Pan

Sorry, Suzi. But I'm sure I'd love all the great Asian food in Hawaii.

Oh, that's so sad about the Kiev! You'll have to trust me that it did use to be a lot better... but then again, it's been several years since last I was there, so who knows what's happened to it since then? But at least now I know that, if the latest incarnation of the Kiev still sucks when next I'm in NY, I can at least go get good pierogies at Teresa's. ← Yep! And probably at a few other Polish diners in this hood. The thing is, I've been so satisfied with Teresa's that I haven't tried most of the other places, like Little Poland, which Stash mentioned. Stage Restaurant on 2nd Av. near the Orpheum Theatre where Stomp! is playing is not bad and very cheap, though. Well, I've got company now and we'll be off to dinner shortly. Stay tuned.

Funny about the area near Radio City. Closed by 8, eh? That's astonishing! That has to be because most of the New Yorkers are there only to do office work during the day, and the great majority of the people there in the evening are tourists. But 8 o'clock? Really! Are you sure those aren't delis that do most of their business at lunchtime and then run out of their sandwich meats and such? Typically, East Village restaurants are open until at least 11 P.M., with many open until midnight or later, especially on weekends. And there are some halfway decent 24-hour places, like Cafe Orlin, on 41 Saint Marks Pl. (here's their menupages.com page), which makes quite creditable appetizers, main dishes, and desserts. Hmm...I see on the page that they close at 2 A.M. most days. Still....And every convenience store in the neighborhood (of which there is probably one on average ever 1 1/2 blocks) is open 24 hours. Street-vendor knishes? No, they aren't part of my normal diet. I don't get a lot of stuff from street vendors, except for the odd bag of honey-roasted almonds or cashews from time to time.

Yeah, I do unfortunately have a sweet tooth (he wrote as he continued eating ginger candies -- it's for the throat-soothing properties, really it is... )

I've never tried Little Poland, Stash. I've munched on a few of these this afternoon: I don't drink coffee because somehow that particular kind of bitter flavor is too strong for me (I like bitter melon and mustard greens, though; don't ask why because I can't explain it). However, I often like things with coffee in them, as long as the flavor isn't overpowering. This is yet another Indonesian candy that can be found at A&C and other Chinese supermarkets in this city. The ingredients are sugar, glucose, milk powder, coffee extract, coffee flavor, vegetable oil, salt, and caramel. The candies themselves look like this: I've also had a couple of the ginger candies I showed you yesterday.

I was really wiped out this afternoon. I think part of that is not only the fact that I went to bed after 5 A.M., but also that the night before last, I had cousins staying over (they slept on a futon on my livingroom-cum-kitchen floor, which I've since rolled up and put back into my walkin closet), and they had to wake up early in the morning, so my sleep was interrupted a few times and fitful. Don't get me wrong, though, I was glad to be of help to them. Anyway, at length, I went to Moishe's Bakery to get a snack to help tide me over to dinner. Here's a view of Moishe's from across the street, also showing Kiev Restaurant on the corner: There was a question about Kiev. I won't pull any punches: I thought the old Kiev sucked, but I haven't been to the new one. Maybe Kiev used to be good in days long gone by, though; that, I couldn't say. But my memory of the old Kiev is from the time a few years ago when I had some potato pierogis that had exactly the consistency of the flour-based paste used for glueing things in kindergarten. Here's a view of the display case from the sidewalk: The counterwomen at Moishe's have told me that most of their business is from walkins, so their display is very important to their success. I also like this shot because one of the buildings you see in the reflection is one of my favorite buildings in the neighborhood, the historic Middle Collegiate Church, which was erected on that location directly across the street from Moishe's in 1891. The corner deli in the red brick building that you also see in the reflection is open 24 hours, but it's horrible. I gave them one shot and then never went back. I decided to get a blueberry danish today: The counterwoman was afraid that it wouldn't be photogenic, but I didn't care. I didn't think it was as good as the last time I got it, though; it was a little doughier than I prefer, and the blueberries in the jam were probably less separate. That said, Moishe's is not a gourmet bakery; it's a place to get solid, down-home baked goods, and it's gotten loads of business from me over the years. I took pictures of many but not all of the contents of their shelves today -- whatever I could shoot without getting in the way of the customers and employees or getting pictures of people who understandably prefer not to have their likenesses broadcast over the internet. In the middle level of this photo, you can see poppy strudels on the left and nut strudels on the right. I particularly like the nut strudels. Various things here, but the ones I'm most familiar with are the strudels with cheese, which are very nice. This is their main area for danishes. At the upper left are cinnamon danishes; at the upper right, blueberry, cherry, and I believe pineapple danishes; at the center left are chocolate danishes; at the center right, cheese danishes; at the lower left, apple turnovers; and at the lower right, little apple strudels. I often get things from these shelves, particularly the cheese danishes, which are really pleasant. Of particular note in this photo are the chocolate cigars in the lower left and the almond horns next to them. I like both of those items and get them with some frequency. On the upper left of this photo, you can see their prune danishes, which are sticky but good. Underneath those are rugelach, and to their right are the remainder of the black and whites. As you can see, the black and whites are popular at Moishe's. So many lousy black and whites are available all over the city, and few bakeries do more than a depressingly mediocre job at them. Moishe's is one of the happy exceptions. Finally, this is a picture of some of their breads, which are very popular with customers. I don't recall having tried their bread, though. One other nice thing about Moishe's is that hamantaschen (the three-cornered cookies you can see in their display case), though traditionally baked only for Purim, are available year-round. I find their hamantaschen dough a bit salty, but I still like their poppyseed and prune hamantaschen. When I'm not in the mood for a sweet, I usually get a bialy. The small things (danishes, black and whites, turnovers, hamantaschen and such) sell for $1.25-1.50 apiece; larger items are by the pound. Don't make the mistake I made once and get pumpkin pie at Moishe's; they don't know how to make it, and it's way too doughy. But if you're in the area, consider getting a strudel, danish, hamantasch, or black and white. Also, their coconut macaroons are excellent. I have a wonderful secretary at the Humanities/Social Sciences Office at Polytechnic University who makes my life easier, so at Christmas and sometimes also at the end of the Spring semester, I get a half pound of assorted cookies at Moishe's for her. She loves chocolate, so I make sure that all the cookies have some chocolate in them. I don't think she's ever been disappointed.

