dresese

Cappuccino successes

I have some great successes in cappuccino making. But I've decided to put it on my food blog, so just pop on over and see my latest creation. Further cappuccino-related news and lessons will appear there.

db

I live in Forest Hills Gardens. It is a beautiful place, and I enjoy living there. However, the neighborhood of Forest Hills is a bit lacking in terms of food. Well, almost. It has Nick's, a pizza place that regularly ranks among the best pies in New York. It has 5 Burros, a very tasty East-Coast style Mexican place (meaning they have lobster tacos). We have a few decent Thai restaurants and a pretty good Greek place, a good Cantonese style restaurant, and a great bagel shop. But even with all this, the restaurant scene feels bad. The main street, 71st Ave, is filled with fast food restaurants. There are no good slices (Nick's serves whole pies only). No good cafes either, in fact no cafes I can remember except for Starbucks. Lots of mediocre restaurants. Very few restaurants opening.

One new restaurant has just opened, though. "db" on Metropolitan. It features Spanish and Italian fare with a clean, modern style. The menu is small. The wine list is interesting, and overall it's about ten times classier than any other joint on Metropolitan. My friend Adam and I ate there a few weekends ago. We had Serrano ham croquettes with garlic aoili, a hanger steak, mushroom risotto, and a crisp for dessert. The food was well prepared with exception of some greens that came with the steaks, that were not properly washed and therefore gritty. The mushroom risotto was a trifle under-salted. But the flavor of the risotto had a great punch, and the consistency was perfect, which is unusual even for good restaurants.

db may not be much, but it is what could be a very solid restaurant. Maybe not so awesome that someone may come from Manhattan to eat there, but good enough so that you don't have to go to Manhattan to get food of this quality.

Aburiya Kinnosuke

A few weeks ago, I went to a great Japanese robata-style grill called Aburiya Kinnosuke. I think this is the first time I've ever been to such a place, and it was quite interesting. For much of the food, they grill it around an open vertical fire, from which the chefs place vertical food around the perimiter of. It's a nice idea, which strikes me as not only efficient (you have more area to grill), but also tasty: the juices from the topmost things run down and flavor the meats and vegetables on the bottom.

Pictured here is one of the strangest things they had. To the naked eye, it is a cracker. But up close, it looks like a nighmare a small fish would have, since it is a "skin" entirely composed of tiny smelt. This one was grilled at our table on a portable charcoal grill. It was nice, not crunchy but rather firm and pliant like a flatbread. But the best item on the menu was probably a sea bass stuffed with herbs. They stuffed it with an intense amount of thyme, and it was amazingly tasty and fragrant.

For more pictures, see my flickr set. Sea bass not pictured.

Cappuccino @ Via Quadronno

I recently heard about Via Quadronno, which many claim is the best cappuccino in the city. It's located on 73rd & Madison, a location where I rarely go. But last weekend I went boating in Central Park (pictures will probably appear on the Hyatt family blog before long), and that put me roughly parallel. I managed to convince Greta that it wouldn't be troublesome to walk over there so I can enjoy some coffee, so I found myself outside a completely packed coffee house, which had a little bar outside selling gelato. Getting a seat there was impossible, but they didn't mind giving me a real cup for me to drink from, outside.

The cappuccino they made was wonderful. It was both completely smooth, and very thick. Probably the best I've had in the city, but the cappuccino at Casa and Zibetto are nearly as good.

Check out the Via Quadronno website for some more great photos of cappuccinos, and other drinks.

More cappuccino progress

The last time I wrote about my experiences with making cappuccinos, I was having better success. The key was the water pressure - as soon as it was fixed my froth became much better. Still, I haven't been that happy. My frothing frequently turns out too bubbly, or too thin, or both.

For help, I went to Zibetto and asked the barrista there about how to make the proper froth. He was very willing to give some tips. First he made some froth and showed me the consistency - it was thick but there were no bubbles. He said that's how it should be, thick & smooth, like yogurt. He said there was nothing to the frothing, you just position the wand at the right place (he sort of rested the pitcher of milk on the upper corner of the wand), and get a whirlpool. He did this for a few seconds, then tilted the pitcher of milk slightly so that the tip of the wand was just at the surface, creating froth. After just a second of this, he moved the wand to the center of the pitcher, all while keeping the whirlpool going. He said the whirlpool will whip air into it, and break up all the little bubbles. He kept this going until the pitcher was too hot to hold, then stopped.

I've attempted the same thing, but found that I tend to get big bubbles at the end, but just on some machines. On others, everything goes great. So for the moment, I'm sticking with the good machines. Even so, I'm not getting the volume of froth that I want. Perhaps I either need to work on my position for the few seconds I spend at the top of the milk, or extend that time period. Or maybe just none of the machines are powerful enough. My latest effort, which was fairly good:

Al Dente

One of the hard parts about cooking is that so much of it is based on knowledge that is only trasmissible through shared experience. Al dente pasta is a good example of this. Every cookbook says the same thing - to cook pasta "al dente", meaning it should not be too soft. Of course, how much is too soft, or how much is too hard? I used to cook my pasta fairly soft. After eating at some nice Italian restaurants in New York, I realized that my pasta was way too soft, so I cooked it much firmer, and found I enjoyed it a lot. Was this al dente? Or too much, or too little? First of all, I've never been to Italy, so I have nothing to compare my pasta against. Second, even in Italy, there probably is a fair amount of disagreement, something I imagine Italian grandmas bicker about while playing canasta.

When I first had pasta that was fairly firm, it was a revelation. I had a similar revelation a few months ago when eating at a restaurant in the West Village called BellaVitae. They had a pasta there that was beyond any al-dente that I've had. The spaghetti was actually cooked just to the point of having a slight crunch in the center, which was a delightful surprise. Surprisingly, they did this with the rest of the pasta not tasting undercooked at all. I'm not sure how they did it, perhaps they just have the timing down to the millisecond in which it perfectly cooked. Perfectly cooked, that is, if you like your pasta a bit crunchy.

But is that al dente? I may never know, and in fact such a thing may be unknowable, and maybe not even a question work asking, because there is no real standard on this.

Di Fara

Last week I got a chance to visit Di Fara, a pizza joint beloved by chowhounds. This is not a restaurant, it is basically a classic slice joint, except with fanatical devotion to quality.

I've been trying to get there for a while, but it's all the way in Midwood in Brooklyn, which is far out of my way.

The thing about Di Fara is that everything is done by Dominic DeMarco, an older man whose been running this pizza shop for decades. There's a photo of a much younger version of him, standing in the same place he is now, with what looks like the same equipment as he has now. It must be something to work in the same place for 40 years. I tried to imagine myself 40 years old working in my cubicle, but the chances of me being in the same cubicle for even 2 years in a row are pretty much nil.

The strategy of eating at Di Fara is a lot like Dumpling House. You have to go there, shoulder your way up to the counter, make eye contact when Dom has a free second, and blurt out your order. Then repeat it to make sure he got it. Unlike Dumpling House, though, you have to stay and make sure he actually makes it, because his ordering is haphazard to say the least. People who walked in way later than you will be eating before you are, and he may just forget your order entirely.

