Otto - GelOtto & Pizza

We thought we were invincible. We had by either sheer luck or too much persistence managed to fish out a lot of kate spade goodies, in relative good shape, for very little moolah and were very pleased with ourselves. If we could pack so much shopping in such a short time, we rationalized, what's a short walk from Century 21 to the village for pizza and some oddly flavored ice cream? What's wrong with strolling in the sun, with no sunblock on a 90 degree day? We are from the tropics and therefore had a natural immunity to sweltering heat, or so we thought.
Just so you know, we did manage to get to Washington Square Park and did locate Otto. We also ate there. But the hour long walk was anything but short, and the initial excitement about trying olive oil gelato for the first time had died down somewhere between tribeca and soho. By the time we stumbled into the restaurant, thoroughly dehydrated and very sweaty at 4 pm we just wanted to crash into the chairs and be fed as quickly as possible.
It is under this premise that Ruoying and I tried the pizza and pasta at Otto, the most affordable Mario Batali-related establishment in the city. I had very inexplicably imagined the restaurant to be in a tiny and quaint cornershop, but it was pretty cavernous and comfortably dark. While it was extremely quiet at 4 pm, I can imagine it being a bustling and jam packed place during more normal dining hours. We ordered quickly and played safe on our choices. At 4pm, we really didn't need added grief if the pizza lardo (lard on bread, dad would kill to try this) didn't come up to our expectations. The server and efficient server, as if sensing our hunger (which is pretty apparent, it being 4 pm for lunch and all) served us rather quickly and plied us with bread and numerous refills of water. We tried the penne alla norma, very al dente, which is the way I like it but less to Ruoying's liking. But the eggplant was nicely done and Ruoying, normally averse to eggplant actually fought me to get to the last couple of eggplant bits on the plate. The ricotta also binded rest of the ingredients together well without being an overkill.. The pizza margherita was also very yummy with a thin crispy base. An afficionado of thick and chewy dough probably would not appreciate it so much however.
With our tummies sated and with us having sufficiently recovered from our unfortunate walk, we then contemplated our gelato choices. Pickings were mainly conventional save for the house specialty olive oil gelato. We chose that of course, as well as chocolate and the hazelnut flavors. The trio was quite a good balance, with the saltiness of the olive oil balancing the sweet nutty hazelnut flavor. The chocolate flavor was somehow less creamy and more sorbetty, and served as a palate cleanser of sorts. Oddly, I was a little disappointed by the olive oil gelato, i had imagined it to be a putrid green or yellow and tasting of solidified evoo. Silly me, Mario Batali and crew obviously have a more understated and sophisticated palate than that! After all, he is an Iron Chef..
The wine selection at Otto is enormous and given its surprising affordability, I can't wait to bring Peishan there when she's in town again =)


p.s.: I thought i saw susan sarandon while in the bathroom. She had curly hair and a nice mellow voice. I was probably mistakened, but after spotting johnny depp and spiderman in the past 2 wks, I wouldn't be surprised if it was her too... i love the cheap thrill of celeb spotting, don't you?
Otto
1 Fifth Ave (on 8th St)

Chinese Mirch

My PM managed to wheedle a meal out of my boss, for not informing us of his top secret island wedding and even worst, not bringing back some traditional Indian sweets to celebrate. So off we went to Curry Hill for a large and joyous meal to celebrate the occasion.
My boss chose to bring us to lunch at Chinese Mirch, a restaurant on Curry Hill specialising in Indian-Chinese food. The idea of marrying Chinese food with Indian spices, according to a blurb on the front page of the menu, was a brainchild of an early Chinese immigrant with the most mundane of names, someone called Yong Ah Huat (something like that) who arrived in the India, hankering for some hometown food hundreds of years ago. Hence, he introduced chinese food to India and it had apparently thrived in the subcontinent ever since. Unfortunately, a restaurant dishing out Indian-Chinese food hardly sounds exotic enough to people who grew up eating both ethnic cuisines, therefore I've never had it before. Still the popularity is not hard to imagine, given the universal appeal of Chinese food.
So how was the food? It was strange to me at first, because the scent and presentation was so Chinese, yet when you tasted it, there was not a doubt that it had been tampered with Indian spices and ways of cooking. We especially liked the Gobi Manchurian, which tasted more like Aloo Gobi than anything Chinese; the deep fried okra, dusted with paprika and crunchy like fries; and the complimentary dessert, a take on chinese sugared apples/yam/other fruit, with molten sugar poured atop deep fried wonton skin, with sesame seeds sprinkled liberally on top to provide extra oriental flavor. They really do a good job with their deep fried dishes.
But while my colleagues enjoyed the largely spicy entrees, I thought it was a shame that many of the dishes such as the chicken manchurian and the chili paneer came swimming in dark gloopy sauces. I know brown sauce, to many American Chinese food eaters, is a requisite component of a Chinese dish, but still the main ingredients would have had a better chance to shine with a drier finish than being brown-sauced to death. The only entrees i truly enjoyed was the spicy lamb with red, not brown sauce and a thoroughly chinese chicken dish, generously flavored with ginger, spring onions and tonnes of garlic.
So in the end, I liked the space, coolly decorated with some chinese accents including bamboo-print wallpaper and some lanterns, but was mainly ambivalent about the food. Its great fun to try a new cuisine, but subjectively speaking, the sum of parts was not any greater than the separate parts. I'll take a dosa over manchurian chicken anytime.

