethiopian, new jersey, restaurant, restaurant week

Jump if you wanna drool.

My best friend picked out this wonderful restaurant based on reviews on Yelp.com. Good job Yelpers! You helped us find a really great restaurant. Decent prices with OUTSTANDING FOOD ya hear? OUTSTANDING. A great date place, but don’t bring your girl here if she eats salad. Portions are BIG. Lets get straight to it shall we? Lets start with appetizers.

Your normal bread and butter no? NO. THIS BUTTER IS DELICIOUS I SAY. I don’t know what they mixed in there but it has this unbelievably addictive sweet, savory taste.

Whoops, got there too late. I was able to snap a picture of these beef empanadas before the rest was scavenged off by us 10 hungry girls. Don’t get in the way of a hungry girl and food. You will get hurt.

Chorizo Argentino con Pimientos y Cebolla.
In english it means Argentinean Sausage with Roasted Peppers and Onions, Argentinean Red Chimichurri. mmm great appetizer.

Now the part you’ve all been waiting for. THE MAIN COURSES. I wasn’t able to photograph all 10 dishes, but a lot of them were ordered more than once so I’m pretty sure I got the bulk of the good stuff. =D

Lets start with mine.

Hello Salmon. I wanted to order something from the wood-burning oven and this was a delicious choice. Your typical salmon marinated beautifully in all their amazing spices that I can’t remember. Served with potatoes. A win. If you like fish then get this, you won’t regret.

This is an amazing amazing amazing dish and a favorite at our table. Grass fed rib-eye steak served with Chimichurri and Yuca Gratin. Ode to perfectly cooked medium rare morsel of meat. Grass fed meat is a plus too. None of that corn fed mass produced meat. Hello health.

This was the last one I could get in before the feeding frenzy began. This was the half a Young Organic Free-Range Chicken Roasted in the Wood-Burning Oven, Garlic Bitter Orange Mojo, Shredded Kale or Spicy Red Potato Puree. A mouthful to say and a mouthful to eat. It is a HUGE dish. Organic (always great) and so tender… The meat melts in your mouth and infuses your palate with flavor. A definite must try when you come here.

Now possibly the best dish of the entire night.

Aww the birthday girl. Cute isn’t she?

Actually you should be focusing on that massive block of delicious cake. All of us already too full to eat it, we all scooped a tiny spoonful to taste the birthday cake. What happened next could only be described as a feeding frenzy of sharks going in for the kill. Thrashing of spoons and forks, all competing for whatever was left of this once beautiful and delicious dessert. In short, despite being too full to even pick up our forks, we BEASTED this thing. It was so unbelievably delicious. VERY light yet flavorful, creamy and flaky. It’s not on the menu and you’re gonna kill me but I can’t remember the name. My friend says it’s something like… malakas? If anyone knows the real name of this dessert, PLEASE tell me.

I rate this restaurant a 5/5. Although I heard bad reviews on YELP about the service, our waiter seemed pretty good. Perhaps it was because it was a tuesday night and the place was nearly empty. Regardless I had a very good experience here. Definitely one of those places I will be returning to so I can try their other dishes. If you live in the area I highly suggest this spot if you feel like you want a fulfilling meal. With dishes between 20-30 a pop, you’ll still have enough leftover to pay off your rent. Also the organic meat won’t kill you! I love this place.

Anyway until next time, peas out everybody!

Technorati Tags: hoboken, new jersey, peruvian, restaurant, south american

This is old, but it’s cute so i’ll post it anyway. Last year in celebration for the Sydney International Food Festival, the flags of participating countries were re-created using popular foods from each nation.

Jump to see the flags!

Italy

India

Greece

France

Brazil

Australia

Vietnam

Switzerland

Spain

Lebanon

Korea

Japan

Cute right?

Via: wildammo.com

Technorati Tags: international, news

Yeah I know. It’s been a while. I haven’t been updating for several reasons and it will remain sporadic for a while. The biggest reason is because spring is here and I’m trying to eat healthy and exercise, and that is nearly impossible to do when you go out to eat all the time. Eating healthy is pretty boring. No one wants to see my whole grain bread with turkey sandwich pictures everyday. I realize this is not exactly “food slutty” of me, but being a food slut comes with slutsequences. Like growing a tire around your waist. Or running out of breath walking up one flight of stairs. That doesn’t mean i’m completely devoid of eating out which brings me to reason number DOS. I haven’t been bringing out my camera as much. I take pictures with a digital SLR and it’s big. and heavy. and annoying to carry around. I find myself leaving it at home on the rare occasions I do eat somewhere new on the off chance I might end up carrying it around with me all night. Also, I don’t own a smaller, more convenient digital point and shoot. So yeah. Actually I did make one feeble attempt to make a new post for this new sushi restaurant I tried, but the service was so terrible I decided i’d rather just not write about it than give it any kind of undeserving promotion on my website.

Things will be slow, but they will not stop. Summer is a comin and that means BBQ SEASON! Keep your eyes peeled for new reviews and recipes. In the meantime I will continue to post random interesting crap about food related stuff you might find interesting I find on the internet. Damn that was one helluva run on sentence. I’ll also try brush up on my grammar. Don’t forget to follow me on TWITTER so you won’t miss any of these updates!

P.S. – I feel lately as though I need some kind of signing off catch phrase. Like…. Until next time, PEAS out everybody! HAH no. (maybe). Anyone have any good sign off catch phrases for me? Lemme know!