When Dom makes your pie, he carefully puts the sauce on, then grates his cheese right onto your pizza. Then he pours olive oil on it, and puts it in the oven. It takes a while to bake. Unlike most high-end New York pizzas, this takes longer than 5 minutes to cook. Then again, this is not a high class pizza. It's more like a high-end low-class pizza. He takes it out of the oven to put more cheese on. When he finally pulls it out, the top is bubbling and molten, as if someone had spilled pizza soup on it. Out of the oven it comes, he peeks at the bottom, then takes his basil out and snips some basil right onto the pizza. Very nice.

The taste is great, completely unlike other pizzas. Mostly it is because of the cheese combination. It has a tangier and saltier taste. Also, richer. Two slices is pretty much all anyone needs.

We got not only the plain pie, but also one with half artichokes, half porcini mushrooms. On the plus side, he is generous with his toppings, and the toppings are excellent. The artichokes were not some sort of canned artichoke hearts, but instead little triangles of real fresh artichokes. The porcini mushrooms weren't thin pieces of rehydrated mushrooms, but instead large whole marinated mushrooms. The problem was that these toppings made the pizza very soggy, and you could only eat it with a knife and fork. I liked the toppings, but probably the plain pizza was the best.

The crust, by the way, was good, but not as good as the more high-end pizzerias. On the whole, I think other places had a better pie, but this was certainly the best slice joint I've ever eaten at.

Naeng Myun

A recent article in the New York Times called my attention to Naeng Myun, Korean cold noodles. Not just room-temperature noodles, but noodles in which the broth actually has ice in it. A group of coworkers and myself went to try it out. We went to You-Chun on 36tht St., a Chowhound recommendation.

We started out with a seafood pancake, which I've never had before at a Korean restaurant. It was a little greasy, but fantastic. The crunchiness of the crust of the pancake was a great contrast to the soft creamy inside & chewy seafood.

I got the soup, which they had several varieties of. I had the simple version with the ice. They also had varieties without ice but with hot sauce. When the soup arrived, it was monstrous, a giant metal chilled bowl filled with a sort of slushy broth with buckwheat noodles. The noodles were very good, firm and chewy. On the side they served a white-colored hot beef broth. The whole experience was less strange than I had initially envisioned, and drinking icy broth on a hot day felt very natural.

This was a lot of food, by the way. I would recommend splitting a noodle soup with a friend, if that is possible.

I would recommend this place, the soup was very good. Also, it is open 24 hours, although the place may be much more karaoke oriented late at night. Even at lunch we sat next to a giant TV showing Korean performances, in this case a guy playing classical to a sort of a house beat, while dancers dressed as cats performed. But, hey, they make good noodles.

Shalimar

When in San Francisco, there is no better place to eat than Shalimar. The deliciousness per dollar spent ratio is probably the best I've ever seen. They are a triple-threat of Pakistani cuisine - they have the best naan I've ever eaten, the best tandoori meats, and the best curries. Oh wait, that's not all, they also have really interesting and occasionally great meals such as lamb brain curry. Oh yes, and the restaurant is a hole-in-the wall filled with mouth-watering smokiness. Your clothes will smell like smoke & curries after you leave. And if you are like me, you'll have a hard time washing these clothes, preferring instead to sniff them for a reminder of the best Pakistani food you've ever had.

I was back in the Bay Area last week and went, and took more pictures of the wonderful food there (previous pictures are in this post.

I ate with just a few other friends, and so we couldn't sample every delicious thing possible. We had to get the tandoori chicken, because no one does tandoor like these guys.

After that, we had to get my all-time Shalimar favorite combo, Bhuna Gosht and onion kulcha. Each of these two things is incredibly delicious, but they work really well together. The only complaint I have is I didn't get any marrow bones in my curry. When I do, it is always the highlight of the meal. If you go there and get a bone marrow, for goodness sake don't leave it there, suck out the marrow!

We also ordered some classic vegetarian options. Most prominent among them is the dal, which my friend Ben swears by. It does taste pretty good, but to me most dals are pretty boring.

Also we had palek paneer:

I was happy.

Una Pizza Napoletana

Last weekend Adam and I went to the East Village to try Una Pizza Napoletana, a pizzeria that burst on the New York scene a year or two ago on a wave of incredible hype. At the time, the story was that it was made by a pizza purist, who was dedicated to the pizzas of Naples, and determined to bring a good pizza to New York. When you say something like that in New York, be prepared for a controversy. When the review came in, they tended to fall along two lines: 1) This is the best pizza ever, wonderful in its simple use of high quality ingredients and techniques , and 2) The pizzas are nothing special, overpriced, and the place charges for tap water.

Una Pizza was ranked among the best in books, magazine articles, and various blogs. So I suspected I would like this pizza. The pizzas are $20, and I feel that if I have one of the great pizzas in America for $20, then it is well worth it.

The place only serves 4 pies, all of them fairly simple. We split two pizzas, both of them topped with buffalo mozzarella cheese, one with cherry tomatoes and garlic, and one with a sauce and basil. They were both incredible, although I preferred the plain Margherita pie. First of all, the crust was awesome, perfectly charred and with the right amount of chew. In addition, the buffalo mozzarella was so creamy that ever bite of it was precious to me. And the sauce, mozzarella and olive oil combined in a really harmonious way that went beyond what I've experienced in other pizzas.

I wouldn't say that it is makes me think less of the other Neopolitan pies in the city. For instance, La Pizza Fresca is probably 70% as good. But to me, this is Neopolitan perfection. Eat there, go now.

Oh yes, and they don't charge for water anymore.

Lin Taiwanese

Also known as David's Taiwanese, Lin Taiwanese is in Elmhurst and serves up a variety of interesting Taiwanese dishes. If you like blood and intestines, this is the place for you. I think of any Chinese place I've been to, it has the most blood-based dishes. It also has stinky tofu!

Ben and I ate here for lunch today. It was quite tasty, although we didn't eat any blood or stinky tofu.

We first got a spicy, salty smelt as an appetizer. It was good, but the fact that this one dishes required about 100 fish to die is not exactly pleasing.

I'm a sucker for stir-fried udon, which I first had in Hong Kong. This was a very good version, with crunchy vegetables and thick chewy noodles.

For our vegetable, we had "si gua", which is a type of Chinese squash. This was really delicious, but this dish almost always is.

Finally, Taiwanese sausage. Strangely, it comes with raw garlic. I'm usually not one to eat raw garlic, a trait I share with most of the human race. I did try a bit of the garlic with the sausage, which is how I imagine one is supposed to eat it. It was a nice combination, but I still felt the garlic was a bit too spicy.

Overall, a solid Taiwanese eatery. Nothing blew me away, but that's fine, because nothing was at all disappointing.

La Pizza Fresca

I've mentioned La Pizza Fresca before. It's a great Neopolitan-style pizza restaurant. It doesn't get as much press as some of the other places of the same style in New York, but it really is one of the best pizzas in the city. I don't have much else to say about them, just wanted to plug them again.

At a Flushing food court

Flushing has got to me my favorite food destination right now. It is so jam packed full with wildly good Chinese food that just choosing where to go is perplexing. Like Buridan's donkey, you might just starve before deciding where to eat.

Last weekend, Ben and I went to a small food court in Flushing. We ate about half of the stalls there. My favorite was the Sichuan stall, where you can order from a man who speaks no English at all. Pointing at the menu won't help because the menu is only a sign that he can't see, and faces towards you (and it's all in Chinese). But the food is spicy and has an abundance of those wonderful Sichuan peppercorns. It's a great, cheap way to eat.

