French Toast at Bakers' Dozen (blech!)

After not being able to sleep due to a warm winter night (yeah, 18 degrees celsius in the winter! Hooray for global warming?), I decided to walk down the street to my neighborhood bakery for breakfast.

I was feeling french toast and coffee, and seeing that they had it on special ($3.25 including tax), I ordered it! The food came out a couple of minutes later, and I'm sad to say, I didn't enjoy it.  The french toast, albeit served in a huge portion, came out with a heavy dusting of cinnamon and with (I doubt it was maple) syrup on the side.

My first bite made me choke, and subsequent bites weren't about to redeem it. So, I threw it out and just had coffee instead. Blech!

This is not to say that Bakers' Dozen is a bad place, since I love their Manhattan special (hot pastrami with swiss cheese and sauerkraut on rye), it's just that their french toast sucks! They do have other stuff like bagels and muffins and other baked goodies, so I'll still go back for those. They also have a good selection of flavored cream cheeses and salads too.

Bakers' Dozen is located near the intersection of Lefferts Blvd and Austin St in Kew Gardens.

Merry Christmas!

Happy holidays from the city that never sleeps!

(Vodka Cranberry at midnight)

Authentic Lechon Paksiw (bisaya-style)

For the holiday party with my Filipino friends, we ordered lechon (whole roast pig) cooked the bisaya way.

I haven't had lechon in more than 3 years, and neither have my friends, so this was a treat for us. About $30 well spent for each.

The lechon was just as we all remember it, cripy and very tasty!  No one could resist picking on scraps of meat left on the tray after the lechon was all chopped up. However, we all know that what's good with the lechon after the feast is paksiw.

So, in the wee hours of the morning after the party, my friend and I cooked two different versions of paksiw, reflecting the culinary traditions of the different regions we are from. I made mine bisaya-style, stewing the lechon in vinegar, bay leaves, peppercorns, garlic and a touch of soy sauce.  The other version was similar to mine but with liver sauce added.

Both paksiw dishes came out really good.  Mine was sour with a hint of sweet in the thin sauce, while the other balanced sweet and sour with the added liver sauce.  Both dishes are best served over steamed rice, like pictured above.

We all savored it!

Happy holidays!

Snow in NYC! (not food related)

In the past week, New York City was inundated with a ton of snow AND THEN a cold front brought the city into a deep freeze. This was taken just after the heavy snowstorm (Austin).

I didn't think leafless tress would be pretty, but with the snow, they are beautiful!

Mobile blogging!

This will hopefully help me keep this blog updated more than it is now. :-)

Vietnamese food in Chinatown-NY!

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I went down to Chinatown for some Vietnamese food, my style. He's partial to this restaurant close to the subway, while there's this place that I like that has pretty good vegetarian and seafood fare in addition to the regular meat options, but which is a little bit of a trek, especially with the unpredictable rain during the Fall.

We went to my favorite Vietnamese place in C-town called Pho Viet Huong on 73 Mulberry St. (N, R, Q, J, M, Z and 6 trains to Canal St.)

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For appetizers, I usually order a shrimp summer roll, however, this being fall, we decided to get salt and pepper calamari. The squid rings were lightly floured and and fried crisp while maintaining the tenderness of the meat. A mixture of spices including chopped chili peppers was then tossed with the fried calamari. A lot of restaurants overcook the calamari, however, we got ours perfectly cooked, with a good spice and heat.

We ordered two different entrees for our meal. One was a vegetarian dish called Fresh Gluten with Hot Peppers and Lemongrass. The good thing about New York City is that I get to meet a lot of people with a wide range of interests, and this allows me to explore an even wider range of cuisines and dishes that I myself would normally not try out. Such is the case with this dish.

Gluten is favorite meat substitute used in vegetarian/vegan diets and it is a protein product obtained from the endosperm of some grains including wheat and rye. The gluten in this dish tastes and has the consistency of real meat, but it's not. :-) The combination with bell peppers and lemongrass makes for a very aromatic and tasty dish. Definitely one of my vegetarian favorites (even though I'm not vegetarian!).

The second entree we ordered is Yellow Curry Shrimp with String Beans. This seems pretty self-explanatory. However, the yellow curried shrimp at this place (relative to the other Vietnamese places I have been to in NYC and elsewhere) is pretty good. The curry brings out a sweetness in the shrimp that I can't describe. The accompanying string beans were also perfectly cooked, crisp and not soggy.

To wash things down, my friend ordered the Salty Plum drink, which basically pureed (or mashed up) salty plum with soda water. The drink comes in a tall glass with the mushy salty plum on the bottom topped with ice cubes. You then have to pour soda/carbonated water into the glass and then stir to mix the soda water and the plums. I have never had this drink before, and I doubt I will ever order it on my own. He had me taste it, and all I can say is that it is really sour and salty.

(The photos in this post were taken by Daman's iPhone.)

Ack!

I have been really bad at making posts on here, however, that's about to change. I hope. I do have a number of photos of new food places I've been to that I want to write about, so, I'll get to that as soon as I can.

Please bear with me.

Yakitori (plus dessert)!

After having a hankering for grilled meats in an otherwise not-grill-friendly city, a couple of friends and I from college met up and had dinner at Yakitori Taisho, in the East Village several months ago. According to wikipedia, Yakitori (焼き鳥 やきとり, Yakitori), or grilled bird, is a type of skewered chicken in Japan . In other words, sinugba.

