M Noodle Shop - Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC

Now that I'm a Williamsburg local I'd like to introduce you to my favorite local restaurant.

http://www.mnoodleshop.com/

Fresh, delicious, handmade food.

Need anything else?  

You don't.

I found this place by simply walking by after coming off the L heading back to the hotel.  It's very cose to the Lorimer/Metropolitan stop.  And to be honest, before I went I checked Yelp to try to get an idea of what to order, what's awesome.  And to my surprise the Yelp reviews were terrible.  Pretty much a slam, stating that if you were drunk and it was late and you were hungry then you might want to check it out, otherwise don't bother.

Yelp is dumb.  I hate Yelp.  

This place is great!  But you need to know that you are headed into a noodle shop.  Chinese fast food, not fine dining.  They also do a huge take-out and delivery service, so if the place doesn't look packed then it's still not kosher to assume that it's dead and they should be totally focused on you.  Come in, sit down, they'll be over soon.

Another cool thing?  Open SUPER late.  Check this out:

Open till 6am?  WTF?!?!?!?!?!?  Wowza!!!!

There are no photos of the first visit, it was just enjoyed, not documented.  And it was completely enjoyed!!!

The second stop is detailed here-after.  I happened to be lucky enough to arrive when two of the owners were making vegetable dumplings.  Here's that piece of art for you:

I also had the Ho-fun noodles with beef and bean sprouts.  SOOOO good!!!

If you're ever near this place you HAVE TO check it out.  Great, delicious, fast, fresh, did I say delicious?  

Eat more noodles

DVA

Katz's Deli - NYC

We came, we saw - the line down the street to get in, we felt the freezing wind (-30 wind chill), we walked on.

See you next time Katz! Or not

DVA

Nice Green Bo - China Town, NYC

http://nicegreenbo.com/default.aspx

Josh, you are the man.  A great recommendation, a great restaurant.  Not that you have, or would ever, steer me wrong, but this place is great!  Great food and super cool also.  Not super cool in the sense that it's new and glitzy and there's some hot new chef.  There's no celebrity chef here, none needed.  This place looks like it has been here since the first railroad was built in America by the first Chinese to come to America.  And did I say that it's small?  Yeah, tiny.  But they have the fastest service and are simply KILLIN IT! I even had the old Chinese lady running the place give me a wink while I stood outside in the snow waiting to be sat, letting me know that my table was ready.  She looked like some old lady Chinese woman gangster, but cool/edgy.  I love this place.

I ordered all of the recommended dishes, even though they have like 200 other items on the menu.

Here is the Hot and Sour Soup

Scallion Pancake

Lo-Mein with Mushroom and Spinach

And the star of the show

****Crab and Pork Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao)****

They are like little soft pillows filled with some sort of ground meat (obviously pork and shrimp just based on the name alone, but you couldn't necessarily identify the meat....just sayin) and then filled with broth.  Some kind of lovely, flavorful, all enveloping elixir of wonderfully flavored magic.  It's a pocket of soup in a dumpling!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  I've heard of the larger version, the kind that you would use a straw to suck the soup out of.  But I really love the small, bite sized version.  It really is magic.

The dumplings are joined by a small dish of black vinegar and julienned ginger.

The perfect bite is the dumpling, dipped in the vinegar, a few slices of ginger.

Josh recommends also adding a small dollop of the spicy red chili.  My table didn't contain any of this, but I am absolutely sure I could've gotten some with a mere nod of the head or toss of my hair....However, at that point I was finished eating and ready to roll.

Nice Green Bo

Soup Buns

Who knew???

Clearly not me, but now I do, and so do you.

Eat More Soup Buns

DVA

Republic - Union Square, NYC

http://www.thinknoodles.com/

I'm familiar with this place as a destination for a really fantastic Banh Mi.  

Naturally, I made a bee-line here my first day on the ground.  The journey contained a subway ride and a brisk walk in the snow, which turned into a rapid walk in the frigid rain on the way out!  

But let's focus a bit, and that focus is FOOD!

To my great disappointment the Banh Mi is no longer offered.  WTF?!?!?!?!?!?  Who made that call?  Wowzer!  

I was not happy, but I sat down anyway and perused the menu.  The special of the day happened to be a steamed bun with chicken.  Sounded worth a try, and I added a watercress salad too, trying to stay a little healthy on this trip....

Let's start with the seating.  This place has the mixed group picnic table seating as well!  Must be the latest hot thing?!?!  Well, anyway, I like it.  Much less pretentious that the standard seating strategy.  Well, maybe pretentious is not the right word, but I like it.  I also like the uni-sex toilets!  There is NO reason for separate facilities!  Just like changing rooms at clothing stores.  You are only un-clothed in the stall.  It's not like, let's say, if a dude is buying a shirt he takes all of his clothes off and walks around infront of the mirror shirt-cocking everyone!  You are only naked in your own stall, we can share people.  Back to the toilets, yes, anyway....  I also really love it when they take the toilet thing even further, especially for a large toilet facility.  Separate toilets with a communal hand-washing station in between. Love it.  Let's evolve people, humans, us, you, me...Let's share a meal, share our experiences, share our time, it's so very limited.

