In the spirit of Tony Bourdain, food as adventure. Try everything twice in case it was made wrong the first time. Eat without fear or prejudice.
Saro Bistro is a tiny place in the Lower East Side serving old world Balkan cuisine. The restaurant is named after the chef's Bosnian grandmother Saro. The place is charming -- the wait staff like to tell you about the chef and his grandmother, and the type of rustic cuisine they serve. Perhaps they're even part of the family - they certainly don't seem like pros. 
Our last small plate was warm chanterelle salad with radicchio, chevre noir, and maple walnut vinaigrette - the mushrooms were perfect and worked well with the crunch of the radicchio - another great dish.
Brian chose the Trout served on top of smoked trout bisque, with pickled mustard, horseradish. I only got a small taste of this, but it was nice.
On researching for the Montreal trip, I had heard some good things about Le Comptoir Charcuterie et Vins, another recently opened restaurant that specialized in small plates of housemade charcuterie. Le Comptoir translates to "counter", and we sat at the main counter that evening, watching the food prep area that was on the other side. 
We started with a large charcuterie plate. All the items are made at La Comptoir. We had their pâté de foie gras, saucisson sec, sopresseta, country pâté, and chorizo. We had something else that was lot like scrapple- very liver-y- seared so it was crunchy on the outside, mushy inside. Fougoo really liked the house made cumin mustard, and bought a jar to take home.
Their menu is listed on a chalkboard, and highlight what is seasonal and available. We ordered two items to share. First was a beef heart confit served chilled topped with a salad of octopus & potatoes with a red wine emulsion.
For dessert, we got a marquise au chocolat with strawberries, rhubarb and a hazelnut tuile.
On Canada Day, the whole TIGBG crew got together in Montreal for an unforgettable dinner at up and coming restaurant, Joe Beef. We figure we’d try a different approach to our posts and turn this into a discussion about our meal.
fougoo: First off, before getting into the food, the atmosphere at Joe Beef is absolutely charming. Even though we had a little mix-up with the reservation, the staff were accommodating, and we were lucky enough to get a spot in the corner of the garden. Dining out there in the early evening sunshine, with plants, flowers, herbs, and vegetables all around us was just a perfect setting - as if you were invited over to your fabulously bohemian friend’s house for dinner on their patio. Our waiter was helpful translating the menu posted on the chalkboard, offering suggestions, and letting us know what was fresh and where it had come from.
brooklen: By our dumb luck, we got the best seat in the house; on one side of my seat I was smelling the smoker, on the other I was getting whiffs of basil. There was thyme growing out of the tree stump at the end of our table!
fougoo: We ordered french fries for the 2-year-old BrookLEN Junior, but everyone ended up stealing from the poor kid - they were crisp, garlicky and delicious!
fougoo: As 1000yregg and redneckhunter devoured the Double Down, I focused my attentions on our other foie dish, a foie gras confit with rhubarb, which I preferred - a perfect summer dish - the tartness of the rhubarb melding nicely with the smoothness of the foie.
fougoo: we ordered the Smorgasburg toast when we heard that they smoked all the seafood on it just feet away from us in the back garden. It was a nice dish -- a bit hard to share among so many people, but really a perfect appetizer if I had to order something for just myself -- a nice variety of fish and shellfish, an oyster, whitefish salad.
1000yregg: The lobster spaghetti was my choice on the menu, and boy was it good. The lobster was huge, and the lobster sauce was rich and strongly flavored. As clean up guy for the table, this was the plate that I finished first.
fougoo: The porchetta with summer vegetables was my menu choice and I’m glad it didn’t disappoint. We probably didn’t need another meat dish, but I did love it. The pork was fragrant with herbs, not overly salty (as it sometimes has been at Porchetta in NYC), the perfect marbling of fat, just melted in your mouth. The waiter chided us for not finishing all of the skin, but by this point 1000yregg (who had cleaned up the lobster spaghetti) was saving room for dessert.
fougoo: I couldn’t believe how much schnitzel we got - two huge flat platter-sized pieces, along with a mountain of potatoes and veggies.
1000yregg: It was a little disappointing. Horse seems to be a leaner meat, and ours was a little dry. We guessed it could have sat while our other items were being made. I’d still try it another time. The veal bone marrow was spectacular and a huge portion. As with the porchetta, the side veggies, spring onions, were wonderful.
1000yregg: As a counterbalance to all this protein, we also ordered a Parc Vinet salad. The Parc Vinet refers to Joe Beef’s own garden located in the back of the restaurant. One of the waitstaff told us that he had hand picked the vegetables in our salad that evening, a wonderful medley of lettuce, fennel, and radishes.
fougoo: While we were dining, we were a little jealous seeing chef/owner David McMillan talking to some of the other diners and showing them the smoker. But as we were leaving the big man himself stopped 1000yregg because he had noticed all the picture-taking, and asked if we’d let him know when they were posted online. He showed us a soon-to-be “secret” table in the adjacent alleyway.
Last night, I went to Waverly's Sometimes Dining for yet another great meal. I realized, I've now been going to this for about a year now, and it's been a pleasure each time.
The first course, presented family style, started with a wonderful salad of fennel, leeks, pear mint peas and arugula. It reminded me of a Thai papaya salad- with the leeks and fennel shredded up and mixed all together. I particularly savored the sweetness of the little peas.
The second course was a soup with a parsnip base, sea scallops, red peppers, and celery. The broth had a really good sweetness to it which seemed like corn at first, and the scallops were delicious.
We also shared a deep fried pickled artichoke served with an oregano & saffron aioli. The aioli sauce looked like nacho cheese, but tasted much better.
Next up was a platter of housemade mortadella with pickled asparagus and cucumber. The mortadella had asparagus in it as well.
The main dish was a seafood mushroom crepe with mustard, eggyolk, and grapes. The crepe was chock full of mushroom, crab (I think) and fish. We started in on a bottle of 2009 Sylvaner Reserve, Alsace, Weinbach, a dry white.
After attending a Dogfish Head beer dinner at Bluegrass Tavern last year, I was excited when they announced a Tröegs beer dinner held a few weeks ago.
We started with an assortment of piggy snacks at the bar while enjoying a pint of Tröegs Pale Ale.
I then tried a few dishes made with the more "nasty bits". On small toothpicks sticking from a small pig, there were chunks of kidney with a pearl onion. I'm still a little neutral to kidney, but these were good.
The last bar snack was pork skirt steak marinated in Dr. Pepper. It had a similar consistency to beef, and with the marinade, it was delicious.
My favorite was the chicken liver.
Course three was a massive slab of crispy pork belly on a bed of Anson Mills blue grits, pickled pear and sauce foyot. Foyot sauce is hollandaise sauce with a meat glaze, which was in this case, bacon. We drank the Hopback Amber with this dish. Chef noted that this breed of pig was particularly fatty, and it showed in the pork belly's marbling.
The fourth course was a sous vide pork loin wrapped in bacon with sunchoke puree, sunchoke chips and a rosemary bruised pineapple. It reminded me of ham with pineapple. We drank Tröeg's Nugget Nectar, which was my favorite beer of the night.