Chinese Mirch
120 Lexington Ave (28th St)

We ate local

Malaysian food that is...
Its funny how I do not hunger for Singapore/Malaysian food for about half a year, and the moment I eat it once, I need to get my fix on a weekly basis. Its not a very healthy addiction, but luckily in Manhattan, with a shocking abundance of Malaysian restaurants, its easily fed.
Yanru and I met up on Saturday to get Rosie a housewarming gift. Brunch however, was first on our minds, with the gift being more of an afterthought. Yanru had initially suggested crepes and coffee at cafe le gamin in east village, but I made her "reconsider her suggestion " and go to Sanur (aka New Indonesia & Malaysia Restaurant) after she bragged about the cheap and good meal at Sanur she had on thursday night, complete with nonya kueh and pandan cake for dessert and breakfast the morning after. So we decided to get our butts out of our apartments early to grab some good old local breakfast, preferably fried beehoon drenched in vegetable curry.
Unfortunately, people in Chinatown eat breakfast a lot earlier than we do and by the time we got to Sanur, no later than 11 am too, the bee hoon was gone... =( It was dirt cheap too at $1.75.... I was muy upset...
We drowned our sorrows instead by downing cheap coffee and eating too much nonya pastries and other stuff. I forgot to take pictures but we ate: lor mai kai, curry puffs, some nasi kuning thingy with ikan bilis, a glutinous rice kueh with gula melaka, and kueh lapis (the colorful one, not the indonesian type) With all that glutinous rice we had, we were quickly sated. Still, I'm hankering for the beehoon that had escaped from my gluttonous clutches and will probably be back soon to get my hands on it.
p.s. the curry puffs were really good, better than Old Chang Kee in fact, and travels very well.. And cheap, for $0.70/piece... convert tt back to SGD and its still comparable to OCK. The 2 I carried in my purse for a day made for a squashed but very tasty snack after being warmed in the oven.

Sanur
18 Doyers St (a very charming, winding street)

Pomaire

A danger one faces when dining around Times Square is picking the wrong places, places that are meant as tourist traps serving expensive and bland food in a cheesy environ where servers, beyond bringing food to the table, try their darndest selling you sparkling water and expensive bottles of wine. Thus, when we decided to eat on the infamous restaurant row on 46th st this weekend, I sifted through recommendations from friends, authoritative new york food blogs and review sites to weed out the duds and to shortlist some potential places. In the end, I picked Pomaire over Becco, for the great reviews it got and the prospect of trying a novel cuisine, Chilean to be exact. Also, the thought of the All You Can Eat pasta deal at Becco was far too allluring and a truly dangerous path to take for a carb fanatic such as I.
Pomaire, advertised blatantly as the only Chilean restaurant in Manhattan serves up some traditional Chilean alongside entrees, such as panfried salmon and steak, that would not look out of place in most new american restaurants. I cannot judge the authenticity of the food, this being my first Chilean meal, but everyone thought favorably of their entrees. Ceci admired the texture of her pan fried hake while Ruoying's combo of juicy ribs and warm mashed potato was full of flavor. I ordered one of the most traditional dish on the menu, the cazuela, or a chicken stew with root vegetables and rice and enjoyed it too, although it tasted too much like the chicken soup I cook at home and didn't merit the $17 price tag.
Appetizers were less successful, the tamale being too watery and the empanadas just normal. And desserts were quite a disaster. The Thousand Layered cake tasted stale, the merengue cake tasted like confectionery sugar and the papayas in syrup were just that, papayas in syrup. All were too sweet, and a real pity because if done properly, the desserts could have been a stellar end to the meal.
We did however, love the extra attentive service. The servers were funny, patient, and went the extra mile to 1) turn an order of 2 large empanadas to 5 small ones so that we could have individual empanadas and 2) to gallantly retrieve my root vegetables from the cazuela to prevent them from disintegrating in the broth and bringing my extra hot sauce to spice the broth up. They weren't overly pushy about selling overpriced drinks, but I thought they figured that we were an easy sell because Gerri's Dad was eager to try all their recommendations and they could have taken some liberty by recommending a pricier bottle of wine and pushing more desserts than we could handle. Then again, I could be overly cautious, this being Restaurant Row and all.
So overall, the meal was enjoyable although the food was only average and a tad expensive, truth to be told. The ambience was quaint but not too chintzy and the warm service redeemed whatever misgivings I had about the food. However, it will be a while before I go back as the quality of the food just didn't warrant the price tag. Still, big thanks to UNCLE & AUNTY for the wonderful meal!

Pomaire
371 W46th St (bet. 8th & 9th Ave)

Restorant Malaysia

Restorant Malaysia looks nondescript from the outside, tucked in the middle of a busy row of restaurants serving anything from taiwan beef noodles to foo chow fishballs. The shop front is narrow and the window was grimy from years of soot, soot created from the satay and stingray freshly barbeque-ed in the front of the restaurant. It is not a very attractive looking restaurant and you would walk right past it if you were not hankering for some authentic Malaysian grub, and Ruoying and I almost gave it a miss. Still, the lure of sambal kangkong and roti prata proved to be too much for two homesick Singaporeans and we walked in to find ourselves ordering way too much and with each bite, connecting what we see, eat and smell with events that happened long ago, linking each dish with places and faces we miss.
We shared a plate of hokkien fried noodles, malaysia styled; hakka style pearl noodles; bbq-ed stingray and finally a plate of sambal kangkong. The dishes were extremely flavorful, smelling of parfum de wok, the wok scent that you find at good zi-char places. The hokkien fried noodles reminded us of saturday lunches in Singapore, with Pa wielding the wok and cooking up enormous amounts of the same noodles in dark gooey sauce. The grilled stingray tasted like those at East Coast Park, plump, succulent and the perfect foil for the huge dish of sambal belacan that came with it. Ruoying was so excited to see the pickled green chillies that by the time we were done with dinner, we had eaten half a bowl of green chillies with our noodle dishes. We could have easily finished everything there, but great discipline restrained ourselves from becoming even bigger girls than we already are and brought most of the kangkong home.
Back home tody, we decided to complemented the kangkong, which by the way microwaves very well with homemade nasi lemak, fried egg and luncheon meat. Its strange how food ties people and places together, and the wave of nostalgia and the regret from being so far from home has not been so strong in a while. Maybe its a good thing that the restaurant's in Flushing and not anywhere closer and the Malaysian restaurants in Manhattan are not nearly as authentic, or else I might be flooded with homesickness everytime i visit!

