Day 9 – 12/04/2019

By this time, I was starting to get the hang of New York. Since I was no longer oggling at absolutely everything with too much for my brain to take in at once, I was able to spot more subtle things, like this lady who was wearing odd shoes! There was also another instance where I saw someone with different coloured laces too. New Yorkers are interesting!

I also made sure to keep up my vegetable and greens intake, so here’s a double shot wheatgrass from the farmer’s market. It was really expensive though, at $6. Then again, I am paying for someone to manually juice a lot of grass, and she’d just juiced 4 shots for the lady before me. Must have strong arms! It’s actually interesting, I so rarely have wheatgrass that the only time I distinctly remember trying this in the past was at Boost when it was either free or $1, and they gave me a slice of orange to get rid of the taste, but I ended up liking the taste. Anyway, the aftertaste of this one lasted at least a day. Wow! Does wheatgrass usually do that?

There were also way more stalls today than my initial visit on the Monday, which makes sense since things usually get busy on Fridays and Saturdays. Now this vegetable stall appeared that display the cross sections of their root vegetables, which is super cool! I’ve actually seen most of these before, but it reminded me that this is probably new to a lot of people, I remember the joy of buying each of these and slicing through them for the first time and marvelling at the colours!

After my greens top up, I decided to walk aimlessly, which ended up being a walk down Broadway. I figured I should get some food but wasn’t really sure what I wanted, until my hipster sense made me stop and look, and behold, an Ole and Steen! No idea what that meant, so I went in, and saw some pretty Scandanavian looking stuff, along with pastries. This smoked trout and devilled + curried egg open sandwich looked interesting and good as a small snack, plus it was also relatively healthy looking, so I tried it out! Honestly, I didn’t even remember at the time that smoked trout was the main ingredient because there was so little of it, but I did enjoy all the egg on here!

Look, more seats in public places, and a great view of Empire State!

Comparing these two photos is so interesting, because it just represents the changing of the seasons so well. The bare branches still the dominant backdrop, while the green and colour are on the ground, growing upwards and aiming for the trees (ok that didn’t sound half as poetic as I hoped).

Remember to always look behind and up, because things look different forward and backward! Behold the Flatiron building in its mightly glory. For some reason I imagined this building to be way more epic, when I saw it in photos I always thought it would be as tall as a skyscraper, and just feel absolutely dwarfed next to it. In real life, it’s still a very prominent building, but I didn’t feel quite in awe of this as I thought I’d be.

Oh, this is a cute Shake Shack! It’s actually a shack, in the middle of this park! There’s a huge queue here too, all the Shake Shacks are so busy! I didn’t realise until later why – this is the original, where it all began. That explains why it’s so shack looking and popular! That’s so cool!

Well, this was Madison Square Park, soooo that means it’s near Eleven Madison Park. I guess I can scout out my dream restaurant!

And here I am at the crossing that would lead me to my beloved EMP. How cool that the building has a bridge!

Taking some sneaky pics now, though my reservation here wasn’t till tonight. How exciting!!! Little did I know that I’d eventually become a creeper looking person a few times here haha, but I can’t help but stop and just look longingly into the doors….

Also took some pictures of the surrounding area, since all the buildings here are so different looking!

Ah New York and your funny stripey smoke towers…

After my little scout around the block, I headed back into the park to explore it a bit more.

This place has some interesting art installations! Daniel Humm is a big fan of art, so it makes sense that Eleven Madison Park actually has invested into this park in general. That’s so cool!

This random glove is not art….

Wow, the parks of New York have dog runs!!! Woah!!! This is so exciting! Look at all the cute dogs here! They look like they’re having so much fun! Though I accidentally got a shot of that dog pooping hahaha. It was actually funny seeing the number of dogs that start doing their business as soon as they enter here lol, as if they just know. And a shot that almost looks like a two-head dog, like a dog-dog.

But where do these dogs all live? How can their owners take them out in the middle of the day to play? These questions! My mind cannot comprehend!

Anyway, when the cute little corgi and its friends’ playtimes were over, I decided it was time for me to leave too. I scouted out Hotel Nomad (I really, really wanted to book a night here but I couldn’t afford it with my eating plans), and with that, Made Nice, so that I could get a another sampling of a Daniel Humm established eatery.