We got the Sichuan cold noodles. The noodles, like the rest of the food, was pleasantly spicy although not overwhelmingly so. The real spice came from the mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns.

We also got a big bowl of cold, smoked rabbit. Compared to the rest of the dishes, it was a little plain. It was so much, though (I think Ben accidentally ordered a double order), that I took it home. Eating it on it's own was a revelation. It was not only smoky, but had a wonderful subtle heat to it. I couldn't stop eating it!

Finally, we got some dumplings. Unlike other ones I've had, these were topped with sesame seeds. Strange. It was quite tasty however, although I've had better elsewhere.

At the other stalls, we got an green onion & egg stuffed bread from an Islamic Chinese vendor, which had a wonderfully hearty and rustic taste. We also got a peanut & chicken soup from a Cantonese stall. That one was much more refreshing that I would have guessed. Very pleasant.

Zibetto

Last week I tried Zibetto, a new and extremely tiny espresso bar near 56th St. and 6th Ave. I can't call it a café, because you can't even sit down. It's just a counter. However, the espresso and cappuccinos are expertly crafted. I recommend it highly, so go there and try it out! This is one of the best in the city.

Portions

How many people can one pound of pasta feed as a main course? I ask, because I subscribe to Cook's Illustrated magazine, and they had a segment on pasta. They claimed that one pound of pasta can feed "4 to 6 people as a main course". Now, I probably eat a little more than average. However, I feel I can comfortably eat more than half a pound of pasta myself. My wife Greta, who is a fairly small woman, eats less than me, but still around half a pound of pasta.

So why would Cook's Illustrated, a magazine that is pretty well informed, have such a bizarre estimate? I figure it is because they really are talking sort of a dinner-party style entree. People have eaten soup, maybe some bread. By the time the main course comes around, perhaps they aren't very hungry. And of course they have to save some room for dessert. Oh isn't that typical of that whole Vermont-style living that the editor of that magazine loves so much.

Really, though, I feel that this is deceptive. I don't normally have courses. Who has time to make more than one meal, or clean more than one set of dishes? So I feel that one pound of pasta can feed 2 people as a main (and only) course normally. Less, of course, if there is more food. But that case is unusual and not really even worth talking about.

Some moderate cappuccino success

After the water pressure got fixed, my cappuccinos have been getting better and better. This one I decided to froth a fair amount of milk, more than I could drink. I hate wasting, but I thought it might be necessary to get a truly superior froth.

I think that is the case. Just look at that beauty! It's wonderful! Sure, no latte art yet, but this style is definitely what I was aiming for. I still need to increase the amount of froth a bit, I think, and be able to make this quality of cappuccino more consistently. More recent tries have looked much less smooth. I believe perhaps that I need to be more careful during the initial phases of frothing the milk not to make any big bubbles.

Mountain View trip

I just got back from a week-long trip to Mountain View. I managed to see my good friends Erik and Vladimir (plus wife Maria) who I worked with at Intellicorp, Shibani, Emmett, Michel, Arthur & Kevin, who I worked with at Intraspect, Patty, Jon & their family, whose lab I worked in at U of I, and Samantha, who I worked with at Intellicorp and Intraspect.

For food, I had at least one of the Bay Area's best hits. With Michel, I had Zachary's absolutely authentic Chicago-style pies.

I had some decent food with everyone else, but nothing mind-blowing. Probably the other really nice thing I had was a mini-pizza with really nice tasting heirloom tomatoes at Charlie's. I'd ask where they got heirloom tomatoes at this time of year, but at least two people told me the high-end supermarkets import them from Chile now and sell them year-round.

However, two disappointments: I did not get to eat at Shalimar, which is pretty much my favorite place to eat in the world. And I didn't get to drink a good pearl milk tea. I'll have to leave that for when I go back.

Oh yeah, and the weather sucked. It was relatively cold and rainy, and at one point while I waited for Caltrain one day, very cold and very rainy. I swear I almost got frostbite. Meanwhile, in New York, the weather was incredible, with highs of more than 60 degrees.

Cappuccino progress

Some interesting updates on my cappuccino progress. My progress has been very slow. For weeks, I just was unable to get any decent froth at all. I didn't know why, it just seemed like it was impossible. I was disheartened.

Then, one day I went to make a cappuccino, and there was a guy working on the water system. Evidently the water pressure had been low for the past few weeks, which was effecting the espresso quality. After he fixed it, I found I could make froth quite easily. The difference was huge. Which is odd, because steam is steam, right? What difference does the water pressure make?

I might not understand it, but man, I was happy. I could quite easily make the smooth emulsified foam that I like so much.

However, all was not perfect. My foam was quite good, but I still wanted more of it. At the Steps of Rome, my favorite coffee shop in San Francisco, their cappuccinos had very stury foam, and lots of it. Which was amazing considering it was all emulsified, and not spooned out seperately. But I couldn't quite get so much foam.

A few days ago, Google was hosting a group of students from NYU. I met one of them by the cappuccino machine, and he demonstrated his latte art skills for me. It was quite impressive, and the results are shown in the picture for this post. However, he made more of a latte, and I'd say his cappuccino was only somewhat better than mine.

Next time I take my camera to work, I'll snap a picture of my cappuccino results. I'm going to start trying to make patterns soon as well.

Shalom Kosher Restaurant

Last weekend, Adam and I went to a new kosher kabob place, one that was written up in a New York Times article I previously mentioned. Read on some pictures of the delicious food we had.

We started with some pickled vegetables: tomatoes, beets, and cucumber. Very nice and refreshing. The pickled beets had a surprising kick to them.

We also had the nice bread. Normally I wouldn't take picture of bread, but the bread at these places is sort of unique, with a distinctive bagel-like shape. This picture has nothing to judge the size of the bread by, but the bread is medium sized. It can feed two people.

We had lamb soup, which was very nice and hearty. I like how they use plenty of parsley. It's not just for decoration, they really put it there to give the lamb a subtler flavor.

More interesting was the "lagman", a hand-pulled noodle soup. The thick chewy noodles were great, and the broth was perfectly seasoned.

Next was the chebureki, a sort of giant oblong deep-fried soup dumpling, which could be filled with beef, or mushrooms, or other ingredients. They both had some nice juice inside, with the mushroom one being incredibly juicy.

And of course let us not forget the kabobs. We got the some healthy kabobs: a deliciously salty and strong-flavored salmon, mushrooms (which could have been cooked a little more, I feel), and tomatoes.

We also got a lamb kabob, and a beef skirt steak kabob. Both were excellent. Unfortunately, unlike Cheburechnaya, no lamb fat kabob was offered.

But that's not all! We also got a plate of cabbage, which was about as good as cabbage can be. Which is not incredible. But good.

And finally, dessert, which was something called Chak-Chak. Basically it was sweet noodles. Like those noodle baklava you see, but with really thick noodles, and arranged in a tall block.

Looking back at this, I'm really amazed we could eat of all of it. I'd say it was cheap, but all this food came to about $40. Not expensive, certainly. But there are cheaper meals to be had. Overall, everything was well done. The standouts for me were the lagman and the salmon kabob. However, I feel that most people would find the salmon kabob too salty.

According to one of the workers there, Martha Stewart is planning to do something for her show at this place. You heard it here first. I was pre-Martha for the Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, and now this. Get out of my head, woman!

