I bought the new Time Out NY 2009 Eating and Drinking guide, and marked all the restaurants that looked interesting that are within walking distance of our new apartment. Yesterday, after finally getting that shower curtain rod at Home Depot and doing some other chores around the house, Rick and I were ready for some brunch. Or dinner. Food actually.
Rick's been reading the South Beach Diet, and suggested going to a BBQ place. He likes Brother Jimmy's and goes to the one in Grand Central fairly regularly, but I wanted to try something new and different. I looked in my trusty guide, and found Blue Smoke - looked good :) Plus it's a jazz club at night - could be very interesting!
Rick suggested ordering the Blue Smoke Flight - a 1 oz tasting of 5 different bourbons. I'd never done a bourbon tasting, so I figured what the heck? I did, however order a glass of lemonade, seeing the Lynchburg Lemonade cocktail and thinking worse comes to worse, I'll mix a little of that bourbon with something. It was a good call. I'm not a big hard liquor drinker, and definitely not straight. I made it through 1 sip. The liquor was very very smoky, and the burn you would expect at the end. Rick sipped a few and then ordered a diet coke mixer. It was interesting, but I don't think I need to do that again :)
As an appetizer, we ordered the sausage sampler. 3 different kinds of sausages, also very smoky. There was a chorizo, a chicken sausage and one other - figures I liked the one I can't remember :) It took a long time for dinner to come. We ordered the Rib Sampler (it was a sampler kind of afternoon I guess :) with Memphis ribs, Kansas City ribs, and Texas beef ribs. I was surprised that my favorite were the beef ribs, but the others were dry. And all were very smoky!
We spent more on the tastings that we would usually, so if we go back, I would definitely order different items. The devilled egg app looks very interesting, and the beef brisket was calling my name. On the way out, our waitress was serving real home made banana cream pie - we thought about sitting at the bar for a slice, but decided to leave it for next time :)
