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The Cupping Room Cafe

New York, New York, United States

The Cupping Room Cafe

The Cupping Room is a restaurant located in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. I think it fits nicely in it's location, having an "artistic" feel - a brown stone with strange art on the walls. The food is really fresh and tastes good and the portions are large.

They have live music playing most evenings. I thought the music was quite appropriate, and not too loud.

Dress

Casual - shorts and a t-shirt are fine

Cost

Entrees are around $20

Service

Our server was very friendly, and went out of his way to bring me my sweater when I forgot it at the restaurant and had already walked down half a block.

Reservations

I'm not sure if they take reservations, but the restaurant was not full when we arrived on a Saturday evening.

Items Ordered

Bread Basket

Bread Basket

The bread basket consisted of mostly toasted pita. Instead of the usual butter, there was a small bowl of olive tapanade and a small bowl of a spicy tomato salsa.

Middle Eastern Platter

Middle Eastern Platter

The Middle Eastern platter came with more pitas, a chopped cucumber and tomato salad, and two heaps of hummus and babaganoush (and eggplant and Tahini mix). Everything was pretty good.

Poached Salmon

Poached Salmon

All entrees come with an appetizer salad and your choice of dressing. The salad was mostly lettuce, with some tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and alfalfa. Depending on the dressing it was a pretty good salad. I enjoyed the lemon thyme dressing.

All the entrees ordered at our table also came with a variety of fresh vegetables. I couldn't believe how delicious and fresh they tasted, even though they didn't seem to have anything on them.

The risotto tasted like a mostly plain brown rice, which wasn't bad. The salmon was OK. It didn't have much flavor on it's own, and although I love cucumber yogurt sauce, it wouldn't be my first choice to have with salmon - but I did love the sauce.

Grilled Pork Chops

Grilled Pork Chops

This entree also came with salad and vegetables. The spicy sauce came on the side, which was a good thing, because it was spicy! It was quite good, but you don't want to put too much on there. The garlic mashed potatoes were creamy and very good as garlic mashed potatoes usually are.

The pork was fairly tasty - there was a lot of fat, which can be either a good thing or a bad thing. Although the two pieces of pork looked quite large, they were mostly bone.