Happy Year of the Dog!

I read here that rich New Yorkers are scurrying about to hire Chinese nannies so that their kids can learn the language of the economic future. So I was thinking that maybe I'll write a remake of Mary Poppins and the Sound of Music. People are getting sick of remakes, but they like familiarity, so why not combine classics? Michelle Yeoh would star in it! She could be a kung fu nanny who sings. Tony Leung or Chow Yun Fat would play the banker dad who she'd fall in love with. Zang Ziyi could play the oldest daughter who falls in love with a thuggish but charming rapper played by Mos Def. It'd be really cool.
My other thought this lunar new years day is that I'd give you a rundown on some dim sum places, but I've really only been to a handful. I used to really love Vegetarian Dim Sum on Pell St a lot, but after my movie star vegan boyfriend and I broke up, it's just too painful to go there. Besides, now that Joaquin is out of the picture, I'm back eating meat with a vengeance!
More recently, my favorite is The Golden Unicorn (18 E.Broadway). The snapshots are from there. I threw in the Li Chuen (17 Catherine St.) scallion pancake just for kicks because we ate it while waiting to get into Dim Sum GoGo (5 E Broadway). But then I decided I didn't want Dim Sum Gogo because I wanted the rolling cart dim sum experience and their shumai isn't just shrimp, it has pork bits in it. Dim Sum GoGo is good, but it's kind of boring because the decor is minimalist and a lot of yuppies go there. The Golden Unicorn is just up the street and miraculously when we went there, there wasn't a line. What's nice about the Unicorn is the carts show pictures of what they hold. Sometimes, the pictured items may not be on the cart but that's a great opportunity to try something new like coconut jelly with peanuts. Just try to eat the stuff with chopsticks!
But my favorite dim sum house isn't really based on food. It's my favorite because of nostalgia. It's hard to find any authentic old New York spots these days, but Nom Wah Teahouse (13 Doyers St.-The hidden street!) purports to be the oldest teahouse in Chinatown and it's definately the first one I went to when I first moved here. To be honest, I can't remember any specifics about the food, except that this old lady just kept on bringing dishes and we just kept on eating them. I believe Ted and I went into a meat coma shortly after this experience.
Happy New Year! Stay tuned for more about what my family eats on Lunar New Year...

Roebling Tea Room

Bubble tea is old news, but hipster tea rooms are forever! Josh and I had brunch at the Roebling Tea Room this past weekend and we are such dorks that we ordered drip coffee. But they have a huge selection of loose teas and wacky drinks like chai with a shot of espresso served in pint glasses. Their waitstaff is friendly in that cute from far away but not upclose kind of way. When we played the, "who would you make out with in this room" game, we really couldn't find anyone. So we had to settle with eating our food. I hadn't eaten all day and it was way past noon, so I wanted a hearty dish. I chose the frittata, but when it came, I thought it was a huge wedge of yellow cheesecake. Studded with bacon bits and gruyere it was filling if not a bit too dense. We shared the beet goat cheese salad. It tasted like good old goat cheese, greens and beets. Go figure. Josh went out on a limb and ordered the vegetarian bratwurst. I'm not sure why he got the meatless one, but it was good. It tasted more like a textured protein veggie sausage than a smooth plasticky hotdog, so it seemed satisfying.
Overall, I dug the place. The decoration isn't over done, the space is huge, so there wasn't much wait. It was loud but what isn't at 2 on a Sunday? It's so close to Josh's place I better like it because we'll be going there a lot.

Egg

Restaurant names are really important. When my family lived in Georgia, we used to go to this restaurant called ‘Po Folks. I never understood the name. Why you would want to eat at poor people’s house? Wouldn’t it be wrong to eat all their food? Would they make stone soup? But ‘Po Folks served huge plates of fried chicken and endless Mason jars of sweet tea. It was confusing.
At Egg (135 N.5th St)in Williamsburg, not all the dishes are served with a side of eggs and at noon, the restaurant space turns into Sparky’s All American Food and serves no eggs but hotdogs and hamburgers.
Ted and I went to Egg because they start serving brunch at 8 am. While the food is tasty, I wish the servings were bigger. For Pete's sake, it’s supposed to be a Southern style brunch and we all know that brunch in the south is served up big. Granted, I am a pig. And this is New York, but you’re paying New York prices because the ingredients are local or artisan and the rent’s probably high. But forgetting all of that, Egg’s pig is really good. I forgot the name of the ham, but it's a well known artisan ham from Kentucky. I had the ham biscuit because I love me some pig. The biscuit was nice, crumbly, warm, comforting. The cheddar cheese was a fancy white Vermont type. The fig jam cut the saltiness of the ham and cheese but added sweetness which was a nice touch, but dammit, I wanted some egg on that morning sammy! Grits were served on the side. They were hearty and added moisture, but like I said, eggs would have been better. Ted had their "eggs rothko" which is either cute or annoying (I can’t decide), it was a toad in the hole with tomato jam and a sausage link. The truth is, I liked Egg and it’s good. But if I’m going to W’burg for breakfast, I’d rather go at 10am and eat with the po folks at Enid's. It’s cheaper, serves bigger portions and there’s free coffee refills.

