Pan

Hoboken is really easy and quick to get to from Port Authority. But I guess it's close to the PATH station than to Washington Av.? How do you get there from the station (or the bus)? Their menu looks great!

The trip to Newark actually is quite a bit less than an hour each way, for those who live near the World Trade Center PATH station. That trip takes 22 minutes. And there are several subways that stop nearby. I could definitely imagine going to Newark for a particularly great churrascaria experience. Truthfully, for me, though, that WOULD be about 1 hour each way, when the subway trip is combined with the PATH.

How often do most Manhattanites go to Coney Island to dine? I haven't done that in several years. I do go to Flushing a few times a year to go to my favorite Chinese restaurant, Spicy & Tasty -- which I was exposed to in the first place because I used to work near Flushing -- but first of all, that takes me a total of about 1 hour 15 minutes to get to, door to door, as compared to a considerably longer time it would take me to get to Penn Station, buy a ticket, wait for a train, take a 40-minute train to Edison, get a taxi to Noksha, etc., etc. (not to mention the greater expense involved), and secondly, it makes me unusual among Manhattanites. I think the fact that I like to go to the Brooklyn Museum and Botanic Gardens is itself quite unusual for a Manhattanite and owes a lot to my parents having grown up in that part of Brooklyn and taking me there when I was a child. Over a decade ago, I used to date a woman who lived in Edison, and when I was there for the weekend, we often had South Indian food in Edison and really enjoyed it. That's the kind of thing it would take for me to eat out in Edison again. And by the way, I don't think your premise about Angelinos is quite correct. My cousin lives in Venice. In the summer of 2005, we had a fantastic dim sum lunch at CBS Seafood Restaurant in LA's Chinatown at the recommendation of rjwong. But as much as my cousin loved our meal, she hadn't been back since then, because it's such an awful drive for her to get downtown and so inconvenient to her work and personal schedule and routes.

50 views and no responses? That's lame! Anyway, it turns out that she's already been to Nick & Stef's, so I need advice only on the remaining choices. Thanks.

You've got my attention and interest, Steven. Could you say a bit more about the Shanghainese places you're recommending, like what dishes you've enjoyed, how much main dishes cost, and where they are?

I think there are a lot of variables there, which is why my first instinct is to look at best v. best. Ultimately I only need one good restaurant in a category to be happy. It's also difficult to do with Chinese because when you get to the top level there's no such thing as "a Chinese restaurant" -- there are all these different regional cuisines. New York, for example, has quite a lot of depth in Shanghainese whereas Vancouver has it all over everyone else on the Hong Kong-style mega seafood places. For Vietnamese -- indeed for all Southeast Asian -- New York is pretty shallow, though. ← You've found that there's a lot of depth in Shanghainese places in New York? I sure haven't! I've enjoyed Yeah Shanghai Deluxe for years, but compared to any hole-in-the-wall in Shanghai, it's quite inferior. I suppose you'll recommend New Green Bo? They can be good but when I used to eat there, I found them inconsistent. I've been to various other Shanghainese places in Manhattan's Chinatown and one or two in Flushing, and none of them touched the quality of run-of-the-mill little nothing places in Shanghai. I will eagerly await your recommendations! New York is shallow for all Southeast Asian cuisines but at least it has one Malaysian restaurant that is pretty satisfying for me, as long as I can't get back to Malaysia. If one is enough, Skyway is enough. But I don't think one is enough. There's a convenience factor, a variety factor, and a depth factor. Would you be satisfied with only one great French or New American restaurant in New York if, for the sake of argument, all the rest were mediocre or worse?

I'm glad you had a good dinner. Just one tangential note, for those of you like me who couldn't figure out what "Union Station" was: It's the Union St. stop.