Nougatine

It was a hot, sultry afternoon on the last week of May. The girls' blouses were damp by the time they reached Trump International Hotel and gratefully they ducked into the cool recesses of the towering building. The droning noise from the streets ceased as they entered the hotel's famous restaurant and were greeted by a trio of smiling hostesses. "Welcome to Jean-Georges. Your table is ready. "
Today, I played hooky from studying and with Ruoying, was set to enjoy 3 hours pretending to be a lady who lunch. Our destination, Nougatine, the casual dining space adjacent to Jean Georges, celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's flagship restaurant. While we couldn't afford to feast on caviar on coddled eggs, thanks to a welcome attempt to bring elegant dining to the masses, were able to enjoy a 3 course lunch for $24.07 each. Walking into the restaurant, we were brought into a cool and airy space that was Nougatine. The bright and clean room, along with powerful air-conditioning, helped cool us down as we contemplated the short menu, consisting of 2 choices for each of the 3 courses. We chose everything naturally, save for the pasta dish that neither one was willing to forgo the steak for.
The appetizers came soon after we finished our first rolls, which were cold but tasty as cold rolls went.
A pink watermelon gazpacho slid easily down the throat, occasionally surprising us with the sharpness coming from the chili mixed into the soup. A dish of a poached egg wobbling atop a bed of asparagus and shaved bacon bits on the hand was hearty and highlighted the sweetness of fresh and young asparagus perfectly.
Soon after, entrees were served. Both of us ordered the steak with ginger polenta and sauteed greens. The meat was flavorful but why did it remind us of chinese sauteed beef? Perhaps it was the ginger, too familiar to our Asian tastebuds. Still, the beef was nicely done despite the ginger overkill.
Desserts came next, two simply dishes, unfussy but not unsophisticated. The blueberry pie was sweet and tart, the fruit sauce further accentuated by a tinge of meyer lemon and a light vanilla ice cream flecked with vanilla bean. The white chocolate pot de creme with strawberry sorbet and a light chocolate mousse was light but rich at the same time, and the tartness of the fruit helped quell the queasiness from eating too much cream.
Too soon, lunch was over. While not a stunning meal, it was still a solid lunch and a welcome respite from the mundane life of a working lady and a student. Sated, we walked out of the hotel back into the crowded streets of New York, allowing the humid air to lull us into a dull drowsiness that the big meal had started for us...

Basta Pasta

In honor of Xinghong's graduation, we hit Basta Pasta for some Jap-Italian (Italianese, Jatalian) food to witness what the Japanese can do to classic Italian cuisine. While pan-asian fusion food is commonplace (foie gras wonton anyone?) and championed by many influential celebrity chefs in the city, Basta Pasta is quite the anomaly as it injects asian sensibilities into western cuisines without killing the italianness of its food. What do I mean? While you do see some Japanese ingredients in certain menu items and the portions are on the light side, most of the dishes remain true to form and very classically italian.
We started the meal with breadsticks, followed by bruschetta with a cheese spread before they finally brought out the bread basket stocked with 4 types of bread. Yup, 3 bread-related courses before the meal began in earnest. Luckily the entrees weren't too big.
I ordered spaghetti with tobiko roe and shiso leaf, the most blatantly Japanese inspired dish on the menu, and liked the buttery flavor of the sauce spiked with the slightly sharp taste of shiso. I also liked the texture of the roe with the firm pasta, although the roe for some reason was kind of sweet. I liked Gerri's spicy spaghetti dish too. The jalapeno taste was mild as you put it in your mouth but intensifies at the back of your mouth as you chew and swallow the noodles. Ruoying's roast duck was nicely rare and juicy and I liked XH's seabass too, although I can't remember too much about it. So entrees were generally well done.
Desserts were also a mix of classic Italian and Asian inspired. I liked XH's hefty slice of tiramisu , generously spiked with coffee and liqeur, a lot. Gerri's coconut panna cotta was so cool and smooth it slides right into your mouth, but we felt that the cantaloupe soup that the panna cotta was swimming in was a little too flavorful and distracted our attention from the mild coconut flavor. I had houji tea icecream, which tastes much like usual green tea icecream, but with a denser and smokier flavor.
We really liked the food and had fun watching the chefs cook in the open-concept kitchen. What we didn't really understand about the restaurant though was the space, which felt very make-shift. With the pictures on the walls and the exposed ceiling, we felt as though the restaurant space could have been an art gallery in the day and converted into the dining room in the evenings by pulling a couple of table and chairs together. Still, it was a comfortable enough room and a great meal to round off a school year.