Wow Popeye’s Chicken is so good! Way better than KFCs back in Aus, though it’s been a long time since I’ve had KFC so I can’t really say. All I know is that when I crave fried chicken in Perth, I can’t get it (because I crave Belle’s Hot Chicken), but this was so good, my fried chicken cravings have been satistfied!

Also kids, remember, this is why I had the wheatgrass shot. Veggies are your path to delicious fried and fatty foods!

I didn’t do too much after the fried chicken because I was too busy prettying myself up for the time of my life. And here it is, my beloved Eleven Madison Park experience.

Day 10 – 13/04/2019

Wow. After a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and receiving an EMP morning-after granola care package, how on earth do you follow that up? What can do you the next morning that could possibly be even remotely as amazing? Well, not much. I didn’t want to eat the granola yet as I wanted to take that home, so Saturday morning was a real struggle. So much so that we ended up back at Union Square yet again, for Saturday’s version of the markets.

It was different again from what I saw yesterday. The markets on a Saturday are more than double the size of a Monday, and there was even an easter egg stall, and the eggs were really, really nicely decorated!

The flowers are starting to bloom! Or perhaps my excellent night has made me notice more nice things!

Oooh a chess player is here too! So the shows are right, there is actually a lot of chess action in the city!

The vegetable stall that was here yesterday is still here today, but now the order of vegetable cuts has reversed, and there are more!

Turkey and pheasant eggs! Man If I lived here I’d love to taste both! But that’s some insanely expensive eggs, so I could probably only do it once. Turkey eggs look smaller than I expected, but I guess they’re about the same size as duck eggs maybe?

There’s even composting initiatives here!

Squirrel!!! With nut!!

When you can’t stay classy, try out the cheap! Nothing can really match EMP, so instead I walked into a random corner deli and ordered a roll. After all, I’m fascinated with all food, and I really wanted a philly cheesesteak from a food cart or deli (spoiler alert: it never happened), but “The American” hero looked interesting because in my head I imagined it loaded with shaved meat – beef, turkey and ham. I didn’t realise that the word hero means roll, or sub, I initially thought it was part of the name! I guess it’s like how Cape Town calls them gatsbys.

It tasted on par with what I was expecting, but was bigger than I expected (since all I’ve really been to is hipster places). A good, affordable feed!

I thought Eataly was an Italian restaurant, but after finally not ignoring seeing it so many times on Google Maps, and because it was next to Madison Square Park (yes I ended up here again lol), I decided to check it out. Wow, it’s an entire food and groceries hall! Like a David Jones Food Hall, but dedicated to Italian food! That’s amazing! Here’s a whole prosciutto just chilling. There was also a panino shop and I really wanted some mortadella on bread, but it was really expensive for the size, and I was full from the sandwich earlier. Oh well!

I didn’t realise San Pellegrino has a prickly pear flavour! Though I can’t be sure if I’ve seen it before. Too bad I didn’t get this though. I’ll never know!

Fiddlehead ferns! Yes! I’ve wanted to look at these in real life! Unfortunately, I read up on them and they’re not good to eat raw, so I didn’t end up buying these either. But at least I’ve seen them!

Finally, something small that I could try out! I remember having a really good cannoli at my local deli in Sydney, so I wanted to see if this one was also delicious. This is a plain cannoli with cow’s milk ricotta. I asked if it was better to add hazelnuts or pistachios as a topping, since both sounded very fitting for this, and the lady said that the pistachio was far more popular, so here it is! Lovely crispy fried cannoli with tasty cream filling! My memory of the Sydney one is still tastier though, but given that I rarely eat these, I’m not sure if that was just a rose-tinted glasses situation.

Another picture of Grand Central! All the stations actually look different, some moreso than others. The style does remind me a little of London Underground.

Welcome to the Bronx! That’s now my fourth borough, only one left! Look at this poor public telephone.

Like Queens, the Bronx also gets flat and empty. It’s so weird because it’s still New York, but so suburbian! There are little rows of shops all over the place, but it’s simply so much slower paced than Manhattan.

The Bronx actually has a few different attractions, but I’m not really one for zoos, but I love strolling through botanical gardens. This set of gardens is interesting, you can pay for tickets, which get you into “paid” areas. We didn’t end up buying a ticket, but we did accidentally enter a paid area because the exit wasn’t monitored and we kind of just waltzed in that way and left via the entrance, with the staff none the wiser. Oops!