Hi, everyone! A friend of mine got a Dine Out New York Birthday Certificate. Please help us evaluate her choices (I'll be dining out with her, so I'm not just a disinterested observer): 50/50 offer (Spend $50/Get up to $50: E.g., if the bill is $88, we pay $50, and if it's $100, we pay $60): Brasserie (100 W. 53rd St.) Brasserie 8 1/2 (9 W. 57th St.) Cafe Centro (MetLife Building - 200 Park Av. at 45th St.) Nick & Stef's Steakhouse (Madison Square Garden; not valid on MSG event nights before 8) 30/30 offer (same as above, but substitute $30): Naples 45 (MetLife Building) Your evaluations are eagerly awaited. I hope that at least one of these places is worthwhile. My friend does love her steak, and I also like steak, so a limited menu is not a problem as long as the steak is good, but of course, a variety of good side dishes and so forth is always good.

I have, twice - once when he was at World Tong in Brooklyn, and once at Chinatown Brasserie. The meal at CB was way better than the one at World Tong, and possibly the best dim sum I've had in North America (though I've never been to Toronto or Vancouver, so my bases for comparison are primarily in New York and the LA and San Francisco areas). However, it was clearly not as consistently delicious to me as my dim sum lunch at Xin in the Concorde Hotel in Kuala Lumpur in 2003. For whatever that's worth.

Fat Guy, one quibble: New Jersey is not New York, so I don't think that it's a viable argument that because x and y are good in Northern New Jersey, that says anything at all about New York. As you know, few New Yorkers go to New Jersey for Chinese food or for any other reason than to visit relatives or something. And bethpageblack, are you actually saying that the quality of Chinese food in New York has gone DOWN in the last x-number of years? I would have to disagree! I believe that the number and variety of good Chinese restaurants in Manhattan, Flushing, and Brooklyn has gone UP and the standard of Chinese food in New York is better than ever, though certainly with lots of room for improvement. As for cookie-cutter places, that's nothing new! The thing that's new is how many places are NOT cookie-cutter! How fortunate that we live in a time when there is a chain of Grand Sichuans, for example.

They did NOT! You were apparently lied to. Look here: Vanilla Swiss Almond I've found it on the shelves of at least a couple of stores in my neighborhood, too, so it isn't available only in Timbuktu or something.

Yes I can! Chinese food I've had in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Bangkok, Singapore, and (perhaps to just a slightly lesser extent) Ipoh holds its own very nicely against any part of China I've been to!

First of all, Franny's is closed Mondays! In terms of places to go, make sure you look through the food in Brooklyn Heights thread. To me, casual and low-key in a moderate price-range suggests Junior's, but that may just be my mood today, and you may be looking for something different. For a much cheaper, more informal place that has my favorite Arab food in the area, I recommend Yemen Cafe on Atlantic. I've never taken a cab from Brooklyn to anyplace, I don't think. I'm not sure how easy it would be to get a cab in Downtown Brooklyn (probably easier in Park Slope, and I do see cabs on Smith St.).

Haagen-Dazs has come out with an excellent new frozen yogurt, Wildberry. Though sweetened, to be sure, it's not an oversweet ice cream substitute, in my opinion, but actually has a bit of yogurt bite. And the berries taste good.

I actually think $35 is the new $20, but in a different sense than you've been discussing so far. Back in the day (1970s), I used to consider meals that cost more than $20 expensive, and my mother still has trouble adjusting to the idea that $35 for an Italian meal is, at most, moderate and a good value, not expensive. I can't consider $35 exactly cheap, but I might even go for a "moderately inexpensive" category for $25-35/40. Quite obviously, I still find mains pushing $30 to be fairly expensive, when you consider what the eventual price of the meal will be (and then, things like the prices of the appetizers and whether the restaurant, for example, will serve half portions of pastas for half price come into play). It all has to do with what your disposable income and attitude toward spending money are. But as for the costs to restaurants, let's not overlook increases in the price of gasoline for delivery and fuel oil for heating!

Bryan, I find your use of the phrase "serious restaurant" interesting. Perhaps it would be interesting to have a thread discussing what makes a restaurant in New York "serious."

Thanks a lot for that tip, Jesikka! What did you have there? BBQ?

Thanks for the report. When I saw an elegant-looking place arising in the former Frutta di Mare space, I was intrigued and kind of excited. The menu prices have given me some pause, but if it's that good, it'll be worth it. I'll report back when I have a chance to check the place out.

