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For all of you that don’t know already, Peter Luger’s steak house has been around for a very long time. Many tourists always recommend eating here and rave about it. The locals though on the other hand are rather impartial. People have told me that their steaks suck and that their best dishes are their appetizers. Others have told me it’s the best steak they ever had. Time to find out.
Like Ippudo, this was supposedly another must-try ramen place. I got to this spot right when they opened, and there was a small line. When you go in, they have counter top seating for 1-2 people as well as a some picnic table setups for larger parties.
Momofuku ramen (pork belly, pork shoulder, poached egg). The noodles surprisingly were just how I like them. They are similar to top ramen thickness if not slightly thicker and cooked al dente. The broth was actually pretty salty. I almost feel as if the broth was drenched in soy sauce, and that they didn’t infuse it with the pork. Don’t get me wrong, the broth did have tons of pork meat in there, but it wasn’t as oily or tasty with pork flavors as Ippudo. All I could taste was salt. So that made eating the soy sauce egg even more difficult.
Soy sauce egg (crispy shallot, chive, maldon). I ordered this to eat along with my ramen. I was expecting this to be a decent complement to my ramen, but I was terribly disappointed. Because the ramen was very salty, this was also salty too. They infused the yolk with too much soy sauce, so it ended up tasting like a salty boiled (creamy centered) egg. It was painful to eat and was not enjoyable at all.
The ramen so far that I’ve experienced in New York has fallen below my expectations. Los Angeles has far better ramen establishments unfortunately, so I’m a pretty disappointed. If I had to choose between Momofuku Noodle Bar and Ippudo, I would easily choose Ippudo. Momofuku Noodle Bar lacked flavor in their broth, was too salty, and was also expensive for what you get ($15+ for the ramen, and $3+ for the egg).
Marc Forgione is one of the Iron Chefs on Iron Chef America. This is his first restaurant and has 1 Michelin Star. Like Michael Voltaggio, this restaurant is one of his babies, so he periodically is cooking in the kitchen. Unfortunately he didn’t cook today, but I just want to preface this by saying this is definitely one of my favorite restaurants ever that I’ve tried so far.
I first found out about WD~50 from my friend who wanted to try it out for the longest time. On research, I found out one of the Bravo’s Top Chef previous contestant owns this restaurant. His name is Wylie Dufresne. He is well known for pushing a movement towards molecular gastronomy, which is basically a different way to cook things. This 1 Michelin Star restaurant’s menu is pretty sparse in choices in that you basically choose from 2 different types of tasting menus, the cheaper or the more expensive. Optionally, you could order 2 items off any of the tasting menus at the bar for $25. We of course opted for the expensive one considering we have no plans on coming back any time soon.
One of my goals was to knock out some popular Momofuku establishments, SSAM being one of them. The SSAM bar is on the San Pellegrino world’s 50 best restaurants list. The style is basically family style. Portions are small for large groups probably, but decent sized for small groups 2-4. The decor has a very modern feel to it.
In the Momofuku line of restaurants, they also have a dessert bar that they call “Milk Bar”. It’s basically a mixture of cookies, pies, coffee, and various pastry sweets. I believe on the menu there were some savory stuff on there too.
From the picture above, I got the following: blueberry & cream cookie (far left), crack pie (mid), cornflake marshmallow cookie (bottom), and compost cookie (far top-right). The crack pie was insanely sweet for me, but I don’t know what is in it. The compost cookie for me was nothing special. It was also very sweet, and I don’t remember what was in it. The cornflake marshmallow cookie was surprisingly good. It was no where as sweet as the aforementioned 2 cookies, and it wasn’t a sugar overload. The best of this bunch was the blueberry & cream cookie. Not only was it not overly sweet, but the cream with the blueberry made a killer combination.
Many say to get the crack pie or compost cookie. I say get the blueberry & cream cookie if you have the chance. I also got a cappucino while I was there, and it was also pretty good. They use Stumptown beans, which is supposedly high quality.
In the end, I really liked the blueberry & cream cookie. The other desserts I got were simply too sweet for my tastebuds. For what it’s worth, I’m not really a big sweets person.
