Lunch for One: Banana French Toast at Clinton Street Baking Co.
Sugar Rush: Keste's Tiramisu
Sugar Rush: Rice Pudding Tempura at 15 East
Lunch for One: The Refrigerated Section of Murray's Cheese
Sugar Rush: Praline Parfait at Pearl Oyster Bar
Sugar Rush: Cranberry-Sage Pie at Four & Twenty Blackbirds
Hot Drinks, NY: Buckwheat Matcha at Ten Ren
Sugar Rush: Gummies and Marshmallows at Sunrise Mart...Matcha Marshmallows and...
...Mangosteen Gummies
As some of you know, I recently left real estate sales for freelance writing opportunities and to work full-time on a new project.
Good morning!
9am at the Brindle Room. Just happen to be reading this doughnut article by total coincidence. Lucky we live NYC, no?
Peppermint Tea for a cold day and two Doughnuts ($1.75 each) hot out of the fryer. They only make cake doughnuts, but they're extra-tender cake doughnuts. The culprit? Mashed potatoes mixed into the dough. That's the Powdered Sugar Cake Doughnut and a...
...Chocolate-Hazelnut Cake Doughnut topped with sliced almonds. Shhh, don't dare tell Monsieur P...we're supposed to be eating healthier! ;)
Morning wake-up, clean the apartment, hot pot of tea. And the wind! We practically flew down Broadway and across Houston, making our way to Russ & Daughters. Monsieur P wasn't too excited about the Saturday morning crowds inside this New York institution, but I assured him that it would be well worth it. Do you remember my first visit to Russ & Daughters? Hard to believe that was four years ago.
A fifteen-minute wait, then "serving number 42!" Here we are! One Classic please, an everything bagel with Scallion Cream Cheese and Scottish Smoked Salmon. Pricey at $10.95, but oh, the quality!
There's a rainbow of cream cheese flavors to pick from, and a choice of:
We also shared the Heebster ($8.45), a bagel sandwich with Horseradish-Dill Cream Cheese and Whitefish & Baked Salmon Salad.
Each sandwich was sliced in half making it easy to share. Coupled with fresh squeezed orange juice and I wouldn't trade this Saturday morning for anything else in the world.
We bought a few extra bagels and "salads" for afternoon snack. A quarter pound of Smoked Salmon Tartare ($15.96/lb)...
...and the Eggplant Salad Romanian ($7.97/lb) with peppers and garlic. This and the Eggplant Caponata from Otto are my two favourite cold eggplant salads in the city.
...for the week at Serious Eats New York. Plus 'Lunch for One' at Chinatown Brasserie and Yuba. And 'Afternoon Tea' at recently opened The Tea Set in the West Village. Happy Friday!
Lunch for One: Mushroom Noodles at Chinatown Brasserie
Sugar Rush: Smith & Wollensky's Coconut Cake
Sugar Rush: Topfenpalatschinken at Cafe Katja
Lunch for One: Yuba
Sugar Rush: Everything Cupcake and SoCo Creamery at Tribeca TreatsAfternoon Tea: The Tea Set
Sugar Rush: Effie's Oatcakes
Sugar Rush: Turnovers at Falai Panetteria
Coffee or tea? The answer used to be both, but now it's only tea.
I grew up with tea, and ventured into coffee during college, when I moved to NYC. And then last year, in the midst of the city's coffee revolution, I found myself shunning it all for tea, hot and iced. I could drink tea all day long with no worries about the caffeine effect and it was easy to prepare at home. It was something I could drink with grandmother on visits to Hawai'i, her big tea pot stored in a bamboo basket. Whereas coffee made me jittery, tea was soothing...simultaneously comforting and luxurious. It started with oolong and darjeeling my parents mailed from their travels to China. And then our trip to Paris involved just as many tea salon as it did patisseries. I whittled away days inside the castles of Dammann Fr�res, Kusmi, Le Palais des Th�s, and the queen of them all, Mariage Fr�res.
When we returned to NYC, I cleared out half our kitchen cabinets. This part, I told Monsieur P, will be for tea only. So much fun! We filled it up with tea and tea pots and tea cups. For awhile I concerned that I was more interested in having all this tea stuff, than I was actually into the art of drinking tea. No worries. I eventually phased coffee out of my life, though Monsieur P drinks both. On occasion I find the scent of coffee unappealing, a notion that would seem crazy just a year ago. I will however, always love tiramisu and coffee ice cream.