Patsy's pizzeria

Patsy's pizzeria is one of the oldest pizza places still around, and a classic pizza of the coal-fired variety. The original is in Harlem, and Patsy's and their offshoot restaurants have been among the best pizza in New York for as long as anyone can remember.

Today some friends and I went to eat at the Patsy's on 23rd Street. It was surprisingly empty at 12:30 on a Friday. We ordered two pies, a plain pie, and an olive pie.

The pizza was quite good. Like many of it's kind, some of the slices were partially soggy. However, the rest of the pizza was excellent, with a great crust, a tasty sauce, and excellent quality mozzarella.

After this pizza, I still need to try Grimaldi's (a Patsy's offshoot, in fact), DiFara's and Una PIzza Napolentana.

The frothing begins again

My espresso making and frothing experiment began last week. Google has some nice machines:

I've been able to create an OK espresso. That is, it's better than many you will find in New York. But still I have a long way to go.

My cappuccinos have not been so successful. I've made two so far. The first one was fairly good, but the second one basically had no froth at all. The whole frothing thing is very hard to do, since one of my hands has to be on the steam button, and the other holds the milk. The machine is powerful, and so the milk heats up fairly quickly. So far, I haven't gotten things down quick enough to get a good froth yet.

Also, I need to get a cappuccino cup. It's hard to even judge how good froth is when drinking from paper cups. When I get it, stay tuned for pictures. My goal is to be able to create good foam and some preliminary latte art by springtime.

Bukharian cuisine in Queens

The New York Times has an excellent article about Bukharian Cuisine found in Queens. This stuff is close to where I live, although not within walking distance, unfortunately. I really like the pictures and some of the tidbits, especially about the Bukharian Jews not being either Ashkenazi or Sephardi, but instead descended from the Jews of Babylon. I had no idea.

Le Pain Quotidien

Yes, it's a chain, but Le Pain Quotidien has my respect. From Belgium, they have locations internationally, and many locations in Manhattan, and Los Angeles. They specialize in dense, chewy, rustic organic breads. I've bought their bread many times, and it is expensive ($10 for a loaf), but the loaf lasts a long time due to its denseness. On Friday, my family, myself, and my friend Adam ate lunch at the branch in the Upper West Side (84th & Amsterdam).

I got a Tuscan bread platter (or something like that). It had a farmer's cheese, a pesto & olive tapenade, prosciutto, shaved parmesan, and a selection of bread. Very delicious, and a deceptively large amount of food.

When in a Belgian place in mid-winter, there's nothing better than a nice Belgian Hot Cocoa. I've never had one like this, which was a separate bowl of froth, and the molten chocolate on the side. It worked fairly well, and the cocoa was wonderful.

Adam got a Sardine & Beet sandwich, which I tried. It was salty with an mild sweetness, and not as odd as one might imagine.

Greta got a couple of tarts. Shown below is the apricot tart. I didn't try it, but she reports that it was really good.

I really like this place. Their whole philosophy of organic, rustic food is something I think New York needs more of.

Mama's Empanadas

The empanada is a food I never really encountered before moving to New York. I haven't been to many empanada places, but I have gone to a local place many times. From my experience, empanadas can range from fairly large (3 would be a meal), to about half that size. Outside the Queen's Center Mall is an excellent empanada place, which has a small sized empanada, Mama's Empanadas.

Their menu is fairly large, with about 20 different types of empanadas, along with other miscellaneous items. They have two types of empanadas, flour ones, and corn ones. They both are good, but I prefer the corn ones, which have a great bite which is both firm, crunchy, and tasty. The insides of the empanadas usually works well, except the spinach & cheese, which I thought was too watery.

Overall, I recommend this place highly. The best empanadas I've had so far, although my experience is too limited for that claim to mean much. By the way, this place is takeout only.

Din Tai Fung

Every year, legendary Taiwanese dumpling masters Din Tai Fung come to the Flushing Sheraton for a week. They bring not only their prodigious skills, but also all of the raw ingredients from Taiwain!

I was fortunate enough to find out in advance when this would happen, and today a group of 9 of us went to gorge ourselves on the Din Tai Fung's legendary xiao long bao (soup dumplings) and other food. We not only got to eat this great food, but we saw the dumpling masters in action. I think they were somewhat surprised and amused that someone would be taking pictures of them.

It wasn't all dumplings. We started with a couple plates of "salty vegetable" which turned out to be some baby bok choi. It was perfect. Nicely salty, crunchy without tasting raw, and of course with bok choi's normal pleasant taste. This disappeared amazingly fast, especially for a vegetable dish!

We next ate some wonderful chicken soup. It was, as the waitress described it, "from real chicken, not frozen!" Taiwun Fun magazine describes it as "wild chicken". It had a perfectly clear broth, with a subtle, fresh flavor. The dark meat in the chicken was slippery and had a wonderful texture. One of the best chicken soups I've had.

Finally, the star of the show, the xiao long bao (or soup dumplings, as they are called here). We got two versions, one with just pork, and one with crab & pork. These were little miracles. They were small, perfectly sized, and had a dumpling skin that was both thin, strong, and tasty. The soup inside was much more elegant tasting than others I've had. The ones I've had in New York have had a sort of greasy, strong tasting broth, with the actual crab or pork somewhat of an afterthought. Not these. The broth accentuated the filling, and the filling was probably the most amazing thing about it. The crab & pork had such a nice, fresh, crab taste, with the texture of real crab. This was the only crab xiao long bao that actually tasted like crab. The pork xiao long bao also had a great filling, with an assertive taste, and a somewhat rough texture. For me, this was unusual, and a pleasant surprise.

We had many other dumplings, most of which I didn't get a picture of. They all were excellent. The strangest dumpling we had was a dumpling filled with sticky rice. This is a strange concept to me, and sort of reminded me of the pizzas you see in New York with ziti pasta on them. They were tasty, though, although they didn't blow me away.

All in all, I found the ingredients used to be top-quality fresh ingredients. The preparation was done extremely skillfully, and it all combined to form a wonderful and memorable meal. I don't know if I'll ever top these xiao long bao's, but I can only hope that I'll at least eat there again next year when Din Tai Fung comes around.

Chikubu Ramen

On a tip from Chowhound, I checked out Chikubu, a Japenese restaurant that, on Fridays, serves some of the best Ramen in the city. So I tried it out with some co-workers. It really was good, with a nicely flavored broth, to good quality noodles, and everything. Probably the best part was the pork in it, which was both flavorful and melt-in-your-mouth tender.

My co-worker Brody took some more photos, but I can't figure out how to link to his public photos (although Flickr says I should be able to do this). So blogging one photo from Flickr is all I can do. Sorry!

The Hummus Place

I love a restaurant that knows what it does best, and sticks to it. Nick's Pizza, for example, in Forest Hills does pizza and very little else. Similarly, this week my co-workers and I went to a place that serves hummus, hummus with chickpeas, and hummus with fava beans. Oh, and a tomato stew. That's it.

The hummus was very good. It was so smooth, and they put lots of different spices in it so that it keeps your interest. And there's egg in it. Everything in this restaurant had the capability of having an egg on top. I wish more restaurants were like that.

Not only was the hummus very good, but the pita bread was excellent, and obviously freshly made. I really enjoyed this bread.

I did not have the hummus, however. I just tried someone else's. What I had was... well I can't remember the exact name, but it was a tomato stew with some vegetables. And a fried egg on top. Yes!

