AWESOME DEAL: 51% off "East Village Eats" Food Festival this Weekend

Well, well, well. New Yorkers sure do love their food festivals. Fresh off of last weekend's Taste of the Village: West comes East Village Eats, sponsored by community development organization Fourth Arts Block. Tickets are usually $45, but Living Social NYC Downtown is offering an awesome discount for this afternoon of eating, drinking and raffle prizes. For only $22, you can get your slice of the cake, literally.

The self-guided tour starts at 11 a.m. this Saturday 10/23 and goes until 4 p.m. You will find a total of 15 (that's huge!) restaurants participating in this event, which means you get 15 food samples and numerous drink samples. Fourth Arts Block has created a map so that you can set your course for the day.

Here are the restaurants and food samples they have lined up:

Bond Street Chocolate: Decadent spicy dark chocolate bark.

Xi’an Famous Foods: Liang Pi “Cold Skin Noodles:” bouncy and chewy wheat noodles, mixed with seitan and vegetables, and tossed with secret spicy sauces to make a cool, delicious mess.

Cucina Di Pesce:  Cold antipasto feast: tomato mozzarella & white bean spread bruschettas, tomato & mozzarella, and eggplant stuffed with goat cheese caprese and roasted peppers.

Hecho En Dumbo: Tostadas de Dzik: chilled salad of braised venison ossobucco with tomato, red onion, sour orange, chile habanero, radish and avocado served on a bed of crisp hand pressed corn tostadas.

Luke’s Lobster: Half of a sweet Maine shrimp roll, one of the best sandwiches in NYC (New York Magazine) and best market lunches in the country (Bon Appétit).

Mud Truck: 10 oz Mud coffee, 10 oz latte, cappuccino or shot of espresso –  all roasted, blended and made by MUD.

Nomad: Moorish chicken skewer flavored with African spices and served with a crispy pita and humus.

S’MAC: Four cheese mac & cheese delight: cheddar, muenster, gruyère and a touch of pecorino.

Souen East Village: Steamed Seitan dumplings: juicy wheat dumplings filled with seitan (wheat gluten), napa cabbage, shiitake mushroom, garlic, ginger, soy sauce.

Supper: Mushrooms Trifolati: freshly sautéed mushrooms on Tuscan toast

Tuck Shop: Cocktail portion of their famous pork and sage sausage rolls, a true classic. Get a $5 beer to wash down the bite.

Tu-Lu’s Gluten Free Bakery: Mini red velvet cupcake with vanilla cream cheese frosting.

Faustina: Garlic Nodini: “Knots” of baked dough with garlic, crispy herbs and whipped ricotta.

Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches: Variety of five sandwiches: the Classic, Sardine, Chicken, Porkchop or Tofu on a toasted baguette with marinated carrot, fresh cucumber, jalepeno, and cilantro with a wipe of mayo.

MONO+MONO: Famous Korean fried chicken that is double fried, non-greasy served with either spicy sauce or soy-garlic sauce.

DRINK PARTNERS

Jimmy’s No. 43: $2 off any beer.

DBA: $2 off any beer.

Xoom: $3 smoothies (normally $7) or $2 lattes

With so many choices, I'm not sure what I'm most looking forward too, but the shrimp roll and the Mushrooms Trifolati are sure up there. Click here to get your $22 ticket! Maybe we'll bump into each other mid-bite. That would be awesome.

Wining and Dining in the Meatpacking

For the past two years, I have seen the signs come up for the New York City Wine and Food Festival and then I've seen them come back down, without ever partaking in a glorious event. My friends at Citysearch changed all that this year after I won two tickets to the Meatpacking Uncorked event from a Twitter contest. Even though my mom and I already had our fair share of wine and food for an entire weekend, we were bound and determined to make the most out of this night.

We arrived at the Welcome Center under the Highline and picked up our event passport, along with some tasty Toblerone samples. Making our way to W. 14th Street, we stopped in stores like La Perla and Kimberly Taylor for wine and shopping (sort of like an encore of Fashion's Night Out). The weather was absolutely gorgeous and people were out in the thousands.

Our first food bite was at The Diner - a goat cheese quesadilla. It definitely tasted good, but that may have been because I was super hungry after an afternoon full of wine. The wait for this sample was a little ridiculous, though.

Next, we made it over to The Cooking Channel truck, which was sampling innovative ice cream flavors like Strawberry Balsamic and Chocolate Challah. Again, the lines were crazy (I would have been mad had I actually paid money for the event tickets), but the ice cream was delicious.

We stopped at the Delta/Coke display, where we got to take Polaroid-like shots with our free mini-bottles of coke. Last, we only got down to Ganesvoort Street before the event ended at 9, but we tried sliders from The Collective.

