Josh

LOL. Come on, Danielle. Surely you've developed more understanding/empathy for the Olive Garden crowd since you migrated from NY... I know I did when I temporarily relocated to Great Plains for grad school... Never understimate the power of copious quanities of reasonably priced mediocre food served in a safe environment! Having said that, are you really more disturbed by the actual food at Olive Garden, or the Olive Garden concept of mass-produced homogenized Italian food? Personally, I don't care all that much Olive Garden. Not the worst thing I've ever eaten, but the concept does irk me and I'd much prefer to spend my Friday night queuing up at a Chinatown NYC hole in the wall to eat soup dumplings at shared tables in a place that hasn't been renovated in at least two decades. But I won't for a second try to convince you that that's any more sane! Having said that, as someone about your bro's age who has a diagnosable weakness for Taco Bell (it's not Mexican, it's Taco Bell!), I would probably be willing to date someone who likes Olive Garden if her palette was otherwise more expansive and we had other things in common. But take her on a third date there? Heck no!

When you tell her about your numskull plan to serve up primates, she'll be digging you a something else! btw, I'm alerting every zoo within 100 miles of your next road route...

This is no way to impress the ladies, Daniel... Fine. I have no idea if it came from a humor book, tabloid -- or heaven forbid, a cookbook Any of our Chinese-reading friends care to translate? And here's another link for a 1998 article with pics from the Hong Kong Apple Daily (tabloid) about something called the "Man Han Quan Xi 蘋 果 日 報 - Manchu-Han Complete Banquet" in Guangxi that serves (served?) live monkey brains. I'm sure it's all bunk. Poor monkeys...

Daniel, I originally posted a link here with some chinese magazine scans that I found in a blog, but decided that the illustrations are probably just going too far... Dunno why I was even encouraging you! EDITED to remove uneccessary link.

Your description of black and whites is accurate. To my palate, the black icing is indeed chocolate, but it just occurred to me that the white icing is sugar rather than vanilla, I think? Usually oversized for sure. The cookie part of a black and white is only one color, a sort of normal cookie color. ← JERRY: Uhm, The thing about eating the Black and White cookie, Elaine, is you want to get some black and some white in each bite. Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate And yet somehow racial harmony eludes us. If people would only look to the cookie all our problems would be solved. ELAINE: Your views on race relations are fascinating. You really should do an op-ed piece for the Times. JERRY: Um, um, Look to the cookie Elaine. Look to the cookie. -- Seinfeld, "The Dinner Party" (circa 1994) Sorry, guys, I just couldn't resist... GREAT blog, Pan. I've been subconciously avoiding the St. Mark's Empire Szechuan location (mortified by the Quiznos-Chipotle strip minimall dropped on the block, methinks... ) but after your pics and description, I'm definitely going to have to hit it soon! Also thanks to your Moishe pics, I'm now craving the kichel (the bow tie-shaped cookies in the bottom of the display case pic) that grandma used to bring. Yummm... I look forward to your further adventures.

My friend and I had a light dinner this evening at Philoxenia in Astoria (north of the Triboro 23rd Avenue at 26th Street), Sietsema's #4 pick on his new Best Cheap Chow list. The menu is fairly limited as Greek restaurants go, with a few Greek meatball dishes, Greek sausage, some fresh fish, a chicken and beef dish or two, some salads and assorted hot/cold appetizers -- but all of what they brought out of the kitchen looked wonderful. And since there were only two of us and we weren't very hungry, we did plenty of gawking... Indecisive on the cold appetizers, my friend asked if instead she could get a platter of mixed appetizers. While it wasn't on the menu, they they graciously agreed and brought her a large plate of five or six spreads for which they charged $10. Forgive my forgetting the greek names here... The standouts were the tzatziki (thick consistency, bold flavor), the eggplant salad (course, not smooth paste), and a garlic potato spread that had a lot of kick. All went very nicely on the sesame bread served (okay -- it seems to have been sitting for a bit). Forgoing one of the greek sausage dishes at the last second, I instead opted for the beef stew special ($11). What I received was a plateful of melt-in-your mouth chunks of beef, in an oil/tomato paste sauce accompanied by white rice lightly dusted with cheese. Very simple, but tasty. At the end of the meal, we were served gratis a thick yogurt laced with honey and crushed nuts (not cloying, nice contrast of sweet and sour plus the texture). Looking around at what others were ordering, the salads looked wonderful, as did the fish menu dishes and fish specials. Like the food, the dining room itself is understated but nice, and there are a few tables out front under a covered awning. The staff is very gracious. While it didn't "wow" me as perhaps I thought a #4 on Sietsema's list would, all-in-all it was a pleasant "home cooking-esque" dining experience and certainly a place to which I'd return to explore more of the menu.