yeah! shanghai

The Mexicans have their tamales, the Italians raviolis, the Eastern Europeans their pierogis, and of course, the Chinese have dumplings in all shapes and forms. The cantonese have 20 different types of dumplings come dim sum time, while the northerners slurp theirs down by the dozens. And for the shanghainese, nothing but soup dumplings is good enough.
While the soup dumplings at yeah shanghai are not as good as those I've eaten in China and Singapore, they rank among the best in nyc's chinatown. Even though they are not as hefty as the ones at Joe's shanghai, they are a little more refine and the skin quite a bit thinner and not as chewy. The pork is also lean and fresh, which makes the soup residing in the dumpling tasty but not too oily. I once ate 16 dumplings all by myself in Shanghai, but since I eat with people here, I had to restrain myself to two. The act of eating soup dumpling the proper way is so stressful, from transferring it from the bamboo steamer to your spoon gingerly to avoid poking through the delicate skin and losing all tt juicy goodness, to biting slowly and sipping the soup carefully out of the dumpling so that 1) the dumpling will not explode on your and 2) you will not scald your tongue. Given the stress level, i guess that two is manageable. Of course, since you want to eat the dumplings while they're piping hot, its a good idea to share an order instead of hogging the steamer all to yourself.
Besides soup dumplings, the other menu items are also worth ordering, especially the specials listed on the chalkboard, written in Mandarin, for those in the know or who are just lucky enough to know Mandarin. That night, 6 of us had, besides dumplings, fried spinach, a slightly fishy but light fish soup, Tong-Po Pork and a huge plate of crabs with rice cakes. The Tong-Po pork was a special order by Ruoying, who had seen another table of diners order it a couple months ago. She was determined to have it this time, and we were happy to oblige. Who could resist a huge slab of fatty pork braised until the skin and fats literally melt in your mouth? The pork comes with steamed plain buns, so stuff some pork in the bun and you have made yourself the asian variant of hamburger.
The crabs with rice cakes is also worth a mention, even if we didn't really enjoy it. It was tasty no doubt, and the crabs were fat and full of roe. Unfortunately, we had anticipated shredded crab stir-fried into the rice cakes, instead of pieces of crab still in its shell sitting atop a mound of rice cakes and minced pork fried in a thick savory sauce. For our very lazy group, it was too much work to get the meat out of the crab, but if you love the challenge of sucking every ounce of meat stuck in the leg, I urge you to order that dish and eat it to your heart's delight. It is afterall, only $12 dollars. That was the price i paid for my crabcake salad in Maryland for a miserable crabcake. Ever wondered how the Chinese did it with their cheap groceries??

Kunjip

For better or for worse, koreanfever has swept into the rest of Asia since the earlier part of the century and remains extremely strong. I unabashedly proclaim myself a k-drama fan and devour every single dvd set I can get my hands on, happily forgoing sleep and human interaction for the sake of finishing up an episode or five. The most memorable one I've seen so far, and the one that has ruoying wasting away on the couch watching 15 hours non-stop has been Dae Jang Geum. The best part about the show for me, besides the exhibition of office politics in its finest and the epic love story that spans 65 episodes, must be the food. platters and platters of food, from the identifiable congee and bibimbap to the exotic, all fit for a king on celluloid...
so from the land of

May i present to you (cue Dae Jang Geum theme song) dinner, K-style! (aka commoner style, we obviously do not live on the emperor's budget and don't have the great fortune of eating special golden roosters and bear paws and what not...

Yanru's friends are on their grand graduation trip, are spending some time in new york, and would like to try food not easily found in Singapore. It is difficult to find a good korean restaurant in Singapore even though there are more popping out now, with the recent interest in everything that starts with a K. The couple I've been to when I was home left me with a bad taste in my mouth and were too expensive given what they had served up. Y's friends were therefore game to have dinner in manhattan's ktown, and so we made plans to meet up at Kunjip at 7pm.

I love korean food because I'm a big fan of spicy stews, and kunjip does a great job with its spicy chigaes. Well besides being spicy, I guess Korean food can be characterized as a little on the sweet side, and very vege-centric, although we do identify Korean food with BBQ. Kunjip, with its huge menu spanning from vegetarian bibimbaps to spam casserole is a great place to try the full spectrum of basic Korean food. Lastly, walk past kunjip at dinnertime on any day, and you will see a line. There was a line at 6:45 when I got there, and a even longer one at 9 pm, when we left... What instills more confidence than seeing a crowd outside your restaurant of choice? Well, a crowd of native diners, and there were plenty of Koreans waiting in line with us as well, so we were in good hands.

A korean meal always starts off with some side dishes (ban chan), and if you're not too careful, you end up snacking too much and becoming full even before your entree gets here. Kunjip serves up a mean bubbly pot of steamed egg custard, somewhat akin to chawanmushi but without the peripherals and not quite as smooth. Still it's silky and goes down well with kimchi and other preserved veges. The secret must be the hotpot in which it is cooked and served in. Be careful not to be overzealous and burn your tongue while you're at it (which I of course did)

Other stuff we ate:

Seafood pa jeon, the pancake , while a little soggy in the middle, was well-received, and was our only in-your-face deep fried and therefore unhealthy dish.

Sundubu chigae and deon jang chigae: Spicy tofu and spicy miso stews, Sundubu is my all-time favorite korean dish. I also love the fact that tofu = dubu and ma po tofu = mabodubu in korean =)

Nakji Bokum (fried squid in red sauce).. yum yum yum yum yum. The udon that comes with it sops up the go chu jang sauce so well...

A large saba simply broiled with salt... very healthy and tasty but not very photogenic. I think the saba dish was not as popular that night because it was the most tasteless dish, not in a bad way, but because everything else was heavily flavored. It might also be the fact that its just fish and not some unidentifiable korean dish, which would have been more fun to try =)

Last but not least, the piece de resistance, a spicy variation of Gal Bi Jim... Korean beef stew, extra spicy, quite sweet with meat that falls of the bones literally and melts in your mouth. Yanru was not feeling well that day and still couldn't stop eating it. I think its a keeper. Yes there's oil glistening in the photo, but what's a good dish without some healthful beef fats?? And spot the carrots? how's that for a well-balanced meal =)

Since 2004, when I fortuitiously crashed some friends' dinner gathering at Kunjip, I've faithfully returned more than a dozen times, and its been great so far. I've recommended this place to so many people and my roommates both love it too.

So the wait is a little long and service can be brusque, and when they set the food in front of you you feel compelled to scarf everything down in 15 minutes to allow other people still in line to have their turn at ordering, but for some culture and a great meal at under $20 in ktown, where the bakery half a block away is charging $6 for tea, its still my favorite midtown pick!

