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?