I’m glad we did the visit in the second week rather than the first, so that the trees had time to start getting leaves and flowers, because the transitional landscape looks really nice and is not something I usually see!

As we were walking through the free section of the gardens, there was a gathering of people around a tree. I wondered what they could be looking at, and from afar, I could make out the shape of a decent sized bird. Maybe it was an owl?

No, it was a hawk! Or eagle! Something like that. That’s pretty amazing!! It sat there the whole time, looking to and fro, kind of like it was just chillin and wondering what all the fuss was about with the humans below. The problem with beautiful birds just sitting there, is that I will continue taking the same shots over and over again just because I can’t stop looking at it haha!

This was definitely the highlight of the botanic gardens!

And some pretty ducks too!

Returning back to the city took us past Colombus Circle again, so here’s a mochi ice cream place! It actually showed up on my feed a few times too, but I kind of ignored it, but I guess it was meant to be! I tried out the basil and ube flavours and both were good! They were quite enjoyable!

For dinner, it was time to try another pastrami place. Pastrami Queen was on my list, and luckily there’s one near home!

Mmm more pastrami on rye! However, I already noticed two distinct differences between Katz’s Deli and this place. One, this place felt too clean. It was a tidy and small diner, rather than being what I call dark and dingy (it’s a positive descriptor). Two, this was machine sliced rather than hand sliced. It’s weird, I feel that this makes all the difference. I feel that there’s a flavour difference between thick and thin – I also experience this with cheeses too. The flavour was still good, but not as good as Katz’s.

This matzo ball soup was noticeably less flavoursome than Katz’s, but it was mostly the texture of the matzo ball that I found disctincly less nice. Katz’s felt bouncy, and had a good, filling texture without being heavy. This one was too light, as if it was less well bound, if that makes sense.

We also got a hot dog just to try it out! I can’t remember how this tasted though!

Day 11 – 14/04/2019

Intelligentsia was next on my list. From my research, I wasn’t sure if they had a fully fledged cafe, but this one in Highline Hotel seemed like a good choice that was unlikely to end with an awkward “oh its not actually here” type endpoint.

I ordered a batch brew and even though it was correctly one serve, it was more than I wanted! I think this is a 12oz cup. It was tasty, even though it took me a while to finish. It looks like everyone is welcome in the lobby, and there’s a courtyard area too!

There are even two, relatively well functioning typewriters here! Someone was using one when we walked in, so the clacking was the first thing I heard. This was super cool!

However, the typwriters were also broken enough that it wasn’t quite fun to type out messages. The keys jammed easily and weren’t aligned with the ink strip. Still, I enjoyed seeing old technology!

Walking around this area lead us to Chelsea! Hello Google! Is this one of Google’s headquarters?

Chelsea Market! This looks like an interesting place and something I’d love – and the inside is massive! So many shops (mostly food) for me to explore! There was a brownie shop, a super delicious smelling Taiwanese noodle place, an expensive lobster and seafood market, a huge variety of small stalls and a middle eastern joint. So much choice!!!

Ninth Street Espresso caught my eye because it was on my list. It’s interesting, a lot of places don’t list the flat white but probably serve it, it’s a little hard to tell without asking. I don’t like asking for lattes because here, they serve those in 12oz cups, which is too much for me! So I asked if they could make me coffee in a 6oz cup and they said yes! Yay! Except it had a double shot in it. I forgot… they do double shots here haha so it was a bit strong for me! Still enjoyable for those who do like this kind of flavour though!

Ok, it looks like Chelsea is one of Google’s headquarters, cause here’s the lift to the Youtube office!

What a cool complex! There was also a shoe shine stall here. I really need to get my shoes shined one day because it sounds like so much fun!

Aah, so this is where the big Reserve roastery is! I’ve actually been having a hard time finding Reserve cafes, and the first one I come across is THE one! However, since I’d already consumed coffee today, this visit was going to be for another time.

What an interesting place. A combination of roadwork, side-of-the-street, almost dodgy looking stalls “yes, it’s real fur!”, trees on eaves, and buildings on buildings. It truly is a melting pot!

Oh and of course, broken things on a Google sign. The hilarity!