And if that delicious meal wasn't enough, there was Turkish coffee. I love Turkish coffee!

All in all, a very enjoyable experience. I'll be coming back here.

Sweet-n-Tart

I've heard good things about Sweet-n-Tart, a nice Chinatown Cantonese spot with dim-sum type items. I tried it out with a friend last week, and thought it was pretty good.

We had some standard dim-sum type dumplings, along with a slightly unusual shrimp & asparagus dumpling. We also ordered chicken and clam congee, a strange combination that worked better than expected. Also, we had a beef noodle soup. The beef flavor was unexceptional, but we liked the noodles.

All in all, a nice meal, and it wasn't too expensive (although it was expensive by Chinatown standards). Nothing was greasy, and everything tasted fresh. I'd go back, especially since there aren't that many good Cantonese places around New York.

More on Spicy & Tasty

I previously blogged about Flushing restaurant Spicy & Tasty. I went back and got some different dishes this week. As usual, it was all very good. This place uses real Sichuan peppercorns, which means that not only is the food spicy, it also has this strange mouth-numbing taste. Pictures after the jump.

So, I got a certain type of boiled dumpling, soaked in red chili oil. I love this type of dumpling, and this one manages to be elegant in appearance, but with a straightforward, rustic taste at the same time.

I also got some cold Sichuan noodles. A classic to try at any Sichuan place. The noodles here were very good.

I also had a slightly different kind of cold jelly than I had the last time. This one had the distinction of having a huge amount of raw garlic on top. The spiciness, numbingness, and bite from the garlic was quite exciting to my palate, but this is only recommended to those who can stomach so much garlic.

Finally, there was the cold, spicy bamboo, which had the familiar spicy taste that all these dishes had, plus a refreshing texture.

Fleur de Sel

Last week a few coworkers and I ate lunch at Fleur de Sel, a well-regarded modern French restaurant. They have a $25 prix-fix lunch. The lunch was three courses, the first was a frothy parsnip soup, with the cutest little parsnip raviolis you ever saw. Really good. Next I had duck & duck confit combination, which was an interesting contrast. The duck was perfectly done, and the light sauce complimented it nicely, without overwhelming the taste. Finally, I had a trio of fruit sorbets that had a really nice natural flavor to it. I didn't have anything that totally blew me away, but the parsnip soup came fairly close.

I'm getting to be more and more a fan of the prix-fix lunch. You can have a really nice, elegant three-course meal for a reasonable price. Yes, it is expensive, but a few cheap meals at other times will more than make up for it.

Another one I had recently was at Nino's Tuscany, where I had probably the best cooked pasta I've ever had. It was perfectly al-dente, which is really tricky to do and requires precise timing.

And, is it prix-fix or prix-fixe? I see both spellings.

More on DeMarco's

I've written about DeMarco's before. After a few trips down there over the past year, my final verdict is the pizza is very good, but inconsistent. The problem is the crust. About half the time, the crust is as it should be: firm and with a good chew. The other half of the time, though, the crust gets a little water-logged, and comes out soggy.

The soggy crust problems sounds worse than it actually is. The pizza is still edible, and in fact still tasty, with the soggy crust. However, it is nowhere near as good as it could be.

By the way, in my previous post, I had not noticed that you can get quick slices from a different door around the corner to the sit-down restaurant's door.

So, eat at this place if you are in the West Village, and hungry for a slice. I recommend getting both a square slice and a round slice. DeMarco's is on the corner of MacDougal and Houston.

1111 Mississippi

When I was in St. Louis, Greta and I ate out with our friends Brian, Amanda, and Greg (who, in the linked picture, has the "1000 yard stare"). We decided to go to a hip little restaurant 1111 Mississippi, a self-described "wine country bistro" which was in the very nice Lafayette Square neighborhood. The menu was quite interesting, and had lots of stuff I would love to try. We ordered two bottles of Saint Gregory wine (which turned out to be very nice). For an appetizer, we had a selection of "regional cheeses", which I thought meant Missouri cheese, but evidently it merely means the cheese came from some region in the world. Not very meaningful.

For dinner, I couldn't resist ordering the "Red Deer Osso Bucco". Anytime you eat deer, it is an interesting experience, however, it tends to be dry and tough. Part of the osso busco was indeed dry and tough, although with a nice flavor. However, other parts of the meet were nice and tender. And the marrow was great. I'm not sure I can recommend the dish, but if you have wanted to try venison, it's not a bad thing to try.

This was a nice place, definitely. They paid attention to their ingredients, and offered interesting dishes. I think what would make it better would be a stronger focus on local ingredients, and perhaps rethinking some of the items like the venison. But I'd love to go back and try out some of the other items.

Ted Drewes

My next culinary stop on the St. Louis trip was Gino's, a great old Italian restaurant near the Hill. After that meal, my family and I went to Ted Drewes, which is one of my favorite places to go in St. Louis. And I'm not even an ice-cream junkie. But the great thing about Ted Drewes is that everyone comes here from all over St. Louis, it's always crowded, and on a hot August night you can stand there with everyone else and cool down by eating a delicious concrete. It's just one of the great communal experiences in St. Louis. When I was there, I saw all sorts of people, including a just-crowned beauty queen chowing down on some ice-cream (I can only imagine how long she had been waiting to do that).

Ted Drewes evidently invented the concrete, when a particular customer kept asking for a shake made thicker and thicker. Concretes are now all over the midwest, and I'm sure that the origin story I've heard is hotly contested. It's even in New York now, in Danny Meyer's Shake Shack in Madison Square Park.

So, next time you are in St. Louis, Ted Drewes is a must. Until then, I leave with only a picture of the wonderful concrete:

Lion's Choice

Last weekend Greta, the twins, and I went to St. Louis to visit my family. I have lots of different posting to make about the trip, but none of the postings could be done in St. Louis, mostly because a huge storm hit the area on Saturday, and my parent's house had no power. When I left on Monday, it still had no power.

First off, I went to Lion's Choice, which I go to every time I'm in St. Louis.

Lion's Choice is the absolute best fast-food burger-like option I know of. It specializes in roast beef sandwiches. The roast beef is cooked medium-rare, and is densely piled on a sesame bun. The beef is beefy, tender, and nicely salted. Eating it, you will be amazed at the difference between a good fast-food roast beef sandwich, and Arby's.

Au jus sauce is offered as a condiment as well as ketchup and mustard. Stick with the au jus sauce. One sandwich costs around $2.50, but you probably want to eat two. If you are in St. Louis, I highly recommend this place.

Waldy's Wood-Fired Pizza & Penne

About 10 months ago I heard about the soon-to-be-open Waldy's Wood-Fired Pizza & Penne. I don't know if the article I read got it wrong, or things were just late, but it opened about 8 months later than it was supposed to. I've been waiting mildly for months now. There already is a great pizza place by where I work, La Pizza Fresca, so I wasn't exactly desperate. But good restaurants in the 6 blocks north of where I work are pretty much nonexistent, so I was curious and hopeful. I went almost as soon as it opened. At the time of writing this, I've been there twice so far, both times with my co-workers.

Waldy's is a tiny, tiny place. Probably only about 10 people have room to sit, with standing room for 4 more. Everyone else must get takeout. I got there early, but there was a huge line at around 12:30.

