New York City Day 3

Grand Central Station

Checking out Grand Central Station was another excuse for me to check out food vendors.  I was immediately sucked into Financier Patisserie and decided right then and there that I would lunch on a bunch of pastries.  I also added some sliced truffled salami from Murray's in Grand Central Market to balance out my sweets-heavy lunch.  Very healthy!  I brought my sugar and sodium-loaded lunch back to the hotel to pig out without shame. 

Truffled Salami from Murray's

I think Financier's Napoleon is the best millefeuille I've had in the states!  It was light, flakey, and what really set this apart from others is the thin layer of lemon curd on the bottom.  I forgot to bring a plastic fork back to the hotel, so I ate this with my bare hands.

Napoleon from Financier

The Diplomate is a thick and heavy tart of eggy custard, bananas, and pecans.  It was a bit too heavy for me to finish.

Diplomate

The Apricot Galette, however, was buttery and light.  Just like the ones in Paris.  Delicious!

Apricot Galette

After walking around mid-town, it was back to Flushing for the best xiaolong tang bao (soup dumplings) in New York!

 

Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center

Joe's Shanghai has 3 locations in NYC.  The midtown location is more expensive and fewer soup dumplings per steamer.  The meal was amazing.  With each bite of the crabmeat xiaolongbao hot broth and scrumptious, briny crab juice gushed into my mouth.  I became a greedy fiend, eating while eyeing my next dumpling.  The pork soup dumpling was good, but the flavor of the crab xiaolongbao is just so much more phenomenal that it completed eclipsed the pork dumplings.  Skip the pork and double your order of the crab soup dumplings!

Crabmeat and Pork Xiaolongbao

You can actually taste and see the crab meat!

Pork Xiaolongbao

Pork Xiaolongbao

Since we were in a Shanghainese restaurant, we decided to order the traditional pot of Shaguo Yutou (fish head stew in an earthenware pot).  Unfortunately this dish fell short of traditional and lacked generous helpings and variety of ingredients.  Yes, it had tofu, Chinese cabbage, shitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and a few broad strands of mung bean vermicelli, but instead of chunks of Shanghainese honey ham there were crappy fast-food-like stir-fried slices of beef that tasted like leftover chunks from a Mongolian beef dish in a buffet line.  This was, indeed, disappointing.

Shaguo Yutou (fish head stew in an earthenware pot)

Shaguo Yutou (fish head stew in an earthenware pot)

Awesome Dinner at Joe's Shanghai

On the way back to midtown, I was able to goof off on an empty train.