STP Experiences

datecake
Originally uploaded by i_eat_ny.

I tasted sticky toffee pudding for the first time at a great London restaurant called Fiona’s. That rich dark cake in combination with its buttery sauce is my idea of a good time. The cake had the deep mahogany color of chocolate and the density of a pound cake, but the taste of caramelized dates within the cake gave a complexity I can’t describe. And that sauce! The kind of stuff you just want to bathe in. From the recipes I’ve collected, the sauce often has what the Brits call black treacle, which is the same as American blackstrap molasses.
My STP experience was three years ago. Ever since, I’ve been trying to find that kind of perfection in New York, but to no avail. There have been some close seconds.
My favorite has been Moto (394 Broadway) in South Williamsburg (take the JMZ to Hooper/Hewes St. stop). I’ll go ahead and call this place a gem because it’s small and romantic. However, it’s super loud during peak dinner times because of the patrons, live music and the location under the elevated train. It’s worth it though because the space is really beautiful in that old European way. Look at the website to see how pretty it is. More importantly, the meals are well done and cost under 20 bucks. Unfortunately they don’t open until after 4pm on weekdays but my advice is to try their brunch, especially if you’re with someone you want to kiss. You should order a panini, then order espressos and then split the date cake. You can make a dumb joke about the name, but once the pudding comes, you’ll be licking the plate clean. The cake is a bit lighter and spongier than proper STP, but that sauce is right on. Feel free to chew on the mint leaves to freshen the breath after the coffees. Now you’re ready to make out, my friend!
I also like the version of sticky toffee that Schiller’s (131 Rivington & Norfolk) makes. No picture, but trust me, it’s yummy. New on the list is the Tuck Shop (68 E 1st St bw 1st & 2nd Ave.) cake. More of a take away shop, (I’ll talk about their meat pies later), their sticky toffee is something you have to heat back up in your oven. I use the toaster oven. It’s certainly no Fiona's, but it'll just have to do until I'm back in London.

Solfood

Say, did you see the amazingly huge moon in the sky?
I noticed it last night after eating a mind altering bowl of beef stew at Zaragoza. I read about the tiny store in the Village Voice years ago, but I didn't start frequenting the place until I was off of work this December. The prices for a tamale ($1) and taco ($1.50) are so cheap, I could even splurge on a Jarritos. I love how the owner adds shredded lettuce, squirts sour cream onto the taco, sprinkles white cheese and then asks you what kind of sauce, green or red. I love their chicken mole with rich beans and rice because it's such a simple meal yet the sauce is complex, bitter, sweet, earthy. I dunno if it's from a can, but I don't care. I love how the bottle opener is located over the trash can and next to the juke box, so you can slip in a quarter as your soda top falls into the bin. Zaragoza is not fancy at all, hell it's really a tiny bodega, but it's home to the kind of delicious and inexpensive cooking that I constantly crave. The flautas and tamales are nuked, but honestly, who cares?
Life is tough. If my mom isn't making me food, I want someone's mom making it! Because it's been so cold, the soup was a brilliant choice last night. This soup ate like a meal and yes, you could definately eat it with a fork. Full of beef on the bone, carrots and potatoes, the Mexican additions of chopped raw onion, rice, cilantro and a twist of lime made this huge bowl exciting. The bill came to $7 with the tamarind Jarritos. But because it came with a stack of 7 tortillas, and I was full, life was looking a little brighter. In light of all the recent closings of East Village institutions like the Second Avenue Deli, as long as little joints like Zaragoza exist, I think things will be alright.

What about green eggs?

This is funny and creepy! I wonder what they taste like?

More closings

There's a scene in the movie, Prime, where Meryl Streep is eating a pastrami sandwich because apparently that's what meddling Jewish mothers do. While I've since forgotten the rest of the film, I can't shake the craving for a pastrami sandwich. But I won't be getting one at the Second Avenue Deli anymore because it's gone. Another victim of expensive Manhattan rent bites the dust.
You probably know by now that the owners owed back taxes and the rent skyrocketed, so the restaurant shut down last week. I had no idea they would take everything down so quickly. There's nothing there except the stars on the sidewalk and a dirty imprint where the sign used to be. The clock is gone, the blue awning, the guy sitting outside the deli in the wheelchair that used to get free soup...
My hands were freezing and I almost dropped my camera, so I threw up my hands and gave up.