Overall, the event was a lot of fun, but the weather had a lot to do with how much I enjoyed the night. The food wasn't anything amazing, but it was fun to walk around and eat in the streets. The lines for everything were pretty long and the vendors did not always look at people's wristbands, so pretty much anyone could wait in line for some free grub. 

Next year, my goal will definitely be to try another NYC Wine and Food Festival event. I think I might pass on Meatpacking Uncorked, but maybe the Grand Tasting...One can dream.

Missed the Giveaway?

After the giveaway I held two weeks ago for Time Stands Still tickets, I felt badly that I couldn't award all of the entrants with tickets, as it's really one of the best plays I have seen in a while. Even if you didn't win (or even if you missed the contest entirely), I have good news.

Time Stands Still is offering discounted seats for as low as $43! Using the code TSAMC813 here, you can get what I call "rich (or lucky) persons" seating for just $79.50, rear mezz. seating for $60 and "poor persons" seating for just $43. This code is valid for all performances through 11/24, excluding Saturday nights. 


To save even more money, I often buy my theater tickets at the box office to avoid pesky ticket website fees. You can go to the Time Stands Still website to find more details on box office hours and the show itself. Believe me, you do not want to miss Laura Linney in this awesome show!

Seamless Winning?

Remember the days when you would actually have to make a phone call to order food for delivery? Well, Seamless Web erased those days when it launched it's online delivery service a while back. Almost every restaurant and food vendor in the city seems to employ Seamless Web to take it's delivery orders and send them out to the lazy eaters of Manhattan. Despite my taste for actually going to and eating at a restaurant, talk to me in a mid-January blizzard and you know I'll be ordering delivery.

The company is launching a new campaign starting today in an effort to get people to get rid of their paper take out menus and learn about ordering online. They've enlisted the creativity of artist Kevin O'Callaghan to create special works of art out of old paper take out menus, which will be on display this weekend at the Brooklyn Flea.

Also, (this is where you want to pay attention), a Seamless Web truck will be making the rounds across the city starting today. You will be able to drop off your unwanted menus (to be used in the sculptures) and learn about the best way to order food online. You can also pick up a fortune cookie containing a ‘lucky number’ that can lead to prizes such as an iPod Touch, free lunch for a month, an iPad, 10% off your next order, free lunch for a week, or even free lunch for a year valued at $5,475! Starting today, you can enter your lucky numbers here to find out what you have won!


Additionally, first time SeamlessWeb users can enter the promo code ‘MOREEAT’ for $10 off your first order.


Here's the schedule of the truck for the week.

10/18 Monday: Truck at Union Square (17th and Broadway)
10/19 Tuesday: Truck at 6th Avenue (between 55th and 56th)
10/20 Wednesday: Truck at Madison Square Park (23rd and 5th)
10/21 Thursday: Truck at Lexington Avenue (between 57th and 58th)
10/22 Friday: Truck at 6th Avenue (between Carmine and West 4th)
10/23 Saturday: Brooklyn Flea at Lafayette Avenue (between Clermont and Vanderbilt)
10/24 Sunday: Brooklyn Flea at One Hanson Place (corner of Flatbush Avenue)

I'll definitely be stopping by today after work. Let us know if you win anything!

I'll Have Some Cheese With that Wine (And Bread and Sauce)

Well folks, I'm officially a NY Vintners groupie. I've been to more classes than I can count (thanks to awesome discounts from Groupon), and I think my personal best experience there was recently topped after my mom, who was in town from Los Angeles, and I attended a Pizza and Wine class there last week.

If you don't already know how much I love this little wine-shop-turned-event-space already, it's about time you figured it out for yourself. And figure it out at the next Pizza and Wine class. 

We walked into NY Vintners at about 3:45 on a Friday afternoon (yay for taking off work early!) and were each instantly handed a bubbly glass of prosecco -- a perfect way to kick off the weekend. After all the other people arrived, we were welcomed by the owner himself, Shane Benson, who you can really tell has a lot of passion for teaching the public about the joys of wine and food. For the next two hours, we were schooled in the proper technique of swirling, sniffing and sipping and well, we really didn't need to know anything about chowing down on pizza. Pie by pie were ushered out of the kitchen to our tables and I was enthralled by the many different varieties the creative kitchen staff came up with -- buffalo chicken, pulled pork, artichoke and one of the most awesome white pizzas I've ever had. We sampled the different cheesy concoctions with five different wines from all over the world and at the end of the night had the opportunity to take home some of those bottles at a discounted price. 

I'm definitely looking forward to my next experience at NY Vintners. Hmmmm, will it be Bubblicious or Bad Ass Reds? Stay tuned!