Plastic bags in trees, the great feature of New York. I’d finally made my way to Queensbridge! I was here to visit the park to try and find the shot from Person of Interest, but I actually didn’t do prior research to realise this was a public housing area. Wow! Oops! It didn’t feel unsafe though, it was really just me feeling out of place. It was still a good experience to walk through the place and see another side of New York though!

Yay, I made it! Except now that I was here, I had no idea what I was trying to take a photo of. I don’t have accurate and lasting memory for shows and books, so I just took any and all shots, hoping that one of these would be similar to the scene in Person of Interest when I find the time to rewatch it for location spotting.

The park was actually full of people playing sports, and a few people walking through. It was quite a nice place! But now we were getting hungry.

Back to Bedford! We’d managed to cross this place a few times during our Brooklyn adventures. We were on our way to check out Peter Luger steakhouse, but alas, they were all booked out. They only take walk-ins before 4PM, and we’d passed that time, so it was reservations only, and they were booked out till the end of the month. I was really hungry at this point, so I kind of just let that instinct take over and started walking.

Oh yeah, I forgot pies are a sweet thing in America! This shop is called Pies n Thighs. My friend saw it on Google maps, and I had no idea that it was the direction we were walking towards, but as luck would have it, here’s where we ended up! There was fried chicken and waffles on the menu, and I love fried chicken and waffles, so here they are!

My first experience of fried chicken and waffles at Roscoe’s, almost 10 years ago back in LA, was a much better one. The chicken back then just tasted so much better, juicier, similar to my Popeye’s experience here. In this instance, the chicken wasn’t as good. Not quite as crispy, flavoursome and juicy. Still, it satisfied my hunger and that was important!

Woooow string buskers!! Isn’t this such a mighty fine cello? I hope it’s a cello. I don’t really know the difference between that and a double bass. But this was so cool, because it wasn’t just this guy.

There was also this guy! They were a duo performance! That was so cool, because they actually interacted with each other. Maybe I just don’t know much about music, have a huge bias towards strings, and was just so happy, that I really felt they were working with each other and playing off each other’s cues and making eye contact, and it made this amazing! I can’t help but tip when I hear really nice strings, so I gave them some monies. I didn’t actually have any $5 notes, thank goodness, otherwise I would have lost my money fast!

They made the performance so captivating that you can literally see the space they create. There was a natural circle between these two and the commuters, and I’m not sure if they only draw in tourists, I feel like unless you’d seen their entire repertoire, you’d (well, I would) be compelled to keep donating! I was so happy to just watch and listen till the train came!

I went back to Columbus Circle, this time for pelmeni. I saw the shop yesterday while exploring – there’s a market under the Time Warner Centre called Turnstyle Underground, which features small shops and food stalls. They had Taiwanese noodles and pancakes, the ice cream mochi place, a macaron shop, mediterranean food, juice, a cafe, everything! Having had pelmeni once before in Perth at a local cafe and being disappointed that they weren’t that great – they tasted like very bland wontons, I wanted to see if New York could do it better, since I figure in a city like this, only the best survive (even if the underground market itself was relatively new lol). Wow, yes! This is how I imagine pelmeni to be! I ordered a small set, half pork, and half lamb, and these were full of flavour! I liked the pork ones better, and I actually don’t know if I got capsicum or eggplant dip, but I think it was eggplant cause that’s what the shop recommended. So amazing! Yes! This is Russian food!

There was also a local shop near us called The Food Emporium, and what I love about supermarkets here is that they all have a hot and cold food bar. You can buy heaps of prepared foods, and I just love looking at supermarkets. I just love supermarkets. They’re same but different different in every part of the world, it’s so much fun!

But I took this picture especially for the Vegetarian Chopped Liver. Um what? Chopped liver of vegetarians? Maybe it was a tofu style blend as “vegetarian liver”. Who knows!!!

This was the most extreme variation on “plastic bags in trees” in the city I’ve seen! Though to their credit, I did see a concerned resident reach out with one of those extended picker things and fight with a plastic bag until he managed to win and get it out of a tree branch. There is hope yet!

And more trash bags. Just because it’s so New York.

Day 12 – 15/04/2019

Welcome to Cafe Grumpy! It’d been on my list, but what gave me all the more reason to go was when I saw someone walk into Sey Coffee while we were there, and he was carrying a Cafe Grumpy bag. Maybe it was one cafe staff interacting with another! Who knows! But the mystery was enough to make me want to visit.

