paulette macarons and umami burger

Paulette Macarons was alright. Maybe I've hyped it up in my mind to be this great thing. Don't get me wrong, the macarons were pretty good, but if I'm going to pay $10.60 for 6 cookies... the flavors on the macarons were not mindblowing, and the crust on the Sicilian Pistachio was way too thick (and I couldn't taste any distinctive pistachio flavor). I do, however, love a good macaron and shortly thereafter, I had a Raspberry which I think was my favorite. The crust was oh-so-thin and the flavor was very sweet but tasty. After the initial crunch, the crust melted away into the gooey cookie and raspberry jam filling, blurring the line between cookie and filling. As far as macarons go, I liked it but I think maybe the big problem I had with the cookies on whole is that they were too sweet and that overpowered any flavor that the cookie should have emoted.

I also had:

*Chocolate ~ which had Cacao nibs on it! What a great idea! This was a very very chocolatey cookie, I guess I don't know what I was expecting but it was very un-macaron like to me. Nonetheless it was #2 in my favorites to the Raspberry one.

*Madagascar Vanilla ~ Too strong of a vanilla flavor, I wasn't a huge fan. It almost tasted artificial

*Violet Cassis ~ Slightly floral and fruity, very sweet.

*Coconut ~ The top cookie was covered in little bits of coconut and the filling had coconut in it as well. Very tasty, I liked the texture of the coconut, reminded me of a coconut cake.

This shows: Coconut, Raspberry, Caribbean Chocolate, Violet Cassis, Madagascar Vanilla, Sicilian Pistachio.

After macarons galore, I met with Rachel and she took me to Umami Burger! MMMmmmmMMMMM it was so good!!!!! I have to say, that was the best burger I've ever had in my life. On my square plate sat a 3/4" thick patty with a perfectly semi-circle bun sitting on top. It was so cute. I opened it up to look at what was inside my classic Umami Burger and there was a melted-then-cooled round of crispy grated cheese, a fat (sundried?) tomato, and a shitake mushroom. It was a flavor like no burger before - do they put dashi in the meat or something?? It was so good I can't even describe. Flavor explosion, all the tastes coming together for a beautiful beautiful burger. We also got tempura onion rings which also had a wonderfully unique taste to them - the only complaint was that there were only 4, but they were crispy, airy crust, substantial taste and size. Yum. A great lunch with Ms. H - thank you so much for lunch Rachel!

(sorry no pix!)