Love it

OK, food

The watercress salad was delicious.  Not super flavorful but doesn't need to be, it's a fricken watercress salad, so in that vein, they had a success.  Fresh, light, yummy.

And a great accompaniment for this....

Ohhhhh mama!!!!!!

If you don't get how totally off the charts this is, let good ol' DVA splain you a bit,

Perfect bun, light fluffy, sticks to your finger JUST a bit, but not sloppily.  Steamy and great.

Perfect chicken.  Fried lightly, battered lightly, sauced lightly.  !!!!!!!!! 

Now, the homerun, bullseye if you will.... take a peek deeper inside the bun....  

THERE'S PICKLED CARROTS AND DAICON AND CILANTRO! 

All of the awesome flavors of a straight up, no bullshit, classic, Banh Mi!  

YES!

Really delicious.  Flavor explosion.  Really well done. Not over done.  Just done right.  Kind of like the singer of the National Anthem at the Superbowl, or wherever.  Just sing the fricken song.  No need to show how you can run up and down the scales.  Just sing the song, the classic, and the crowd will love you.

Republic sings the song.  They just fricken sing it.

When in Manhattan, anywhere near Union Square, you really have to try this place.  

Eat more noodles.

DVA

Momofuku Noodle Bar - Ramen - East Village Manhattan

  http://momofuku.com/new-york/noodle-bar/

David Chang has many restaurants.  I believe they are all in New York City, but I'm not sure.  The Momofuku home page has all the info if you have a further interest.

My interest is Ramen.

 Noodle Bar is David Chang's Ramen shop in the East Village, Manhattan, New York City.

Ramen and so much more.

A couple of disclaimers first. 

1)  This place was sofaking busy that I wasn't able to get much info about the noodles, if they make them, if not where they get them, blah blah blah.  I plan to return while I'm here so that I can sit at the bar and get all of this info, and take photos of the kitchen, a beautiful open kitchen.  So look for that.

2)  At 7:00 pm (being a Friday night as well) the wait for 4 people was 2 hours, the wait for 2 people was more than an hour.  Being as cold as it was/is outside, seemed kind of crazy to wait.  But wait we did, or rather, walked around and hung out with Buttercup and a couple of his buddies for a few.  Made the time pass and was good to meet some people the first day on campus.

The seating is also quite interesting, and I thought very cool.  Other than the bar along the kitchen and bar area, which is obviously a single row, the dining room was more family style.  Picnic type tables (very up-scale though, so maybe not picnic?) and they seat parties of 2 across from each other.  So you end of being mixed in with people you don't know which encourages casual friendly conversation.  I thought it was great and it allowed me to get a photo of food that we didn't end up ordering.  A great community feeling, if you happen to sit next to friendly people, which I think most are.  I have a dream...

And, speaking of the setting, I think it's fair to say that most people were there because this is a David Chang restaurant, not because the ramen is super duper awesome.  Details about the food are coming, I promise.

Like coming RIGHT NOW!

This is:

 duck sausage rice cakes – kohlrabi, mint, cabbage

The duck sausage was pretty good but the star of the show was absolutely the rice cakes, especially when they were drenched in the sauce.  Very very good.  

The problem was that the last fourth of this dish was difficult to eat.  You are left with very small pieces that would take a year to eat, one at a time, or in small clumps.  Now, I say this because we were sharing and when sharing you can't really take the bowl to your mouth and devour it, which is exactly what I'd do if I was alone.  Or a few steamed buns or something so you could scoop it all up, that would have been killer.  So, as a single portion it might work, and maybe that's how they designed it, so maybe I'm the problem?......nah

This lovely mouthful is:

shrimp – spicy mayo, pickled shallot, iceberg

A steamed bun with a great looking shrimp cake, yummy spicy mayo.  Looks great but kinda small on the flavor, at least the flavor of the shrimp cake.  Don't get me wrong, it was good, but I wanted a big shrimp donkey punch right in my grill, and I didn't get it.  It's almost like they could have served just the bun with the spicy mayo and it would have been just as good.  But, eating just a bun with mayo on it seems a little ghetto.  Might as well just have a ketchup packet on a saltine....

Now to the ramen!

This is:

momofuku ramen – pork belly, pork shoulder, poached egg

I didn't have this, the nice people next to me did.  Looks pretty good, egg is a little under done for my taste, but looks OK.  Taking a minute on the egg, I think it's a mistake to have the egg soo underdone.  I get what they are trying to do, at least I think I know.  I believe they want the egg to mix with the broth, making you feel like you are participating in making your meal, interactive if you will.  But god damm you spend HOURS making a killer broth, if you know wtf you are doing.  So to then mix some fucking egg yolk in?????  Sounds super lame, on the brink of stupid.  It is giving in to theatrics, making the ramen more of entertainment than a good bowl of noodles.  I want to enjoy the egg AS the egg, the broth AS the broth, etc... you get where I'm going with this?  Ughhh, frustrating.  