A poursteady system! I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen one of these before, but my memory has often proved me wrong, so I can’t be too sure if it was my first time. But it felt like it’s the first time I’ve seen it. Pretty cool to watch!

And here’s my pourover! There’s not a huge food selection here, but I did get an orange and olive oil bundt cake that I didn’t take a photo of. The cake was of a very different texture compared to my earlier funfetti bundt cake at Black Fox. This one, having olive oil as the fat, felt more moist and softer, but in a way, my mind thought that it was “heavier” in texture without actually being of a “weighs you down” kind of feeling. I actually liked it a lot!

Smokey tower things!

I only saw a handful of these during the first half of my stay, but in the second half, I started seeing a lot more being fitted out. New York is finally moving into the modern age of tap and go! Well.. still in testing. It’s gonna be a while. Since I never really rode the train in peak hour (I had one sardine moment, but even then it never really got to the sheer crush of my experience of London Underground, where the trains and platforms are both so packed that there’s really only an exchange of about 3 people per carriage, and then the line would move forward for the next train, and so on, until all the people on the platform emptied), I didn’t see exactly how slow and annoying this system of swiping a flimsy card could actually get.

Hello Made Nice! I figured now was good a time as any for trying this place out, since all I’d had to eat was a small cake. The salads here all looked tempting, and it was actually the duck and waffles that caught my eye. I really wanted the roast chicken and chips though… decisions! The ordering system here is very different from what I’m used to as well. The entry point of this restaurant had two lanes, entry and exit. Walking through the entry, you end up in an “open” space in front of a board with the menu, and a person is standing there – not behind a counter or anything – with a tablet, and you place your order to them. That was pretty cool, and the staff member explained to me that the duck and waffle serving was quite small and recommended getting something else, and when I asked about the frisee salad (I saw veges and egg tempting me), he said that it’s been on the menu since day one, so I got that too. The place is cashless, so I gave him my card and he did the old swipey thing. Then he told me that when my order was ready, the name on my card would be called out. How cool! It reads the name and that way there’s no way to incorrectly take down your name!

So, the duck and waffle was a tad bigger than I imagined, relative to how much I wanted to eat. It was also very different than I imagined, because usually the waffles are served on a plate and with a confit duck leg. The flavour was good though! And the salad was about twice as big as I imagined! That being said, it was mostly lettuce so it was actually easy to finish the whole thing and not feel completely full. It was a good feeling! Another vegetable top up complete! Those fried potato croutons were incredible, but there were so few that I had to ration them out!

I also decided to try their cranberry soda because the staff said it was all house made. I generally avoid them because fizzy drinks hurt my throat and cut my appetite, but I put a lot of effort into finishing this one!

After that, I decided to take a walk, with the intention of finding a tea place. However, travelling on foot is perilous because it means so many distractions! Like this cupcake!

The cupcake isn’t their main feature though. It’s actually these face cookies, which are absolutely adorable!

I got the cupcake instead of a face cookie because I can’t resist a good buttercream, this one was not quite as buttery as I’d hoped but still good! I was so full though!

The buildings here are all so crazy different!

And finally I was here! I really wasn’t sure what to expect, since tea shops seem to be quite hit and miss for my particular preferences. I like shops similar to Zensation in Sydney, where you know the tea is incredibly good. I hate feeling the disappointment when I go into a tea shop and there are too many flavoured teas and the focus on “pure” tea is lost.

Magic, as soon as I walked in. The place was beautiful! The tea person greeted me immediately upon entering, and asked me if I was having some tea. I actually had no idea what I wanted, but my mouth kind of just started talking before my brain could process anything and said yes!

It was a narrow store, but it felt so right! The decor, the theme, it was exactly what I was hoping for! And the reason I experienced a disconnect between my brain and my mouth was because there was just so much to take in, my brain was still oggling away. Even on the left side, where the tea server was, was amazing, because it was an entire long table full of tea tables! If I remember correctly it could serve up to 4-5 people. And there were more tables towards the back of the shop as well. I absolutely knew I wanted to have tea here.

Since I said yes, the tea server (does this have a name? Like coffee is barista, so what is a tea person??? Server sounds too lowly, I’ll call them tea sommeliers from now on!) instructed me to pick a tea pet from the shelf to accompany me.

