A Taste of Flushing in the East Village!

I was all too excited to find out that there is finally some serious authentic Chinese food in the east village! This famous hand-pulled noodle shop is food from the Xi'an region of China and is unlike anything I've had before. The food has unusual spices and is said to almost taste Arabic in flavour. Their original shop is in Queens and they had recently opened their first Manhattan location in Chinatown a while back, and now this East Village post! I got a few recommendations as to what to order a few days ago as well as obsessively watching all the videos on their website... so i was all too excited to try it! The space is small and I didn't have the time to sit yesterday so I took it to go, which was still great! I tried one of their most famous dishes, the Liang Pi Cold Skin Noodles and it was delicious!! You can have it spicy or not, but of course spicy was great.. lots of chili oil! I can't wait to go back and try to Lamb Spine, which I heard can be a life-changing experience!

Xi'an Famous Foods
81 St Mark's Pl (between 2nd Ave & 1st Ave)
Manhattan, NY
(212) 786-2068
xianfoods.com

Cool Off at Hester Street Fair

New York was hot as hell this weekend and we finally found some relief under the shade at Hester Street Fair in the lower east side. My girl Suchin organizing this awesome event every week and invites her favourite local restaurants and store owners to participate. We spent a few hours there, snacking on all the yummy food and even did a bit of great vintage shopping! Luke's lobster rolls from the east village were there representing, along with An Choi....yah! So of course had to have both! There's was an awesome Japanese bbq stand, and a pulled pork sandwich station. There was a kimchi hotdog booth, which Suchin is chowing down on here ;) I couldn't find room for that as well, sadly... next week! These empanada boyz are serving up my new favourite lemonade, which is made fresh with mint and cucumber! Although the food was great, our biggest obsession was these homemade Mexican popsicles. They are all made with fresh fruit and are insanely delicious! We tried the watermelon, strawberry and the Tamarindo (with chili spices on top!) There were so many flavours that I can't wait to go back and try them all! It was the perfect thing to cool us down on this horribly hot day.

Hester Street Fair
Intersection of Hester Street and Essex Street
New York, NY
hesterstreetfair.com

Summer Soba

Zaru soba is the perfect dinner during the hot New York summer. It's healthy and light and satisfies that craving for noodles! It's really easy to make; just cook soba noodles, drain and chill with cold water. Then buy and pour soba shoyu broth in a bowl and add freshly ground sesame and chopped green onions and DIP away!

Hot for Hummus, Mad for Mojito!

Hummus Place is a local favourite that I've been going to for years now, but I realized I don't think I've ever blogged about it. It's low key, cheap and has great consistent food. The menu is very small and simple and there is no meat to be found anywhere. This very israeli establishment is a favourite in the east village and also full, but never a wait. It's wonderful to order as take away or delivery too. I also get the same things on the menu, the hummus fava (with has a lovely hard boiled egg in the center), the shashuka, which is stewed tomatoes, with eggs and halumi baked into it. Halumi is an amazing sheep's cheese with a very distinct and wonderful flavour. Then I also love to add the falafel and labne sides.

The new discover this time however was the very AMAZING mojito! It was super special with the mint completely blended with the ice into a super smooth think slushie. It's done with Anise wine, which is an Israeli speciality apparently. They also have a variety of tasty fruit juices from Israel. It was so so wonderful on a very hot New York summer's night.

Hummus Place
109 Saint Mark's Pl (btwn 1st Ave. and Ave. A)
New York, NY
hummusplace.com

Death by Cocktail

All this time living in the East Village and I've never officially had a drink at Death & Company. So finally we sat down to a few very wonderful cocktails! Our girl Nikki started working there and she took good care of us with some great recommendations. I can't even remember what I ordered or which one this photo is of, but they were both amazing and so refreshing! I was most impressed with the quality of the cocktails. I can't vouch for the food since I didn't try anything. I'd imagine stick to drinks.