Patio update: It's FINALLY OPEN and nicely done with some landscaping and a fountain. Probably a dozen or so tables-for-4 out back, some with umbrellas... Notable from last night's dinner: There was a special appy handwritten on a post-it note in the menu, so we tried it. It was crispy rice cakes served with a shrimp/chicken/peanut sauce that could best be described as chutney-like. Not spicy, but I really enjoyed it -- my dining companions less so.

Awesome, Daniel! Thanks for sharing. Reminds me of the jaunts I'd take during grad school in Nebraska...

Mmmmm.... Taco Bell.... My guilty pleasure I cannot tell a lie -- occasionally I crave Taco Bell. But never, never, never do I find myself saying, "Hmmm, I want Mexican. I know, let's go to Taco Bell!" Never. Why? Because it's not Mexican -- it's Taco Bell! My Mexican cravings take me to hole-in-the-wall tacquerias... Similar experiences could be found with some people and their McDonalds cravings (fries excluded, because them be good fries!). Moving along, while I joke with the best of them about the Chihuahua mascot vanishing because he visited a processing plant and was mistaken for raw materials by the line men working the grinder, the quality of ingredients is actually quite okay. I just did a quickie nutritional comparison on the Taco Bell and McD's websites. A beef soft taco supreme at Taco Bell is 220 calories, 14 grams of fat (22% DV), 7 grams of saturated fat (35% DV), 360 mg of sodium (15% DV), 35mg cholestorol. Excluding drink, a meal would probably be 3 of 'em, so triple those numbers and you get 660 calories, 42g fat (66% DV), 21g saturated fat (105% DV), 1380mg sodium (45% DV), and 105mg cholesterol. FYI, if you opted for bean burritos again thinking they are more healthy, think again -- each has 370 calories, and while there's 1/3 less fat and cholesterol, each one of these suckers is 1200mg of sodium (50% DV)!!! A quarter pounder with cheese at McD's is 510 calories, 25g fat, 12g saturated fat, 1150g sodium (WOW!!!!), and 95 mg cholesterol. Excluding drink, a meal would add at least a medium fries for another 350 calories, 16g fat, 3g saturated fat, 220 g sodium, but no more cholesterol. Total here? 860 calories, 41g fat, 15g saturated fat, 1370mg sodium, and 110g cholesterol. So it seems to be a wash, except for the sodium on those darn bean burritos. Friends, I am now thoroughly disgusted Guilty pleasures are just that -- guilty! I don't have the heart to look up any other items...

Hey, Glenn, a friend who just moved up the block from you was raving about your burger tonight. I know you were a bit nervous about it, but it sounds like you found your groove with it. For what it's worth, this guy's a skeptical eater... Congrats! I'll have to check things out again the next time I swing by there.

Was in Bensonhurst this evening, so I thought I'd wait out traffic by swinging through Brighton Beach for dinner. Had the momster in tow, and having come of age in the area she always gets a kick out of going back. Without JJ Goode's Time Out NY cover story with me, we headed for Uzbeki kebabs at Chio Pio, but it looked like it had either gone "hip" or was replaced with another restaurant altogether (I don't recall the name, but in tiny letters above the new name it still said "Chio Pio Inc.) With a stack of photocopied menus on a table next to some giveaway cigarettes outside the completely empty place, we decided to push on. We wandered into a shishlik place on the south side of Brighton Beach Avenue between Brighton 4th/5th Streets (I just now see that JJ listed it in his piece as Cafe Shish-Kebab) and after watching a flurry of tasty-looking salads, breads, and kebabs being delivered to the tables around us, we jumped in. We ordered the babaganoush, some bread, the fresh vegetable salad, and a few assorted kebabs of chicken, lamb, and beef (sorry kids, no lamb's balls tonight!). Despite the waitress explaining that the baba had mayo in it (mistranslaton of tachini, perhaps ?!?), we found it excellent, especially when spread on the piping hot bread that I can only describe as pizza crust shaped like a 9 inch bialy. The "fresh vegatable" salad was tomato, cucumber, onion and a liberal helping of dill in a light vinegar/lemon dressing -- very Israeli and nicely done. The kebabs themselves were a mixed bag -- tasty with the accompanying sauce really making it work, but some having too much grissle. Also, as JJ notes in his blip, for some odd reason it takes forever and a day for them to cook these small kebabs... Overall it was fun. I wouldn't mind going back with a few more people to sample some of the other salads and dishes they were bringing out that looked wonderful. Hey, does anyone have any updated Chio Pio info? What's going on over there?