Wow, what’s a tea pet? Is it just because I was by myself? Or does it have some sort of purpose? Considering it was made of clay or wood or something, I felt like it was part of the tea making process.

I decided to choose this cute little piggy! The next tough decision was deciding what to drink. I browsed through the menu and there’s some really interesting stuff here. They also have cute comments, like on the red tea page – “known as black tea in the west for reasons we do not understand”. Lol, I know that feeling! What caught my eye though, was the yellow tea section. I’ve so rarely seen yellow teas that I forgot they existed, but upon seeing this, was reminded that I tried a golden needle ages ago from somewhere, which was a yellow tea.

That means I absolutely had to pick yellow! But wait, there was also something weird going on. This section was divided into two parts, INSANELY EXPENSIVE and sort of expensive. What??? Well, all the teas were pretty expensive, on average over 20USD per serve, a serve being 4 brews. It makes sense though, if you take into account that you are using a lot of the tea somm’s time by drinking four brews. Tea is a very zen, very free-time-flowing (lol what kind of phrase did I just attempt to make up) activity, so that amount of money does get you a couple of hours with personalised service.

Back to the yellow teas. When I say insanely expensive, I mean triple digits. Over one hundred US dollars. The second section was only in the mid thirties, so I tried one of them.

This was the Huang Ya, Jin Ji Shan, Huo Shan. A very light coloured tea, and while it sort of tasted like green tea, it was definitely less tannic and grassy. Not a bad tea to drink but the flavours were super subtle.

There was a man sitting on the next table over, and he offered me a cup and a tasting of his tea. Wow. That kind of punched me in the face with its tannins, but it followed up with some great flavour! Apparently it was a pu-er tea, and quite enjoyable!

We all started talking about teas, and how I usually order teas from a Melbourne company called Kuura Co. The tea somm recognised that name and said that sometimes Ayden posted on his Instagram too! What a small world! I also mentioned I was on holiday, and when it became evident that I was on a foodie tour, the man sitting at the table fistbumped me for every high profile restaurant I went to! He was excited for me! That was pretty cool. It turns out he’s a foodie too, and he was from Chicago. He can’t really drink coffee but he loves tea. We had a small discussion on pizza and hot dogs, and concluded that New York was better at pizza, but Chicago was the place to go for hot dogs. Also, he ordered yet another tea and shared that one too! This time it was an oolong, Dan Cong, or Phoenix something something. Zhi Lang Xiang, I think was the farm. This one was so floral and juice, it was incredible! I’m so glad I was here when there was a regular, because tea sharing is so great! It’s the same as coffee culture, it’s nice to taste all the different flavours and I love that tea and coffee are both such social drinks that you can also appreciate!

My friend had arrived at this point so he got to try some of the other teas too, but we soon finished up and I decided to purchase that Phoenix Oolong for my mum. 27g of tea, plus my yellow tea, cost about 100 AUD all up! Whaaat! So expensive!!! I’m used to paying silly amounts for tea, but this was crazy! I didn’t mind though, and given that I’ve not had an experience quite like this (though honestly Zensation is MUCH more affordable for the same thing), it was worth doing once, and I did actually want to go back again because the atmosphere was so friendly!

There was a mochi shop nearby too, and I can’t resist mochi, so I got this little plate with some with a half half of peanuts and kinako. Not too bad! I was so full from all the food and tea still though, but there’s more eating to be done…

I saw this restaurant on my way to Tea Drunk, and after doing a very quick skim of the menu, it seemed like it was a vegetarian restaurant. It seemed to have super cute decor. I mentioned passing it while drinking my tea, and learned that the tea somm was vegan, and said that Ladybird was a nice place! The Chicago foodie also mentioned Avant Garden being a good vegan restaurant. Since Ladybird was right here, I decided I should check it out, and see what vegan cuisine is like. Just so you know, I am legitimately curious and have always wanted to go to Yellow in Sydney, because I’d love to have a fulfulling, vegetarian meal!

The inside is so fancy!

These maitake buns were amazing. I love mushrooms and I gotta have my fill of fungi! I forgot that buffalo means spicy, but I ate the whole thing cause the mushrooms literally melted in the mouth. I had no idea that mushrooms could take on that texture!