Kunjip

9 W 32rd St (between 5th and 6th Ave)

crabcakes and cheesecake

Its official... I am the size of a pregnant whale. Ever since Ruoying moved in for the summer two weeks ago, I have steadily been piling on the pounds... soon, I'll need a new wardrobe. Good thing summer sales are around the corner...
I was in Baltimore for 3 days on a conference and in 3 days i visited cheesecake factory twice... and of course loaded myself with a thick slice of cheesecake each time. I adore cheesecake factory! I know.... its a chain, quite like the applebees and olive gardens of the world... But it held good memories for me as a student, where it was our source for good bread, huge basins of pasta and the designated birthday cake supplier back in Chicago. I would say really good things about the place to my family and by the time Ruoying visited Chicago shortly after starting her freshman year, she had given such glowing reports of the restaurant that every family and friend were demanding to be brought there for lunch/dinner/cheesecake break... My sisters and cousins are equally enamored by the place and for our blowout Jay Chou/West Coast/Winter Break holiday, I remembered me choosing to stay where we were in San Francisco based on its proximity to the CAKE (tt's cheesecake factory's ticker! yah yah I'm a nerd) and I also remember us jumping around gleefully but unglamorously in the San Francisco branch, when our beeper finally started vibrating, signalling that after waiting for 90 minutes, there was finally a table open for the 5 of us. We had even bought a whole 7" strawberry cheesecake (349038475 calories) and dug our way through with 5 plastic forks in record time... fun memories those were, although my younger siblings and cousins probably had much higher metabolism rates than i had... sigh... Anyway, I was too disgusted by my lack of self-discipline in Baltimore to even take pictures and remind myself that I actually inhaled about 2000 calories with 2 teeny pieces of cake...
Besides that, I had an utterly unmemorable crabcake salad in a restaurant called J Paul's on Baltimore's inner harbor... Good view of the harbor, but you know what they say about the negative correlation between views and meal satisfaction... Despite not being a fan of crusteceans, I had to order crabcakes, they being Baltimore's proudest invention and contribution to the world... The salad was really not bad, the bibb lettuce was crunchy, but the salad dressing was probably storebought. And the crabcake... I dont think i've eaten enough to judge, but i guess it was fine, but again,I should have listened to my inner gourmet voice and gotten a burger instead.

Better luck next time, if I ever do head back to Baltimore again... Can the next conference be in Chicago please? I'll like some steak and a good slice of deep-dish pizza, thank you very much =)

Les sans culottes

"Do you want to go to yoga with me on friday?" Rosie asked. "Sure, but only if we go out for dinner after that" was my reply... so on friday we had yoga, but my focus was more on the ensuing meal. No wonder my balance was a little off... Anyway, I had wanted to eat korean food but Rosie was more inclined towards something French, and having consulted with Andreea, decided to try les sans culottes, it being french, cheap and close enough from the gym. Besides Rosie and I, Andreea, Yanru and Ruoying also joined in for a night of over-eating.
At around 830, we walked into a busy room, and there wasn't a table large enough to fit the five of us. A couple sitting on the long banquette offered to move so that we could join two tables together, but luckily, it didn't take long before another couple left, leaving us enough room without having to trouble any other patrons into moving for us.
Le sans culottes has a really cheap pre-fixe menu. $22 for appetizers, entrees and dessert... what a deal! Of course the food wasn't very delicate, but its not a fancy shmancy kinda place anyway. So we had a good, hearty meal consisting of crudites, pate and sausage for appetizers, entrees of our choice (all huge platters, and pretty decently, if plainly cooked) and our choice of creme caramel or chocolate mousse.. Andreea broke her diet for dessert, but we all decided it was well worth it... Yanru had dinner before joining us, so she declined to have the whole meal and opted just to get dessert and helped herself to the ample appetizers on the table. More on Yanru's crepe later.
The appetizers were the most gimmicky I've had in a while. Instead of individual salads, we were given a huge basketful of vegetables and fruits, whole apples and tomatos, big slices of cantaloupe and a big chunk of cabbage... we didn't really know what to do with it, since raw cabbage isn't the most appetizing of vegetables. And the three foot sausages came draped on a cage like contraption, like a sausage tree... It looked a little curious looking, and we were slightly put off by the comically grotesque sight in the beginning, but once we got past that, and the thought that many others had handled the sausages with their bare hands before us, we had a lot of fun slicing off the parts we wanted to eat and watched the sausages get shorter and shorter as the night went on.
The entrees were ok, v. filling but nothing to wow about. Rosie complained about the mussels in her pasta being overcooked while there were too many bones in my trout. It tasted a little frozen too, but still pretty tasty.
Desserts were again simple, but pretty tasty. Again, 22 dollars... i will not complain tt there are only two choices of dessert, especially when one is my favorite flan. Yanru decided to get a more substantial dessert off the a la carte menu since she did not order dinner, and got a huge crepe filled with icecream... The owner of the restaurant jokingly brought her crepe out a lot earlier before he brought ours, because he said since she's been waiting patiently for us to finish our meals before getting her own food, its only fair that we should watch her eat now... And the best part about the crepe, besides it being thin warm, and filled with vanilla icecream? it was FREE!!! when was the last time you had something FREE?? the owner decided that Yanru deserved to have a crepe on the house, and he didn't charge her for it! definitely made our day =) So overall, an affordable, fun-filled night with great eating buddies. what more can a cheapskate glutton hope for?
Last curious point about the restaurant. apparently the name stand for "without underwear" and its supposed to have some kind of political connotations to it. If someone would enlighten me that would be very helpful!

Les sans culottes east
2nd Ave, between 57th and 58th st

gimme some dim sum!!