I think it's more of a specialty in my part of the world. I used to buy dried hibiscus petals from Angelica's Herbs -- a neighborhood place, on 1st Av. and 10th St. -- but I now get them mail-order via the internet from Mount Rose Herbs: http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/ I get 2 lb. bags of organic hibiscus from Tanzania. It tastes a lot better than the non-organic stuff I was getting at Angelica's, and it's also a lot cheaper.

Well, it would probably force you to clean it out before photographing it---even a fridge that's not heavily used benefits from the occasional purge.[...] ← I usually don't have very much in my refrigerator.

Hi, everyone. I'm just checking in briefly for now. It's 12:14 P.M., but I'm probably going back to bed. I was woken up a little while ago because someone who was scheduled to arrive at my parents' apartment at 11 had been unable to get anyone to let her in. Turned out, my mother was out, and my father fell asleep and was dead to the world (which is what not infrequently happens when he's asleep -- he sleeps very soundly), but people were worried. [Edit to clarify that it takes me 30-40 minutes to get up to my folks' place if I take the subway and not much less to go by cab, had I gone up there today.] Anyway, yes, I do have a rather small refrigerator (I suppose, medium-sized -- not one of those useless little boxes people living in dorms rent), a Summit. Its freezer is big enough to freeze ice but not much else, and when I get ice cream or frozen yogurt, if I leave the container in the "freezer" overnight, it is not fully frozen the next day but kind of slushy. There is nothing disgusting in my refrigerator, but I'm not sure there's much point in my showing its contents.

Finally, I had one of these: This is hibiscus tea. I started drinking it because I heard it lowered blood pressure. Now, I drink it at least as much because I like it. It's got a bracingly tart taste, and I like to drink it straight. I also drink cold water in the glass that still has the hibiscus petals in it, in a teaspoon that was one of the practical birthday gifts my friend, eGullet Society member ankomochi gave me last year. I use the fine-meshed tea spoon almost every day. Well, it's 5 A.M. and I've spent the last few hours manipulating images and so forth. I'm finding out more about how powerful a program Photoshop is: The light was so low where we were eating, just outside of the dining room at Pylos, that I was afraid all those photos would be total losses. That I was able to save photos of everything at least to the extent of improving them to a level of visibility seems amazing to me, but the process is certainly very time-consuming. See you in the afternoon, Eastern Standard Time, I expect. Goodnight from the City that Never Sleeps.