You got me curious and after doing some searching... check this out. It's not in the city, and the kitsch factor is bound to be high, but a bus ride up to Mohegan Sun may soon yield Native American Fusion cuisine: The Uncas American Indian Grill will be a warm and beautifully ethereal space designed to resemble a clearing in a forest with a campfire at its center. Rustic, natural design elements will evoke the outdoors of Uncas and the Mohegan Indians in Connecticut. Look forward to enjoying cascading waterfalls and pools, fire pits contrasting with icy ledges, trail-like mosaic walls of internally-lit marbles, reed canopies, natural birch trees, fieldstone walls, and dream-like dawn and dusk lighting. linky Makes me wonder, though, if there aren't some hidden taqueria-like gems near any of the Indian Reservations in CT, upstate NY, or LI. Next time I head out to the Hamptons, maybe I'll poke around Shinnecock...

FYI, last night I asked about the status of the back PATIO and they said that they're hoping to open it in July. It's a nice-sized space... will be interesting to see what they do with it!

For soup dumplings, I'd rank them in order: Joe's Shanghai --> Moon House --> New Green Bo --> Yeah Shanghai Deluxe. Joe's dumplings rock. I've searched and searched for better, but I've mostly come up short. Moon House on Bayard Street, which I was introduced to recently and go to when I don't feel like dealing with the Joe's circus at busy times, is a close second, but I'm not impressed with the non-dumpling fare that I've eaten there. New Green Bo's soup dumplings were my second choice before I found Moon House, but overall it's one of my favorite spots in c-town and unlike Joe's they offer veggie dumplings for the non-carnivorous among us. Yeah Shanghai? The dumplings are tasty, but the skin's a bit tough, they are small, and the soup is "less soupy". Although I like their overall menu a lot and they have a pleasant back room with exposed brick, it's somehow migrated down my list to an also-ran. Yet I'd highly recommend it if someone asked, so go figure. Edited to mention: btw, any desire that I had to check out Fuleen is now... gone.

When you say "hmm, I'm in the mood for Italian" the last place you think of going to is Olive Garden. The fact that one can even get enough business in Manhattan to remain open perplexes you to no end. When you say "hmm, I want to call up for a pizza", it never enters your noggin to call Dominos. Furthermore, you probably don't even know where one is, although you can name at least a dozen pizza places in multiple boroughs that have "the best slice". When you order a pastrami sandwich, you never ever ever run the risk of the counter guy asking you if you'd like it with mayo. "Going out for chinese" involves hundreds of choices. Gastronomic bliss can be found in the form of five-for-a-buck dumplings at Fried Dumpling, or a $150 tasting menu at Per Se. Always something new to try. Specifically-speaking a suggestion: A Lower East Side/Chinatown/Little Italy grazing tour involving some combination of: a stop at NY Noodle Town; soup dumplings at Moon House or Joe's Shanghai; 5-for-a-buck dumplings at Fried Dumpling on Mosco Street or Tasty Dumpling on Mulberry Street while eating them across the way in Columbus Park; egg cake nuggets from a cart on Canal Street near Mulberry; jerky at New Beef King on Bayard Street or Jung's dried beef on Mulberry Street; a nosh at Fay Da bakery on Canal Street; a rasberry and cream tart at La Bella Ferrara on Mulberry Street; a knish at Yonah Schimmel's on Houston Street; gelato at Laboratorio Del Gelato on Orchard Street; candy stop at Economy Candy on Rivington Street; pastrami sandwich at Katz's on Canal Street; Gus's Pickles at the Tenement Museum; a you-know-what at Donut Plant on Grand Street; Roti Canai at Nyonya on Grand Street; and peeking into the endless ethnic markets and food stores that dot the area. *warning: do not attempt to eat all these things on one trip or you won't be able to fit into the subway!*