New York City Sweets- Max Brenner
Today's topic will be on Max Brenner. Max Brenner is advertised as a restaurant that serves lunch and dinner, but is mostly known for its chocolate. It began as a chocolate shop in Israel created by two men, Max Fichtman and Oded Brenner, around 1996. Later, Max Fichtman left, leaving Oded Brenner to handle things. This is the bald headed face you will usually see in the restaurant,whose public name is a combination belonging to two seperate individuals.
Max Brenner was a place I heard of from my friend, who told me," they have good but expensive chocolate", and the restaurant was rather fancy. Well, with me having the sweet tooth that I have, and enjoying the decadence of fancy things, I made a vow to go to this place, and take her with me. (She went twice before, so it was her third trip there.) There are two locations in New York, though only one seems to be listed on the official website. We went to the one in Union Square, which was quite spacious. The other address is on this list, a site stating their products are Kosher.
When we went, it was around the afternoon, so we had to wait about five minutes before we were seated. When we sat down, we were placed around the back, where we got a rather nice view of most of the restaurant. Now, my younger brother also came that day, and as I was about to order food, he and my friend voted against it since they already ate. I, on the other hand, held my appetite for lunch that day and didn't have any food beforehand, but I was like, "What the heck? Might as well indulge and have dessert for lunch; it's not something I do everyday." I ended up purchasing a Strawberry White Chocolate Truffle drink, which was so good! (However, since it was a specialty and not a fountain drink, you don't get refills.) We decided to all order one big dessert, which resulted in buying a concoction called," Chocolate Pizza." This being my first time of ever hearing about a Chocolate Pizza, we decided to buy a pie with roasted marshmallows. In case you were wondering, it had no tomato sauce or anything else in a typical pizza. It gets its name cause it looks like a pizza; it has a breaded dough that is shaped as a round disk, and they splatter it with chocolate sauce and whatever toppings they have listed for it, which you can get however you want.
It was interesting, and rather tasty. The sauce was thick and a tad sharp, but easy on the stomach, and the marshmallows complimented it well. The pie wasn't a huge pie; each slice was about two inches, but I was full after two slices. XD I didn't regret it though, I made sure to devour every bite! Overall it is something I would recommend to try, even once.
In the end, as we were ready to leave, we learned of a strange policy the place had on tipping. A word of advice for those planning to visit; if you do not have a credit/debit card, and are only carrying cash, try to bring alot of singles and change. If you give the waiter cash that isn't the exact payment, they assume the change is their tip, so just be careful in that department.
(If you were wondering why I didn't understand this earlier, it was never stated in their shop anywhere for one, and in my history of visiting cafe's or restaurants, if I'm not in a shop that has a tipping jar, most restaurants I've attended expect you to leave the tip on your table before you leave, or tell them in advance before they take the check.)
Entrance of the restaurant.
Thanks for reading this far! All articles I got information from are listed below:
NY Magazine
Philly Article on Max Brenner
Pages:
Facebook (U.S.A)
