What do you do when it's cold outside, you're hungry, you have no cash, and there's no food in the fridge? You eat the 50 persimons and korean pears that your roommate's mom sent her in a care package 2 weeks ago that still aren't finished yet. What do you do when you're completely sick of persimmons because you've been eating them for 2 weeks now? - you pay someone else to cook for you. Sunday was one of those days and Susana and I went out to Momofuku on E 10th and 1st Ave.
Momofuku was rather crowded when we got there around 7:45P. The place is a long narrow bar lined by ikea-looking backless stools. The menu was pretty eclectic - from ramen to roasted brussel sprouts. We sat ourselves down right in front of the grill and burners and took a look at the menu. After what seemed like forever, someone finally took our order. We ordered a Momofuku Ramen and a Pork Neck Ramen, $14 and $15. I'd show you pictures of both, but they looked exactly the same, except one was in a bigger bowl.
The soup wasn't anything I'd order again - the broth was a little too salty and the pork was dry, but the noodles were really fresh and tasty and the poached egg was good too. Honestly though, for the price, this place is nowhere I'd ever visit again. It's like the food version of Pearl River Mart - take something cheap, dress it up, sell it in a nice store in a trendy neighborhood, and charge an arm and a leg for it. Next time I'm going to eat Pho, $4.25 a bowl, or even cheaper- ramen at Kenka, $3 a bowl. No mo' Momofuku.
Momofuku Noodle Bar
163 1st Ave
Btwn 10th & 11th St
Phone: 212-475-7899
As with most mornings after a night of partying, I got a call from Danielle about going to Shanghai Cafe in Chinatown. When most people crave bacon, eggs, and buttermilk pancakes for a weekend brunch, we crave soup dumplings (xiao long bao), sticky rice, and scallion pancakes. Shanghai Cafe, just north of Canal St on Mott St, is our favorite place for these steamed dumplings filled with ground pork and broth. I've been coming to Shanghai Cafe with my friends ever since I moved to NYC - probably at least 20 or 30 times now.
One of my favorite things about this place that I had to throw in is this poster advertising tapioca milk tea (boba), clearly a candidate for submission to http://www.engrish.com. It reads: "For this glittering pearl. Let's drinking this tea one more 5000 years" - yet another hilarious example of English grammar in Chinatown.
When you order food here it comes almost immediately since most of it is pre-made or takes seconds to cook. After about a minute after we placed our order with a rather rude server who we had communication issues with, the plates quickly rolled in one after another. The xiao long bao, sitting on a layer of napa cabbage leaves, came steaming hot in a bamboo steamer with a ginger and vinegar dipping sauce.
When you eat xiao long bao for the first time, it's best to remember that there's a technique to eating these so you can get the maximum broth without spilling it onto your plate.
1. Pick up the xiao long bao with chopsticks by the top knot just high enough so that you can slip your soup spoon under it being careful not to rip it - if you rip it its over, the broth will spill out all over the bamboo steamers
2. With the xiao long bao on your soup spoon, position is so that it's on its side
3. Bite a tiny hole
4. Slurp out all the broth, no need to slurp quietly
5. Continue to eat there rest of it as you would any other dumpling
The mark of a good xiao long bao session is a clean plate. These dumplings are incredibly cheap at Shanghai Cafe, an order of 8 will only cost $3 and a single order is good for 2-3 people depending on how hungry you are.
Shanghai Cafe
100 Mott St
Btwn Canal & Hester St
Phone: 212-966-3988
Today my roommate, Susana, took me out to Bouley for a lunch tasting. This was the first experience for either of us at any one of David Bouley's establishments in TriBeCa. Bouley is an unassuming place on the corner of West Broadway and Duane St, decorated with a massive wooden-planked door flanked by simple window planters.