Gluttony at its Finest

On West 26th Street, there's a porthole to Texas. Although the granite outcroppings and the hills of yore have been paved over with concrete and festooned with skyscrapers, Hill Country is aptly named considering the etymology of Manhattan (mana-hatta means "island of many hills" in the Native American Lenape language). Walking in, you can anticipate the yee-hawing, finger-licking, down-home fun you are about to have.

Upon being seated, a friendly hostess will explain the cafeteria like set-up, with each person receiving a meal ticket. Everything you order will be marked off on the ticket and you will use that to pay on the way out. You will find a meat station with every bbq offering known to mankind that has been rubbed and cooked for hours on end to achieve that perfect bbq essence. The ribs are honking huge as well. 

After heaping monstrous packages of meat onto your tray, you move over to the sides station, where all the fixin's are served. From Cowboy Pinto Beans to gooey Mac 'n Cheese, and Confetti Cole Slaw to Sweet Potato Bourbon Mash, everyone will find one or two or ten things to happily fill the empty stomach space between the meat.

Mac 'n Cheese

Armed with a $50 gift certificate and a Scoutmob discount, my boyfriend Mike and I essentially had $75 to spend and had saved up our calories for the entire day to eat this meal. Sunday is definitely the best day to go because they have a $20 special - 1/4 lb. brisket, one beef rib, one pork rib, 1/4 chicken, 2 sides and a dessert. Holy majoly - that's a lot of food. We each ordered the special and sampled the Sweet Potato Bourbon Mash, Deviled Eggs, Cornbread and Mac 'n Cheese for our sides. 

Texas Thunder

With money to burn, we also decided it was only appropriate to have something tasty to wash everything down with. Served in mason jars, the drinks are very creative. I tried the Texas Tornado with Firefly Sweet Tea vodka, Southern Comfort, lemonade and mint and Mike had the Rolling Thunder (they're big on weather names apparently) with Sailor Jerry's Spiced Navy rum and IBC root beer.

I told you the ribs were ginormous!

Mike attacks!

Carnage shot

But wait! You must save room for dessert! After all it's included with the Sunday night special. Mike and I opted for two of Hill Country's signature cupcakes - German Chocolate and PB&J. They were, in a word, AWESOME. Just the right amount of gooey and not overly sweet, but still indulgent and fantabulous.

Even though at the end of the night Mike and I packed away a very large portion of BBQ, we still had three lunches worth of food to take home for the two of us. With a downstairs lounge and another bar, Hill Country is a great venue to catch live music most nights. They also offer weekly specials and an appealing happy hour. My only complaint was that the whole restaurant only has one restroom. But true to Texas standards, it is fairly large. 

Hill Country Chicken just opened as a fried chicken outpost a few blocks away from the original BBQ joint. If it's as good as this, I might gain 1000 pounds by the end of the year. Just sayin'.

AWESOME DEAL: 47% off "Tastes of the Village: West" Food Festival this Weekend

Whoever thought up the food festival was a genius. Honestly, the concept of sampling all different culinary concoctions in one location for one meal must have been an idea before it's time.

If you also appreciate this awesome tradition, you're in luck. This weekend six different iconic West Village restaurants are teaming up to make your day. By offering a 47% discount off tickets, The Dealist, a new group-buying site, wants to make your wallet cheer as well.

A $17 ticket (normally $32) will get you the following:

• Num Pang - 1 Slider (choice of Duroc Pulled Pork, or Veal Hoisin Meatball)
• Spunto Thin Crust - 2 Slices of gourmet thin-crust pizza (1 Cheese, 1 Pepperoni)
• Cabrito - 1 signature taco (tinga de pollo, skirt steak, or marinated pork with pineapple)
• Satay Junction - 2 Satays (choice of 8, incl. chicken, beef, shrimp, tofu w/peanut dipping sauce)
• Pasticceria Rocco - 1 mini-cannoli, classic italian with chocolate chips
• The Donut Pub -  2 mini-doughnuts (choice of Red Velvet, Cinnamon Sugar or Honey Glazed)

After you've stuffed your face, find yourself some discounted liquid fun at the following bars:

• Fiddlesticks: $4 beer, house wine and well mixed drinks
• Blind Tiger Ale House: $1 off beer
• Half Pint: $4 domestics, $5 well drinks, $6 craft beer
• Cabrito: $6 marguarita
• Galway Hooker Downtown: $5 beers, house wine and well mixed drinks

To get this deal, you have to hurry! Discounted tickets are only available until Thursday. The Dealist will email you your ticket with instructions on how to get your food and drinks. You can use your ticket to get your samples all at once or spread out on both Saturday and Sunday from 12-6 p.m.

I'll definitely be checking out this event and posting a recap with pictures. Thanks The Dealist and happy eating!