New York City Day 2

Statue of Liberty

The second day was devoted to the Financial District.  I highly recommend taking the 8 AM ferry to Liberty Island.  By the time I returned to Battery Park around 10 AM, the lines to get to Liberty Island were impossible.

I've been to NYC twice before and spent most of both trips in museums.  I really wanted to just walk around NYC rather than stay indoors this time around.  And it's when walking around that I got to capture Kodak moments like boy scouts abusing Arturo Di Modica's bull's testicles.

Not So Mighty Wall Street Bull

Walking around the Financial District was surprisingly relaxing and enjoyable.  It's less crowded save for the hoards of boy scouts taking group pictures at every tourist site.  I walked until my 1 PM NYC Restaurant Week reservation at Delmonico's.  I picked Delmonico's because of its reputation as one of the first restaurants in the U.S.

Delmonico's

Perhaps Delmonico's is passé in a time when the culinary world praises innovation and fusion.  You obviously would not and should not expect that from a restaurant that has been standing since 1837.  I expected each course to be solid and satisfying, and that's exactly what I got.  However, Delmonico's should be ashamed that their breads were some of the worst I've had at any restaurant (chains included).  It's utterly shocking how one of the oldest restaurant establishments has not spent more time refining the recipe for the one thing that is served at every table for every meal throughout the past 173 years or however long the tradition of serving complimentary breads at each meal the restaurant has observed.

Very Dull, Rubbery Bread

Bad bread aside, the first course of grilled asparagus and frisee salad with grapefruit slices, poached egg, and truffled vinaigrette was quite amazing.  I got really excited when I smelled the truffle oil from afar.  The truffle aroma worked beautifully with the poached egg.

Grilled Asparagus and Frisée Salad Summer Citrus Fruit, Poached Farm Egg, Black Truffle Vinaigrette

My slab of Delmonico's Steak with a puddle of glistening butter was stunning.  I was in a state of carnivorous coma.  This steak did not need any jus, steak sauce, or extra sprinkling of salt and pepper.  It was perfect.  The fries were crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside and super garlicky--no ketchup needed.

Delmonico Steak Frites Maitre D'Hotel butter, Twice Fried French Fries

The dessert was a light and tart confection.  However, I don't know if the execution of the tarte was a mistake or intended.  The tarte shell was more like the browned sides of a cake or a muffin than a crusty tarte.  I didn't mind it at all, and it paired nicely with the creamy meyer lemon curd, but it really didn't taste like a tarte.

Meyer Lemon Curd Tarte with Pine Nut Brittle

After visiting the sobering World Trade Center site, pushing through the chaos and crap that is Century 21, the mega discount designer clothes department store (hawking crap at designer-struck consumers), and a peaceful, much-needed nap on a bench at Trinity Church, I headed to old Chinatown. 

Trinity Church

My friend phone-navigate me to Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.  Ice cream is truly my best friend on hot summer days.  However, I didn't know that ordering 3 flavors here would turn into an entree portion of ice cream!  Eeks!  Right before dinner too!  The ice cream was good, not great.  It tasted like the packed ice cream I get at Asian supermarkets.  None of the flavors stood out.

Chinatown Ice Cream Factory-Lychee, Green Tea, and Ginger Ice Cream Cup

After surveying a couple of restaurant menus displayed on the windows of cramped restaurants with basement kitchens, Shanghai Asian Cuisine looked promising when I spotted xie rou xiao long tang bao (crabmeat steamed soup dumplings) on the menu.

Shanghai Asian Cuisine in Chinatown

This turned out to be quite a find!  The place isn't much to look at, but the food was very well made.  We started off with a cold appetizer of "vegetarian duck," which is tofu skin stuffed with shitake mushrooms marinated in sweet soy sauce.  I hate it when Buddhist-inspired vegetarian dishes are made in reference to meat dishes.  Most of the Chinese fake meat dishes are made from some form of bean curd.  I'm sure tofu and bean curd loving people would order these dishes regardless of meat references.  Besides, these vegetarian dishes never taste remotely close to the meats they're supposed to resemble. 

"Vegetarian Duck"-Bean Curd Skin Stuffed with Shitake Mushrooms

The hot and sour soup is standard comfort food that my family orders almost at every Chinese restaurant it's served at even though the risks are always high.  The soup is either too soupy or too gloopy (excess of corn starch), too spicy or too sour.  Balance is apparently hard to achieve with this soup, but this bowl was close to striking that elusive balance.

Hot and Sour Soup

The stand out dish of the evening was the wine chicken.  The chicken is succulent with an intense shao xing wine flavor.  The leftover chicken tasted even better as my breakfast the next morning!

