nixienox

Fortunato Brothers in Williamsburg, worth a trip for pastries and gelato, esp. when it gets close to Christmas and Easter.

I have a couple of items, given to me as gifts by one of my sisters. She loves their products and owns loads of it. Most of the gadgety things I have no use for, but I like the pizza stone. And I baked a crunch cake in one of the stone baking pans and it came out lovely. This same sister doesn't cook. She uses her oven and stovetop for storage, for the hundreds of dollars of things she's bought at parties. If I use something while I'm visiting, it's usually the first time it's been used. She just likes parties I guess, and buying things at parties.

I used to wait for the bus in Chicago and look at a coffee shop awning that announced Julian's salad. Do you think Julian worked there?

If you are willing to go to the outer boroughs, you should be willing to go to NJ too. Take the bus to Fort Lee or Englewood (NJ Transit schedule), and go to Mo'Pho or Saigon R. Actually, they are owned by the same people, and Mo'Pho is easier to get into and to get to from NYC, so go there: Mo'Pho Noodles 212 Main Street Fort Lee, NJ 201-363-8886 Neither of these places do the sandwiches though. We've talked to the owner about it, it's just not cost effective for her to offer them as not enough people order them. But she does the most amazing pho and other soups. Click the above links for pictures. ← The specialty is pho, and it's reachable by Path train. Saigon Cafe (201) 332-8711 188 Newark Ave Jersey City

Actually we will be needing takeaway, as the children will not joining us for either Gordon Ramsay's or the dinner dance at The Ritz. So delivery of roast chicken and potatoes sounds like a very good idea (the usual U.S. options being not very good Chinese and really atrocious pizza). Though we have a kitchen, and both children can manage simple meals, so we may just drop by Waitrose and have them pick out something they'd like. ← Our options for ordering out are Thai, not atrocious pizza, Malaysian, Japanese, pretty good Chinese (Hunan or Szechuan), or regular Chinese, excellent Mexican, excellent Italian, Cuban, Vietnamese, and more. But I still long for the choices we had when we lived in the East Village. One person's everyday is another's exotic, which is why I wouldn't choose to eat Polish, especially since we're only in London for such a short time. I'm looking forward to having a Wallace and Grommit moment looking in the markets for cheese. In fact, going to the markets is at the top of my list as is looking at art. My biggest concern now is the exchange rate, which we can't really do anything about, except worry. But if this week's New Yorker is correct, I have images in my head inspired by high school history classes, of showing up with wheel barrows of devalued currrency to buy a cup of coffee.

The children are old enough that we no longer need to go to the trouble of actually tying them to trees and running away if we want to avoid them: we simply tell them to go away and they oblige. But this option might come in handy for nixienox and her younger brood. ← St Johns looks like the kind of London restaurant I was hoping to try, thank you. As for the suggestion about how to dine without the kids, here I was thinking they could wander the market while we eat. Actually this restaurant might make me consider attempting to dine without them.

Delighted to see your post therese, I will be following this thread closely as I too, have just booked a trip for next April with my husband and two children (3 and 11). It will be our first family visit, on our way to stay with friends in Berlin. I'm most curious about the ability to dine at restaurants with a small child, as well as an older child, as most of the reading I've done seems to either assume children only eat fast food (mine don't) or stay at home. Pham sounds like a good choice for my older girl, she would probably choose to eat sushi everyday.

2 Chicago memories Ashland Avenue near Division, over ten years ago there was a restaurant I remember as Donna's Notorious Italian Cheeseburger, and my husband remembers as Dolores'. It was tiny and decorated to suggest you were in an aunt's kitchen, one who hadn't redecorated for many years. This effect was intensified by the fact we were usually the only people there. Dolores had long gray braids, granny glasses, turquoise eye shadow and wore 1972 era maxi dresses. Her cross dressing partner wore gas station attendant style work clothes. Everything was made from scratch, and when you ordered say, a vegetable omelet, you'd watch Dolores reach into the refrigerator and pull out handfuls of raw vegetables (Broccoli, carrots, etc.,) and start to wash them. The notorious cheeseburger was ground to order, and it was a good one. The effect this restaurant left was its overwhelming quality of not being a restaurant, but having to be on your best behavior at a distant relative's house, (in some anonymous suburb) while just outside the door was Ashland and Division circa 1988, which was untouched by gentrification then. There was also a japanese/greasy spoon coffee shop on Clark Street that perfectly married the 2 disparate sensibilities. Scrambled eggs with sprouts and soy sauce. Cranky japanese counterman, with unclean apron.