Polish GI

After brunch with Josh on Saturday, I was supposed to go to a lecture at the gym about craving sweets. But as I passed the window of Polish GI (1st Ave. bw 6th & 7th), I noticed this lovely loaf of poppyseed cake. I was dying to find out if the buttercream was lemon or vanilla. So I skipped the lecture and got a nice slice for just $1.50. I started getting the shakes because it was taking so long to get a good shot of the cake. That's why the picture is blurry. The cake was perfect, each bite was fluffy and had a bit of crunch from the seeds. The cream was vanilla and studded with almonds on the top. This would be a perfect cake for a tea or if you were meeting a friend for coffee somewhere that didn't serve dessert. Check it out!

Chinese pizza heaven

I've been a working girl since age 14. When we lived Roanoke, my sister waited tables at Hunan Chinese Restaurant. The owner's of the restaurant, the Ku's, needed someone that could pack the take out orders. Lena suggested me. Child labor laws be damned! I got paid in cash on the Fridays and Saturdays that I worked. Between babysitting and Hunan, I was the richest I've ever been in my life. I learned a lot from the job too: how to fold napkins into a fan; busboys don't play guitar with long pinky fingernails; one should wear her long black hair in a ponytail when packing white rice in every meal, scallops are often made of shark, all kinds of things. But one of my favorite dishes I learned about from the restaurant, was what the cooks called Chinese pizza. The scallion pancakes weren't on the menu, but the salty fried dough flavored with bits of scallion were a special treat that I got excited about when I saw the dough resting in the refrigerator. I've eaten a lot of different scallion pancakes in my time and they were all fine. You almost can't go wrong with fried dough. It's just that Hunan's will always be the holy grail. However, Li Chuen's pancake is pretty damn close to manna from heaven. (By the way, are there any records of what manna tastes like?) Located at 17 Catherine St. just off of the East Broadway stop on the F, the tiny storefront is dusty with flour and stuffed with boxes and bags of scallion pancakes and other treats they sell to wholesale.
The first time I went into the shop, the owner's kid was helping out at the register and all of the women molding steamed buns were laughing at his attempts to cut 3 stacked pancakes with a large cleaver. HIs mother swiftly took over but it was he who helped this gaijin with the contents of what looked like an empanada. Inside this Chinese turnover, a yummy mix of scrambled eggs, scallion and rice noodles added a punch of flavor and protein. Plenty of dumpling houses carry this treat, but this one was nice because it wasn't as greasy as others I've had. I certainly can't say that the scallion pancake isn't greasy because it is, but in the best possible way. It's actually the perfect treat when you only have $1.25 and you have pms.
PS. The name on the awning and the name on their product label is spelled different. Go figure.

I miss Santa

This pizza chain, Abitino's replaced everyone's favorite down and dirty West Village slice, Joe's, on the corner of Carmine and Bleeker. I once saw a celebrity there, but I can't remember if it was Tobey Maguire, or Lukas Haas or Elijah Wood. That Joe's closed in late 2004, and I wasn't that upset because the Joe's a few stores down is still open and at the time, my Joe's (different owners) in the East Village was still open. Mica and I always planned to do a segment asking people why they went to the corner Joe's instead of the one at 7 Carmine, just another regret.
Anyway, another one of these Abitino's opened on 2nd Avenue (and E.10th St.? ) in December in the old space that was tea house turned pan Asian restaurant no one ever went to. I actually sampled a slice one night before we went to see "Brokeback Mountain." The plain slice wasn't terrible. I'm not saying it was fabulous, just that it was fine. The strange thing about this place is that it hasn't been open since. I looked the place up online and they list "strategic partners" like Coke and Ferraro Foods. There's also some story about a family opening their first store in Brooklyn in 1974, blah blah blah, but I'm not buying it. I think Sbarro's from the mall just changed their name to Abitino's. It's easier to pronounce. And there's another pizza place opening on Second Ave., a place called Singa's Famous Pizza. I did the online thing and it's not Indian fusion pizza. It's another localish franchise. There's a bunch in Queens. I guess I'll try it, but I'm not going to like it.
I miss Joe's near my place. I wish I had a picture to show you. Yet another regret. His huge belly was really something impressive. It was like Santa, but instead of a bowl full of jelly, it was probably full of pizza.