Anyway, until next time, PEAS OUT EVERYBODY! =D

Technorati Tags: update

Technorati Tags: video

So apparently, my entire life i’ve been opening a banana the wrong way. I came across this youtube video today on the proper way to open a banana. It was QUITE enlightening and I feel retarded for opening them any other way. Here, now you can open them properly too.

Jump to see the proper way to open a banana!

Technorati Tags: banana, how to

YESSS!! The time has FINALLY COME when Heinz decides to give the hated ketchup packets that give you almost no ketchup, are retarded to open and makes a HUGE mess and gets all over your clothes, a new design!! Well 40 years in the making, they patented this new ketchup packet that gives you 3x the amount of ketchup you normally get in the packets, and gives you an option to give the traditional “squeeze” method, or… dum dum dum… DIPPING OPTION! HALE YEAH! This is a pretty new innovative leap for ketchup packets. It’s also at no cost to the buyers or customers!

Click here to watch a video on these awesome ketchup packets

Via: yahoo news

Technorati Tags: ketchup, news, Take-out

Howdy folks. Yay new post.

Last night I took out my best friend out to dinner as a congratulations on finally graduating college dinner. For almost 8 months, i’ve held on to this Restaurant.com (link on the right side of website) coupon to the Waterstone Grill. It was a $25 coupon I received for like $2, or something like that, on orders $35 or more. Pretty good deal i’d say. It’s a cute little seafood spot located waaaaaay down in lower Manhattan, near Wall Street.

Jump to continue reading!

It’s a cute/romantic ambiance with some interesting decor. Such as this octopus starfish thingy. I thought this was the coolest thing ever to photograph.

The lights actually  made that effect. There was some kind of cool lighting feature that gave the shadows different levels of contrast against the wall. I really want one for my room.

After a healthy dose of picture taking, our food arrived rather quickly. I guess being the only ones in the restaurant will get you such fast service.

As an appetizer, we shared an order of their crabcakes. MMMMMM… VERY good. I definitely recommend.

I ordered a medium/rare pan seared ahi tuna & baby greens. there’s avocado in there. great combination with the tuna!

My friend ordered the Chimichurri Skirt steak with the most amazing, melt in your mouth, buttery mashed potatoes.

Everything was really great. They gave really big portions for the price. Service was good and I hear during the summer, they have outdoor dining (which I LOVE doing). My only gripe was that the table they sat us at was uneven and needed a piece of cardboard under one of the legs. Hardly impressive for a place that’s supposedly nice. We had to move to the table next to us. Anywayyy. The bill came out to $54, so with the $25 coupon, i only paid like 30 for 2 great meals (excluding tip). Very recession friendly. Definitely recommend this place for a good meal for a decent price, especially if you go get a coupon off restaurant.com, but I wouldn’t put this on top of your list of places you must try.

Have a great week everyone! I’ll be off in Vermont for the weekend snowboarding. Next week is restaurant week. oooh boy get ready for great food posts!!

Food-slut’s breakdown:
Food: 7/10
Service: 8/10
Would I eat here again? Yes, but I probably won’t.

Technorati Tags: new york, recession, restaurant, seafood

You already know I love tacos. And I found my new favorite taco truck! Coincidentally it’s called The Taco Truck. I heard about them first through my friend Pat who insisted I take a trip out to Hoboken, NJ to meet him for these tasty treats.

More after the jump!

There’s Pat trying to look cool next to a bright orange truck.

It took us a couple tries of oversleeping, bad timing and other excuses before we finally met up, tracked this thing down and conquered. I’m glad because it was a fairly nice day to go out and take pictures… well fairly nice compared to the coldness we’ve been experiencing lately. Anyhoo, they’re fairly easy to track down as they update their Twitter page everyday on where they’re going to be located. Unlike some trucks that station in one spot and don’t move,  i.e. The Krave, they have a pretty wide berth of places they visit on rotation, but mostly in the Hoboken/Jersey City area.

We ordered our food and it came in nice solid packaging that you can take to go and won’t smush if you put it in your bag.

Boys, don’t shy away from these girly looking drinks… they’re bangin! The vendor told me he drinks at least 2 of these a day. haha.

So pwetty.

They’ve got a good amount of options you can choose off their menu, but I went for one of their best-seller’s, the Barbacoa de Costilla taco with shredded pork short ribs, onions and cilantro! This taco was BANGIN! It was different from the traditional “authentic” Mexican taco (like Taqueria Downtown)  as it had it’s own twist. You can choose from several different types of salsa, but I opted for the “fresh greens” salsa which is a combination of guacamole, avocado bits and other goodies in there. The guy asked me if I wanted the “cheesy guacamole”. Um YES? Gimme dat! Is there really cheese in it? Whatever made this guacamole “cheesy”, it made it SO GOOD! And at about $5 for 2 of these, they’re recession friendly! And healthy!

Pat opted for their Pescado Taco del Mar, which is their fish taco. I didn’t taste this one yet but Pat tells me that it’s as delicious as it looks. I’m definitely going back for this one next time.

Pretty good I say! As a Taco enthusiast I give this place a 4/5! Definitely a place I’d return to. The only problem is wanting to track this truck all over town. That problem may be solved as they are opening a storefront restaurant, also called The Taco Truck very soon! Yay.

Like I said it was a beautiful day for taking photographs. Here are some random shots I took while I was out there for your enjoyment. =D

The view of NYC from Jersey City.

Some building in Jersey City.

Technorati Tags: fish, food truck, mexican, recession, taco