Last weekend, I went out for sunday tea canton style with walt, gerrie and ruoying at the Golden Bridge restaurant in Chinatown. I've never had trouble with the wait for dim sum on saturdays, but sunday, i surmise, is family chow-time... tables of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12... they were all there, the kids, the adults, the grandparents and a random grandaunt here and there... luckily the wait for smaller tables weren't as long and we got seated after 15 minutes. phew...
Can't really remember much about the food, but remembered that it was uniformly good. I think the quality is a lot more uniform than a lot of dim sum palaces in Chinatown, e.g. Jing Fong, Mandarin Court etc. The steamed items were especially well made, although we were very disappointed about the lack of har gows in the menu. We must have been seated too far away from the kitchen, but the time the carts came rolling our way, the popular items (aka har gow) were taken away already. Disappointments about har gow aside, we ate... a. lot.
A sampling of the best golden bridge has to offer:

Weird looking fish.. Chinese style tempura... see the eyes staring right at' cha? Good crunch factor though...

Carrot Cake, crisp on the outside, soft and gooey, chockful of ingredients inside:

Ma lai Kou... my favorite... the tasty factor is unfortunately untranslatable through the photos...

And something others ate... we were too chicken to try:

Clams in the higher bucket and snails in the lower one... yummy, if you like extracting things from shells and then putting it into your mouth...

And in the typical fashion of a v. cost conscious person, i have to report that we spent a grand total of $8.50 each for a tummy-busting lunch... I believe its cheaper than jing fong (my standby dim sum pleasuredome) Other reasons why you should come to golden bridge? 2 simple reasons. 1. the cleanest female bathrooms in the whole of chinatown and 2. the picket line outside the restaurant, made up of former workers demanding unionization and better pay blah blah... We felt a rush defiantly striding past them into the restaurant for lunch... yah yah cheap thrill =)

Golden Bridge Restaurant

50 Bowery St (Canal and Bowery)

casa @ cupcake cafe (or is it the other way?)

51 Wilkinson Rd as I know it no longer exists, with my parents having moved out and the construction crew moving in. I haven't lived there permanently since 2001, but it is home as i know it and the only home i acknowledge, the apartments in chicago and now nyc are still just long-term accomodation.
So it was with some sense of delight that I found casa about 10 streets away from my apartment that channeled 51 wilkinson. Why do I say so? Like 51 wilkinson, casa is probably owned by a master hoarder of things, and the room and walls reflected the owner's sensibilities. The decor is an odd mish-mash of stuff inherited from grandparents, lugged in from the flea market 2 streets down, but all lovingly collected and exhibited. I was complimenting the guy manning the store about the beautiful antique cash register and he promptly told me about its history, its design and where he got it from. And proceeded to talk about the coffee grinder next to it, as old and as well maintained, and fully functional as the cash register had been. Just like the way it was at home, where my mum couldn't bear to throw a lot of the old stuff that she had amassed throughout the years and had to bring them to the new place.
It was also odd that the cool and dark room at the back of the store felt like the dining room at home, where i spent many hours poring over my study notes on the dining table, which was the only table big enough for me to spread my junk all across it. Which was incidentally what i did in casa, I picked the biggest table n dumped my cfa notes on it, ordered some breakfast and coffee and pretended to be a good student when I was actually paying a lot more attention to the coffee and warm strawberry waffle that i was to what I was supposed to be reading.
Anyway, casa's supposed to be an offshoot of the popular cupcake cafe a mere block away, so there's obviously fresh cupcakes. But when i was there, the barista, also the cashier and server (v. capable one man show) was making another customer waffles on a double waffle iron, and the smell of freshly made waffle, compounded with images of me slathering it with butter and dousing it with syrup just meant that I had to get it too... I also got a nice big cup of iced coffee that went brilliantly with the sweet syrup... I'm no real coffee connoiseur even though I drink a lot of it, but the coffee was not bitter and the expresso to milk ratio was just right. just one of the best way to start a productive saturday morning.

Casa
545 9th Ave (40th and 41st st)

Italian on a rainy day

black tagliatelle
Originally uploaded by hong.ruoxi.

It puked rain yesterday, all day long, so XH, Gerrie and my plans to visit Basta Pasta was shot... But we were still determined to eat pasta (well, I was), so we decided to just pick an italian restaurant as close as possible and hope for the best.
I made some searches on menupages and based on the reviews picked Roberto Passon. Hey! less than half a block away! 4 stars! ok.. that settled it...
Anyway, the food was fresh and decent but really nothing that special. They don't let you go hungry though, and the plates pretty much overflowed with food. My black tagliatelle with mussels and clams was ok. After the transcendatial arroz negro in Barcelona, I have yet to find another black squid ink stained dish that tasted as great, but tt's really not their fault. The arroz negro was really good =) XH had a very filling plate of spaghetti carbonara, while Gerrie took the prize for best dish of the night with rabbit on baked polenta. The polenta in particular was crunchy outside and creamy inside. Like a good piece of fried 萝卜糕
Alton Brown's little blurb about "polenta, grits, its the same thing" made gerrie and i very interested in getting our hands on some grits soon too =)
The three of us split a large warm banana tart for dessert, and while good, tasted too much like breakfast (banana nut loaf) for me to order it again.
Overall, the restaurant is a nice neighborhood place with some interesting things on the menu (black pasta, portuguese octopus, chicken liver), but given all things, I still prefer Maria Pia just a block further from home, because its more spacious and the servers were just a tad friendlier.

Roberto Passon
741 9th Ave (50th St)

Up we go to Beyoglu!

