A General Chinese Tea Tasting Guide

Since Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching, the most common and traditional pairing is mooncakes served with hot tea to aid digestion. If you never had a mooncake, it’s a very dense confection that needs the hot tea to cut through its thick, rich texture while the tea can bring some of its own flavors to your [...]

Homemade Snow Skin Mooncakes (冰皮月饼)

I’m continuing my tradition of making my own mooncakes for myself and my family. (Here is last year’s mooncakes post.) The two main reasons why I’m making my own mooncakes is I know what the heck is in them (especially, I’m hearing/reading a lot of preservatives and odd things are getting into [...]

Very Good Food at the U.S. Open’s Tennis Center

U.S. Open’s grounds

Whenever I think sports venue or stadium food, I think the typical hot dog, burger or any other mediocre fast food (with a high price tag) while watching the über talented athletes like Serena Williams or Rafa Nadal, grunting, running around the court, and swinging their racquets exponentially better [...]

Ice Cream, Chocolates and Cookies: Chozen Ice Cream, Valrhona, Jin Patisserie, and Alégio’s Claudio Corallo

Note: This is a general post all about sweets I’ve eaten within the past several weeks just to catch up before my grad school schedule gets in the way…

Trio of Chozen ice cream flavors

Several weeks ago when we’re all suffering (in New York City, at least) from the blistering heat. [...]

Red Boat Fish Sauce – Delicious Artisan Fish Sauce

Red Boat Fish Sauce with dried large scallops and dried shiitake mushrooms

All my life, I have tried and eaten many different Chinese dishes cooked with fish sauce ever since I was a kid. To tell you the truth, I never wanted to be in the same kitchen when my parents cooks [...]

Le Creuset Cookware – Beautiful, Versatile Cookware

Le Creuset 5-1/2 Quart Round French Oven with Stewed duck with taro (芋頭燉鴨)

I’ve been recently obsessed with Le Creuset‘s cookware. I love companies that have a long heritage of making great products and this is one of them. Le Creuset started in 1925 and able to make cast iron versatile by [...]

Recap of Meatopia 2011

Burning in the hot sun; Views of Downtown Manhattan & Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge

Yesterday at Meatopia 2011, was literally the hottest event I’ve ever attended. Temperatures in New York City was in the high 90s, feeling like 100 and being surrounded with the attendees and have burning coals and smokers nearby [...]

Num Pang: Creative Asian-influenced Sandwiches in Midtown

Sign at the front and Interior, graffiti wall

You, my dear readers, may or may not know about my love for Cambodian-influenced sandwiches (called num pang). It all started way back in 2007 when I ate from the (sadly) closed Lower East Side restaurant Kampuchea. Coincidentally enough, one of the chefs of [...]

Lunch at Kin Shop

Back when a good friend of mine came back from her trip to Asia, I joined her, her husband and one of my best friends to Kin Shop for lunch.

Interior shots

As everyone in town is talking and writing about this restaurant, it’s busy. By the time I arrived around 1 [...]