I met a dear friend and former girlfriend for dinner tonight. We keep in touch but because of life circumstances, hadn't seen each other in a few months, so it was a pleasure to take her to one of the newer, classy additions to the neighborhood. If I remember correctly, Pylos has been open no more than a couple of years, and I think just a bit less. A restaurant of that type could not have opened so far east 15 years ago; Alphabet City was too rough and the neighborhood was too poor. Nowadays, much of Alphabet City is chic and the whole neighborhood has gentrified more and more. But that gentrification has not yet come anywhere close to pricing me out of this neighborhood in terms of food and drink, though there are a small number of area restaurants I do avoid on account of expense. Pylos is not one of them. The food is worth every penny, and as you can see, they really gave some thought to the atmosphere: My friend and I were sitting on the street just outside of the dining room, and this was my view into that room. Isn't that suspended amphorae look cool? The food at Pylos is rustic Greek, really superbly done. Before we ordered, we were given fresh pitas right out of the oven (yes, they make their own very good pitas) with a fava bean spread: I made an effort not to fill up too much on pita, but my friend liked the spread a lot and ate a few more pieces of pita. Here were our mezethes: Saganaki and breaded, fried calamari. The saganaki is very pleasant at Pylos, though one does miss the song and dance provided at some establishments. When I went to Molyvos, the waiter said "Opa!" and lit the ouzo tableside. However, a dinner at Molyvos would cost about twice as much. Squid and octopus are cooked absolutely perfectly at Pylos -- I've never gotten them rubbery. They're cooked through, succulent, and delicious! For main dishes, we got items properly described on the menu as "Greek Comfort Food." My friend ordered moussaka: I ordered pastitsio: I've had the moussaka before and really enjoyed it, but tonight, we both agreed that the pastitsio was better. I loved the perfume of spices in it -- some powdered cloves, for example. I drank a Greek white wine with the meal whose name I forget. It was light and fruity with a nice little aftertaste, basically a table wine but sufficient to satisfy me in context. My dining partner did not drink tonight. For dessert, I wanted the Greek yogurt with walnuts and honey, but I didn't see it on the menu. Instead, I saw a dessert of yogurt with baked nectarines. It turned out to have way less yogurt than I wanted. The two fruit halves had some yogurt on top of them, and they were sitting on a piece of filo dough surrounded by what I think was a sort of nectarine-lemon curd, with red wine sauce around the circumference: There was also some very strong mint that I liked per se but didn't really belong. I can't say the dessert was bad or anything; it just wasn't what I thought I was getting. I've had friendly service on previous trips, but the waitress we got tonight was very brusque. That couldn't spoil the pleasure of the good food, good room, and good company, however. At $80 including tip for two, it's probably my splurge of the week. I look forward to the next time, whenever it is, but I hope I have a different server.

I also had one or two candies from this bag: Ting Ting Jahe, an Indonesian ginger candy that packs a wallop, is one of my favorite candies. Last Sunday, when I was last in Flushing, I went to the humongous Chinese supermarket, A&C, and bought two bags worth. Any of you who are near one of the branches of Hong Kong Supermarket are almost sure to find the candy there, as well. I also buy it there when I'm in Manhattan's Chinatown.

Yeah, being a regular is nice. Though I'm not always so good about remembering people's names, we do recognize each others' faces. On returning from my lunch and a trip to the drugstore, I had two packets (two wafers apiece) of these: There's a cinnamon flavor without any artificial flavors, which I prefer, but it's usually unavailable at my local Rite Aid. However, I have found no other drugstore that sells these wafers at all. They're fairly palatable and taste like biscuits -- nothing gourmet, mind you, but compared to all those horrible powders with tons of aspartame and dreadful, chemical-tasting artificial flavors, these are fantastic. On an average day, I have a few packets' worth, but I can usually go a few days without having problems even without them, especially if I make sure to eat a good amount of green vegetables on those days. If you need more dietary fiber than you can get just by eating fruits and vegetables, consider these wafers.

