Bay State Gabby's

Gabby's restaurant is pretty new, they opened up January, 2011. I first learned of the restaurant when I received a 1/2 off email offer from Living Social. I had looked at the restaurant's website and the menu looked pretty good, and with $15 for a $30 gift certificate it looked like it was worth a gamble.

It wasn't until after I had purchased the certificate did I find a review on Gabby's. Boy it looked like I might have been taken in. There was a lone review and it wasn't pretty. I then noticed that there were filtered reviews and so I went looking to see what they said. Those reviews were a bit more positive but I guess reviews get filtered because these reviewers might be shills.

Well I had already spent the money for the certificate so I went with a lot of intrepidation. Things didn't really look better as it was 6pm on a Wednesday evening and the place was empty. The hostess promptly greeted and seated us. As I sat down, I remembered the other review talked about a bad smell. I mentioned this to my friend and before we looked at our menus we were sniffing the air like a bunch of basset hounds. Good thing nobody was around to see us, but we didn't notice a thing.

When we got our menus they looked exactly like what was posted on the website. It definitely did not look like it was put together as a school project as someone on Yelp.com had said. I was kind of wondering if the other review was for the same restaurant. The waitress who was also the hostess came by to fill up our water glasses and to put two warm rolls in front of us. The rolls weren't freshly baked but were heated up just before serving. I thought that was a nice little touch and we were given little bread plates.

There was quite a few Italian dishes on the menu, but we were more interested in trying the Argentinian cuisine. For appetizers we tried a beef and chicken empanda. They were kind of small but pretty tasty. The pastry crust was flaky and tender and the beef empanada was filled with a flavorful ground beef. The chicken empanada was filled with white meat and was a tad dry.

For the main course I ordered the Tira De Asado which is short ribs and my friend ordered the Pastel De Papa, an Argentinian casserole. We both got a house salad with our entrees. The salad was just a basic garden salad with a vinaigrette. Nice, but nothing special.

The meal was going well so far but it was kind of un-nerving to be the only patrons in the place. The hostess did say that they are busier on the weekends and when they have live entertainment.

Our dishes came fairly quickly. My dish consisted of 2 short ribs sliced sideways about 1/4 inch thick. I had selected the rice pilaf and the vegetable of the day was grilled vegetables. My friend's dish consisted of the casserole which looked like Shepherd's pie, garlic mashed potatoes, and the grilled vegetables. We split the casserole and the short ribs so we could sample both.

The casserole tasted just like Shepherd's pie. Mashed potatoes on top and on the bottom with ground beef in the middle. There were no vegetables in the ground beef. It was OK but I wouldn't bother ordering it again. As for my dish, I had made the right call. The short ribs were grilled and you could taste the charcoal flavor on them. And the chimichurri sauce that comes with the dish complimented the ribs very well. The hostess had said that the sauce was usually served with beef but some people had asked for it to use as a dipping sauce as well for the empanadas.

The grilled vegetables were also a big hit. The vegetables were string beans, carrots, and asparagus. They were lightly grilled with light grill marks and not over cooked. They also had a nice charcoal flavor to them.

Even though I was full, I did order dessert. Partly to try another dish, and partly to make sure that I spent all the money on my certificate. The list of desserts wasn't too much but they did have flan so I ordered that. The waitress asked if I wanted some caramel sauce on it and I thought that sounded good. When I got the flan, I must say it didn't look overly appetizing. The flan was a decent size piece but the caramel on top was a scoop that was not warmed. Since it was not warm nor liquidity it actually look kind of like a scoop of poop on top. Undaunted I still tried it and if was fine. The flan was not too sweet as other restaurants but the caramel could have used a bit of warming up. Not just for a smoother texture but it really didn't look too good. My friend kept laughing about what it looked like.

Overall, the whole experience was quite pleasant, I was impressed by my dish and would come back. The prices were reasonable and the chimichurri sauce is kind of addictive on the ribs. The casserole was OK, but you can get better elsewhere. Still I am kind of curious about the Yelp.com review, the only thing that seemed to match what was written was that they have mozzarella sticks. Maybe the restaurant read the review and fixed things.

One Dollar, Two Brothers

The New York Sharks were invited see the Broadway show "Lombardi". The play is about NFL coaching great Vince Lombardi. The producers of the show gave the team some tickets and the Sharks offered to promote the play on their website.

It had been quite a while since I saw a Broadway show and while this one did get some very good reviews, the thought of 40 Sharks attending a play can be quite entertaining. Usually when the team gets together off the football field something happens. Road trips can be quite the interesting tale and sometimes it is not the fault of the players, stuff just seems to follow them. Case in point, we haven't been back to Canada since the team bus tried to barrel through the border crossing without stopping. The Canadian Mounties chased the bus about 2 miles past the checkpoint to stop it. The bus driver thought that guards were waving at them to go by without stopping. Imagine what the authorities thought when they asked who they were and the answer came back a women's professional football team.

I took the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan. The train was already filling up with Ranger fans for the Rangers-Capitals playoff game at Madison Square Garden. I hadn't been to the city in quite a while and I was looking forward to hitting a few places, mostly Gray's Papaya.

