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I’m putting my Parisian vacation experience on pause for now, to bring us back to NYC in a more current time setting. Scenes from different rooms On Thursday, June 24th, I attended the 4th Annual NYC Food Film Festival: Brad Farmerie’s Southeast Street Food Asian Market at the Astor Center. It’s an food event featuring dishes [...]
Taken place on January 3, 2010.
Continuing on the Sunday food fest with Hagan (started with brunch at Public), I joined him later on the afternoon at Luke’s Lobster. If you have read Hagan’s introduction about this stop earlier, I have indeed told him that I’m probably the last NYC-based food blogger who’s eaten their lobster roll. I know, I hang my head in shame. I had my reluctance since the Interwebs were inundated with hype that are either true or false. For example, Porchetta had glowing reviews from many different bloggers and a few respected food journalists when it opened within its first week but I didn’t love it so much, hence my reasoning of holding back from trying Luke’s. After lamenting from the losses of Pastry Chef Pichet Ong’s P*Ong and Batch that was located in West Village, I have never felt happier when I read that he’s opening again in the East Village, named Spot.
I have been to both P*Ong (review here but I’m warning you the photos aren’t that great back then) and Batch (went there twice – here’s the photos I went a few weeks before it closed) and it is a hybrid of the former two places. The minimalist interior and plated desserts reminds me of P*Ong while the baked goods and the use of edible glitter reminds me of Batch.
Taken place on October 5, 2009.
Back when Motorino (the East Village location) started to serve lunch, I asked Giulia if we can meet up and try the pizza that everyone was talking about. I missed out on the opening week when dinner was served. But then again, I’d rather stick with the serene atmosphere that isn’t crushed by a ton of people who eat there after work and give the pizzeria some time to work out their kinks – service or the expensive brick oven that’s left behind from the former Una Pizza Napoletana.
We decided on sharing the $12 lunch prix fixe and added an extra pizza, getting some healthy greens, the mixed salad to balance out the carbs from the pizza we’re about to consume. A large pile of fresh, tender leafy greens lightly dressed in vinaigrette was quite welcoming for us. Courtesy of Cook.Eat.Drink.Live; event photo For the die hard foodies who reside in the NYC area, Cook.Eat.Drink.Live Food Festival returns for its third year. It’s an interactive holiday themed event that showcases new food products, celebrity chefs, wineries, cocktails, cookbook authors, mixologists, and popular restaurants (list of them here). In addition to the tastings (see [...] Waayy back on August 26th (yeah, I know I’m absurdly behind), I met up with Gordon, for a potential outing to eat one of Big Gay Ice Cream Truck‘s creations. Problem for that particular date, if you follow BGICT’s Twitter, he didn’t make it to Union Square within my lunch hour because of mechanical issues with his truck. A bit disappointed, I resorted to think of somewhere else to have ice cream that none of us (as in me, Gordon, and my friend Giulia) had and it’s close to Union Square, I thought of Stogo. Frankly, I’m not a fan of vegan ice cream. It sounds like an oxymoron – ice cream that doesn’t contain dairy. But I thought, “what the heck, try it once and move on if it doesn’t work out.”
By the time we walked over to Stogo, I’m at a loss as to what to get. Frankly, I’m hesitant to get anything just because I wouldn’t call this ice cream since it lacks dairy and without dairy, it doesn’t have that wonderful creaminess that I love in ice cream.
Gordon chose the creamsicle. It’s nicely balanced with the orange and cream flavors. It tastes quite healthy after sampling a little spoon – and admittedly, a bit icy.
Originally taken place on July 3, 2009. The first part is from Ssam Bar’s prix fixe lunch (it started with the beef tendon dish).
I didn’t have the intention of stuffing my face with a ton of Momofuku food that day…
But Seungmi was hungry and wanted something to eat. I was presuming Helen was coming downtown from work and Seungmi never went to any of the Momofuku places, I might as well introduce her to the “lighter” fare of Momofuku Milk Bar & Bakery“>Milk Bar. When I looked up at the chalkboard, near the register, I noticed they might be selling a burnt honey and mustard croissant. Sounds tasty…
Seungmi ordered the Volcano. Yes, that large pastry puck of potato puree and Benton’s cheese. I told her it would be tastier if she added some sriracha sauce to add some interesting dimension to this dense, sorta one-noted savory pastry. She agreed it tasted better. She’s happy and pretty stuffed that she saved the uneaten remnants for Helen.
I’m putting my HK/China posts on the back burner for now since I’m eating out NYC a bit more since it’s SUMMER here. If you’re anticipating the HK/China posts, just hang on for a bit. Sorry.
Back on June 11th, I had lunch at Marea, after reading positive reviews on this place. I like seafood and thankfully, I’m not allergic to them anymore. (I know weird, right?) So, I hauled my butt over and tried their tasting menu, which is four courses but you pick your own from the menu.
I’m not going into depth since I’m waay behind blogging, I’ll succinctly say Marea is a very good seafood-centric restaurant. You can’t go wrong with pastas since Chef Michael White is great at making tender strands of noodles and it’s oversauced. If you want the break down of each dish, go to my set. It’s not Le Bernardin-level seafood but it’s close to it. It’s been a loong time since I’ve seen any of my friends because of my mom’s hospitalization a few weeks earlier and prepping for my upcoming vacation. Julie commented on my blog recently wanted to see me before I’m leaving NYC, I made time last Friday to have dinner with her at 6:30. Almost by default, I’ve brought Helen along because she’s out from work early and can accompany for pre-dinner. (What I mean by “pre-dinner” is consuming food right before dinner just to kill time.) It was a warm (finally) evening, Helen and I wanted ice cream. We thought of getting coffee but creamy, frozen dairy trumps caffeine during the later hours of the day. Anyway, we took the subway down to Momofuku Milk Bar & Bakery. Yes, I know most of your are thinking this place is overrated but I like this place (implicitly, the Momofuku empire) a lot.
When we arrived there, I looked up at the menu boards and spotted the “Coming Soon” section, indicating the possible existence of Arnold Palmer Tea Cake and Cookie Cookie Dough. My eyes were wide open and my mind screamed, “I WANT.” But going back to earth, I’ve made up my mind about getting the Bavarian cream soft serve with banana crumble topping and Helen wanted the chocolate donut soft serve. [Continuing on from the evening portion with Patrick. If you haven't read the first part, please do so (click here). I know I'm doing this at a painfully slow pace but uh, stuff is happening in life that's slowing me down from updating. Sorry.] If any of you ever meet Patrick in person, he tells you two things. No. Make it three: (1) he’s vegetarian but loooves cheese, (2) he needs to eat a lot (like a minimum of 4,000 calories) before he withers away (lucky him), and (3) he loves tea. I covered fact number one at Hearth, fact number two is supplemented with my food gifts to him (Mitzy’s macarons from Tafu, Bouchon Bakery’s peanut butter cup, and Momofuku Milk Bar’s cookies) and whatever he ate earlier in the day, and now I’m taking care of number 3. Since that evening was really cold and ridiculously windy, we seek refuge to the nearest tea house from Hearth the my mind can come up with – Cha’an.
Going up a flight of narrow stairs from the entrance, it felt like we were transported to a different place. It’s zen-like yet casual and lots of conversations carried around in this small tea house. You can tell it’s very tea-focused when you flip through the pages of the menu. Especially with the worn pages of the world map indicating what region the tea comes from. Improve the web with Nofollow Reciprocity. |
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