Speaking of renovations: The scariest words a New Yorker can see on a beloved shop or restaurant are "Closed for Renovations." Experience shows that places that close "for renovations" frequently never reopen. In fact, as Teresa once told me, that fate almost befell her restaurant, and caused needed renovations to take 5 months instead of 1. To hear her tell it, the landlord had hoped to find another tenant that would have paid way more for rent, but eventually gave up and settled. Boy, was I relieved when they reopened. So imagine my dismay when I walked past my favorite Bangladeshi spices and sundries store, Dowel on 1st Av. between 5th and 6th, and saw a "Closed for Renovations" sign on a boarded-up shop a day or two ago. This afternoon, a much cheerier sight greeted me on passing the store: All the members of the management team were there, setting up a small-scale outdoor nut-vending operation while supervising the renovations, which they told me would take about a month. Halleluyah! Dowel is wonderfully fragrant inside, but I have practical uses for the place: (1) I like to get roasted unsalted nuts (usually cashews or almonds) to snack on from time to time. (2) I like the orange-colored sweet Bangladeshi yogurt they sell. (3) I am the designated shopper of Asian items for my father. When he feels up to cooking, he cooks in Indian styles at least as much as any other, so before I come up to visit, I call him and ask what spices and such he's running low on. Ajwain seeds? No problem; how big a bag do you want? Basmati rice? I'll get you 10 lbs. Do you want regular or premium-quality? Kalonji? You bet! Black cardamom? Do you want regular or industrial size? The one spice they were out of for long enough that I went to Kalustyan's (the truly amazing Middle Eastern/South Asian purveyor on Lexington Av. in "Curry Hill") to get it was black cumin seeds. In any case, I look forward to the opening of the renovated Dowel, which is a fact that all the guys who work there know.

Hi, everyone! Thanks for your patience. I thought it was appropriate for me to start this blog at the diner around the corner, which I feel so lucky to have! Teresa's, which is in fact owned by a woman named Teresa, can be thought of as either a down-home Polish restaurant that also serves good diner food or a good diner with Polish specialties. Either way, it's got some really pleasant soups -- some in a weekly rotation as soups of the day, some available every day, and one seasonal one (cold red borsht, which is available only in the summertime) -- omelettes, pancakes, roast chicken, sandwiches, meatloaf, and so forth, but also pierogis, blintzes, stuffed cabbage, kielbasa, etc. I often get delivery or takeout, but this afternoon, I ate in. I started with these items: The sesame bread is good to put in soup, though my cup of tripe soup was so packed with tripe today that I didn't use much bread. I like the raisin pumpernickle roll, though, and ate that. I love this flavorful soup, and add a good deal of pepper to it to further accentuate its pleasantly bracing character. For my main course: The spinach pierogis aren't on the menu, but they're a regular special. As you can see, the specials are on a board. In addition to that, there are lunch specials that include a cup of soup, a choice of one of certain main dishes such as chicken stew (my favorite) and one side (I usually get beets, spinach, or sometimes cucumber salad or kasha) with coffee, tea, or a soft drink for $7.55. My lunch was more, about $13 plus tip. I'm sorry this photo didn't come out better, because the man you see next to the board is Maciek, the Manager, who was tickled when I told him why I was taking pictures. He's seen me come into his restaurant for many years, both before and after the renovation and laughed when I said that of course Teresa's was the first place I am featuring in my foodblog. For me, and for many others who live in the neighborhood or have some other connection with it, Teresa's is a kind of second home, where we can read the newspapers left in front for that purpose and have some hearty food, and when I'm sick, it's such a relief to be able to get delivery of a large order of their chicken soup. Thank you for making my life more enjoyable, Teresa's!

Thanks for the words of welcome, everyone! Therese: Thanks for finding my post in the Dinner thread and linking to it! Julia: I loved your blog, and I'm glad you were able to get power back to post the remaining photos! It really isn't expensive to eat out in New York, unless you want it to be or don't know where to go for inexpensive-to-moderate food. It's easy not to spend a lot of money in Chinatown, the East Village, and to some extent Hell's Kitchen west of 8th Av. and Little Korea in the West 30s. And if you get out of Manhattan, that opens up various other areas. Johnny: My kitchen is also my livingroom. Little Tappan range, 4 burners plus oven. I use it mostly to heat water for tea. Alright, gotta go off to Tai Chi (I've started taking lessons recently and this will be my fifth). I took pictures of my late lunch but have no time to deal with that now.

