Mother's Day Outing

For Mother's Day Mandy took my mom and I out on a full day outing. Our first stop was a hidden spa in the middle of Korea town in midtown NY. It was on the second floor of a dinky looking building but the inside was amazing, but unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures.

After a quick body scrub and massage at the spa, we headed to a Thai restaurant in SoHo called Kittichai.

The decor in the restaurant was really well done. There was even a little water display in the middle of the restaurant with floating candles - very pretty.

Me, my mom and Mandy celebrating Mother's Day together as mothers for the first time.

At any new Thai restaurant I always feel compelled to order the Thai Iced Tea, mostly just because I like it. Here they keep the tea, condensed milk and sugar separate so you can make it to your own tastes, which was nice.

For appetizers we had the Kittichai fish cakes with cucumber and red onion chutney.

I ordered the Eggs Benedict with Penang curry hollandaise and Canadian bacon. I know not really the first thing you would think to order at a Thai restaurant, but it still tasted really good.

Mandy ordered the Kittichai pad thai.

We ordered a side of pineapple fried rice.

And my mom ordered the Chili-smoked hanger steak in green curry, and that was delicious. The meat was nice and tender and the sauce was excellent.

For dessert we shared the banana spring rolls with coffee ice cream . They definitely get points for presentation!

Even though we already had dessert at the restaurant, Mandy made plans to take us downtown to a dessert place called ChikaLicious. It's a tiny little place run by a little Japanese lady who study in France. It's definitely the fanciest dessert place I've ever been to. My mom ordered an iced coffee and it came with espresso ice cubes. We did the prix fixe, where you get an amuse-bouche (like an appetizer to the dessert), a choice of dessert and petits fours. I can't remember exactly what the amuse-bouche was - it was a honey flavored something with a berry sauce. In any case it was delicious.

There's the owner/chef, Chika, putting together one of our desserts. It was amazing what they were able to whip up in such a tight space.

Mandy had ordered something with rhubarb topped with ice cream. We watched the assistant chef melt it a bit with a hand torch.

I had ordered a mango tartar with ice cream and a ginger cookie.

My mom ordered the Fromage Blanc Island "Cheese Cake". It's not what you would think of when you hear cheese cake. The consistency is totally different and actually tastes more like cheese than cake - no cream cheese in this cheese cake!

And, as if that wasn't enough dessert, that was followed by the petits fours. There were chocolate truffles on the right and in the back are coconut covered marshmallows.

It's definitely on the pricier side, but the food was delicious. A nice place if you're looking for something a bit fancier. Then across the street the chef has another store, their Dessert Club, where they sell various desserts and baked goods. I felt bad that Phil didn't get to join in on the festivities, even though it was Mother's Day, so I bought him some cookies - the Situation and the Situation Dark.

The Situation (left) had pretzels and corn chips in it, and the Situation Dark (right) had pretzels and caramel corn. They reminded me of the compost cookies they make at Momo Fuku.