After we returned from Paris, all these tea shops in NYC open, literally out of nowhere. There was In Pursuit of Tea in the old Matcha Box pop-up on Crosby Street. It's a tiny space with a selection of teas on a daily basis. You can have tea by the cup or purchase their loose leaf teas in this space. Don't miss the collection of tea sweets baked by French Culinary Institute's chef-instructor, Melanie Franks. We just signed up for a Tea Dinner they're hosting at In Pursuit of Tea next Monday. I'm not sure if openings are still available, but it sounds like a fun experience. $60 a person for a 5-course dinner...it will be a surprise dinner for Monsieur P!
Around the corner on Broome Street, Harney & Sons opened in a long, narrow space. Here the walls are lined with tea, all the way up to the ceilings, just like it was in Paris. Beautiful. You can taste any of their teas and then make your way to the fine tea salon in the back. Tea by the pot. Scones! Savory tea snacks. Of course, tea-flavored ice cream. There is The Tea Set in the West Village, The Tea & Honey Store in Grand Central, and don't forget Kusmi which opened near Bloomingdale's last summer. A little birdie also told me that both Mariage Fr�res and Le Palais des Th�s are shopping for retail locations in NYC. Exciting indeed.
The best part? It's only the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't even begin to touch on the numerous places for afternoon tea in the city. Which is why I started writing a bi-monthly Afternoon Tea column over at Serious Eats. We've been to Podunk and Crosby Street Hotel in the last month, and there will be many more to come!
Valentine's Day Gifts: The Best Chocolates and Desserts. That's the Pretzel-Covered Sea-Salted Caramel from Bespoke Chocolates. Only one word: GLORIOUS.
The City Bakery Hot Chocolate Festival. I marked my calendar for the 7th - Earl Grey Hot Chocolate! See the rest of the month's offerings here.
Lunch for One: Tamarind Tribeca ... the appetizer as part of the $24 lunch prix-fixe, an excellent deal.
First Look: The Return of Dorie Greenspan's CookieBar 2011. We visited the pop-up cookie shop inside Park Avenue's Mizu Salon in 2010, and came back on the first day she opened this year. The shop was here just for a week, but the good memories will last till 2012! If only there was a way to have these cookies year round...
Sugar Rush: Twinkie Trio at Lulu Cake Boutique. Red velvet (center) is the most popular flavor, but the one all the way at left is my personal favourite. Working our way inside-out: chocolate pudding filling, chocolate cake, dark chocolate shell, chocolate cake crumbs. Ahh indulgence.
Sugar Rush: Speculoos and Feuilletine Chocolate Bars at Neuhaus. Speculoos are those crispy, cinnamon cookies from Belgium (remember the ones we had from Dandoy Biscuits at Borne Confections?) and the feuillentine comes from Brittany.
Lunch for One: $10 Lunch Special at Cha-An. The unagi bowl is pictured above - all that plus a pot of genmaicha for only $10. Specials change daily.
Sugar Rush: Lemon Souffle at L'Artusi. Beats out the olive oil cake with raisin marmelatta as my favourite dessert at L'Artusi.
Sugar Rush: Boozy Apple Preserves by Anarchy in a Jar. Boozy is no joke�the rum comes though as clear as the apples.
Sugar Rush: Chipless Wonder Cookies. Chocolate chip cookies minus the chocolate chips ;)
It's over here, on the 3rd floor. See it?
Yes, over here! A slip of an entrance. A brief ride in an elevator that fits precisely three individuals. Or three flights up carpeted stairs, the somewhat menacing walls papered with life-size cartoon drawings of children.
Here is where you want to be when it is a frigid 5F degrees (!!! bring me back to Hawai'i !!!) outside and the offer for hot soup is more tempting than wd-50's tasting menu. Here the $10 bowls full of knife cut noodles and hand torn noodles are enormous. The menu is straightforward, five types of noodle soups, your pick of knife cut or hand torn noodles. Or even better, a mix of both.
I was there with Robyn and Diana last night. We shared two bowls, with leftovers. The Chicken Kar-Jeabe is my favourite, a concoction intensely chicken-y beyond words. It's a milky broth marked with shredded chicken, thin potato slices and green onions.
Here's a look at the dough flakes - slippery, silky bites, think thin wonton wrappers...
...and these would be the knife-cut noodles.
The Anchovy Kar-Jeabe was not as pungent as I was secretly hoping for, but satisfied soup cravings sufficiently. No matter what you order, every meal begins with kimchee. There's constantly refilled cup of cold tea and don't forget to make use of the spicy bean paste, stored in lidded black containers at each table. You've been warned, a little goes a long way.