or: when you procrastinate on something so long that instead of being “good things i ate in nyc” it becomes the much more powerful “things i ate in nyc last year that i still think about all the time.” just pretend i meant to do this. either way, here’s a list of things i enjoyed eating on my trip to new york in september 2022. no guarantees that they’re all still on the menu.
curry flower – cauliflower, koji butter, pickled ginger, katsuobushi from ivan ramen
yes, the ramen was great. i ordered the triple pork triple garlic ramen and it was full of porky garlicky niceness. but this cauliflower was so good that i’ve googled “ivan ramen curry flower recipe” about once a month for the last 14 months (no luck yet). and yes, the katsuobushi really does dance around on the plate.
yuzu lemonade from ivan ramen
the most refreshing drink on a late summer afternoon
spicy asian cucumber salad from xi’an famous foods
again, yes the cumin lamb noodles were great. i had had them before on a trip to new york in 2015 and have had it playing on a loop in my head for the last 8 years. and have tried to make them at home a couple times with varying degrees of success. but my boyfriend, along with his cold-skin noodles, wanted to order the cucumber salad. we stuffed our faces and then took the leftovers of the salad back to where we were staying to snack on throughout the rest of the trip, and even talked about buying another cucumber to cut up and toss with the remaining dressing. i don’t think we ended up doing it but we have tried to recreate this one at home too with, again, varying degrees of success.
tacos with beer-braised brisket, avocado, red onions, cilantro, tomatillo salsa, horseradish crema from toloache
ok so this was the standout dish of the whole trip. after months of meticulously planning what restaurants i wanted to go to, including narrowing it down from a much larger list after calculating how many restaurants we would be able to squeeze in per day (if you ever travel with me, make sure to pack your emptiest stomach), we stumbled out of a 5 pm broadway production of moulin rouge, and we were hungry. it was raining, but in an amc interview with the vampire “was it raining that night?” way. rather than trying to make it all the way out to queens to go to the restaurant i had planned for the night (mombar for egyptian food, and i still want to go there), we googled “good restaurants times square” or whatever, picked one that came up, and found ourselves in toloache, dining on what had to have been the best tacos i’ve ever had. if the bonito flakes on top of the curry cauliflower we ate at ivan ramen danced around on the plate, these tacos danced around on the tongue. i took progressively smaller and smaller bites because i didn’t want it to end. i think about these tacos not just now, 14 months later, but likely until the end of time. or at least until my next trip to new york.
iced blueberry lavender cappuccino from maman
umm idk but drinking this after putting in my two weeks notice and then proceeding to go on a week long vacation at my coffee shop job where the most exciting thing you could order was a caramel latte, was kind of satisfying. as was the flower-covered cafe itself.
baked roast pork bun from mei lai wah
i dragged us all the way to chinatown just to order a single pork bun from this particular bakery. and it was worth it.
rice flour rolls with chinese kale from vegetarian dim sum house
and then we walked around some more and came across this restaurant. my pescetarian boyfriend, having not had the pleasure of enjoying a pork bun, still needed something to eat, so we went inside and ordered a bunch of things, mostly for him while i savored the memory of that pork bun. my favorite thing we ordered was the rice flour rolls with chinese kale. the texture of the rolls themselves was nice, but the filling was so good that it definitely did not compare with the filling of the pork bun but one could maybe think about saying so if they were trying to make a point. (how many times can you say pork bun in a review of a vegetarian restaurant?)
zucchini, ricotta, and mint stuffed caramelle with mint pesto, burrata mousse, and pistachio from a pasta bar
on our last night we splurged on the 5 course pasta tasting menu. my favorite was the zucchini and ricotta filled caramelle served with a zippy mint pesto and creamy burrata mousse. i’m sad to say that in trying to remember what was in this dish, i saw it no longer appears to be on the menu, but it might just be a summer special.