Wow yes, these brussels sprouts were so good!!! They were super charred, but didn’t taste burnt, instead, they had a great flavour that was balanced by the apple and chicory. Also, I feel like there was some good crunch to this, that didn’t come from quinoa, but rather, crispy soy bits. That was amazing!

Haha this was a funny looking dish. Sliced avocado, with seaweed salad piled on top, then two bits of fried avocado. It actually wasn’t too bad, the fried avocado was crispy on the outside and reminded me a little of a yum cha dish that’s like fried taro or something, where it’s super light and crispy, and inside is creamy. It was a fun dish to eat, though not spectacular on a technical scale apart from the fried bits since they were preparation based.

When this dish came out, I commented that it was like corn jenga! To be honest, I find stacking a little boring, but I couldn’t think of another way to present this so stacking it was! I love baby corn and this was pretty tasty!

I don’t exactly know what flavour this was, but this was pretty good! This is their fondue, and it’s tasty! That toasty bread with its oozy filling, and while the bowl was more akin to a capsicum-tomato soup, it was still so good! I was super full though since I’d eaten just so much throughout the day, that I couldn’t have much of this.

The place is actually quite tasty and I was very impressed by the range! I love vegan restaurants!

I had to walk off all of the day’s food though, so we took a walk to Chinatown.

Seems the Chinatown here has a jail problem. There were also heaps of bail bonds shops too!

I heard someone saying that Little Italy was close to Chinatown, and hey look, there’s the sign!

I feel like all Chinatowns are roughly the same. Generally, you can’t tell them apart, except this one has the classic New York orange and white striped tubes everywhere!

I also managed to grossly miscalculate my need for a bathroom, because I’d consumed so much tea, and I also had a mocktail at Ladybird. And the problem with Chinatown is that I hadn’t marked a place with a bathroom, and being here, it was unlikely there’d be public restrooms? And all the eateries would require me to pay for something. Luckily, I found a store that looked like it had a bathroom, so I forked out some money for water and a cannoli. Phew!

Day 13 – 16/04/2019

Alright. Since I knew where the Reserve Roastery was and marked it previously, it was time to head in. Today was the day to see what the Starbucks Reserve brand is all about. It was so big and such a cool place that I had to make a separate post about it!

After coffee, it was time for food, and this is a place called Very Fresh Noodles in Chelsea Markets. The smell here is interesting because it’s good, but it smells a little… fermenty? I don’t know what it is,n but it’s not like a Cantonese noodle shop or a ramen shop, it was very unique! Fermenty in a good way! The noodles are also pulled to order, so you can see the guys behind the glass just stretching away before throwing the fresh noodles into the pot!

The little cards reminding you to clean up after yourself is hilarious!

Wait, what? What am I seeing here?

It looks like they were taking photos of the bagel place next to us! How interesting! I’m surprised they brought along an unwieldy light reflector and a massive camera. I hope their shots turned out nicely!

And here’s my bowl of noodles! I’d actually eaten some food from my Starbucks visit, and even though this mock duck was “not spicy”, there was still some spiciness to it that prevent me from eating it at full speed. The noodles were amazing, and I like enjoying this kind of soup broth mainly because it’s so different from other soup broth noodles I usually have! Also that drink in the background was a tofu drink that I got. So full!!!

Walking around the garment district. Here’s a cool statue!

I think we wandered aimlessly quite a bit, since I don’t have too many other photos for this particular timeframe. However, you know the weather is warming up when the ice cream cart appears! The first time we saw this card, we heard a lady comment to the vendor that it was that time of year again! So it sounds like these places pop up every year. How cute!

You know how I’m starting to complain a lot that I’m really full? Well, here’s an ice cream to add to my fullness! These little scoops are $2, and this one was lime and pineapple flavoured. Makes me wonder how much sweetener and artificial colour goes into these though! It also made me think about whether or not these vendors have other jobs, and exactly how hard they’re working. I can’t imagine this cart by itself earning enough to pay the bills, and they don’t operate on cold and rainy days, so how much does the average labourer earn? Scary to think about given how much I’ve been paying for my stuff.

Finally my body had digested a bit to the point where I didn’t feel like I couldn’t eat anymore. This place somehow popped up on my feed, a newly opened mazemen place that had some insane looking noodles – the photo I saw was one of mazemen with cured salmon and heaps of salmon roe – my dream! I decided, with this much yummy stuff on offer, there was no way I’d keep my rule of “don’t eat ramen cause you’ll be in Japan soon”.