While in training, Tyler told me about Beyoglu and praised the place to the skies. In fact, he bestowed it his golden "thumbs up". Very high praise indeed. Unfortunately Beyoglu is on the Upper East Side and I live in Hell's Kitchen. The distance outweighed my appetite for turkish delights and so I remained stuck in midtown. A trip to Chinatown and a chance meeting with Tyler and his wife at Yeah Shanghai- another great recommendation he had made earlier and which I had fallen in love with - reminded me that this is a man with impeccable taste in food. To disregard his recommendation on Beyoglu would be a big mistake.
Finally, nine long months after the glowing recommendation was given, I took the subway 40 blocks up to 81st and 3rd withYanru and Andreea in tow to try out some authentic Turkish food. Man, was I dumb to have taken so long to get there. In short, the food was fantastic, servings were generous, the service very warm and the check very kind to the wallet!
Beyoglu is apparently very popular among Upper East-Siders and when we got there around 7, it was pretty packed already. Not an easy feat, given the plethora of food choices in the vicinity. Thankfully New Yorkers eat late. There wasn't any room left on the first floor, which was decorated in mediterranean style, with orange walls and blue tiles all around, so we were ushered to the dining room on the second floor. The room on the second floor was decorated like a cross between a provincial french dining room and the reincarnation of an italian restaurant and felt a little incongruous with the 1st floor and the turkish music playing softly in the background. But that was soon forgiven and forgotten when the food arrived.
I remembered Tyler telling me to order from the appetizer menu because he liked it best, so we decided to split a mezze plate and share a kebab amongst us girls. There was plenty to go around and with yummy bread flowing freely from the kitchen into our mouths, we didn't even manage to finish all the food. The lamb and beef kebab we had was well spiced and well cooked, but since I'm not a big meat eater, I thought it was above average but not by much. The mezze plate however, was insanely tasty. We had stuffed grape leaves, hummus, baba ghanoush, ezme (a spicy diced salad), tabbouleh, sauteed spinach and home made yogurt and all were excellently made. The yogurt was thick and tangy, the hummus and baba ghanoush creamy and smoky and were excellent foils to the sharper tastes of the salad and the very lemony and extremely yummy tabbouleh.

Mezze plate (LHS), Kebab (RHS) looks the same, yah?

Yanru declared it "the best tabbouleh I've ever eaten" And the bread is home made and warm and we could not stop tearing more bread to dip into the various appetizers. We had tried to be civilized and used spoons to scoop the spreads into individual plates in the beginning, but hygiene really plays second fiddle to easy access to good food in this case =) I was fairly certain we mopped up every bit of food on that plate. It was that good. I guess it was lucky that both the Singaporeans and the Romanian had no issues with double dipping =p We ate almond pudding after that, which was a fair but not awe-inspiring rice pudding specked with slivers of almond, bringing the feasting to a rich and decadent end.
Besides the food, service was also relatively attentive and our server was very helpful at explaining the dishes and making recommendations. During dinner we complained that the a/c was a little too strong to the server and she promptly remedied it by turning it down a little. She did this despite the fact that the room was packed and she was busying serving other table, which made us very appreciative and subsequently bigger tippers.
I may have been slow getting there, but I will definitely be back!

Beyoglu, 1431 3rd Ave (81st St)

Mozart for music and desserts

I need to get the whole take pictures before I eat part down. I need to commit it to memory.. "take pictures before you stick your chopsticks in and make a hole in the fish"... " take pictures or you are not allowed to it" ... bleah...
So yes, no pictures of Cafe Mozart in its full glory, or the apple and walnut pie i consumed at midnight on friday night after catching La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera. But people who hang out near the Lincoln Center area know all about this place, because it serves above average desserts in a cute setting, and doesn't close until past midnight, when all the other cute cafes in the area have long closed for the night. They even have a pianist playing live music from 8 pm to midnight most nights, although the room is so noisy when its packed that the music falls onto deaf ears most of the time. I feel sorry for the pianist, playing for unappreciative diners who, quite sensibly, are there for the conversation and the food and not for the music.
About the desserts, they are really good. The chocolate desserts are sinfully rich while the tarts, filled generously with fruit, come with a nice warm and crumbly crust and served with fresh cream... When eaten at midnight, its heavenly =) I had the apple walnut sour cream pie. It was most of a crumble, but I am not complaining. The apple to walnut ratio was quite nice and the crumbles, while a little too sweet for my taste, was warm and slightly crispy. When mushed up with the soft, tart, baked apples and the crunchy walnuts, the texture was very pleasing. Of course you pay for it the next day, but whatever...Oh, and since its called Cafe Mozart, it does serve some austrian desserts, such as sacher torte and linzer torte. I dont think I've tried either, so I cannot comment on the authenticity of the austrian items. I've also tried the dinner menu before and I'm not as enthralled by it as I am by the sweets. First, I really do like sweets a lot more than savory foods, and second, there was nothing really special. They covered their bases by offering pasta, fish and chicken and hamburgers too, but there wasn't anything too out of the ordinary that made me stop and appreciate the food a little more.
A tiny gripe: there is a serious dearth of food places open late at night in the Upper West Side. Besides Mozart, we saw Penang open and that was about it. All the other eateries were in the midst of closing shop by 11 pm. I guess people have more sensible sleep schedules there =)

Cafe Mozart
154 W70th St (Between Broadway & Columbus)

belated blockheads post

This is a little belated. It is about ZZX and me at blockheads, and since he is back in Singapore and should be over his jet lag by now, this just proves that it is more than a little late... but i blame it on food poisoning.
Anyway, sometime last week ZZX was in town and he happened to be at the port authority, so we decided to meet there and then proceed to 9th Ave for some nosh. I live in the area, but as seamless and boxed dinners take over my life during weeknights, I am shamefully ill-informed about the restaurant scene in Hell's kitchen, save for my half a dozen trusty dependables (Mee, Grand Sichuan, Maria Pia, Shimizu, Wondee Siam and Blockheads, there i said it, 6). And since ZZX vetoed everything asian and wanted to try something hard to find in Singapore, i brought him to Blockhead Burritos...
BLOCKHEADS? U BROUGHT YOUR FRIEND TO EAT BASTARDIZED MEXICAN FOOD? WHAT KIND OF FRIEND ARE YOU??? yanru was thoroughly disgusted with me the next day. But, it was ok, because ZZX really wanted to try mexican food, he was happy with what he got, and even happier with his $3 margarita, so I was happy too =)
so at blockheads, we obviously ate burritos. (For the uninitiated, burritos are basically mexican-style popiah) These guys were HUGE and filled with fresh ingredients (beans, rice, meat, guacamole, with a healthy dose of salsa and sour cream on the side). you can have it for 2 or 3 meals, depending on how you sliced it. So does it make a lot of sense that we ordered one each? Sure! we were just exhibiting greed! Once again, with $3 drinks that came with healthy doses of tequila, who can complain?
At some point during the meal, when we were both too stuffed to talk, i commented that i ate the same amount as ZZX did. Which prompted him to rapidly cut up another wedge of the burrito and stuff it into his mouth. What does that prove?

