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!*

It's still a regular haunt of mine on the Upper West Side (and sometimes Upper East, too). I think their pho, bo luc lac, bun dishes and grilled dishes are wonderful, and the varied menu can suit almost any crowd. Come to think of it, I've never taken anyone there who was unhappy with their meal... The price-point is excellent, and their newly expanded UWS digs are pleasant. Certainly one of the best asian choices on the UWS, in my opinion. Salty? Hmm... Yeah, I guess it is salty. But I haven't found it to be more so than other asian places. Is it "authentic"? I think the answer to that question is that it can be, if you wade through the menu and order right. True, they stay away from the entrails and intestines that you'd find at a place like Nha Trang and that "Americans" generally wouldn't go for (personally, I can't stand the stuff so it's absence bothers me not!). And yes, since the expansion of the UWS location, they now have a sushi bar, but it doesn't impact how I judge their other offerings anymore. I've never eaten sushi there, but dining companions have said it's decent.

Very interesting. If I had to list many of my favorite places in NYC, many would have come from that list... Huh. Who knew it was all the same guy? Thanks for the tidbit, Todd.

A quick google search indicates that David Burke was the event's "National Honorary Chef". Just what exactly that is, I cannot say, but it would explain his presence and thus the booth.

Check out these tours offered by the Museum of Chinese in the Americas. I haven't been, but they look really interesting and I'd bet are chock full of great info. They don't look like eating tours, but are $12 a head and afterwards you can just pop into any one of the many places recommended in discussions here and go to town with your pocket change. Also, check out the explorechinatown website run by the NYC Visitors Bureau. They have some good info, maps, and a nice little self-guided tour description, too. $70 at Mandarin Court buys you more than 125 steamed buns

A group of us went for the $35 prix fixe brunch at davidburke and donatella this afternoon for a celebration. This was my first visit to DBD and I was very pleased with the experience. While I'm not one for whipping out the camera when I dine, I really wish I had brought the digital camera with me for this one. I started with the Lobster Bisque with Green Apple and Crispy Lobster Roll. The bisque was nice, but it was the accompanying lobster roll, tender lobster wrapped in a perfectly crisp 6-inch long "spring roll"-like shell, really made the dish. The addition to the bisque of bits of green apple gave tangy highlights, but I felt it could have sufficed sans-apple. Some of my dining companions started with the Pretzel Crusted Crabcake and Shrimp Tempura. It was artfully-presented and truly divine for crabcake lovers. For my main course, I had the veal saltimbocca. Served with mushrooms over spinach, this was as good a rendition as I've ever had. The veal was done to perfection. In terms of main dishes, standouts among my companions were the Mustard Crusted Tuna Teriyaki and the Ginger Rubbed Wild King Salmon. Both were artfully presented and top notch. A conversation ensued about whether not the salmon was actually wild ("Tastes wonderful, but it's not red enough to be wild salmon." "Hey, maybe it's that Canadian wild salmon that's farm raised." "Would they deceive you like that HERE?"). Apparently somebody read last month's NY Times article, but interestingly enough nobody asked the server to clarify The desserts... Ah, the desserts... The table basically decided to go to town and order one of each to pass around. Most know about the cheesecake lollipop tree (another $8 in the prix fixe...) so I won't go into detail except to say that it tasted much better than the gimmick I thought it would be, and that I could do without the bubblegum whipped cream which could kill it. The green apples from my lobster bisque made a reappearance in the Crisp Apple Tart, albeit more appropriately and with sinfully good cinammon ice cream. The creme brulee was about as good as it gets, although had I eaten the whole thing I'd have to say that the large portion size would have overwhelmed the meal for me. So that was the food. As for the atmosphere, I thought it was a nice place. While I was weary of the crowd because of some of the things that I read, on this mid-afternoon Sunday the crowd was quite mixed. Sure there were some stuffed and plasticky stereotypes that many bemoan in their descriptions of DBD, but nothing ornery. The service was efficient -- it didn't stand out as spectacular, but perhaps it was understated by design and nothing eventful happened during the meal to really "test" it. All in all, a good outing. Did I dine with two companions to the point of blissful gluttony last night at El Malecon for a total with tip that was less than this per-person price? Well, that's neither here nor there in terms of comparison, but yes, that is indeed a fact davidburke and donatella was certainly one of the most creatively presented fine dining meals that I've eaten in NYC, and for something that beautiful to taste so good is truly the mark of a gifted kitchen.

When I'm in the East Village, I go for the seafood-based shio ramen at Rai Rai Ken. Usually the ramen texture is "springy" and very good. I've only had good gyoza experiences there. Give me a bowl of shio and a bottle of Sapporo and I'm in heaven. I also enjoy the atmosphere of the 15-seat counter digs -- although it's not a good idea to go with more than one other person and you may want to leave the clastrophobes at home... When I'm in midtown, I go for Menchanko Tei's dish of the same name. The noodles are superb and while I enjoy the original, there are 10 other variations to choose from as well as hakata and kikuzo ramen and a variety of appetizers to choose from. The digs are far more spacious than Rai Rai Ken's which is a plus when feeling social. J.

In Laos I was offered fried spiders, snakes and beetles. But I cannot tell a lie -- I didn't taste them. I just... couldn't bring myself to do it.

For the letter A, you may want to try a quirky little homey French-Caribbean place on Columbus Avenue betw. 106/107th Street simply named "A". Here's the menupages linky. And a half year from now, when you've slogged your way through to letter Q, you may want to break the mold of geography and jump the subway/LIRR to Forest Hills to hit the thai bistro on Ascan Avenue simply named "Q". It's a nice little place with the added bonus of having on the wall a framed picture of its namesake James Bond gadgetmaster

Question. The catfish in the fried catfish salad... how do they prepare it? I've never tasted anything like that before. Josh

Maybe it's me bonding with my inner-sociologist, but I find it fascinating what people put in their carts... Says much about who we are... One of my first stops when I'm in a new country abroad, or even in a unique area of the States, is to check out the local supermarket and what people are buying. Now taking this to the local extreme, I actually enjoy a variation of this game at warehouse clubs like Costco, called the "what the heck are they going to do with THAT MUCH _______ ?!?!?" With a mix of people buying for personal use, restaurant use, and resale, the legitimate possibilitie are endless, but some of the combinations are nevertheless interesting/perplexing/frightening. A palate of refried beans hidden below the 25-pack of toilet paper, anyone?