Go Red

My friends Peter and Joanne turned me onto this place and it's amazing! The food is super fresh and has wonderful textures! We ordered a bunch of stuff to try, some of which is not pictured here, but there wasn't one thing that wasn't good. I loved it all, but my favourite would have to be the duck turnip cake, it has pieces of soft fried turnip cake with thinly sliced duck skin mixed in... it was the perfect medicine for the nasty hangover that I had =) The green tea balls for dessert where pretty insane, filled with a sesame paste! The place itself is a bit fancy and modern but service was not so great. But in terms of who won the contest, they are both very different styles so bit hard to compare, but all in all Red Egg did blow me away!

Red Egg
202 Centre Street
New York, NY
(212) 966-1123
redeggnyc.com

Go Green

I know I've blogged Dim Sum Go Go before but we've been doing a bit of a double dim sum marathon for the past two weekends, comparing GoGo and a new find Red Egg. We had a vegetarian with us so we decided to do the entire thing sans-meat... well, almost, I always treat myself to a tasty steamed pork bun =) We ordered the cilantro and chive rice noodles that you see here, which I actually liked WAY better than the usual shrimp one I tend to get. Aesthetically I'm really interested in food all of the same or similar colour. The best one was the dumplings called "Green Dumplings" that you see here in the white, not green wrapper. They are filled with amazing little pickles veggies and they were super unique and tasty! The one complaint was that we ordered the galan with garlic off the menu which is really tasty, but not worth the price! It was $16 for that plate of veggies! It really blew our cheap dim sum idea out the window, so really annoyed about that! Go Go should fix that price YO!

Dim Sum Go Go
5 E. Broadway (at Chatham Sq.)
New York, NY 10038
212-732-0797

Gimme More!

This spot is solid and always worth blogging about. It's without a doubt the best coffee in the soho/nolita area. So make sure to stop in when you need a boost in the middle of a manic day of shopping. The crowd is way cool, hot boys frequent that spot =) and of course the baristas know their shit. I always get the cappuccino with whole milk, but be careful if you are sensitive to caffeine, there's a 3 shots of espresso pulled into 2, I believe (hope i got that right).... so basically, it does the trick every time! I take all my out of town friends here... Greg, my boy from LA liked it =)

Gimme
228 Mott St, btwn Spring and Prince
New York, NY
212-226-4011
gimmecoffee.com

Home Cooking Series

I decided to start a home cooking series in lieu of the recession, time to eat in and save some money. I love grocery shopping and I get pretty obsessive about my ingredients. I really like to cook although I can't say that I am amazing nor do I have much knowledge beyond a few family Italian recipes, but I love trying to make new stuff, then the best part, EATING IT!

x

Home Cooking: Sliders with Pickles

This first one is really random, because I'm not a huge burger person. I had bought some nice all natural beef at Trader Joe's to make my family meat sauce, which I'll blog soon, and I had some left over meat, so I decided to make a mini hamburger. I have these pickles that I love from IKEA (I actually buy a lot of food from IKEA) and thought they would be amazing on my little burger. I melted a slice of nice gruyere and a little mayo/mustard. These pickles are sweet and delicious and work nicely on sandwiches and in salads even!

Little Saigon

Huy and Tuan Bui are two brothers that are bringing some authentic Vietnamese food to Orchard Street. After partnering up with local rockstar photographer Sebastian Kim, to open An Choi, the three are taking over the lower east side with their awesome new Vietnamese eatery. I went to their soft opening party last month but I missed out on all the samples, so I've been dying to try it out. Since their official opening a few weeks ago, they have been really busy and tonight they actually had run out of almost everything on the menu! So this is part one of my An Choi entry, there's will be a follow up when I go back to sample the rest of the menu, including their famous Pho! Tonight we sampled most of their vietnamese sandwiches and crab spring rolls. We tried a grilled pork, a chicken and a portobello mushroom sandwich. They were all great and handmade by Huy himself! I'm already excited for more!

An Choi
85 Orchard St (btwn Grand & Broome)
New York, NY 10002
212-991-9880

Get Your Don On!

Thursday evenings always makes me want to get my don on. Cha-An is an amazing Japanese teahouse located on 9th street on the second floor. It is a beautiful little haven designed in true traditional Japanese style. I love escaping the city, and pretending I'm in Japan, for some amazing authentic Japanese desserts and tea... or in this entry's case, a light snack or an early dinner. The AMAZING tuna don "setto" is only available from 2-6pm on Thursdays. So cut out of work early to catch an early dinner here. The lightly seared tuna over rice is drizzled with a lovely ponzu sauce and it's accompanied by two smaller sides. Also their matcha milk makes for a lovely dessert.

Cha-An
230 E. 9th St, 2nd Fl
New York, NY 10079
(212) 228-8030
chaanteahouse.com

A little taste of Australia

Ruby's is a super cute little spot in Nolita run by cute Australian boys serving up some yummy food! The "Whaleys Burger" is pretty amazing, super juicy beef pattie with pineapple and a fried egg on a nice ciabatta bun. I thought it was going to put me out for the rest of the day but suprisingly it didn't... it was a quality burger all right! Ruby's is usually full of local Nolitans and transplanted ex-pats, I even ran into an old Australian friend from San Francisco.

Ruby's
219 Mulberry St
New York, NY 10012
(212) 925-5755
rubyscafe.us

Don't be Grumpy!

Anna and I stopped by Café Grumpy since we were in the neighbourhood for the Barney's warehouse sale. Although its not my favourite cappuccino in New York, it's still one of the the best in the midtown/ Chelsea area. Their baristas take their drinks quite seriously so don't ask for soy or any modifications.

Café Grumpy
224 W 20th St
New York, NY 10011
(212) 255-5511
cafegrumpy.com

Country Breakfast Moroccan Style

Mogador is hands down one of my favourite restaurants in the east village. The crowd is young and hot and the food is great and really consistent. Mogador's dinner is great, but I usually find myself there for weekend brunch. The price is good and the staff is super friendly. My two favourite breakfast egg dishes are the "Country Breakfast" (pictured here), which comes with labne and arabic salad and the "Middle Eastern Breakfast", which comes with hummus and tabouli. The "Halumi Eggs" dish is amazing but a bit rich because the poached eggs are on top of fried halumi cheese, but I still HIGHLY recommend it! Just writing about it makes me hungry, I think I'll head there again tomorrow for Sunday brunch!


Café Mogador
101 Saint Marks Pl (btwn 1st Ave + Ave A)
New York, NY 10009
(212) 677-2226
cafemogador.com