Zicheng asked me for food recommendations in preparation for his upcoming trip to New York, so here I go. This is the third part of this series from another blog that is not dedicated to food.
Our trip to New York was mostly one of food pleasures. Pamela researched and planned a lot about what sort of amazing food we should try, so the trip was replete with chasing tastes across (mostly) Manhattan. We had the best breakfast ever at Clinton Street Baking Co. & Restaurant in the Lower East Side. One must at least visit for the blueberry pancakes with maple butter. The pancakes were so perfect that Pamela loved them though she usually dislikes pancakes, and then one dips them in a hot mixture of maple syrup and butter and it spoils one's mouth for weeks. It makes me cringe with anger that I can't be eating those right now for breakfast. They were ridiculously good. I remember I couldn't speak while eating; I was too depressed that I wouldn't get to continue eating them in Toronto.
The buttermilk biscuits and the grits were also really good. And the place was beautiful; soft, creamy light, a weird sign that says EAT, and other nice stuff I can't remember.
I really miss the Doughnut Plant, also in the Lower East Side. It was like a Willy Wonka factory of doughnuts, a sort of experimental doughnut place that was especially remarkable after a life spent with Tim Horton's monopoly. They don't just churn out the same old shitty doughnuts over and over again. At the Doughnut Plant there is a passion for doughnuts (instead of flagrant corporate gustatory indifference). They're gourmet, connoisseur doughnuts, if that makes sense. There's really interesting flavours, like peanut butter & jelly, tres leches (“three milks” in Castilian), and crème brûlée. My favourite was the simple vanilla bean. There were also interesting variations on the doughnut, like square ones and jelly-filled ones in which the jelly went around the doughnut (so that every bite gets some jelly) instead of just sitting in a big blob island in the middle.
These two locations account for the most memorable and easily describable food outlets we visited, though we enjoyed many amazing vegetarian restaurants as well. Notably, Red Bamboo was a vegetarian meat-lover's paradise. It had alarmingly good pseudo-meat foods, like fried chicken, chicken wings, steak & cheese sandwich, amazing vegan milkshakes, etc. Perhaps even better was Vegetarian Dim Sum, the unambiguously named place in Chinatown where we ate the best dumplings ever. I wish I could eat these right now so much. They were ridiculous. Apparently there's a vegetarian dim sum place at Pacific Mall in Markham, so Pamela and I are going to go try it out soon. Want to join us?
I imagine that if Pamela made this post she would of have presented a different selective memory; not so doughnut orientated. I'm surprised you guys didn't go to any michelin star rated restaurants. My entire research process consisted of going to the website of each two star and three michelin star restaurants in New York and checking out their lunch prix fix menu prices. There is one three star restaurant that has a two course lunch prix fix for 29 dollars! That's serious value. For some reason, Canada doesn't have any restaurants that have michelin stars, not even one star. I wonder if a place like Pizzeria Libertto would deserve one star? I guess I will know soon enough.
ReplyDeleteMy dining in New York, I'd imagine, will consist of a few very lunches at two and three star restaurants, and mostly food from the grocery store.
This is true, Zicheng. I would have focused on very different aspects of the food, but also much more on the memories surrounding the process of eating (ie. for me, the memory of the "shrimp" dumplings at the dim sum place is inextricably tied to the relief I felt at sitting down to stuff my face after limping around for hours with blistered/bleeding feet from trudging around Chinatown all afternoon in the bazillion degree heat).
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, Alexander's presence on the voyage had a huge impact on the kinds of places I decided to take us to. The kind of foods he likes to eat best (sugary breakfast things, cheesy things, carbohydrates, comfort foods) doesn't mesh super harmoniously with the things I enjoy eating most or wanted to try the most. So the decision to stick to veg. comfort food places and brunch-oriented restaurants was largely a factor of trying to find things that we could both enjoy. That said, however, New York eating, for me, is always largely all about eating as much weird vegetarian comfort foods as I can cram in my mouth. The rarity of those foods in my life, plus their admitted nostalgic value, is what makes them so undeniably appealing to me.
To be honest, I'm not generally terribly fussed on "status" eating (that's a bad way of phrasing it, but I don't know how else to convey what I mean). I feel like people who look to Michelin stars or price or status of a place as an indicator of how good the food will be are fundamentally speaking a different culinary language than I. It's not that I don't think those indicators are indicators of -something-, I just don't think that what they indicate are things that are at all the primary driving force in my culinary interests. I'm much more interested in the thrill of the hunt, in exploring new kinds of tastes, new kinds of techniques, and uncovering fantastic, previously unknown (to me) hole-in-the-wall kind of places.
That said, I did investigate the possibility of dining at various establishments-of-repute (Le Bernardin, L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, Morimoto, The Spotted Pig, WD-50...) but beyond cost issues and the necessity of making reservations WAY in advance, the attitude toward vegetarian (never mind vegan) dining that permeates these places is what, more than anything else, drove me away from even bothering to try to patronize them. I refuse to pay someone $50 for assembling some unimaginative afterthought of a dish consisting of some bullshit grain and squash whatever-the-fuck. In the case of the Spotted Pig, for example, Chef Bloomfield even has the gall to offer a "vegetarian plate" on her menu that's nothing more than three side dishes from other meat-focused meals on the menu haphazardly plopped together. I see this barely veiled hostility toward vegetarian eating that's so prevalent in "haute cuisine" as not only heartbreaking, but also incredibly inconsiderate, narrow-minded, and ethically suspect.
Okay, rant over.
Reservation will probably be the bane of my existence next week. Nevertheless, I love fancy food, like the kind Pizzeria Libretto serves. And there isn't any opportunity to get that in Cambridge.
ReplyDeleteWhat else did you guys do in New York? I'm sure it wasn't just eating.
ReplyDeletei would love to go to a veggie dim sum place! i've never been for dim sum. and then we can karaoke afterwards upstairs in the mall in this place with private karaoke rooms!
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