I'm sure that people that don't know ramen, and have heard of David Chang, will come here and think this egg is great and mixing it in is cool, and what a great time it is.  I just think it's lame.

This was mine, the special of the day, Pork Ramen.  No egg, ha!  Perfect!

Main points:

1) Noodle to broth ration seemed off.  LOTS of noodles, or actually, less broth.  But that's aight cause the focus is more on the noodle, which is great if they are making the noodles themselves, which I bet they aren't.  GIVE ME MORE BROTH!

2)  The pork belly was AWESOME!!!!!  Soft, flavorful, cooked perfect, really really great.  

3)  Not Hot Enough!  I heard this same complaint from the folks next to me that had the Momokufu Ramen.  Hello, this is soup, and it's F'ing cold outside!  I want this soup to light a fire!  Dang!  Again, I think this is another error in execution.  I believe that all of the elements of the soup, other than the broth and the noodles, are cold, thus lowering the overall temp of the soup when all are combined. Ramen Yamadaya did this shit too.  Are they not eating their own food?  Or are they so excited about jerking themselves off about how awesome they are that they have lost sight of what the fuck they are doing?  Frustrating.  Makes me not even want to go back.  I saw another ramen shop around the corner from this place that looked easier to get in to, maybe I'll just try them instead of this place again.....

This is:

ginger scallion noodles – pickled shiitakes, cucumber, cabbage

A veggie option, I think.  Again, too busy to ask about the bowl.  The broth might be pork, but likely it't not, who knows, who cares.  Yeah, I'm getting sour, look out....

Flavor was good, but I wish it was hotter.  Hannah enjoyed it and took half back to the room and DEVOURED it a few hours later watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of the best all time movies.

At this point I'd rather talk about movies than noodles, or David Chang.

Momofuku?  Momo-who cares

Eat more ramen

DVA

Pizza - Just a Slice - NYC

Landed at JFK about 2 hours ago. Starving. Ahhhhhh, not any more.

DVA

Pizzeria Luigi - San Diego

Pizzeria Luigi is my favorite pizza in San Diego.  

Yep

Crust, sauce, toppings (being minimally applied which is a good thing.  Not skimpy but not over done)

Now, I'm talking a whole pie, freshly made.  Not slices, which can be bad or good ANYWHERE depending on how long said slice has been sitting in the case.  I generally don't like buying a slice for exactly that reason.   

Whole pie, Luigi's beats Bronx (My pick for #2 in San Diego).   

HOWEVER, this topic will be WIDELY discussed and debated in an upcoming post, wait for it.....

With all of that said, this blog is NOT about my favorite pie, even though it is Luigi's.  The topic of this post is a specialty pie, which I am normally not a big fan of.  Done right though, it can rock, and this one does, mostly, kinda, sorta.  I was digging it untill the end then, blech.  Explanation below.

Here's the pie, Loaded Baked Potato.  Now, Luigi's has a creative, super cool name for it which I don't recall because it doesn't relate to the pie.  Something stupid or too cute.  It tastes like a loaded baked potato.  WHY NOT JUST NAME IT THAT?!?!?!?  Instead of "Sidecar" or "Streetkiller:  or whatever the F they named it.  Stupid.  Ughhh, let's just take a look at the pie, Kay???

Looks interesting, smells KILLER!  Just like a baked potato with the works

YUMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Bacony, cheese-ony, yumm-ony

Let's dive in and have a slice!  

Bullseye!  

Tastes EXACTY like a loaded baked potato!!!!  Oh, wait, I've said that like 4 times already

But it does, and it's delicious.  I devoured my first slice in like 4 seconds.

When I got the edge of the crust I was like, huh?  Why dis crust no so soft?

But I ate it anyway and moved on to the next slice.

Same shit.  Hard as a rock.

After much debate I think I have it figured out.

The Luigi dough is designed for minimal toppings, designed to cook fast, under 10 minutes likely, just enough time for the crust to cook, cheese to met, then out.

But this potato thing creates a problem.  The main one being that the potato is not pre-cooked.  Meaning that the slices of potato has to cook while on the pizza, requiring more cooking time, requiring them to cook the shit out of the pizza, killing the crust.  Oh sure, the dough under the pie, we'll say "back-side-pie....." remains ready to stuff ur grill.  But the outer rim is ruined, destroyed, cooked beyond recognition.  For me, ruins the whole experience.  If I can't eat the crust, and love the crust, then the pie should not go in my mouth.  Sorry, but you gotta admit that it's true.

Stupid

It's worth a try, but get ready to have a pile of bricks to throw in the trash when you're done.

DVA