True Love. Just in time for Valentine's Day!

OK, I know I've been writing about food a bit more than usual this week. But in order to complete my first full work-week of posting (wooooooo!!!!!!) I am going to have to throw some more food info your way. And you're going to like it! Ya hear me!?!?!?

I recently had the experience of meeting my gay soulmate. My gay husband is the one who introduced us and now it's a big gay love fest. I feel more and more like Grace Adler everyday and I'm really loving every minute of it. Just waiting for my hot Jewish doctor to ride in on a horse and save me (except I hate horses, but that was a Will & Grace reference, duh).




Anyway, my new gay soulmate and I realized we were meant to be when we discovered how much we both love sauces. My claim to fame is that in high school my friends would to call me "The Sauce Monster" when we went out for meals because I always order at least one (but usually more than one) order of "extra sauce on the side."

So gay soulmate and I started swapping food recommendations. And today, coincidentally, we both took each other's recommendations for lunch! Another sign that we are indeed, meant to be. My recommendation to him was to try the Asian Peanut dressing at Hale and Hearty (which was prompted because he said he loved all asian peanut sauces). It was a raging success. He loved it and he made everyone in his office try it and they all loved it too. My BFF Dickie also tried this last week for the first time and is obsessed. You should try it too because it's kind of unbelievable.

When he first started telling me about Energy Kitchen I remembered the one experience I had in the past. I ordered a chicken stir fry wrap. One of the listed ingredient was steamed vegetables. Good. I love vegetables. But when I got the wrap instead of steamed vegetables it was steamed baby carrots, which is really really weird and way too bulky for a wrap setting. It was extremely off putting.

Earlier this week he sent me his review of Energy Kitchen:

Date: 5 February 2010 AD
Location: New York, NY
Temperature: 34 °F
Restaurant: Energy Kitchen, 47th St
My order: Tex-Mex Bison Wrap
Laura got the BBQ chicken quesadilla which she said was delicious.

I forewent the sides to be healthy and to compensate for the overeating I will be doing later.


Pros:
-LOVE the prices - $5? Are you kidding me? I should have ordered 3!
-Very tasty, quality ingredients. I could tell I was eating healthy but it didn’t taste like I was eating cardboard
-Wrap held together very nicely - big pet peeve of mine is when you touch a wrap/burrito lightly with a feather and the entire thing falls apart - love that I could hold it in my hand and continue to take bites with only minor fallout…
-I only finished it about 15 mins ago but I'm feeling very full and it feels like the kind of 'full' that will last for a while…

Cons
-I'm contradicting the last pro and being nitpicky - the wrap was a bit on the small side, but enough to fill me up and CERTAINLY worth $5...I guess I'm just used to gorging myself at lunch and having anything in a wrap be oversized and gargantuan
-Ingredients were a bit unevenly distributed, so I would get a bite full of dry rice, or salsa-drenched beef - this problem is obv not unique to EK - most places don’t take the time to evenly distribute the ingredients in a wrap/burrito, which is another huge pet peeve of mine and also makes me appreciate when they DO do that so much more…but in this particular case it wasn't so bad to the point where it's like I was eating 3 different meals sharing the same wrap (I'm looking at you, Chipotle - as much as I love biting into an entire glob of plain sour cream…) - another benefit of the nicely held together wrap was that I could take big enough bites to counteract this Con
-Delivery time was 36 mins, which is a little on the high end as far as HK restaurants go

Overall - would definitely order again - keen to try all the other options, including breakfast!

Thank you for all of your input over the past few weeks leading up to this most pleasant dining experience. I couldn't have done it without you.

This e-mail/review serves as further proof that we are meant to be. Or that there is an intruder in my brain...

So today I got the BBQ Chicken Quesadilla. Wow. The BBQ sauce tastes like it came from California Pizza Kitchen. Which is two thumbs up right off the bat. And although my gay lover was able to hold back on sides because he was planning on over eating later, I was not able to hold back... So I got creamed spinach and vegetarian chili. Having had vegetarian chili from The Pump on Monday night and being fiercely disappointed, this was a nice surprise.

Here is a pic of my meal:



The TV-dinner set up definitely surprised me. But it kept everything in place for the not-so-close delivery travel (PS delivery took an hour, which I wasn't thrilled about, good thing I wasn't starving, or some very passive-aggressive calls would have been placed). Because of this lengthy journey the two sides were not hot. And because they were all grouped together on an elementary-school-cafeteria-style plate, I had to spoon out each side into a bowl and microwave it for 30 seconds. Which was annoying but not the end of the world. The creamed spinach needed salt, badly, so I fixed that. And I also obviously dipped the BBQ Chicken Quesadilla in Ranch dressing.

If I'm eating something that involves BBQ sauce you can bet your ass there is going to be Ranch dressing involved. It's just how the world is meant to be.



Yes. I did just make that in Photoshop. Be jealous of my tech-savvyness slash artistic abilities.

The one thing I was super impressed with was the quality of the chicken. I have, through osmosis, developed a fear of meat. My roommate is very skeptical of meat and now I am too. I never was before. It's weird. Anyway, you know when you get that bite of chicken that is weird and a little chewier and a little gamier than it should be? That's the kind of chicken we're scared of. It's... a debilitating fear. Keeps me up at night. You can typically find this chicken in Lean Cuisines or any frozen dish, or low quality restaurant. If you get the sliced chicken (not chicken breast) from Subway, you know what I'm talking about.

The thing that grinds my gears about Energy Kitchen is that it's not on Seamless. When a restaurant isn't on SeamlessWeb it is a huge deterrent for me. Seamless is just so easy and amazing and I'm incredibly loyal to it. Energy Kitchen has it's own online ordering system. Fine. I programmed in my info and now have it for the future (Lenny's also does this, btw).

Anyway, it was a lot of food and I felt good after I ate it. Very full but not an "I'm gunna vom" kinda full because although I was stuffing my face, it wasn't with gross unhealthy stuff. A nice change of pace.

The moral of the story is that I will indeed be trying Energy Kitchen again and do not doubt that I will thoroughly enjoy it.

HAPPY THREE-DAY WEEKEND AND VALENTINE'S DAY AND OPENING CEREMONIES TO ONE AND ALL!!!!!