At Waldy's you can order a fairly expensive pizza (something like $14 for a small pizza, $18 for a large), and can choose from about 10 different varieties, most of them unusual but tasteful.

As you probably guessed from the name, everything is cooked in a wood-fired oven. From what I've read, it is an interesting ventilation design. There was no ventilation for this shop to use, so all of the smoke gets piped out of the front door.

The pizza crust is thicker than normal. It has a tough, hearty consistency. The first time I went, it was undercooked. The second time I went, slightly overcooked. I think even if perfectly cooked, it is not the best crust, certainly, but it isn't bad.

We got, the Margherita Pizza, which was very nice, with a combination of cheese, as well as some cherry tomatoes. This is almost always the best pizza to get at any wood-fired pizza joint in New York, and this time was no exception.

We also got a Clam pizza, which was not generally liked. The clams were nice on the pizza, but there was no sauce, and the pizza was unpleasantly dry. This was the first time I've experienced a clam pizza. Maybe all of them are too dry, but I doubt it.

The "Beacon" pizza was better. It is named for Waldy's restaurant, The Beacon. It has wild mushrooms and onions. A nice mushroom taste, far better than most mushroom pizzas in the city.

And now, one of the most interesting, a pizza with arugula, garlic, and two fried eggs! A wonderful pizza, I thought. The garlic is quite noticeable, so if you don't like garlic, don't get this pizza. And as you can tell from the picture, the egg yolks have broken. The first time we got this pizza, they were whole. Either way, they were runny and delicious. Isn't everything better with fried eggs on it? However, they were not evenly distributed on the pizza, just two fried eggs right beside each other, leaving three quarters of the pizza egg-free. Quite unfortunate. Still, a good pizza, but it really needs more fried eggs.

Waldy's was, on the whole, good. The strength here is the toppings, not the crust. Great pizza has the crust as the strength, so this is not great pizza. But I thought the toppings were interesting and really worked well together. Due to the price, I doubt I'll go here that often, but I'm happy I tried it a few times, and I'll look forward to an occasional visit.

Red Chopsticks

This is yet another in a series of queued-up restaurant posts. I think it was two months ago I ate at Red Chopsticks in Flushing with my friend Ben and his visiting friend from Pittsburg. I've seen this restaurant several times in my wanderings there, and it was always full, which is a good sign. The food was Cantonese in style, with an emphasis on fresh seafood.

We ordered a variety of dishes. As a vegetable we had Si Gua, or Chinese Okra as it is called. I almost always like this vegetable, and this time was no exception. It is sweet and slightly crunchy, which was a good contrast to some of the saltier, tangier dishes we tried.

A specialty of Red Chopsticks was the sticky rice in bamboo. There were several kinds, we got the plain sticky rice, which was delicious. And, as you can see, quite elegantly served.

We also got one of the unusual dishes on the menu, basil snails. The snails were out of the shell, which is the first time I've had snails like that. They had a semi-crunchy, semi-chewy texture, not unlike conch. The dish was surprisingly spicy. Not overwhelmingly so, but more than I would have guessed.

Also slightly unusual was the dish with stir-fried deep-fried anchovies with peanuts. A bit salty, as you might expect. However, it was full of flavor, and had a great chewy texture. This would be good bar food, I think. The most amazing thing about it was contemplating how many creatures actually had to die just to give us an appetizer.

All in all, a very good meal. I'd say this is the best Cantonese-style food I've had in New York, although that isn't saying much. The Cantonese offerings here are fairly limited in comparison to San Francisco. However, this place is good on it's own merits, regardless of location. Keeping in mind that I didn't have any of the fresh seafood that they specialize in, for what I had I'd say that it is perhaps not great, but it certainly was good.

Decent Pearl Milk Tea

Or, as they call it here, "Bubble Tea". A block away from the B/D station in Chinatown, I noticed a Pearl Milk Tea place I never saw before. As I've written before, getting decent Pearl Milk Tea, even in Chinatown & Flushing, is not easy. A few months ago Ben took me to a decent place, Sago Tea, in Flushing, but although it was good, with later visits I found the place inconsistent.

At any rate, this place in Chinatown was called "Quickly".

I was immediately impressed by the look of the tea. I like it when they cover it with plastic that you have to punch through with a straw. It's a great design, and I think it correlates fairly well with the better places. When I tried the tea, my thoughts were confirmed, and the tea was just as good as I had hoped. Not the best I've had, but maybe the best for New York so far.

I'll definitely come back here on my frequent visits to nearby Dumpling House.

Bicycle Messenger World Championships

My coworker Brody just went over to Jersey for the Bike Messenger World Championship, where he witnessed all manner of fun. Read all about it on his blog posting. While you are at it, check out his great post about New York vocabulary weirdness.

Westville Market

One night Adam, Ben and I were wandering around the West Village, in search of some food. We wandered by a very interesting looking little restaurant, Westville Market. And it was a very little restaurant indeed, with a sort of rustic Napa Valley-esque charm.

We chose to wait outside, and shortly afterwards we were seated and attempting to pick out which of the many delicious things on the menu we wanted to get. The vegetables were supposedly great, but they were out of the Cuban-style corn. The turkey burger was especially recommended, but no one opted for that. Instead, we got a platter of 4 vegetables: shaved fennel and parmesan, asparagus, mushrooms, and beets. Each of them were delicious in their own way, and the taste of the vegetables really came through.

Adam and I both ordered the same thing. Normally I'm reluctant to do that, but I really couldn't say no to the fish taco offering. It was very tasty, although more like a burrito than a taco. And the fries that it comes with were perfect too.

Ben got a steak sandwich. It looked delicious, but I didn't taste it.

This is a very solid place. Maybe not worth traveling long distances for, but if you are in the neighborhood, try it! I gotta remember to try this place for lunch as well.

WuLiangYe

I first heard of WuLiangYe in China, when I had some of their strong and tasty liquor, and someone bought for me a glass of their liquor with a glass ship inside. It was quite cool, but Greta never let me open the darn thing to drink! I guess somethings are just too nice to use.

The second time I hard of WuLiangYe was at Little Sichuan in San Mateo, California. I had lunch with a few fellow Intraspect employees, and Qingyang told me that as good as Little Sichuan was (and it was oh so good), on her recent trip to New York, she found WuLiangYe's restaurant in Manhattan was even better.

So, after I moved to New York, I was determined to try WuLiangYe's restaurant. After some research, I found that it was probably one of the best Sichuan in Manhattan, competing for that title with Grand Sichuan.

After trying both, I find both excellent, but I slightly prefer WuLiangYe. The latest time I went was with my ex-Intraspect colleagues and friends Tash and Hollander, who probably were there in San Mateo when Qingyang told us how good this place was. We went to WuLiangYe on 48th Street.

First up was the classic dumplings in hot oil. I actually prefer Little Sichuan's to all others, but I can't explain why. I was actually addicted to Little Sichuan's dumplings at one time, and that craving never left. These are more delicate, and really delicious. And look at them. They are beautiful!

Ah, next the Cold Rooster. I love this dish. I've had it before, and it wasn't a huge hit with anyone except me. It's cold, a little salty, and full of those mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns. What people dislike is that there are many bones, and not huge amounts of meat. However, I feel that this is all the better for enjoying the wonderful spicy sauce that contains it. The waiter told me we wouldn't like this dish, and he was sort of right, because Tash and Hollander weren't huge fans. But I ate out almost the entire thing. Glorious.