Death & Co.
433 East 6th Street
New York, NY
(212) 388-0882

Saks Snack

It's easy to build up an appetite shopping for shoes at Saks Fifth Avenue so we stopped for a little mid-day lunch so we could refuel for the next few floors ahead of us. There's a little café on the 5th Floor which was especially convenient since that's my favourite floor :) We tried a few different sandwiches and they were all quite yummy... not to mention mini-sized, which I love!

SnAKS at Saks Fifth Avenue
611 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor
Manhattan, NY 10022

Butter Me Up Baby!

My girl Sarra brought me back some tasty Apple butter from Bermuda. She went there on holiday and knew that I would love to enjoy a taste of the local food there! So far I've only tried it on toast in the morning and it was yummy!

The Yuzu Touch

It's been so hot in New York that all I want to eat is sushi. Having being spoiled by growing up in Vancouver, it's hard to justify the typical sushi prices in the city and so I'll take it any which way I can get. That's why Sunrise Market is great. It's truly Japanese and support the entire Japanese community here in Manhattan.

They have sushi, among other prepared meals available as take away. It's definitely the cheapest way to eat sushi in New York! I also bought this amazing tofu there. It's from Hokkaido and I've actually bought it in Japan! My friends there introduced me to it one time at Takeshimaya in Niko-Tama a few year back! It's so exciting to see it make it's way to NYC! It's so delicious and tastes pretty much like dessert, super fresh! I topped it off with the featured ingredient of this post... Yuzu-kosho! As you all probably already know, I love Yuzu taste. It's great with chicken especially but it can be used in soups, on tofu, and I get a little crazy and mix it with shoyu (soy sauce) instead of wasabi for dipping my sushi! It's not ideal for tuna but its great for the salmon! It adds a lovely citrus taste.

Unfortunately you can not buy the yuzu-kosho at Sunrise. This little jem of a jar comes from Japan, it was a gift from a friend of mine there. I use it sparingly but try to experiment with it on food as much as possible!

NIgiri Sushi and Tofu (from Hokkaido) can both be purchased at Sunrise.

Sunrise Mart
29 3rd Ave (between 10th St & 2nd Ave)
New York, NY

No More Wait for Ramen!

All my trips to Ippudo have finally paid off! I was WAY TOO excited to receive my "Black Card" this week at Ippudo. The manager, named Lighting, very officially presented me with the Black Card. I had been told that I was getting one but I hadn't been into the restaurant in a few weeks. The important thing is that the Black Card means NO MORE WAITING. The lineup at Ippudo on ANY given night is about 2 hours these days, it's crazy. You present the card when you come in and they slip you in as soon as possible. Now that's customer appreciation at it's best! I have been getting black card perks already there for some time but it's nice to be official. The card also allows you to get any toppings on your ramen for FREE and also there's a few other small special perks included too!

Ippudo Ny
65 4th Avenue (nr 10th st)
New York, NY
(212) 388-0088
ippudo.com

"En"dulge

En is a restaurant that I have been wanting to try for a while now. It always sounded great but it was WAY over on the west side, not usually where you find the authentic Japanese restos... so I never made much effort to try it. My girl Momo-chan wanted to take me there as a treat so of course I was SO excited to try it! It was awesome. We had some lovely starters Kyoto-style... including a wonderful daikon-grilled buya dish and hijiki salad.. all so yummy. The highlight however was the agedashi-dofu... they do this crazy... almost "wrong" (but so right) version of agedashi-dofu... basically fried tofu... one white tofu and one black sesame tofu, but oosing with soft creamy tofu on the inside. It's more of a dessert really. It's way TOO good. We also tried the black miso cod, also ridiculously yummy and some dessert. It was kind of an over-indulgent dinner but wonderful! I want to go back and try their tasting menu!

EN Japanese Brasserie
435 Hudson Street (at leroy)
New York NY
enjb.com