dresese

Street Food

Ah, street food. Is there nothing better? I thought so, and so was excited to try a lot of the street food in New York. After trying some of it, though, it seemed to lose its appeal. Most of the food carts are not that great. I've found a few of the more famous ones, like the Daisy May food cart, which is nice. But most of the typical rice and chicken, or kabobs on hot dog buns, are not that great.

So I decided to try a few of the more well known places recently (before I was sick, basically). I went to Kwik Meal, hearing about their sublime lamb on pita. It was quite tasty, and the lamb was melt-in-your mouth tender. However, that tenderness comes at a price, which is flavor. The lamb was not well-browned, and so didn't have a strong lamb flavor. Overall, not good enough to keep me coming back. When I was there I noticed that it was St. Patrick's day, and went to check it out, and quickly got caught in a huge crowd, in which it took me about 15 minutes to extricate myself.

But after I got out, I did see some cool groups in the parade coming down 43rd street, joining the parade.

I did take a picture of the Kwik Meal cart, but it came out blurry. Now I know, to be a food blogger, you have to take more than one picture.

My next excursion was that Friday, where I went with my friend Tash to a famous Trinidadian food cart in the Financial District. This was excellent, very authentic Trinidadian food. I got a double (two deep fried chick-pea flour bread, with curried chickpeas inside), and a oxtail roti. In the Trinidadian style, it's like a burrito with curried meat and potatoes inside, with the meat frequently having bones. Mine, being oxtail, obviously was very bony. But it was good, although I thought the oxtail could have been cooked longer so it more easily came off the bone. We had a Mauby each, which is a wonderfully bitter and sweet drink, great for fighting off the heat (at the time a sweltering 50 degrees!). The cart offered a wide range of items, most off the menu. Next time I may try a classic like a cassava pone, or some of the other treats they have. I would have taken a picture of the food, but my hands were way too messy with curry!

Windows Schadenfreude

I'm feeling better today, and wanted to get at least one backlogged posts off my chest. So, this one is about Windows Schadenfreude, which is the feeling I get when I see some sort of innocuous non-computer device displaying Windows error messages, causing me to greatly enjoy the sheer stupidity of it all. Here's one I found on 7th Avenue, where a ClearChannel ad displayer above a subway is advising pedestrians that they may want to run "CHKDSK /F".

Isn't Windows Schadenfreude a great feeling?

Five colds

Just as I was getting over the last cold (which lingered in my chest for a week or more), I get a brand new cold. This one is even worse. Expect more posts when I recover, sorry for the silence.

Four colds

I'm in the last stages of a cold today. Ordinarily, nothing worth even noting. But it so happens this is my fourth cold of the winter. Four! Usually I get one, or maybe, maybe two colds for the winter. Now, I move to New York, I get four.

Is it because of New York? I do come seem to rub shoulders with an insane number of people every day, mostly on the subway. Or perhaps it is just because my kids are toddlers now, and getting out and playing with other children? Whatever the cause, I calculate I've been sick about a fifth of the time this winter. And it's not just me. Almost everyone at work has been out sick with at least two serious colds or flus. So, I think it's just New York.

Maybe I should eat more kimchi.

Jaya

Earlier this week I met a friend for lunch in Chinatown. He suggested we go to Jaya, a Malaysian restaurant (one of many in Chinatown). We went there and had a really great meal.

We had some Roti Canai, which was delicious as always. The sauce they served was spicier than usual, although the roti was not as large as the ones I am used to from California. Still, it was very tasty.

Due to the cold weather, we decided a soup was a must. We got a soup called Asam Laksa. At least, that's what I think it was called, I'm trying to recollect by looking at the takeout menu online.

The soup was dark, and very fragrant. It was a bit sour (did it have tamarind in it?), and it was spicy, and all the flavors came together very nicely. The soup contained pieces of fish, assorted vegetables, and thick round noodles.

We also got the classic Hainanese Chicken, a simple steamed chicken with a spicy dipping sauce. The chicken was simple, sure, but it was tender and full of delicious chicken flavor.

Finally we got some vegetables (I'm drawing a blank on their name) with the usual Malaysian shrimp paste. It was spicy, tangy, and just so flavorful. A nice compliment to the simpler chicken.

There was so much else on the menu that looked good. I'm definitely going back soon.

Aguirre

I recent saw the movie Aguirre, The Wrath of God. Besides Klaus' brief appearance as a hunchback in For a Few Dollars More, I haven't really seen any real Klaus Kinsi films. Aguirre seems the most famous of his films, so I started with that.