We also got the Sichuan "yu-xiang" eggplant, which is a classic vegetable I usually get at Sichuan restaurants.

Finally, we got the classic "Ants Climbing a Tree", which is cellophane noodles with pork and green onions, in a spicy sauce. Very tasty here.

There's many more great dishes here. If you go, get plenty of things off the inside cover of the menu, and the first two pages of the menu. And be sure to try to WuLiangYe liquor, which has a very interesting robust rice-liquor taste.

Uncle Vanya

I have a bit of a backlog of food posts to make. While I have some free time, here's some info on a lunch I had a few weeks ago at Uncle Vanya in Midtown.

I went there with two of my good lunch-partnering coworkers. The style was individual dishes, so I can only vouch for the dish I got, which was the stuffed cabbage. Which was excellent. We also got a chicken in aspic (not pictured) which was good, but when you added the grated horseradish, it became really good. Oh, and there was nice dark rye bread served as well.

All in all, a nice change of pace for lunch. I'm no Russian food expert, but one of my co-workers is semi-Russian and thought it was good, but not truly great. But realize that this shouldn't give you pause; it is my experience that any countries ex-pats will never enjoy restaurants of their own cuisine. My Persian friend Farhang would often claim that there are no decent Persian restaurants in the Bay Area, which I always found odd seeing how there are so darn many of them. I mean, no good ones at all? But to him, his wife or mother's cooking is far superior to what you get in the restaurant. But for the rest of us who can't just invite themselves over to Farhang's house, the best we can do is a restaurant. So, in that vein, unless you can go eat at your Russian friend's house, go to Uncle Vanya and you will be happy.

Uncle Nick's Ouzaria

Last weekend, my friend Adam and I ate at Uncle Nick's Ouzaria, a place that was panned by Chowhound. After eating there, I disagree with the Chowhound reviews, I found it a solid Greek place. It was easily as good as Forest Hill's Corfu, which has good Chowhound reviews. My review follows after the jump.

First we got a selection of four dips, an eggplant, a cheese, a garlic, and a salmon roe dip. It came with a supply of nice fresh pita bread. It was very nice. After the meal, I took this home with me, and the garlic dip really smelled up the subway car. Very few people were on my end of the car, but on the other end it was more than twice as crowded.

Next, we got a huge and delicious Greek Salad. I'm not a big salad eater, but this was great and simple, just tomatoes, olives, and feta cheese.

We also got a shrimp dish in a tomato sauce, which was nice, but nothing special. Adam thought the sauce was quite good, while I thought it was merely OK.

Last, and best, was a grilled octopus and squid. Very simple, tender, but with a good texture and nice grilled taste.

All in all, fairly solid. There are better Greek places, I know, but at least if you get these items, you won't be disappointed.

More Flushing treats

Tonight Ben and I went to eat another fine meal in Flushing. First, we stopped by Takoyaki on Prince St to have some Octopus Balls. Unlike the Fish or Cuttlefish Balls I've had previously, this was some sort of light batter with vegetables and a chunk of octopus in each one, with mayonnaise, wasabi, pepper and other things sprinkled on top. Even cooler, you could watch the guy make it, which involves filling six concave holes in a griddle, then rotating, refilling, and transferring the mix to other holes about a dozen times. It was surprisingly labor intensive.

After that, we went to eat some Shanghai food at the Yangtze River restaurant. Chosen somewhat at random.

We ordered some Si Gua. I'm unsure what the English name is, I've seen it called Loofah before, though. This was the best Si Gua I've ever had. It had a really great sweetness to it.

Next came the Xiao Long Bao, or the Soup Dumplings as they are called. They were being made by two little ladies in a window near the entrance, which I always like to see. The dumplings were nice, but could have used more soup inside. And I prefer them smaller, which no one in New York seems to do.

Finally we had some enormous pan-fried dumplings. Very interesting, I've never had dumplings like this before. There had a thick wrapper probably made with something very fattening by the look of it. The inside had crab and pork and a slight amount of soup, and the filling reminded me up those pinkish meatballs you get at dim sum. It was nice, but, perhaps because I was getting fairly full, it seemed a bit much.

Taste of West Lake

Ben and I went to eat in Flushing last weekend. After wandering around Main Street for about half an hour, we had about six great-looking restaurants we wanted to try. We eventually settled on Taste of West Lake, because neither of us has had that regional cuisine before.

The restaurant was downstairs, in a plain-looking room with a few long tables and a bar. The menu was not extensive, having a list of 8 or so West Lake specialties, about 6 appetizers, 6 desserts, and about 10 or so regular items.

We ordered a variety of dishes. one of the highlights of which were a set of 4 giant pork belly cubes.

When eating this pork belly, I started out by eating a lean piece that was falling away. I found it tough and dry, although it had good flavor. After finishing that, I couldn't see how eating the rest of it would be an enjoyable experience. However, when I ate a mouthful with both lean and fat layers, the whole thing magically transformed into a succulent, juicy piece of meat. Amazing how the two kinds of layers to the pork belly and complement each other so well, and essentially fool the tongue.

Probably the most interesting dish we got was the raw salted crab. It came with a sweetish dipping sauce that I could not identify. The sauce was a good complement to the salty meat. But the crab meat, being raw, was amazingly tender. In fact it was nearly liquid, and a complete delight to eat.

Another interesting dish was the shrimp with tea leaves. It sounded more interesting than it was. As you can see, there are tea leaves there, but the shrimp itself didn't seem to pick up any of the flavor. Don't get me wrong, it tasted very nice. But nothing special, I think.

When I was taking the pictures of the food, an amazed waitress came up and said "Hey, why are you taking pictures?" I was sort of at a loss what to say. Was she mad at me? Or just curious? I couldn't tell, so I said "I'm just like taking pictures of food." Then, to make myself seem a little less strange (or perhaps more so?), I added "I put these pictures on my internet site". This made her very happy, and she thanked me. Which I felt a little strange about. I didn't tell her that hardly anyone reads these things, and most of them that do read it don't live anywhere near Flushing. So I guess my taking pictures of the food was really as crazy as it initially appeared to her.

Casa

One thing I've missed in New York is great espresso and cappuccinos. New York just doesn't have the same cafe culture as on the west coast, and besides the ubiquitous Starbucks, there isn't many good places to choose from. But I have had some good coffee here. One of the latest places I've been going to is Casa, around 40th St and 9th Ave, right by the Port Authority overpass.

I went by there yesterday, as the 9th Ave. international food fair was in full swing outside, and met my friend Adam.

Casa has probably the best cappuccino's and espressos I've had in New York. The most well-regard barrista there is Andrew, who is evidently a real coffee geek. He's there most of the time on the weekends. However, I've had fairly good luck with the other barristas as well, so it seems like most of them know what they are doing.

Ah, look at that espresso. You can see that wonderful brown crema on top, a great sign. How many times have I gotten espresso in New York and gotten no crema at all, or a fairly wispy one? Ah, so many espressos wasted.

Here is Andrew making Adam's cappuccino. Evidently the espresso machine you see is one of the best you can buy. It has pipes going down to the basement, where they have some sort of system to deliver steam or something like that.

Above you can see Casa's owner, in the red Caffe Trieste shirt. It's a good sign that the owner is a fan of that place.

There it is, a great cappuccino. No latte art, but that's OK, what really counts is the foam, which in this case was silky smooth, and super sturdy. Great stuff.