Gray's Papaya is one of those uniquely New York city places that serve hot dogs and papaya drinks. This combination started in 1932 with Papaya King and soon spread to many imitators. What got my attention with Gray's Papaya the first time was that they were selling hot dogs for only $0.75. The prices then went up to $1 per dog or you could get a recession special of two hot dogs and a drink for only $2.50. But the last 5 years inflation has hit the place and the last time I had checked the recession special was over $5. It was no longer the great bargain but the all-beef hot dogs are still one of the better tasting ones around.

I walked out of Penn Station and headed uptown on 8th Avenue towards Gray's Papaya, but horrors, they were closed! I later found out that not all Gray's Papaya went out but just this one. I was bummed. Not only was I hungry for a good hot dog (which is most of the time anyway) but I didn't want to spend a lot of money to get a bite to eat before the play.

It didn't take me too long to find a replacement though. It wasn't a hot dog but a block further was 2 Bros. Pizza.



Over the past few years, someone figured out that you can make money by selling pizza for as little as $1 a slice in New York City. And that is not $1 plus tax, it is $1 total. If you want to go crazy you can order 2 slices and a soda for $2.75. And for those Rockefeller types, pepperoni slices go for $1.50.

Of course at that price, you have to not just sell a lot of pizza, but you have to sell a really big lot of pizza. You have to find the balance of selling a pizza that was not only cheap in price but good enough for people to buy it. And surprisingly, 2 Bros. has found that balance.

The place was pretty busy around 6pm when I got there. Behind the counter they were churning out pizza pies like crazy. With a very limited menu service was pretty quick.

I ordered on slice of plain pizza and it was a decent size slice and quite surprisingly was not bad. Not a great tasting slice but quite serviceable. I would make this a destination if I wanted a pizza and was in the area. What I don't understand is how a place like Papa John's can even exist. I won't include Dominio's as supposedly they have improved their pizza and I haven't had that for years. But I did have Papa John's during this year's Super Bowl and it was pretty bad.

After eating my slice, I walked over to the theater in plenty of time. 40 players and staff of the Sharks showed up for the play. The theater was quite small and we definitely took up a large portion of the audience. And with most of the players wearing their blue jerseys, we definitiely stood out.

The stage set-up for Lombardi was quite interesting. The theater was quite small and the stage was in the center of the theater. Guess that is why they call it theater in the round, duh!

The play was quite good. The acting was top notch and all of the Sharks enjoyed the show. Many of them were seeing a Broadway show for the first time.

After the show we went to The Palm restaurant across the street for a free drink with your Lombardi ticket stub. We over took the bar area. The Palm is noted for their steaks and the cartoons of prominent people drawn on the walls. The Sharks owner, Andra Douglas told me that she has her picture on the walls of The Palm in Florida.

I saw that they had a small bites menu which was only $5.95 after 9pm. They had sliders, lobster sliders, mini-crab cakes and a few other things. Other people were ordering them and they looked really good and the price was right. But just before I was going to order some crab-cakes, I felt like someone knocked the floor from under me. I could feel the coming onset of a major cold and even though I only had one slice of pizza to eat for dinner, my appetite flew away quite quickly.

My eyes are usually bigger than my head and I really wanted to try the crab cakes but I knew that they wouldn't last inside my stomach on the long train ride back. So I refrained from ordering. Drat!

But in the long run it was the right choice. I made it home OK, but the next day got hit with the flu big time and was stuck in bed for 2 days.

Baskin Robbins 32 Flavors?

I am by no means an ice cream connoisseur or even an ice cream snob. I ususally don't eat ice cream and when I do, my tastes are pretty parochial and I stick with pistachio. And if pistachio is not available I usually will pass. That being said, I will still try something if it piques my interest.

Even though I work for a football team, I still am a big baseball fan at heart. So when I heard that Baskin and Robbins had a flavor named Baseball Nut®, I had to give it a try. It is a seasonal flavor that Baskin and Robbin rotates with other flavors that make up their lineup of 31 flavors. Baseball Nut® is a vanilla ice cream with a ribbon of black raspberry and cashew nuts. Even I know that Baskin and Robbins is not the best ice cream out there but I still went ahead and ordered a small scoop on a sugar cone. The ice cream wasn't that bad. Not creamy nor rich as the premium stuff but the flavors were not overpowering each other and there was no aftertaste. At least the ice cream didn't have any aftertaste.

I usually like sugar cones with my ice cream, as they provide a nice crunchy texture to go with the cool smooth ice cream. But this cone was unbelievably disgusting. It literally tasted like Play-Doh, that child's modeling clay toy. Now I have never eaten Play-Doh, but as a child I did know a few kids that did. But the taste of this cone was exactly like the smell of Play-Doh. It was so bad that I chucked the rest of the cone in the trash.

The aftertaste was so bad that I went over to a hot dog truck in front of Home Depot and ordered a chili dog to get the taste of Play-Doh out of my mouth. This was one ice cream flavor I could have done without.