Josh

Visited Srip for lunch today... The three of us started off with the Tom Yum shrimp soup. Spicy yet balanced... Yum! Next we had the fried catfish salad. I enjoyed this, but it got mixed reviews from the others. "Prove that's catfish and not panko!" I liked the texture and dish overall, but alas I could not prove that it was catfish because it had zero catfish taste. Has anyone ever compared this to the broiled catfish salad version? The Drunken Noodles with Chicken was "Thai Chow Fun" if you will, but spiced nicely and the chile-laden vinager sauce that they serve with the dish really works. Our favorite dish was the delicate and delicious Steamed Tilapia Filet with Garlic, Chili and Lime Juice. Yup, as JosephB reported, they've got a Beer list and some wines now... Also, I peeked out back and it looks like they are working on an enlarged patio area. Not sure how they're going to set it up, but the slab's down and the square footage back there looks huge. Looking forward to it!

About two weeks ago, the NY Times ran an interesting piece on FreshDirect. Seemingly eschewing the kamikaze business practices of the dot com bubble, FreshDirect seems to be taking it slow and steady, using an ultra-efficient back-end operation to saturate specific tested areas. Unlike the Kozmo and UrbanFetch price-war battle that ultimately drove both companies into the grave, you don't see FreshDirect giving away the store... And this will ultimately be the key to success. The Times article points out that the company appears to be a valued high-end service, achieving pretty high saturation in many luxury buildings. There's plenty of money to be made here for an efficient player. Will it replace brick-and-mortar grocery shopping? Of course not... But like delivery ala-Fairway, it's a good extension that serves the needs of busy urbanites and, as emmapeel pointed out above, those who don't want to schlep things like bottled water around. Another factor to ponder: commercial rents. With commercial rents going up and already tight grocery margins getting even tighter, will online shopping be the way for grocers to deliver the widest range of quality goods to nyc's urbanites? I agree with jogoode and would personally opt for the in-person approach even if it means going out of my way, but I know many others who will quickly get used to such a service... Sorry for taking this conversation in such a non-foodie business direction. I'm a former dot commie with a bit of a case of deja vu here...

So I finally made it to Roberto's off Arthur Avenue in the Bronx last Friday night, and it was a truly wonderful dining experience. The three of us arrived around 9:15pm and were seated about a half hour or so later. As we began to peruse the menus, Roberto himself pulled up a chair and, well, let's just say that was the end of the menus... We wound up ordering family style, with a mixta seafood appetizer, a gnocci with toasted almonds and ground lamb with a light white sauce pasta dish, a radiatore with cherry tomatoes also in a white sauce pasta dish, and a veal topped with slices of tomato, some sort of thin sliced meat (sausage, ham... not sure, but it was tasty!) and smothered with mozarella. These were all from the Roberto's extensive blackboard of specials, I believe. Some glasses of various red wines accompanied, and dessert was a shared tiramisu. The seafood appy was warm and wonderful. Of the two pasta dishes that followed together, the gnocci was clearly our favorite. The gnocci themselves were perfectly done, and the well-complimented by the lamb flavor and crunchy paper-thin almond slices. While the radiatore were incredibly fresh, we found the cheese sauce to be a bit too salty. Perhaps if they were served successively instead of simultaneously the distinctive flavor of the radiatore dish would have been better appreciated. Pretty full already, we were nervous about the main course yet to come, but the portions were just right. The veal was cooked to perfection and the entire combination simply worked. Of course we couldn't refuse dessert, and the freshly made-on-the-premises tiramisu didn't disappoint. As we were finishing off our dessert, a very gracious Roberto popped back to see how things were and insisted on taking us downstairs to see his wine cellar and the adjoining private dining room. This guy is quite the wine aficionado... The bill? Quite reasonable, at about $40 a head with one drink each. Most of the dishes are in the 14-22 range, with some specials and seafood going maybe another few dollars higher. All in all, a really relaxing and enjoyable dining experience with that special personal touch and quite worth the schlep to the neighborhood. Josh

You may find this link of some photos someone took in 2003 interesting, then. Duane Reade takes its sign down and reveals...

Mallet, good tips. Sounds much more healthy and palatable than some of the ready-made dehydrated meals that can be bought in camping stores. Truth be told, I've been reluctant to experiment because of flashbacks to an undergrad flatmate's malfunctioning dehydrator and the nightmarish things it did to his food and our electricity bill, but alas the time may have come to get over it...