The foyer is a small hallway lined on the left with an amazing wall encasement of flowers. Immediately inside, we were quickly greeted by the Maitre'D who took our coats. To the left was a room painted with a deep, rich red and the right a room of bright, airy cream. We were led into the red room and seated. Bouley had a very elegant,yet homey feel. The low ceilings brought about an intimacy to the dining room, furthered by the throw pillows strewn all over the room and the simple centerpieces of rose tips and pine sprigs.
Bouley offered an a la carte menu, a $35 4-course lunch tasting, and a $45 5-course lunch tasting. Feeling wary about whether or not she could eat 5 courses, Susana went with the 4-course tasting while I opted for the 5-course.
The service at Bouley was hit or miss. At times it was great, like when we first got there, at other times it was horrendous, like when we ordered sparkling water that never came out. Our server in particular was very forgetful and hardly attentive, but a couple next to us had a spectacular one. Almost immediately after we sat, even before our water was poured, someone served us the canapes, but it turned out to be for the wrong table - not that it mattered anyway since we were going to get them eventually, but someone told the server to just leave it for us as she was taking them away and to get another set for the correct table.
So our lunch started off a little early with the Chef's canape - I forgot exactly what it was as our server talked a little too fast over a slight accent, but it had beets and mascarpone topped with some sort of foam. The canape had a unique flavor - it was fresh, smokey, sweet, beety, creamy, gelatinous, and refreshing all at the same time.
This picture sucks - as do most of them, because I didn't want to use my flash inside the dining room, but as you can see, all the foam disappeared because I waited too long to snap the shot. The canape was followed by a selection of breads from Bouley Bakery. I really liked the apple roll. There was also a server that carted around a selection of all types of loaves from which slices were cut to order for diners. I got a slice of saffron walnut and Susana got a slice of roasted garlic and a slice of pistachio. The cart reminded me of the "second-helping" cart at House of Prime Rib in San Francisco, which reminds me that I still have yet to find a prime rib place in New York comparable to HOPR.
My first course was an assortment of phyllo-crusted shrimp, baby squid and sea scallops in an herbal broth. All the seafood was cooked perfectly, just barely cooked a second or two after the point which it's still under-cooked leaving it extremely tender and flaky. I think the broth was flavored with shiso leaves, giving it an herbal, oceany taste very different from the kind that saffron gives. This opener clearly shows the subtle Japanese influence on the dishes at Bouley.
My second fish course was halibut steamed with ginger on roasted artichokes and candy-cane beets (yet another hint of Bouley's Japanese influence). The fish was nice and flaky, but over-powered by the ginger broth, which I thought was a little too spicy.
The following two shots are both my and Susana's meat courses. I had the duckling and Susana had the chicken, they were both accompanied by a potato puree. I wish the skin on the duck had been crisped a little more, but the sides on the plate were awesome - particularly the quince puree and the Pruneau d'Agen, a halved prune filled with a sweet plum paste. I looked up "Pruneau d'Agen" on Google, but all the search results are in French so I still have no idea what it is, but it was sublime - probably the highlight of the whole meal for me. It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but the prune-thing is at the top center of the plate.
I'm not sure exactly what Susana's dish, I should've taken a copy of her tasting menu, but I only got mine. Basically it was a poached chicken with a soy-based sauce - a fancied French version of the Chinese boiled soy-chicken dish. Her's was OK, I liked mine a lot more.
With the main courses over, the palate cleanser came out, a chilled pear soup with a vanilla chestnut and Banyuls sorbet. This was really good! It was refreshing and light and really creamy-tasting and from what I can tell, there's no dairy in it. It was followed by a pineapple meringue and pistachio cake with passion fruit sorbet and pistacio ice cream along with a chocolate souffle with maple and vanilla ice cream and chocolate sorbet.