Visit: http://milkbarstore.com/
This is the infamous Halal cart that everyone who visits NYC keeps talking about. Using http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2012/10/best-halal-cart-53rd-street-6th-avenue-street-food.html as a guide to these halal carts, I encountered this one for lunch which is supposedly legit. The cooks had the log on the back of their shirts, and they have the “We are Different” slogan. Also for what it’s worth, there was no line because there were not many drunk people around at noon time. Purists might say I went to the wrong one because its not the one at night, but I’m skeptical on wait time and if it’s really worth it for barely marginal tasting halal food.
And this is what it looks like. The same as all the other pictures you’ve probably seen on the internet. The white sauce was pretty good just like what people say. The rice was also decent although a bit firm for my preference. I got a mix of chicken and gyro meats. The chicken was surprisingly moist and tasty. The gyro meat was chopped off a bit too fine for me, but it was also pretty good. The red sauce was pretty hot for how little I had on it. Definitely take it easy on the red sauce. This literally was like sodium overload for me because I was pretty thirsty afterwards.
I initially felt people were overrating it because literally all the reviews say that this tasted best when they were drunk. I tried it when I was sober, and it’s still pretty good but hefty especially for lunch. The next time someone says that you HAVE to come to this cart, ask if they were drunk.
Visit: http://53rdand6th.com/
On Yelp, this ramen place Ippudo got a crazy number of reviews. Since I’m in New York for a short week, I decided to check this out during lunch to avoid the lines for dinner. I ordered the “Akamaru Modern” ramen which has pork flavored broth, their own miso paste, pork chashu, cabbage, scallions, and garlic oil. I told them to not put sesame kikurage mushrooms because I am not a fan of non-psychadelic mushrooms. In addition, I made this into a set combo for 3 extra dollars, so it came with a small salad and fried chicken on top of cabbage and rice.
The salad had a ponzu type vinaigrette that you typically find in most Japanese places. There’s some citrus and wasabi flavors in it. The rice had some cabbage on top that was doused with some type of mayo mix. On top of that is the fried chicken which is similar to “chicken karage”. The chicken breading was ok. It was breaded very thin, so it definitely lacked the crisp associated with fried chicken.
The ramen noodles are very similar to Shinsengumi in Gardena. If you have read my preferences for ramen, you would know I’m only a fan of thick noodles, so I wasn’t that thrilled with these noodles. Other than that, the broth itself was flavorful, but definitely not as rich as some of the other places in Los Angeles. Like most ramen places, this one has quite a bit of sodium in the broth, but luckily this place was very quick on refilling your cups with water.
All in all, I’m not sure what NYC’s ramen scene is like, but this one is mostly a glorified Shinsengumi to me.
Visit: http://www.ippudony.com
This is a very small restaurant in the lower east side, so be prepared to share tables if necessary. In my blog of NYC eats, I totally forgot to blog about this one. This place is supposedly known for their spicy margaritas. My party each ordered habanero margaritas, and they were delectable. They were spicy with a kick, but not overbearing. For many, habaneros are already daunting. But once you soak the habanero into the tequila, it’s really not that bad in terms of spicy.
I ordered the pescado tacos, which is citrus rubbed tilapia served with avocado salsa and pickled onions. It was very good, and for $10 I was easily full. The tilapia was surprisingly moist, and I’m glad the salsa wasn’t so watery that it would break the tortillas when you picked them up.
If you are visiting Manhattan and want a good non-touristy place to grab some tacos and habanero margaritas, check out Barrio Chino.
This will be my last NY food post for a while. For the last day to cap off the trip, we went to Rice To Riches in Nolita. This was actually really close to our Blue Ribbon meal a few posts ago. Rice To Riches is basically the equivalent to Baskin Robbins 31 flavors in LA. Instead of many choices of ice cream, you have many choices for tapioca. You also have the option of sampling any flavor that you want. I’m not a huge tapioca person, but I was willing to give this a try.
What you see here is a duo of flavors. From what I recall, the brown is some type of coffee flavored tapioca with coffee beans, and the white is banana walnut tapioca. The coffee flavored tapioca was underwhelming because the coffee flavor wasn’t as prominent as I’d had hope. There were some chunks of the coffee beans, but it was a little sparse. The banana walnut tapioca surprisingly had stronger flavors than the coffee. The banana flavor was very distinct, and there were some small chunks of banana.
In the end, this was a unique dessert. I still prefer ice cream over this, but I suppose if and when I felt like shoving flavored tapioca, I wouldn’t mind coming back here again in my next New York trip.
Visit: http://ricetoriches.com