I stand corrected. The original egg cake lady is indeed gone, but there's a woman with a cart who often sets up at Mosco/Mott or a block or two west on Canal. While it's possible that she's just a pretender to the throne, I've been told that she has taken up the same recipe and methods and can be distinguished from the "egg cake man" whose cakes are smaller. Got all that? Okay, I'm done splitting hairs now. Pretender or not, her concoctions are darn tasty, and so are the maybe-not-AS-great-but-still-pretty-darn-great man's cakes, so enjoy!

Often travelling with a small backpacking stove and single pot, I usually take ingredients that I can re-use multiple times and in multiple ways. I start by looking at my caloric and nutritional requirement for the trip based on length, terrain, exertion, speed, etc. and then build a feast from there. On shorter trips I'll take calorie-heavy foods such as chef boyardee raviolio (sorry, mom!) out of their cans and ziplock bag them to be used as a base ingredient. From there, I'll embellish with different spices (put tumeric in your spaghetteos and you won't even recognize 'em!), cheeses, and supplment with lightweight grains or pastas such as couscous, orzo, and kasha. Have a snack bag with walnuts, peanuts and almonds? Crush and add. Hard salamis also work well. And different instant sauce mixes can be bought to jazz things up. Fruits and veggies are tricky. I do well with some bags of pre-peeled baby carrots, and pre-sliced onion and bell peppers which I ziploc. Yes, these are fresh, but I've found that it takes days before they go totally bad on you. Garlic travels well and is versatile. Fresh apples are heavy, but so refreshing -- I'll take for shorter trips. Otherwise I try to go for dehydrated bananas, pineapples and apples, some of which i've added to main dishes or just had on the side. For breads, if I have an open fire, sometimes I bring a bag of flour pre-mixed with some salt and a little sugar. Add some water, make some dough, wrap it in tinfoil and just throw it into the fire to impress your friends with fresh bread (pretzels to rolls to pita depending upon exactly what happens in the fire... heh). French baguettes travel well because of their long, thin hard-shelled form. For drinks, I'll take gatorade powder, some tea bags and hot cocoa packets. Other powdered drink mixes such as KoolAid or CrystalLight (blech!) will also work. My favorite thing to do, especially with weight a consideration, is to hit the local asian grocery store. The options there for dehydrated foods are far greater than at your average supermarket. Soups, noodles, spices, fish, veggies... Just watch out for the sodium overdose.

My first eGullet post, and having spent many an afternoon/evening bouncing back and forth between the different dumpling joints, I can't think of a better topic to start with... My vote for your best bet in FRIED DUMPLINGS is Tasty Dumpling on Mulberry Street, between Mosco and Bayard Streets. The quality is high, consistent across visits, there's a tremendous variety compared to some of the other places, and there's actually a few tables if you're so inclined to sit. I've found the quality here to be quite similar to its sister Dumpling House location on Eldridge between Broome and Grand, only with a more varied menu -- an especially good feature if you're with less obsessive newbies. Having said that, I often find myself in Fried Dumpling around the corner on Mosco Street. I agree with previous posters that the quality is often inconsistent. STILL, there's something about the hole-in-the-wall aesthetic with the Al Yageneh-esque woman yelping "Dumpling? One dollaaah!"at you that I find inexplicably alluring. Truthfully, I've had more good experiences there than bad. Definitely to hit it when the dumplings are just pulled from the fry/steamer... Whether you choose Tasty Dumpling or Fried Dumpling, the added advantage of that location is that it's adjacent to Columbus Park, a neat outdoors place to plop yourself down and feast while you watch the neighborhood at play. Some excellent 5th generation chinese beef jerky from Jung's Dried Beef a few doors up from Tasty's on Mulberry, not to mention the previously-mentioned Hong Kong Egg Cake Lady's stand on Mosco at Mott, doesn't hurt the feast either! When it comes to SOUP DUMPLINGS, my heart is still with Joe's Shanghai. Yeah, the place can be somewhat of a disaster with the waits and all, but what can I say -- me likes! Yeah Shanghai, New Green Bo, Sweet-n-Tart, and a whole host of other places also have good offerings. Only warning is that there's no veggie option on the soup dumplings at Joe's -- only pork or seafood. For DUMPLINGS IN SOUP, my current favorite is Great NY Noodletown on the corner of Bowery and Bayard Streets. Chaos reigns here and that's part of the fun. For a quick tasty meal for a pittance, it's hard to beat. It's also open really late (possibly 24hrs?), lest you find yourself needing some sustenance after a late night on the town. Stumbled across Rosecrans Baldwin's well written account in 'The Morning News' blogazine of dumpling shop hopping with self-proclaimed chinatown afficianado Harley Spiller. It's two years old, but as relevant as ever. Cheers, Josh