Ran Shou Wine Chicken

The crabmeat xiao long bao was good...that was until I tried the ones at Joe's Shanghai in Flushing the following evening.  In retrospect, these xiao long bao were above average but I really couldn't taste the crabmeat and it didn't have enough broth inside the dumpling to qualify as a true Shanghai-style steamed soup dumpling.

Crabmeat Xiao Long Bao

Crabmeat Xiao Long Bao

Crabmeat Xiao Long Bao

The Lo Mien was nothing special.  At least it served well as my breakfast the following morning.

Shanghai Seafood Lo Mien

New York City Day 1

I recently went to New York to attend a good friend's wedding.  I was super excited because it was the first wedding ceremony I've ever attended!  Of course I was even more excited for my friend, who married the sweetest man I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.  I'm completely jealous.  Congratulations JR & JG!

The wedding was also a great excuse for me to explore the NY food scene, Chinese food in particular...

The first thing I did after checking into the Warwick, was head out to Flushing, Queens.  Chinese restaurants that haven't succumbed to the pressures of serving Americanized-Chinese food are in the single digits here in Austin (my top three picks: First Chinese BBQ, Asia Cafe, and Din Ho).  I was thus eager to reacquaint myself with venues that don't give a damn about Western tastes.  Unfortunately, they also have a habit of flunking health inspections.  Before my trip, I researched places I wanted to try.  It turned out a bunch of the restaurants and Flushing Mall food stalls on my list were shut down this year by the health department.  Quite a few were highly recommended by critics, foodies, and yelpers.  :-(

Flushing, Queens

Walking around Main Street and Roosevelt was exciting and frustrating, like the rest of NYC except for the constant chatters in Cantonese and Mandarin along the bustling sidewalks.  Goods and produce overflow grocery stores and medicinal shops and onto the sidewalks.  Fruit and roasted/marinated meats vendors hollered out their goods at passersby.  Food lovers unabashedly show their enthusiasm for what Flushing has to offer by expertly picking out fruits and veggies, slurping handmade noodles in basement stalls, sipping boba teas while searching for the next snack.  It was so tempting to get picked up by this swell of felicitous food loving and eat everything in sight.  However, I had to save room in my tummy that evening for what I knew was going to be the highlight dish of my NYC trip.

Grilled Skewered Meats and Seafood

A Busy Prepared Foods Stall in a Hole in the Wall

"New Chinatown" Market

My friend in New York, a former Austinite, warned me about the sweltering summer heat, and she was absolutely right.  That's why I made sure to add Ice Fire Land for Taiwanese shaved ice to my itinerary.  Ice Fire Land is a Taiwanese hot pot restaurant with a boba tea and shaved ice bar at the front. 

Ice Fire Land

I ordered a bowl of shaved ice with taro, stewed peanuts, pineapple chunks, and condensed milk.  Although not spectacular, it was still tasting and sufficiently cooled me off.

Shaved Ice with Peanuts, Taro, Pineapple, and Condensed Milk

After more food scouting, I headed to 東湖 New Imperial Palace Seafood Restaurant for their famous glutinous rice steamed with dungeness crab.  Apparently, every table ordered one or two steamers of this dish!  It's not overhyped.  It's as good as sticky rice gets.

New Imperial Palace Seafood Restaurant

I was afraid that the dungeness crab would not be as fresh as a strictly dungeness crab dish, but the crab was meaty and delicious by itself!  The rice, although simple, was perfectly cooked (not too soft and sticky and not hard and stale), soaked up all the crabs' natural flavors, and went from delicious to drool-inducing with the aid of fried shallots and fresh scallions. 

Glutinous Rice Steamed with Dungeness Crab

This should be on everyone's NYC food list

We only ordered this one dish as we didn't have a fridge and didn't have anything with which to reheat leftovers at the hotel...until I figured out that I had to request room service for a coffeemaker.  You can make so much more than coffee with a coffeemaker and air vents can sometimes double as a fridge!  More on that in later posts...

All meals end with a free bowl of sweet red bean soup and a small plate of canned fruits.  The fruit is lame, but it's free and the red bean soup is good.  I prefer this to the disgustingly teensy weensy dessert "course" at Momofuku's newest restaurant, Má Pêche .  More on that later...

Hot Sweet Red Bean Soup and Canned Pineapple and Lychee

Not satisfied with the canned fruit for dessert, we lugged a small yellow-flesh watermelon back to the hotel.  I was hoping to find Taiwanese guavas and mountain apples in the Flushing markets, but I had no such luck.  I still believe that the only state that carries a reliable supply of Taiwanese fruits is California.

