February 2009

The Archives

• Chinatown, Food in Film/TV, Giveaway, Restaurants

  Feasting at Hop Kee & No Reservations Giveaway- NYC

  02.23.09 | Permalink | 28 Comments

  Yes, it’s another post about Chinese food, because as you may have noticed by now, I love Chinese food. My friend, Eunice, says sometimes I act like they are going to run out of food in Chinatown. They probably won’t, but why take the chance!!! Amazingly enough, I wasn’t crazy about Chinese food until I started dating my boyfriend. I mean I liked it, but not with this much fervor. Growing up, my brother would order Chinese take-out almost every day. In the summers, I would wake up to my brother holding two menus: Chinese in one hand, Italian in the other. As a result, Chinese food was nothing special, it was always around. Well that changed when I started living with David. My boyfriend, as I mentioned previously, does not like pork. In addition to that, he does not like Chinese food. Consequently, Chinese food is now another obsession of mine, and whenever an opportunity arises, I hit Chinatown with a vengeance. Two weeks ago I did just that, when my Chinese food-loving friends, Soo Hyun and Joo Hyun, came to visit me from Seoul. As usual, we did some damage at Hop Kee.

  Hop Kee is one of my long-time Cantonese favorites in Chinatown. In college, it used to be one of my go-to spots after clubbing, since they’re open until 4am on the weekends. The place hasn’t changed much since then. They still have the old red booths and the waiters still wear the thin grayish white jackets that make them look like shady back-alley dentists. But most importantly, the food is the same, delicious, cheap, and plentiful. MORE »

• Restaurants, Small Shops, Vermont

  Pain & Pleasure at Mount Snow – Vermont

  02.19.09 | Permalink | 7 Comments

  Most people lose weight after snowboarding all day, three days in a row. Me, I gain weight. You really can’t blame me. I mean Vermont is the land of cheese and maple syrup. How could you not gain weight? And of course, waking up every morning with new aches and pains in different parts of my body, my brain was misled to think I had exercised more than I had, giving me an excuse to pig out, when in fact, most of my soreness was probably due to falling from the lift repeatedly throughout the weekend. Anyhow, the trip was, as my friend Dave would say, “awesome,” with lots of yummy treats, but for me, by far, the highlight was the sugar waffle at Mount Snow. MORE »

• Midtown, Restaurants

  Delicious, But Check Your Bill at Dong Hai – NYC

  02.10.09 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  

  I never thought I’d be blogging about Dong Hai, but somehow I am. First of all, the place looks too ’80s neon to be taken seriously, and second of all, they not only serve Chinese food, but they also serve Thai food and Japanese food, including sushi. Thai food at a Chinese restaurant is weird, but I really draw the line at sushi. Just because a restaurant is run by Asian people, does not mean they know how to prepare sushi. In addition, except in a few regional cases, raw fish is not normally found in Chinese cuisine. You might as well go to Applebee’s and order a sushi platter. That said, you can understand my hesitation going to Dong Hai, but then Midtown Lunch got an email from a reader claiming the restaurant was even better than Szechuan Gourmet, and so I went, bravely where I had never gone before. MORE »

• LES, Small Shops

  Gravlox & Cream Cheese at Russ & Daughters – NYC

  02.02.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  There are a few perfect foods in the world. Foods that are compact, quick, delicious, and include everything in the food pyramid. Along with pizza and dumplings, I think lox and cream cheese bagels are one of those perfect foods. Growing up in Bayside, Queens when it was still largely a Jewish neighborhood, my brother and I would go to the Bay Terrace Shopping Center on the weekends for bagels. Now Bay Terrace is overrun with chain restaurants like Outback and Applebee’s. Luckily, I moved soon after this happened and now live happily a few blocks from Russ & Daughters, where delicious lox and cream cheese sandwiches can be found every morning since nearly a century. MORE »