caelum13: June 2010

27 June 2010

Banh Mi Comparison

Plump Dumpling - 11th St. betw. 1st and 2nd Ave.

$...forgot *blush*

"Vietnamese sandwich"

-small (think 2 butts of a baguette)

-smells funny

-terrine in huge chunks that activated my gag reflex

-cilantro given on the outside??

Baoguette Cafe - St. Marks Place betw. 2nd and 3rd Ave.

$5.75

"Baoguette"

DELICIOUS! The sandwich that made me want to start this comparison.

-char siu pork = wonderful

-perfect meat:veggie ratio (possible a bit too bready but with a great baguette I won't complain)

-veggies not overly pickled (per David as he does not like pickled things but liked this just fine), very fresh

-surprisingly large, like I could eat this for dinner and save half to bring to work for lunch

-the bread! so crunchy and warm

-can pick your level of spice (sriracha and jalapenos), I got mild once and medium the next time

-terrine thinly sliced so as to just hint at its presence

To be continued

Halal Cart Comparison

43rd and 5th - $4.50

-stuffed to the brim even though "small"

-choice of rice (pictured here, "red"), well-cooked, soft, and flavorful (although I suspect ketchup)

-lots of salad: one side of styrofoam container filled with salad while the other side gets stuffed with meat and rice and other, beware when opening!

-perfect amount of sauce to eat everything together, just how I like it

-lamb possibly too salty?

-other! = onions, peppers, chickpeas(!)...

116th and Lexington - $5.00

-relatively large (bigger styrofoam container but not filled to the brim)

-virtually no salad (2 leaves of lettuce and 1 slice of tomato)

-dry rice

-sauce was unremarkable

Also comes with cart guy who asks my name, where I'm from, if I'm Chinese (?), where I live (??), how old I am (???), whether or not I have a boyfriend (????), and then tells me I should come by again without him...

56th and 6th - $5.00

-not stuffed but as you can see, big styrofoam container

-price bargained to $5 from $6 (yay competing halal carts =D!)

-chicken over rice (not lamb), dry and with bones??

-sauce tasted like Ranch dressing (this falls as a negative for me)

-saving grace = delicious Basmati rice underneath and a healthy serving of salad

To be continued

Kenka Izakaya - St. Mark's Place, East Village

Ume onigiri: $3.50 (for 2)

I spent a really long time trying to figure out which rice balls I wanted, vacillating between ume, yaki, and miso yaki. Hopefully I can try them all at some point. I've been disappointed in the past by yaki onigiris (EHEM Gyu-kaku) which is why I decided to go with the ume. LOTS of ume, more than what you'd get at Famima, almost too much. They're pretty big, and one order gets you two!

(In the background are David's yakitori = $4/4 skewers).

Tonkatsu: $5.50

Delicious, perfectly crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. No sogginess, but I wish they'd given a better dressing (not just a slice of lemon) to go with the shredded lettuce.

Dessert! Cotton candy: free!

They give you a small cup of pink sugar with you bill. You go outside where the machine is, turn it on, put your sugar in the middle, and spin a chopstick around the outer edge till it puffs with cotton candy ^_^. Not so good for short people though as the machine is hard to reach at certain points T_T.

Work Lunch: Cafe Metro pasta

$7.79 (a bit price-y). Enough for about one and a half meals.

1. Pick a pasta (tricolor spirale)

2. Pick a sauce (pesto)

3. Pick a meat (Italian sausage)

4. Pick as many(!) toppings as you want (tomatoes, eggplants, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, OK I got a little carried away and I will admit this wasn't a very good combination)

5. Parmesan or mozzarella? (parmesan)

Next time when I feel like a pesto pasta, I will probably pick the same pasta (picks up sauce well) but get it with chicken or spicy shrimp. And no artichoke hearts or eggplants. I hate to admit it, but the eggplants did not go well with the pesto T_T. And the artichoke hearts were too salty. Possibly add fresh spinach or basil.

I RETURN!

Exotic Produce: Dragonfruit

$6.50/lb in Chinatown. This one was about 1 lb. Super easy to eat: just slice in half and spoon out the fruit flesh (skin not edible). Consistency and taste a bit like a kiwi's but less sour. Beautiful pale lavender color on the inside, really interesting look on the outside. Too bad it's so expensive T_T.

Bar Book

Bar Book! This was awesome. It's a bit like Ilya Kaminsky's Dancing in Odessa in that it skips through lots of different genres/formats. There are footnotes, free verse poems, recipes, snarky prose sections, etc. It makes me wish I could drink each cocktail she mentions and compare it to the characters she makes them. One negative: the book is marketed (>_<) as having the themes of love, divorce, relationships, recovery, and motherhood, BUT the subject that most stood out was divorce. There is in fact very little to do with recovery. I will concede that it has love and relationships but I bet it's really hard to write a book of poems without having either. Quick read that I wished I owned to the point that if it stays in my mind, I will buy a copy of my own.

Spook

Probably not as good as Stiff or Packing for Mars (I say probably because I haven't been able to get Stiff from the production library and Packing for Mars isn't out yet). No real conclusion or too much of an arc but a quick and easy read. I get the impression that Mary Roach is pretty spunky and persistent but perhaps not the easiest to get along with nor the most understanding of other cultures (starting with borderline insults to cultures that believe in reincarnation wasn't necessarily the smartest way to go).