1. He is very macho and can handle his burrito
2. He is being silly
3. He is hungry

Oh anyway, as I said, the burritos were at least good for 2 meals (unless you were like Mark who painfully finished the whole thing in one sitting) , so we packed the remainder home... next came the unpleasant part, i believe the source of food poisoning to be 3 day old burritos that had somehow gone bad sitting in the fridge... not that i blame blockheads or anything, but keep in mind, everything is best eaten fresh, and if you weren't as greedy as we were, SHARE!

Plump clouds of joy

We were looking for some dessert last Friday in the east village, but instead of going to Veniero's for cannolis, I suggested going to Cha-An for tea and some Japanese styled desserts instead. My dining partners obliged, thank goodness. Or else we would not have been able to try the house mochi. So good that it has taken me three tries to write about it. I swear this will be the last time I make any more edits, because I am tired and really need to get on with life and stop torturing myself with finding the right words to do the desserts justice. Anyway, just do me and yourself a favor and go to Cha-An when you are in the area, relax in the simply furnished but elegant room, sit back and let the dessert makers wow you with the subtley flavored and perfectly shaped and plated sweet treats.
The three of us each chose something different from the dessert menu. One loving suggestion to the proprietors... Expand your dessert menu! It consisted of less than 10 desserts, including two types of mochi and ice-cream =( that means 3 more visits with friends and I would have exhausted the menu...
Anyway, Ying got 2 scoops of ice cream. The green tea tasted normal, but the sake icecream was really strong and very special. You would like it if you enjoyed rice wine. I ordered the black sesame creme brulee (pictured above). The custard was soft and had the right amount of smokiness coming from the creme brulee and the ice cream was homemade and just creamy enough.
The star of the show, the scene stealer, the diva, and whatever other accolades I can pile on to a dessert was the chocolate mochi Yanru ordered. My only regret was "why didn't I order it?" Then I would have 3 perfectly shaped soft and plump mochi filled with earl-grey flavored chocolate all to myself =( It was really great, the glutinous skin was so thin it was almost translucent, but it did not lose its chewy texture. The chocolate was thick and smooth, and the earl grey flavors accentuated the sweet chocolate well. Neither flavor overpowered the other and it felt so great when you had a little tinge of chocolate left in your mouth and the fragrance of the tea just permeates through that little bit of chocolate into your bloodstream... so good... My tummy is smiling just thinking of it. I kid you not, go try it soon!
FYI, they serve meals and a lot of tea too...now if only their dessert menu was as extensive as their tea menu =)

Cha An Japanese Tea House
230 E 9th St, NY 10003

Where are the orchids?

Answer: Everywhere!
A profusion of orchids, all of the cloth and plastic kind greeted us at Fake Orchid, a thai restaurant in the east village on Friday night. We were there because Yanru read rave reviews about the place on menupages and wanted to test whether the food was up to snuff. I tagged along, fully intrigued with the choice of name. Would you call your restaurant Fake Something? Would you? Don't you want to be the most authentic? Shouldn't your name should bolster the authenticity of your cuisine? Anyway i digress...
At about 6:30 pm, we walked into a small and relatively empty restaurant. No people to watch? No matter at all, because our eyes were promptly assaulted by a slew of bright and crazy looking things that filled the room. The ambience in the small dining room is super kitschy and very fun, what with the mismatched furniture and serving ware, bright wall décor, fairy lights and tons of fake orchids. Fake orchids littered on table tops, hung from the ceiling, interwoven into the glittery lights on the walls, even attached to the disco ball (disco ball??!!) in the middle of the room…

Crazy Room in the dark!!
Crazy room with flash... See the offending disco ball?
The kitchen and room are manned by two thai ladies and service was very relaxed but gracious. We liked Fake Orchid because it was fun to hang out there, and besides us girls, the room was relatively empty save for 2 couples. They seemed to be enjoying themselves too, but before you drag your man there, please make sure he'll feel comfortable sitting in the cramped quarters basking in pink lighting. We tried imagining a colleague sitting there and he looked pretty miserable in our minds =)
Oh and the food was fairly decent although we found it slightly pricy (entrees around 9-12 dollars) compared to other thai places in the area, such as Klong. The Fake Orchid curry I ordered was neither too sweet nor over-spiced, and I liked the addition of the lychees into the curry. It didn't do anything to enhance the taste of the curry, but at least the very least, relieves some boredom from chewing too much chicken. I also like the inclusion of edamame in the curry, adds a little bit of crunch which I enjoyed.
In the end, I think we enjoyed our meal, but while it might be a good standby for a casual night out, I might give the other thai restaurants in the neighborhood a shot (and there are very many) before going back again. Truth to be told, I think I'm getting too old to stomach this much cuteness in such a tiny space =)

Fake Orchid
440 E9th St
(between 1st Ave and Ave A)

seamless web

Besides yahoo finance, seamless web must be the website most frequented by working professionals in the city, too busy to cook or to visit a restaurant when they could be eating in the office instead. Since I rely so much on it for meals, I might as well derive some fun out of staying in the office for dinner and write about what I eat... sheesh...why does it feel like a primary school science project?
anyway, the city in question refers to New York; seamless web is the product of some genius who must have gotten fed up with collecting wads of takeout menus and found a way to consolidate them in virtual format; bicycles are the preferred mode of transportation amongst food delivery people and me = me! haha... i'm a lunatic...