Their main shop, Nakamura, is a ramen joint right next door. Wow, both places mirror each other and are so intimate! The place is absolutely tiny, and it’s a 16 seater communal table! What!!! I’ve never seen a restaurant like it! Usually you’ll have a bar space or window space, or maybe a tiny number of 2 seater tables, but no. It’s one massive table and that’s it. Each seat had a coathanger behind it on the wall, for all your coats and bags. Wow! And the server comes around to you and takes your order. That’s pretty cool.

Oooooh yessss. Oh my goodnesss. YES. Wow. WOW. This!!!

Ok so. What I’d ordered was the yuzu vongole mazemen. I love clams so I wasn’t letting go of a chance to have some vongole! I wanted this so much that I ignored some of the other more luxurious ingredients like beef and foie gras.

But that wasn’t all. You could add on things like the cured salmon, roe, uni, etc, so i added the uni and the salmon roe. I was absolutely blown away by how much I received!!! It doesn’t look like much in the photo but I can assure you it felt like at least 2-3 sea urchins got shelled out and into this bowl. It was so sweet and creamy, so sweet, soooo sweet! This was incredible. It was also different because all the “bits” weren’t cleaned properly, but I don’t mean that they were dirty, what I mean is that they looked like they were so freshly scooped out of the actual animal, without being tidied up and neatly presented first and then packed into a wooden box. Yesss it made all the difference to flavour! Based purely on just the uni, the uni here gave me so much more happiness than Omakase Room! But only the uni haha. The two experiences can’t actually compare, and even though this was a more communal setting, there wasn’t really discussion between groups of people. However, it’s always my belief that a communal setting really is dependent on its crowd, as Kisume has shown me, so I can imagine this place being so much more if you had a full interaction between diners!

And here’s the damage. It actually doesn’t look like much when you think about it. I’ve splurged how much on high end restaurants? But this receipt was the biggest shocker of my trip because look at the base price of the noodles. I’d essentially doubled the cost by adding the ikura and uni, and then, the tax got applied, and a 20% tip, so by the end of it, this seafood bowl cost me over 70AUD!!! That’s the most expensive bowl of mazemen I’ve ever had! It was totally worth it though! But I think it was this that all of a sudden triggered some sort of stingy switch in my brain so I was conscious of the cost of everything from here onwards. What a good meal!

Thanks, train, for reminding me that I have no money :P

And best moment of the night, look at this adorable little puppy!!!

Day 14 – 17/04/2019

Some birdwatching! Well, I spotted these birds dustbathing so I had to take pictures. I think some sort of conservationist noticed me looking at the birds and tried to talk to me, but they kind of stayed behind my line of sight and was only talking sort of in my direction rather than looking like they were actually talking to me, and he asked me some question probably related to conservation, I’m not too sure, but I had no idea what was going on so I kind of just said no and he walked away. Well that was rather odd!

It was time to visit the original Shake Shack, here in Madison Square park. This time however, I wanted to try the hot dog instead of the burger. This was the Shack-cago dog, and it was great! I actually don’t like the split sausage, I find that it “thins” out the flavour (same reason I like chunky meat and cheese). However, it’s definitely tastier than the street stuff (and costs more too, obviously).

I also tried out the “Pie O My” concrete, which features pie and their frozen custard. This is special because this particular menu item donates a portion to a cause, I just don’t remember exactly what the cause is but possibly more park sponsorship?

I don’t even know what flavour this was but it tasted good! I hope it was pumpkin pie..

More doggies!!! All of them are so cute! Though it;s interesting to see some of the dogs being randomly aggressive to other dogs. People say that dogs are so nice and kind and man’s best friend, but really, if the wrong two dogs see each other it gets pretty violent!

What, two hot dogs in one day?? Well this is a special cart. It sells 99c hot dogs! That’s a bargain since most sell them for $2.50 and over, you’re even quite lucky to find a $2 hot dog cart, so this was a rarity! Oh yeah, Shake Shack’s sausage quality is definitely better, but this was a great buy!

The rest of the day was quiet and didn’t involve eating, because this was for tonight. My Per Se dinner, a place I’ve waited 7 years to go to. My dinner here concludes part 4!