When we were first deciding on our tasting options, I already knew that I was going to get the pineapple meringue, not because I have a particular liking to pineapple, but because I knew that Susana, being the chocoholic that she is, was going to order the souffle. The pineapple meringue was forgettable - the pistachio cake was rather bland and the pineapple bits gave it a strange crunchy texture. Under the layers of the meringue was a pale green coin-shaped object that was hard. At first I thought it may be something inedible, but it turned out to be a flavored white chocolate medallion (green tea or pistachio maybe?) - a somewhat well-intentioned, but poorly executed surprise. The chocolate souffle was excellent, but nothing out of the ordinary. I liked the maple ice cream a lot. I don't really have much more to say about it cause the two desserts didn't mix very well so I tended to just eat mine and Susana just ate hers.
And so... for the finale, a shot of flan and an assortment of cookies and confections. The flan was simply amazing - a thich vanilla custard with a layer of green tea gel; rich and sweet, crisply cut by the slight bitterness of the green tea. This was a perfect ending to a nearly 3 hr journey through Bouley's lunch tasting. Although it had a couple misses, like our server for one, Bouley is on my short list of tasting menus I'd recommend and I can't wait to try the next one.
Bouley
120 W Broadway
Btwn Duane & Reade St
Phone: 212-964-2525
Tomorrow the gang is going to celebrate a couple birthdays by partying at a club in the Lower East Side, so the plan tonight, Friday, was to take it easy. Start with a happy hour, head over to a casual dinner party, and maybe catch a movie. Janet had the great idea of not just going to any happy hour, but an oyster happy hour. The last time we went to said hour of boozin and shuckin was at Amuse in Chelsea, which by the way should still have a $1 oyster and $3 wine deal, but that must have been almost a year ago so it was definitely due for another one. As with any specific search for something in the city, I started looking on CitySearch and a couple foodie blogs, but neither returned any decent results. It wasn't until I hesitantly went to Chowhound's Manhattan board that I found what I was looking for. I mention hesitantly because, although Chowhound is probably the best content provider of everything foodie for NYC, its interface is hardly user-friendly, if you go to the site you'll know what I mean. But no fear, I finally discovered how to find what you're looking for on it using Google's best hidden secret: the site search parameter. Here's how I conducted my search of the site on Google:
Google the following string: "manhattan+oyster+happy+hour site:www.chowhound.com"
And voila - a list of Oyster Happy Hours in the city:
1. Fish - Bleecker and Jones - 12-7p - 6 oysters and a drink for $8
2. McCormicks and Schmicks - 52nd and 6th Ave - 4-6p and 9-11p - $0.50 oysters
3. Aquagrill - Soho - 4-6p - ??
4. Amuse - 18th and 6th Ave - 4:30-7p - $1 oysters
5. Five Points - Great Jones and Lafayette - $1 oysters
6. Schaffer City - 21st and 5th Ave - ??
We went with Fish in the Village since it seemed to have the best deal at a convenient happy hour time we all could go to. Fish had an unpretentious and authentic atmosphere about it, much unlike that of BLT Fish Shack. It looks like a place where a Lobster Bisque and Clam Chowder would actually taste good. This is the "Red, White, and Blue Special" - Choice of 6 Blue Points or 6 Little Necks and choice of a house red, house white, or Pabst Blue Ribbon - all for only $8.
The three of us each ordered the special and this was how the tray looked like with all of our 18 oysters on it. Notice the baggie of oyster crackers in the foreground, I've never been served oyster crackers with oysters, but I suppose oyster crackers could be a logical garnish for raw oysters, although by the time I started slurping down my share I totally forgot that I wanted to try the crackers with it - oh well, next time. The only low point of the special was that both Danielle and my first oysters were bad. Luckily it was only 2 of the 18, and for the price, what do you expect? I just hope I'm not shellfish poisoned tomorrow, man, I've got to stop ending my posts like this.
The hour we had at Fish was definitely a happy one: great oysters, great beer, and greater price. Fish earns a gotta-try-it-again star in my book.
Fish
280 Bleecker St
Btwn Jones St & 7th Ave S
Phone: 212-727-2879