This is the kind of film I wish there was more of. It is both personal and historical. The class of civilizations when the Spanish invaded Central and South America has always been interesting to me, and this is the first film I've seen about that period. The movie, made in 1972, only looks dated when showing that 1970's era low-budget blood that is so familiar to fans of zombie films from that era. The rest, though, looks surprisingly modern. Excellent cinematography. The plot is very simple, but manages to show a surprising amount of facets to the journey: the terrain, the food, the cannibals, the primitive raft construction, the black slave, the native slaves, the noblemen, the women, the religious killings of natives who could have to help them, and finally the increasinly maniacal Don Lope de Aguirre.

I've started watching the commentary as well, which is fascinating. Evidently it was based on a real letter. Werner Herzog wrote the film in 2 days, and a drunk guy vomiting on his typewriter made him lose a few scenes (which he later could not remember). The making of the film also seems interesting, since it was filmed on location, with actors trudging through real swamps, etc.

Next up in my Kinski-fest is Fitzcarraldo and My Best Feind.

Zabb

Yesterday Ben and I went to Zabb, in Jackson Heights. After reading a review in the Village Voice, it sounded interesting enough to try. Evidently it is not just a Thai restaurant, but a Thai restaurant of the Esan (or Isaan, depending on the romanization) region of Thailand. If there is one thing better than ethnic food, it is regional ethnic food. In fact, my rule of ethnic food is that the more specific the region is, the better the restaurant is. Avoid, for example, a Chinese/ Japanese restaurant. Also avoid Chinese restaurants that say things like "we specialize in Shanghai, Hunan, Sichuan and Cantonese food". That's just another way to say "All our Chinese food is equally crappy". But if you can find just a Sichuan restaurant, or a Cantonese restaurant, then the food has a decent chance of being good.

At any rate, this was the first time I've eaten at any sort of regional Thai restaurant, so I was excited. Also fortunately, Zabb was open until 2 am, so I didn't have to rush. Zabb is right under the 7 train, a few blocks away from the Jackson Heights/74th St station.

On walking in the restaurant, one surprising thing is how small it is, and how nice it looks. Hey, this is Jackson Heights! Isn't everything here a hole in the wall?

The menu was extensive, mainly focused on salads. In the usual Thai style, the salads were mostly meat-based, with either beef, pork, squid, or even catfish. There was a tremendous variety, so that our decision was a bit agonized. As I learned from Chowhound, they also offer a special Esan-style hotpot. I asked for this, and was informed it was supposed to be on the menu, but they forgot to insert the page. They showed me the disenfranchised page, which listed two "steamboats", a Esan-style one, and a normal one (I think the normal one was even called "Suki Yaki", although I thought that was Japanese-only). The Esan-style hotpot was spicy, we were warned. We got that, and a papaya salad with calamari. Later in the meal, we added another dish: a "superball" combination, of pork balls, shrimp balls, and beef balls, all either grilled or fried (we chose fried).

The hotpot was great, easily the best hotpot experience I've had. The broth was dark, garlicky, spicy, and had a very robust flavor. The light color in the broth in the above photo is just due to the flash. We chose chicken and liver as the meat, and they also brought out some cabbage and some leaves that looked to me like dandelion greens, but were not bitter.

Our papaya salad was sweet, and had very interesting calamari, fried so crisp it was almost like a pork rind. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was a pork rind. it was a nice contrast to the spicy hotpot, and it was tasty, but it didn't blow me away.

Finally, we had the "superballs", a name which makes me think of Stephen Chao's movie God of Cookery. They were glazed with a sweet sauce, but were fairly tasty. We neglected to see how well they bounced. Again, it didn't blow me away, but it was good.

Overall, it is an interesting place. I need to go back a few more times to try out some of the other salads, and perhaps an entree or two, before I can really pass judgment. But just the fact that it is not the typical Thai restaurant, with the same typical Thai menu, is enough to make me eager to try more.

Sullivan Street Bakery

I was browing on Chowhound yesterday and came across a post on Pizza Bianca (no link provided, Chowhound would break the link within a month). I've never had such a thing, but according to the thread, the place to go is Sullivan Street Bakery. So I went down there, and tried some of their pizzas. Cold pizzas, and pizzas without any cheese, and mostly without tomato sauce. But they were all really good. The slice of Pizza Bianca was huge, but quite light. It had a taste of olive oil, with some rosemary and olives too, and had a pleasant bit of natural sweetness. I also had a slice of pomodoro pizza (great tomato flavor, nice crust), and funghi slice. The latter was unusual for the densely packed mushrooms, creating a wonderfully woodsy taste. For those three slices, I spent $5.75. I wanted a bit more to eat, and got a lemon and cornmeal tart, which was dense, but not uncomfortably so, and fresh tasting.