Hello, everyone! By popular demand, I am the blogger this week. Some of you know that I have previously been full of excuses for why I shouldn't blog -- mostly, that I almost never cook anymore. This in spite of the fact that some people who know me well enough to have experienced my cooking would tell you that I have good skills (some would say very good, but I wouldn't want to push it among this extraordinary assemblage of home cooks). If I knew an easy way to find it, I'd link to the place in the Dinner thread where I posted on my improvised Nasi Goreng (Malaysian-style fried rice) that caused my parents to say I hadn't lost any of my cooking skills at all (no pictures to document that, though). I think I'd be rustier if I tried to cook other things. But having established that there will be no cooking in this blog, why should you read it? Well, no-one's forcing you! But seriously, because I will show you why and how it is that I enjoy food every day on a fairly frugal budget without cooking. Part of the reason I don't cook is that I'm a bachelor living by myself and prefer the stimulation of an appreciative audience, but that didn't stop me from cooking my own food almost all the time while I was in undergraduate school at SUNY at Purchase or in graduate school at SUNY at Stony Brook. You see, there were no good alternatives to cooking in those cases. Food on and walking-distance from campus ranged from inedibly horrible to barely acceptable, except for one upscale Italian restaurant across the train tracks in Stony Brook that would have bankrupted me if I had eaten there often. So when I wanted bistecca alla pizzaiolo, I damn well got the steak, the tomatoes, the onions, the garlic, the herbs, and the red wine and cooked it myself. When I wanted breakfast, I fried eggs in extra virgin olive oil, added a bit of sherry, and ate them over toast, or if I had more time, I made eggs scrambled with fried onions, garlic, tomatoes, green herbs, cheese, and pepper in wine sauce. Etc. But now? Since 1996, I've lived in the East Village, smack dab in the middle of the greatest collection of diverse affordable restaurants in the city; most of them deliver, and some of the rest do takeout. Chinatown is about a 20-25-minute walk from here, as well. In store for you all this week if things go according to my typically loose plans (as a musician who likes to play things by ear) are trips to several of my favorite East Village eateries, Chinatown, a visit to my folks' place on the Upper West Side (probably bearing takeout food from the local Grand Sichuan branch) and one day in Flushing, a distant neighborhood in Queens that I've spent a lot of time in. I'm an adjunct professor of music, and one of the places that's taken me is Queensborough Community College, a long freakin' commute from here (1 1/2-2 hours via two trains and a bus -- that's right: like many New Yorkers, I don't drive) through Flushing. I've made virtue of necessity by picking up breakfast/lunch in Flushing to eat on the bus and then having a sit-down dinner there after each long QCC teaching day. Now that I'm on summer vacation and might not be back at QCC in the fall, I welcome the prospect of an ~1-hour trip to Flushing just for fun. In between times, I'll post a few photos of the neighborhood, to give some of you who haven't been here a little bit of the feel of this historic district, home of some wonderful architecture and some strange-looking people. But first, I need to free up some more space on my hard drive and take care of some errands. One word of warning: I am not a morning person, especially since I'm on intersession now. So no "good morning" pictures out the window a la Lucy, but not just for that reason: All you'd see is the building next door. I face away from the street, which gives me more quiet but a boring view out the window. Not that I'm complaining, mind you: The least interesting view from the least interesting building on this block is still in the East Village. Ciao for now.

Yep. (Result of site search of New York forum threads with "cesca" in the title.)

I'm thinking of things like the prevalence of garlic, onions, tomatoes, and red wine, and also the emphasis on fresh green vegetables and herbs in an agricultural region. Jonathan, I haven't been to the Italian Costa Azzurra; also, when I was in Nice, I was on a student's stipend. So my experience of food in Nice was on the cheap-to-moderate level. Also, I compared the quality of the Italian food there with what I experienced in the summer of 1991, again on a student stipend, in Lazio, Toscana, and Campagna, but especially Siena.

The hotels I stayed at in Italy that provided breakfast had bread and cornetti accompanied by jam (marmelata) and butter, with water/juice/caffe latte/tea/hot chocolate/milk to drink, and perhaps some fresh fruit. No meat for breakfast in those hotels. What level of luxury were the hotels you were staying at? We stayed at relatively inexpensive hotels, mid-priced at times. Some were classy, some weren't, but none were expensive luxury places.

I can only echo what the others have written: This is one of the best pieces of writing I've read in some time.

I take it, you preferred this to the food you've had in New York Vietnamese restaurants?

I guess that would be an application of the adage "Don't judge a book by its cover." But I don't feel the way you do about photos in cookbooks. I like photos as much as the next guy and gal, but I think lots of glossy photos are unnecessary in a cookbook and mainly have the effect of making the book more expensive to publish and, therefore, more expensive to buy. If the cookbook has delicious recipes, phrased clearly, accurately, and sufficiently completely (i.e., without skipping necessary steps), I believe photos aren't necessary.

I wonder if any of these threads could be of use to you, even though they're not very recently posted to: Fabulous NYC Cake Decorator Needed, Any recommendations? Birthday Cake I realize that some of the suggestions would be in the "too sweet" category, though. Good luck! One other idea: Do you remember the Miss Grimble shops, where you could get fabulous cheesecake, linzer torte and the like? They're online and deliver: http://www.missgrimble.com/

Breakfast? Sheesh! And look at that fancy presentation! Who cooked that, you or/and lambfries?