17 Tuesday Jul 2012
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I had some lettuce scraps left over from lunch yesterday so I decided to blend them with some sour lemonade and make popsicles. Some of the leafy pulp floated to the top but they still tasted really good!
17 Tuesday Jul 2012
Posted in bucket list, New York, snacks, spicy
Má Pêche (Momofuku in midtown) surprised us with a delicious vegan entrée for lunch today. The rice cakes ($18) were served with green garlic purée and hon shimeji mushrooms. What could have ended up like a plate of mushy gnocchi turned out to be something totally mouth watering. Each rice cake was very gently toasted (or maybe fried) to give it an unexpected crispiness. The green garlic sauce was spicy and so good!
I want a Christina Tosi cake for my wedding… or at least my next birthday! I think the frosting-less cakes are so beautiful.
Of course I also bought some of her truffles. The new flavor is strawberry lemon cake. SO GOOD. Is it the powdered milk that makes them so irressistible?
15 Sunday Jul 2012
Posted in New York
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Just a reminder to anyone who is planning on going to New York Restaurant Week this summer: check in to a participating restaurant on foursquare and get $5 back on your Amex credit card. I can’t decide where I want to eat this year. Any suggestions?
14 Saturday Jul 2012
Scoboco just posted this image on his flickr account. Could it really be a first glimpse of M. Wells Dinette at MoMA PS1? First they said on the website that it would be ready in May, then June, now July! I called a MoMA PS1 a few days ago and the receptionist told me that they were hoping to open in July. By the looks of this photo, I’m starting to think she meant July 2013!
12 Thursday Jul 2012
Roses and thorns about Pok Pok Ny? I like to start with the thorns. There is only one tiny toilet for the entire restaurant and the wait is typically 7-8 people long. The part that bothered me is that when the employees at Pok Pok have to use the bathroom they cut in line and say to everyone, “I just need to check to make sure the bathroom is clean for you!” In line last night one employee did this and as he was walking out he was adjusting his fly, clearly having just urinated. Moments later another employee cut in front of everyone again saying, “I just need to check to make sure the bathroom is clean for you!” My friend told her, “Somebody just did that 30 seconds ago.” The employee looked embarrassed, as it was apparent that we had caught on to their system. Pok Pok: rent some Porta-Johns.
The food was good but nothing was so memorable that I would actually go to Redhook again for it. In fact there was one “Vietnamese” style catfish over vermicelli dish that was covered in dill (I wonder if it was really pak chee lao) and it reminded me of a foul Slavic dish of carp with dill.
The papaya salad with salted black crab could have been a little spicier.
I felt kind of swindled after my Singha slushy arrived. The server omitted the part about it basically being a bottle of beer that was left in a freezer for too long. She pointed to a fanciful battery-operated wooden barrel that twists back and forth, mixing ice and salt around the bottles to lower the temperature and turn the beer into slush.
The wings and the papaya salad with salted black crab are also available at Pok Pok Wing in the Lower East Side — so you won’t have to go all the way to Redhook to try those menu items.
Did I forget the roses? I think I’m just focusing on the thorns because I’m so sad I live in Queens, so far away from this amazing restaurant. It really is a special place with herbs and ingredients hard (impossible?) to find elsewhere in the city. I suppose it’s a case of sour grapes because I know I won’t be able to return for a while and taste their awesome food! PS: the staff is super friendly even though they tend to exude a certain Portlandia vibe.
Pok Pok Ny
127 Columbia St
Brooklyn NY
11 Wednesday Jul 2012
I went to Ladurée yesterday for the first time in weeks. I had been so upset about the discontinuation of the muguet (lily of the valley) flavor that I couldn’t bare even to pass by the storefront.
Overwhelmed with curiosity about the new summer flavors, I found myself in line once again trying to decide which of the new boxes I was going to buy for my collection. I chose this one in honor of the “Queen’s Diamond Jubilee”.
New flavors include basil & lime, strawberry & poppy (not poppyseed, but poppy petals), and the latest “incroyable” strawberry, with a guimauve (marshmallow) filling and a bit of sugar sprinkled on top.
28 Thursday Jun 2012
Two vendors were selling wax apples in Chinatown on Sunday. They were $5 per pound or $1 per piece. My friends (who had tasted them in Taiwan) told me they tasted like “water” or “nothing”. I thought they tasted like parsley.
The wax apples have little hairs at the bottom that remind me of pubic hair.
23 Saturday Jun 2012
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Yakitori Totto fries up tiny ice fish and serves them with a little green tea salt like French fries. The shirauo kara-age is only $6.
The green tea affogato was mochi, ice cream, and pon gashi drowned in matcha.
I want to go back again tonight for more delicious meat skewers. They had hatsu (chicken heart) and bonjiri (chicken tail), my favorite yakitori items.
Yakitori Totto
255 W 55th Street
New York NY 10019
18 Monday Jun 2012
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Manty (манты) are served stuffed with seasoned lamb and onions at Café Kashkar, a Uyghur restaurant in Brighton Beach just off the eastern end of the boardwalk. Freshly chopped celery leaves and dill are sprinkled on top of each dumpling.
You will find a little cruet of infused vinegar at each table.
This lagman (لەڭمەن) dish included stewed lamb and vegetables. It was so delicious I almost ordered a second plate.
If you get a chance, you will love this place. The new owners have updated the menu with pictures. The only downside is that the hot guys who used to work there no longer do… and there is a mechanical bird that chirps from time to time that drove me crazy.
Café Kashkar
1141 Brighton Beach Avenue
Brooklyn NY 11235
17 Sunday Jun 2012
Elmhurst’s Ayada restaurant is really proud of their raw shrimp salad. Their front window is wallpapered with New York Times articles that ranked it as one of the top 100 New York snacks. It is served with raw bitter melon slices, raw garlic, and a raw carrot salad in the middle.
I thought it was nice and spicy with a great brininess, but the sweetness was missing. No balance. I wonder if the chili and lime concoction that was covering each shrimp could have benefited from a little bit of jaggery.
I will probably never order it again and I give it 6 out of 10.
Ayada
77-08 Woodside Ave
Elmhurst NY 11373
(718) 424-0844
Chinook Olive 