At Yakitori Taisho, they featured on their menu a variety of grilled meats and veggies, including pork, beef , liver, chicken, scallions and mushrooms. Having all met at the University of the Philippines, we've all had our share of isaw (grilled chicken or pig intestines) and atay (liver), so we ordered what was familiar to us. We got a platter that included, among others, chicken liver, chicken skin and pork belly. I think there was balon-balonan (is it gizzard?) too.

It was yummeh! Yakitori Taisho has been one of my favorite restaurants in the city since I discovered it a couple of years back, and I've been coming back every time I get a good group of people together. I'm guessing business has been good to them too, since they opened another restaurant a couple of doors down, and every time I pass by, there's almost always a line.

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After dinner, we all decided to hit the Dessert Truck, that we all passed by when we were walking towards Yakitori. This truck is a new concept here in NYC (and there's a bunch of them new ones, gastronomic concepts that is), so we just had to try them out. These aren't your run of the mill desserts, but are essentially gourmet. They sell individual desserts for $5, and servings are usually good to share. We ordered the molten chocolate cake, the vanilla creme brulee (real vanilla) and the goatcheese cheesecake. Holy cow! or goat! These were good! My personal favorite is the goatcheese cheesecake. Be warned though, goatcheese is an acquired taste!

Here's a photo of the MBB folks (all grad students at SUNY-SB, BrownU, SUNY-SB respectively) enjoying their desserts! I think I'm the only one not pursuing a PhD here, but oh well. lol.

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Yakitori Taisho is located at 5 St Mark's Place (near 3rd Ave) in NYC.
The Dessert Truck makes it's rounds of NYC, however, from 6pm onwards, it can be found at the intersection of St Mark's Place and 3rd Ave.

German and Bavarian fare

Last week, my volleyball team and I went to Zum Schneider in the far East Village for beers and food after our game. At this biergarten (beer garden), we had large beers (1 liter mugs) and the Riesen Schlachtplatte, which is this huge platterful of sausages.



There were five different kinds of sausages served with roasted potatoes over a bed of sauerkraut. And I do mean a bed of sauerkraut. That was good! And then we had the apple fritters with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I have to say, that platter was no match for 6 grown men after a volleyball game. lol.

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Zum Schneider is located at the corner of Ave C and 7 St in NYC.

Elmhurst tour

Elmhurst in Queens is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in New York City. As expected, the variety of food and restaurants here is as diverse as well. Mare and I have been frequenting (more her than me) this quaint Thai place on Broadway called Boon Chu, and I would say they're up there amongst the best Thai food places in New York City (together with Sri Pra Phai and Ubol's Kitchen).


However, on the way to Boon Chu from the Elmhurst stop on the R, V and G lines, you get to pass by one of my favorite all-time drinks. QUICKLY! Within the past two years, Quickly has opened about four locations in New York City. I found out about Quickly in NYC about two years ago when I was walking around SoHo, and I spied a girl/lady carrying the familiar Quickly drinks. I ran after her and stopped her (I must have nearly given her a heart attack), and politely asked where she bought her drink from. She told me, and that's the start of my Quickly adventures in New York! Me and my foodie tendencies!

I got me a taro ice (slushy) with pearl (tapioca, or as the Filipinos know it - sago) and lychee bits. Mare had a lychee slush with the same add-ins. Having Quickly reminded me of college back home when I couldn't not buy Quickly on the way home because the store was on the way. Yeah, I was a Quickly guy in college, not Zagu or Orbitz, but Quickly. :-)

After Quickly, we then walked down the block to Boon Chu. It's a small space, with 7 tables seating 2 people each. The decor is nice, and the staff friendly. I like the way their menu looked. I liked the menu contents even better! They had a good selection of appetizers (from thai steamed dumplings to satay), entrees (chicken basil, etc), noodles (pad thai, pad see ew, etc) and curries (green, red, jungle, penang, etc). I was disappointed that they didn't have the crispy fried watercress salad that Sri Pra Phai has, but whatever. lol.

Whenever my friends and I eat out, we usually get down to business right away. No more starters. If we do get appetizers, we have them served together with the rest of the entrees. Last night, Mare and I ordered the Kana Moo Grob, Chicken larb, Penang Curry with Beef and Jungle Curry.


There is something about the Kana Moo Grob that Filipinos love. It's basically a sauteed chinese broccoli dish with crispy slivers of pork. The crispy pork and the veggies are a good mix, plus, the taste! Sweet and just a bit tart. I think there's oyster sauce in it, but Maricel thinks otherwise. She says it's soy sauce and fish sauce. Regardless, it was very good!

I also liked the Penang curry. Even though I think it's origins are Malaysian, I tend to go for coconut based curry dishes, regardless. We originally ordered the jungle curry, but it turned out to be not what Mare liked (she does not like bamboo shoots), so we ordered the Penang curry.

The larb on the other hand felt out of place. I guess it's one of those things where you have to have it before the entrees. Larb is a meat salad with roots in Laos. It is unofficially the national dish of Laos according to wikipedia. Larb is made with raw or cooked meat that is then minced and mixed with chili and mint, and then flavored with fish sauce and lime. Our larb was made with minced cook chicken and spicy! almost fiery! But still good!

As I said earlier, I think Boon Chu is one of the up and coming Thai restaurants in the city. Dinner last night was great, and I definitely will be becoming back.

(Boon Chu is located at 83-18 Broadway in Elmhurst, NY and Quickly is only a couple of doors down.)

I'm back!

A bunch of my friends have expressed interest in my food blogging, and because of that, I'm going to start blogging again.

I can't believe it's been almost three years since I last posted. WoW. Now, armed with my camera phone (my apologies in advance for the crappy photos) and a penchant for good food, happy eating!

Coming up next... Quickly and Thai!