Depends on your income, Bryan. But yeah, inflation does have to get taken into account. The thing is, people who regard $30 entrees as expensive also regarded $20 entrees as expensive, when their value in current dollars was the same.

I think that's the issue right there. The class of restaurants with appetizers all over $10 is increasing in this area. To me, that's pretty pricey for the area, but that's because I'm NOT new to the area and am experiencing the results of gentrification here as a change. Some of the results have been very good for me as a diner (starting with a place like Col Legno and extending to places like Lavagna and more recently, Pylos -- and Hearth, when someone else is buying), but I'm being increasingly priced out, as the cheap hangouts like the old Leshko's and Teresa's are being forced to close and places charging prices comparable to Allen & Delancey are gradually but increasingly taking their place. So it's really a matter of perception. And in this equation, portion size is an important consideration, because some $25 worth of appetizers plus about the same for one main amounts to some $50 plus tax and tip, without considering drinks or dessert ($10 per, so make that $70 plus tax and tip before drinks if we have two desserts), whereas adding another ~$25 to that for another entree is real money to some of us. But I don't want to bore you with more such talk.

It was a pleasure to work with Mary and Brad when I was on staff. Both of them were very enthusiastic and showed their knowledge very frequently and generously on the boards. I have always found both of them to be genial, gracious, and cooperative, both in public and behind the scenes. My warmest wishes to them on their current and future endeavors!

This restaurant is really expensive for the area and evidence of the increasing effects of gentrification (as is the new place on the former site of Frutta di Mare, 4th St. and 2nd Av.). In particular, the appetizers are freakin' expensive on that menu! How big are the portions? Would it be possible for two people to have a meal of two appetizers, a shared main, and a dessert or two?

Where's Don BoGan? I know there's excellent Korean food in Flushing, but I usually go to Koreatown in Manhattan, especially Han Bat (35th St. just east of 6th Av.), which has good Hyaemul Dolsot Bibimbap (mixed seafood rice put on the table in a hot stone pot) and a good banchan (free side dishes). I recently went to the Mandoo Bar (32nd St. just west of 5th Av.) looking for something soothing and got it -- Vegetable Mandoo Soup, which was not only soothing but also tasty. As for Greek food, I don't frequent Astoria but in Manhattan, but I enjoy having Pylos (7 St. just west of Av. A) in my neighborhood. Most everything they make is tasty. And for both sweet and savory Greek pastries, I love Poseidon (9th Av. between 44th and 45th Sts.).

African countries: Aside from Ethiopian and Moroccan (and sometimes Tunisian) food, there is some West African food to be had. I haven't been to any of the places yet, but Florence in Harlem has gotten good writeups (more on Chowhound than here, I think). If you want South American food, you'd be best off getting off at 82nd or 90th St. on the 7 train. Most every kind of mainland Latin-American cuisine (i.e., Mexico/Central America/South America) is represented in that neighborhood. I am no expert on which particular places you should hit, but at least I've given you information that will help your search. For Eastern Europe, there's a place in Greenpoint that got a good writeup with photos here, but I believe you have to take at least two trains from Manhattan to get there (i.e., I think a transfer to the G is required). Otherwise, Ukrainian East Village in the Ukrainian National Home on 2nd Av. just south of 9th St. has some good food (not all of it equally good) in a somewhat faded but still elegant old-fashioned atmosphere that I like. Relatively uncommon Asian cuisine: I'll bet you don't have really good Malaysian food in Missouri! Go to Skyway, Allen St. between Division and Canal. Do you have good Korean or Thai food? Tell us. Something not on the list? New York Cheesecake! (Though you did mention "pastry shops.") Within Manhattan, Two Little Red Hens, 2nd Av. between 85th and 86th, makes a very good classic New York cheesecake, as well as nice bars (lemon bars, lime/coconut bars, etc.) and other stuff. Do you also want recommendations of Greek, Italian, or French pastry places? Also, we DO have "THE BEST" threads on these kinds of things; if you haven't already done so, look at the pinned "'THE BEST' threads" linked list.

I thought that I understood them to be traditional, but from a different region than tacos you'd get in other parts of the U.S.