Katie "The Great" I.'s Profile

I was a bit taken aback when I ordered a cappuccino and realized that for my $4 bucks, 8oz is pretty damn tiny. But the thing is, this coffee is damn good. I don't know if its the beans, or the fancy coffee machine, or what, but consistently awesome coffee every time. I tend to drink my coffee with soymilk, which I find gets burnt a lot of the time ( looking at you, Starbucks), but this place manages to never burn it.  Lots of foam on the cappuccino too and in a pretty swirly pattern. Yay!

I call them, say I need a car, a minute later a car materializes at my door and takes me from point A to point B. If you are in the city or airport, you can always call them to see if a car is in the area and they'll send it over if so. Saves you dealing with yellow cabs. What more do you want?

I'm hooked on this place. They were pretty mediocre when the place first opened, but I gave them another try and now they are a lot tastier. I'm partial to the duck dumplings. I miss the fried pork dumplings though. They took away their fryer, which is BLASPHEMOUS. Do you hear me, lords of Rickshaw? BLASPHEMY.  Fried up they were really tasty but certainly not healthy and with everyone becoming more health conscious and posting calories blahblahblah bye fryer :(

The chocolate dumpling is good and at $1.75 each for a tiny little thing, a bit too pricey (for what it is) to buy more then one. Which is actually a good thing or else I'd gorge myself on them.

This was the first time I ever got my nails done, usually I just do them myself. But I had an event to go to, and figured why not do the whole girly thing for once? It was cheap enough.  But ugh. The lady spent the ENTIRE time she was doing my nails jabbering away on the phone about inane nonsense. So inane I remember her damned conversation, because it melted my brain. She was chatting away about how she was going to the club with some guy and how her friend was gonna come and how it awesome it would be for him to have two asian girls on his arm, like she is some sort of freakin' novelty or something. She kept repeating this, to make her point to her buddy on the phone. WHATEVER LADY.  
I digress.
The nail polish they used was the same cheap crap I have in my nail polish collection, and I never spend more then $3 on a bottle of nail polish. I recognized the brand. Save your money and your brain and  just buy the nail polish in CVS like I did.

Figuring it would be good because its always packed, I wandered into the Tea Lounge. The guy behind the counter ( barista? waiter? tea-dude?) asks what I want.  
Me:" I want a cup of green tea."
Him: What kind? *hands me extensive list*
Me: * looks over list* I'll take a cup of such-and-such tea
Him: You can only buy that one by the pot
Me: huh?
Him: We only have these 2 flavors available.
Me: ....  thanks for making me feel like a jerk.Why didn't you just SAY that?  

I didn't actually say that last line, because I'm a bit timid and at the time throughly confused by the whole episode. In short, I don't appreciate their attitude or their prices. Ain't worth it.

This is my favorite Ethiopian restaurant ever. I have yet to find a better one in NYC and whenever I'm in Portland I always have to come here. Technically its Eritrean food, but the menu is the same as any Ethiopian place ( I can't tell the difference). What makes this place so good is they don't dumb down their food for Americans. They make it spicy and authentic and its awesome. I'm sick of how bland and mild the other ethiopian restaurants I've been to are, just 'cause the rest of my country is a wuss doesn't mean I am!

The fiery lamb/beef/chicken stew is my personal fav. GO HERE.

I'm a little mixed on this place. I'm not really a spa kind of girl, but I've gotten gift certificates for Lia Schorr a couple of times so who am I to turn it down? But I found myself very uncomfortable in this place. They have a round robin set up where one technician goes from room to room and treats multiple people at once, so you are stuck sitting there alot of the time. Its all very rushed. I've had both Alla and Eugina, and both are very skilled at extracting clogged pores and my skin looks awesome when its through. BUT, they tend to make comments that I don't appreciate. One of them, while rubbing down my face, made a comment about my  upper lip fuzz( "You should do something about that, it doesn't look good") which just made me totally paranoid and self conscience for the rest of my life because maybe the rest of the world had noticed it and not just the lady looking at my pores under the bright light ( I was between waxes, sue me!).

So over all , I dunno. Maybe the spa experience is meant to be uncomfortable and make me  paranoid. But its nice to be free of clogged pores for a few days.

The problem with this place is I go up and order my mocha, and every time they forget my drink so I am stuck standing there under the glowing chili pepper light looking like an asshole until the barista turns around and is like  "yes?" and then I'm like " I ordered a mocha 20 minutes ago.

Now the one good thing about this is they feel sorry for me and give me a "good for a free drink" coupon for next time.Which I use, and they forget my drink again, and I get another coupon. Seriously, I once got 4 days straight of free starbucks from free coupons alone

But I don't get why they always forget my simple 'mocha' and yet some jerk behind me who orders something like a "white chocolate unsweetened mochalottachino half decaf triple shot with no whip" gets their drink no problem.

I saw Dr. Iyer in order to have a mole removed. It was quick, painless and left no scarring. He was super nice and gentle. Coworkers of mine, who recommended NYDG, also reported good experiences here.  
They took my insurance, so I am happy !

The good news - this place did an awesome job.
The bad news- this place did an awesome job and now I'm going to have to pay $125 for a haircut? Damn.

I went to Tammy who cut my hair exactly how I envisioned it and managed to tame my poofy hair. I can wear it down now with no maintenance for the first time in my life.

They give you a good scalp rub at this place too. and their shampoo smells so good, very piney.