Cinco de Mayo gets most of our business when we want Mexican. They have a larger menu, with more interesting choices and good specials. Gloria does a good tamale, if you can get it fresh. They have pretty good enchiladas too, and the service is very sweet (even complete with a grandmother eager to hold babies.) There are some qualifiers to the Gloria experience, one being an enormous screen on karaoke default tunes, played at extreme volume. And a certain inconsistency (like being out of those tamales) and a dish being fine one visit, and not so the next. But I hope they succeed there, and put some money back into the restaurant. And it's great to have a place to walk to on summer evenings. And late last summer is probably when I was last there.

Crema's can vary, but generally they are richer, less watery, than american-style sour cream. Some make the claim for less additives, but I don't know, some crema you can buy has additives. And it combines heavenly next to chiles or a sauce made with chiles.

I definitely will check it out Vasija de Barro. My kind of destination restaurant. I too have been in Jersey city for 4 years, after having moved from Brooklyn. (My older daughter attends a charter school in Hoboken.) Lived in Chicago, Lower East Side, Brooklyn, now JC. I hardly know anything about New Jersey west of here, beyond state parks and other hiking destinations, and continuing searches for good garden stores. And I am trying to shake the dismaying feeling that once I head west everything's in or attached to a mall, which is just a prejudice, and probably not accurate at all.

There is a Cuban restaurant at 396 Central Avenue called Viarreggio if you can't quite make it to the family favorite. It's basic, but good. And on Palisade there's an Ecuadorian/Italian restaurant called Robalino's that might interest you.

Those beautiful color pictures certainly make the neighborhood look inviting. Cinco de Mayo is a favorite it's gratifying to get the word out on them. (And on the very afternoon I had a wisdom tooth removed! So thank you for letting me at least look, even if the thought of eating seems very far away to me now.) The Heights neighborhood has a few things I'd still want grocery-wise. If only Supremo carried Tomcat Bread, and goat cheese. . .

I can add some suggestions for the Heights neighborhood. Cinco de Mayo Taqueria on Central Ave is also a grocery store. Everything I've had from them is delicious. My husband loves their mole poblano, and I like the tostadas and well, everything else. There are also some decent salumerias on Central. Supremo Market on Palisade Ave has a good fish vendor and a busy butcher department. I like them for dried chiles and spices and at least 5 brands of crema. I can second the vietnamese and Tanya's suggestions made earlier.

Some of my favorites: Escovitch (Escabeche) fish, gandules the way a roomate of mine made them (with olives).

There's a desert the aussies call fly cemetaries. I've never had it but I can certainly picture it with the flies, I mean raisins all lined up. Actually I like raisins.

Actually I find it a hoot that almost of none of the cooks responding to the recipes on that site have actually followed the recipe. They don't seem to realize that it's not helpful at all if you are looking for a recipe to see no one has actually cooked the recipe given. Yet somehow they hated it! And felt the need to pass it on! (And it's so crazy really, the results were so terrible, even when they substituted canned green beans!!!)

This thread is making me happy. Expressing some of the joy and wonder it is to be able to cook and feed others. I am just dumbfounded by those who don't care or don't cook. Especially those with kids, how do they do it? OK I do know (Perkins anyone?) Its an insiduous sort of message that billboard sends, that cooking is not worth the "trouble". Some of you people do seem to enjoy your knives, huh?

I too searched thrift stores for vintage coffee makers for what my husband called my "museum of coffee-making devices." Those vintage glass vacuum coffee makers are so beautiful, and good theater also.