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8 April 2010
from the xie xie sandwich shop on 9th ave. sandwiches definitely not as good as num pang in the village, but I love the icecream sandwiches! the centre is blackened caramel (tastes exactly like the crunchy caramel in a skør bar) and they make the ice cream and cookies themselves. delicious! 23 January 2010
how’s this for a pizza idea: mac & cheese. also shown here: black bean & avocado slice, vegan meat & cheese slice, and garlic knots. the portions are large so one slice is probably enough, but we wanted to try the different kinds! to be honest they look better than they taste, but it’s not bad… definitely worth going if you’re in the neighbourhood. slices $4, garlic knots $1 (for 5).
Vinnie’s Pizzeria 12 December 2009
I was supposed to take my parents somewhere to eat during their layover at JFK yesterday, but they didn’t make it out of the airport due to ticketing problems. Not to waste an opportunity to eat away from Manhattan, G and I headed to Flushing anyway. I wanted to try this new Qingdao restaurant called M&T, but it was closed–and being too cold a day to go exploring, we went back to our old standby: the jumble of basement food stalls known collectively as Golden Shopping Mall.  liangpi, tiger salad, and beef noodle soup G went straight to “Xi An Famous Foods” (西安名吃)–which by the way now has swanky new signs, a video camera (?!), and wall photos of Anthony Bourdain enjoying their liangpi–and ordered a dish of cold skin noodles (“liang pi,” 凉皮) and tiger salad (“lao hu cai,” 老虎菜). I went to a sichuanese stall by the entrance to the mall and ordered a spicy beef noodle stew (“niu nan mian,” 牛腩面). All three dishes were delicious, humble, and beat the pants off anything in Manhattan’s Chinatown. I must admit that the tiger salad defeated me: consisting of raw jalapeno peppers, scallions and cilantro in a vinegar sauce, one of the peppers was just too much… so I ran to the counter and asked for a plum drink (“suan mei tang,” 酸梅湯), which is a typical drink to have with spicy hotpot.
Total damage: liangpi $4, tiger salad $4.50, beef noodle $4.50, plum drink $1.50. And full + happy stomachs. Golden Shopping Mall 1 December 2009
For foodies, it’s no secret that Queens is the home of New York’s best cuisine–and for Chinese and Korean it’s in Flushing, an easy (if long) ride on the 7 line all the way to Main Street. Here are a few photos of this vibrant neighbourhood:
Vendor scooping out seeds at a tea & herb shop:
Street counter food:
Massage, anyone? Only $20-30 per hour…
HK-style BBQ, and a cook just finishing his smoke break:
groceries…
the entrance to my favourite food court (love the Xi-An place in this “Golden Mall”):
and the street food counter under the train bridge:
1 November 2009
I heard there was a ‘little sri lanka’ on staten island, so I booted over there and had lunch at SanRasa restaurant, not too far from the ferry terminal, on Bay street. The food was worth the two-hour trek (due to weekend subway rerouting, grr) to get there. We started with some yummy fried lentil patties (masala wale) accompanied by a sweet sauce, followed by a lovely vegetable curry that surprised me with its coconut base. And last but not least was the kottu roti, my raison d’être: kottu roti is basically made by frying and cutting up sri lankan style roti with (hopefully) spicy spicy curry (leaving your stomach burning even hours later).  masala wale  vegetable na...nagarathna?? and kottu roti SanRasa was much fancier than I expected–not that it was particularly upscale, but it had a nice ambiance and the food presentation was good. I was rather expecting a small takeout joint: I’m used to kottu roti looking like this, not like a pyramid laced with delicate scallion and carrot slivers. Plus, at $10 a dish, this place is considered cheap eats by New York standards (even though that’s twice the price of kottu at Jolee in Montreal, sigh). Check out a video of street-style kottu roti here. There is also a feature in the new york times about Staten Island restaurants, including a description of SanRasa and its $11 buffet lunch on Sundays. Worth checking out. SanRasa |
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