Yellow Flesh Watermelon

Sichuan Cuisine at Asia Cafe

My grad school friends quickly parted ways after graduation this May.  It's a weird feeling being the lone person sending people off on their way to redefine their life post-school.  This summer is marked by a succession of goodbyes.  In my planner, that means finding the proper Austin restaurant or choosing dishes to prepare for pot lucks that will be missed by the departees .

Surprisingly, no one has picked BBQ, Tex-Mex, or Mexican thus far!  The winning cuisine seems to be pan-Chinese.  One friend asked for a hodge podge of Chinese food reflective of the pot lucks she helped host throughout grad school.  Another asked for Taiwanese food, and yet another suggested Asia Cafe, in her opinion the best Chinese restaurant in Austin.

Asia Cafe

I say "pan-Chinese" rather than "pan-Asian" or simply "Chinese" because of a conversation I overheard at Asia Cafe a couple of weeks after my friend's farewell dinner. A first-timer to Asia Cafe was waiting in line to place his order. He told his date that he has to order the fried rice here because that is how he measures the food at Chinese restaurants. Although you'll be hard-pressed to find a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. that doesn't serve fried rice, unfortunately for him, Asia Cafe is known for its Sichuan dishes, and not for fried rice, which is more of a staple in Cantonese cuisine. The odds are, the fried rice he ordered wasn't great. Being a nosy diner, I looked for the plate of fried rice at his table. It looked more like steamed white rice with meager specks of scrambled egg and scallions. 

I can't blame the guy though. For my friend's farewell dinner, some of us were too worried that the food might be too spicy, so we ordered more southern and coastal Chinese dishes like stir-fried water spinach, salt and pepper squid, and beef shank stew with daikon. The one Sichuan dish we had that night was the restaurant's famous spicy fish. Lesson learned: don't bother with non-Sichuan food here! Forget about your fear of spicy food. It's not intolerably spicy anyways. I suspect that they tone down the heat for Western palates.

Stir-fried Water Spinach

Spicy Fish

Salt and Pepper Squid

Beef Shank Stew with Daikon

I knew better the second time around, and ordered the amazing seafood combination pot ($13.95 for a tub of seafood!).  If you order this, don't order the spicy fish.  The pot is full of the same spicy fish as the stand alone dish plus squid, beef, bok choy, shrimp, and two or three pieces of pork intestine.  Don't worry about the spice level.  It's quite tame when paired with a bowl of rice.  I also ordered a famous Sichuan cold noodle dish that's served with green bean strips and shredded chicken.  It's actually cucumber strips, but the menu says "green bean."  The only non-Sichuan dish that I ordered that day was the house special green bean with garlic, which turned out to be the best stir-fried green bean dish I had in Austin.

House Special Green Beans with Garlic

Seafood Combination Pot

Check out the red pepper flakes that had been hiding underneath the greens!

Cold Noodles with Cucumbers and Shredded Chicken

Deeeeelicious!

Happy Hour at Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill

I never planned on spending most of this summer in Austin, so I haven't been in the mood to post about food in town.  I know. That's stupid, but that's the only explanation I can come up with.

This doesn't mean that I've been deprived of good food though, and I'm far from done with trying the eateries around Austin.  I've been wanting to try Moonshine Patio Bar and Grill for I believe 2 years, and I finally managed to go to its happy hour on my birthday a month ago.

Happy hour was such a bargain, and the food was delicious.

Free Seasoned Popcorn

The main draw for me was the corn dog shrimp that I read about in a local magazine a while back.  I usually hate corn dogs because they remind me of nasty school cafeteria corn dogs, which have a cakey, grease-soaked batter.  Blech.  So I was actually curious about the honey mustard blueberry swirl more so than the actual corn dog shrimp.  I finally tasted a "corn dog" that I liked this time!  Moonshine's corn dog shrimp is crunchy rather than cakey and the mustard was surprisingly spicy in a good way.  An overly sweet honey mustard would not have worked as well.

Moonshine "Corn Dog" Shrimp with HoneyMustard and Blueberry Swirl

Moonshine Grill really knows how to deep fry things.  The beer battered asparagus was crispy on the outside as it should be.  I've had so many bad experiences with soft, bready batter elsewhere.  My gal pals raved over the buttermilk ranch.

Beer Battered Asparagus with Buttermilk Ranch

My favorite deal of the evening was the half-price BBQ duck quesadilla.

BBQ Duck Quesadilla with Mango Salsa and Goat Cheese Crema

St. Louis Style Pork Ribs with Onion Rings

I'm not a big fan of the desserts here because they are all pretty heavy. 

White Chocolate Bread Pudding

Red Velvet Cake

I will come back to try their Sunday brunch.