Cafe Martino

Good morning and Happy April. I've been swamped with a variety of things lately, so the missus has been doing most of the cooking. Since she doesn't really like to write about it, I've had nothing to post. Tragic, I know. Hopefully things will settle down a bit in the coming weeks and I'll have a chance to either make something interesting or go eat somewhere worth writing about. I do want to try my father's pastiera and with a jar of good cooked wheat and a manifesto on how to make that he sent me, I should be all set.

We did finally get a chance to check out Cafe Martino, the swank little place on on Myrtle that a commenter suggested I try a little while back. It's one of those places that tends to blend into the background, so while I always knew it was there, I never went out of my way to go there. Requiring brunch on Saturday, we gave it a try.

The coffee was good (which is important), and Mick had a cappuccino that she liked. The food was good but not great. I had the steak and eggs, and the eggs weren't very easy for being over easy. That's one of my pet peeves with eggs - if I order them over easy, I want a lot of yoke running around for to be lathering up my other breakfast potables. These were a bit disappointing, but thankfully the steak made up for it. They came with home fries which were as standard as home fries get.

Mick had the spinach, portabello, and cheddar omelet, which was a bit more interesting. To say she inhaled it would be an understatement, so I can only assume it was good. The muffled superlative along with a curt nod seemed only to confirm that.

Aside from my slightly overdone eggs, everything else was great. I like that they give you a bottle of water for your table, which eliminates the tendency of some restaurants to either leave you parched, without drink, or to have a waiter constantly hovering near you refilling your glasses. Another great touch was the salt and pepper. No ordinary shakers here! They left us a pepper grinder along with a big container of sea salt. Nice touches.

Cafe Martino's got good coffee, decent food, and what looked like pretty good pastries and empanadas as well. They've recently started serving dinner, although I haven't had a chance to try it. If you're nearby, definitely give them a try for breakfast or brunch.

Where to Get Some Coffee and Munchies

General Greene, a pretty great Fort Greene blog has a fun little comparison of various coffee shops up. My favorite notes are that Pillow will apparently add whiskey to your coffee (awesome!) and Provisions smells of fish (not awesome!).

Check it out

The $25,000 Hot Chocolate

This isn't Clinton Hill-specific, but since it's a NYC curiosity I figured I'd post it anyway since I find these kinds of things interesting. Serendipity-3 has unveiled their latest ridiculous dessert, this time a cup of hot chocolate that goes for $25,000. Usually most of the cost of these kinds of things comes from a gem or piece of jewelry that comes with it, and this appears to be no exception.

The dessert, spelled with two Rs, is infused with 5 grams (0.2 ounces) of edible 23-karat gold and served in a goblet lined with edible gold. At the base of the goblet is an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds.

The sundae is topped with whipped cream covered with more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle from Knipschildt Chocolatier, which sells for $2,600 a pound.

It is eaten with a gold spoon decorated with white and chocolate-colored diamonds, which can also be taken home.

So, yeah. Doesn't that seem to be a lot of gold to be eating? Almost everything I know about medicine comes from TV, and there was an episode of House where some guy got poisoned by gold. This sounds dangerous.

My favorite hot chocolate comes from the Brooklyn Tea Lounge on Court St. They have a white chocolate mocha there that's pretty amazing too.

Brooklyn Coffee Roasters?

I love coffee. I don't drink it as regularly as I used to because I tend to get a lot of heartburn when I do, but I still love it.

I've been looking to upgrade my home coffee experience for a while on a number of fronts. We've got a great coffee grinder that was a gift from my father a few years back. It's an older Kitchenaid that gives off a 1950's-type vibe and it works beautifully, so we're set there. Beyond that I'm pretty sure I can do better.

Our coffee maker is a basic Mr. Coffee drip maker that I bought when I first moved to NYC back in 2001. It's serviceable enough, but I'd really like to replace it, likely with one of the nice Cuisinarts everyone seems to have. Mickey doesn't like to use any of that, preferring her ancient stove percolator. To each her own.

I buy whole beans from Costco, but one thing I've wanted to try for a while is roasting my own coffee beans. I've read up on it and it doesn't seem that difficult, but I have enough demands on my time as it is, and I know I'd end up just going out and buying coffee beans when I ran out. What I'd really like to find is a local roaster and see if the beans are really that much better than what I'm buying.

So, any recommendations? I could just Google it, but this seems like a much more fun way of finding something interesting.