More on confusing bathrooms

You heard it here first, folks. Now the Times picks up the story with an article on different restaurants confusing restrooms. They do mention wd~50, and the scary thing is, at first that place didn't even have a sign saying to push on the wooden panels.

I think in a few years this will be a trend looked on with some amusement. Ah, yes, 2005, the time when New York high-end bathrooms became unusable...

wd~50

Yesterday I went with Adam and ate at wd~50 a restaurant that has been getting a lot of attention. It was recently on a list of the best restaurants in world, at a rank of 34.

wd~50 has a reputation for being wildly inventive. I knew this was true when I walked in, and went to the restroom. I saw some nice sinks, with some tiny fluffy towels. Delightful. But where were the stalls? All I could see was the sink, and a nice looking wall of wooden paneling. Then I saw a small sign saying to push on the panels to use the bathroom. When I did, the panel moved on a very well hidden hinge to reveal the actual stall with an actual toilet. This was the first time that my life imitated nethack, and I had to search for secret doors. If that didn't work I might have to just quaff from a sink and see what happened.

But wait! The story doesn't end there. I had to figure out how to flush. There was no button to be seen. I put down the toilet seat. Nope, not there either. And it wasn't an automatic flushing system. Wait, I thought to myself, maybe it's so advanced, that when I unlock the stall, it will flush. I unlocked the door and opened it a crack. No flush. Stupid idea, what was I thinking? Then in desperation I pressed what looked to be a little metal door to a trash receptacle, and finally with a soft and gentle noise, it flushed! I was very happy, but at the same time I felt that for all the cleverness, these guys really needed to read their Don Norman. Oh yes, and did I mention that the stall played me some music? It did!

After that bit of brain-stretching business, I was eager to see if the food was so perplexing. It wasn't perplexing, but it was really original, and had many new ideas and techniques. Adam and I got the tasting menu, so we tried quite a few of their dishes. Each dish had 1 or 2 main elements, and 2 or 3 supplemental elements, plus a sauce. The fun came in trying each of these things in combination, to see how they pair up. For example, one dish I had a substantial round of foie gras, inside of which was a caramel sauce. On the foie gras was a piece of crisp seaweed. There was slightly dehydrated grapefruit (which seemed more like pomelo to me) with tiny little basil leaves. So one bite I just try the foie gras (wonderful, of course). Then I try the foie gras with the caramel, and it goes fairly well together, bringing out the rich taste of the foie. Next, I have to taste the foie gras with some caramel and some grapefruit and basil. That works better than I would have expected, the acidity of the grapefruit cuts the rich foie gras, but the sweetness of the grapefruit doesn't overwhelm everything. And the basil added a unique little touch.

Each course was like that. The standout dishes was a lamb belly with grated chocolate and other items, an egg poached at exactly 153 (if I recall correctly) degrees for an hour, and combined with sev (Indian dried noodles used in chaat), and a shrimp cannelloni, where the cannelloni was actually made out of a shrimp somehow pounded flat and used as wrapping, with a chipotle emulsion. So many of the dishes had some element that was so original. Besides the shrimp wrapper, there was tiny cubes of translucent lettuce, dehydrated onion cubes, deep fried mayonnaise, a grapefruit sorbet somehow inside a grapefruit meringue and many more things I'm forgetting right now.

All in all, it was a great experience. The food was delicious and not only artistically interesting, but also interesting as "food science". I kept asking how on earth they did this stuff. As far as taste, I thought the French Laundy and Jean-Georges was more delicious, while still being fairly inventive. This food I think trades off pure taste for experimentation, which is something I welcome as a change. These things are experiments, and some of them work better than others, although none failed to be delightful. I look forward to seeing what these guys some up with next.

Spicy & Tasty

Last weekend I went up to Flushing to check out Flushing Meadows Park, and while I was there I stopped by Flushing Main St., and went to Chowhound favorite, Spicy & Tasty.

I was by myself, so I only ordered two dishes. The dishes were cheap, though; together they cost around $11 and I took some home with me. Not a bad deal at all.

I perhaps should have chosen slightly more carefully. Both dishes I got were cold dishes. But, actually, after my long, warm, walk through Flushing Meadows cold food was just what I needed. The dish pictured above is a cold jelly with hot oil (spicy hot, not hot hot). Although you can't tell it from the picture, there was more than enough hot oil to go around the noodles, and it was a delicious, spicy dish, with plenty of those numbing sichuan peppercorns.

This was a cold, spicy, diced rabbit. The sauce was spicy and very numbing with all the Sichuan peppercorns. Somehow that numbing taste goes very well with cold food. The rabbit had a lot of bones, but this is something I really appreciate with this kind of dish. The more bones it has, the longer it takes to eat it. And the longer it takes to eat it, the longer that delicious sauce stays on your tongue. If it was boneless, you would just pop it in your mouth, chew and quickly swallow. It would be merely tasty. But with the bones, you have to put it in your mouth and work it around, or hold it in your hand and gently nibble all around. In either case, you really are tasting it much more than you would otherwise. So remember, the bones are your friend. Just like living without a car and having to walk everywhere, a little bit of inconvenience is good for you.

My meal at Spicy & Tasty was wonderful. They had many interesting things on the menu, and because I only tried two things I can't really compare it to other Sichuan places like Wu Liang Ye or Grand Sichuan (two Manhattan-based Sichuan restaurants). I personally like Wu Liang Ye a little more than Grand Sichuan (although both are great), and so far Spicy & Tasty seems like it could be as good as Wu Liang Ye, or perhaps even better. But I would have to eat there again to find out.

Aki

My friend Adam and I went to eat at Aki on Friday. I was intrigued by the thought of Japanese cuisine with little touches of Jamaican cuisine, which is the style of this restaurant. Evidently, the chef used to cook for the Japanese ambassador to Jamaica.

Located in the West Village, on West 4th street, in a stylish little space, which seats probably around 14 people. I had to make reservations, but it wasn't too difficult to get in.

Adam and I got a medium-sized amount of chilled sake, which came in a very elegant little carafe that I neglected to photograph. The sake was excellent, and cost $20, which was slightly pricey, since we could have drunk twice that amount quite easily.

We ordered five appetizers, some hot, some cold. We stayed away from the sushi, mainly because we've had sushi before, and it just didn't seem that exciting. However, there was a few interesting Jamaican-fusion sushi, such as sushi with banana, or heart of palm or other interesting ingredients.

The first appetizer we got was a dumpling filled with tofu and various mushrooms in a light broth. The picture above has a bit taken out of it to show the inside. Well, actually it looked so good I temporarily forgot to take a picture of the pristine dish. The soup and dumpling tasted even better than they looked. The broth was so light, but yet the flavor was assertive and delicious. The dumpling had a filling that was mostly soft, due to the soft tofu, but had other varied textures because of the mushrooms. It was flavorful and fresh tasting.

The next dish we had was yellowtail tuna sashimi, with apple slices and starfruit. This was probably the best dish of the night. The sashimi was perfect, and so naturally tender that it almost melted in your mouth. The crunchy apple and sweet starfruit made a nice contrast, and I thought the whole thing worked well together.

Ah, this dish. My memory is a bit fuzzy. I believe it is some sort of minced fish in a thick syrup. It was very nice, and interesting because I never enjoyed fish this way before. That last sentence was brought to you by Troy McClure