Category Archives: Food

My very first cacao fruit — in Honduras

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Few things excite me more than discovering new food, and especially new fruit, while traveling. I love that different countries and and climates have different fruits that can only be grown in certain areas. Some people are upset by this, as they believe that globalization should enable anyone anywhere to get whatever produce they want anytime they want, but I think that’s just unrealistic given how delicate and sensitive some of these fruit and vegetables are. Indian mangoes are a great example: while many are being exported to the U.S. from India, it’s a huge gamble which of them are actually intact once they make it to stateside. Many would have rotted in transit, and they all need to be sprayed to prevent infestation. The one time we bought a box of Indian mangoes in New Jersey and brought it back home, I still remember one of them never ripened, while a couple others were rotted and black. There’s a no-returns policy on these, so it’s fully at your own risk!

While in Guatemala on our day trips to Antigua and Lake Atitlan, I talked to our driver about cacao fruit, and he had mentioned that locals did buy it to eat the fruit around the cacao beans. We saw it at a few fruit stands there, but the road conditions and traffic were unpleasant, and so I never asked our driver to stop. In Ecuador in July, our driver who took us to Quilotoa Crater Lake told us that one of his sons absolutely loves cacao fruit and that it’s one of his favorites, so he gets it just for him. My interest was piqued; I needed to try cacao fruit at least once!

So when we passed several street-side vendors selling the fruit, I asked Javier our driver if that was in fact cacao, and he confirmed it was. So we stopped by a fruit vendor, and from there, I was given a cacao and chose the ripest possible mango (out of likely over 20 that were ROCK hard!) given we had less than 24 hours left here. I just spent over $2 USD on local Honduran fruit, and I was extremely, extremely thrilled.

Back at the hotel last night, I asked if someone from the kitchen could help me cut the cacao in half. I got it back and scooped out all the cacao seeds (beans), which were covered in a thin, custardy white layer — this is the fruit! Chris and I shared the fruit since Kaia seemed extremely uninterested in it, and I didn’t feel like pushing her given it was a potential choking hazard. The flavor was sweet first, then a little tart, with a custardy texture and finish. Chris remarked that he wished there was more flesh to eat, which I agreed with. The more I thought about it, the more the flavor and texture reminded me of the cherimoyas we had while in Peru. Cherimoyas are a lot less work and far more flesh to eat, though! The act of sucking off the flesh from around the beans — this was definitely reminiscent of the mamoncilla fruit we ate while in Colombia and El Salvador. Those seeds were extremely large and round (super big choking hazard!), with a thin, bright pink flesh.

Fruit adventuring while traveling is one of the best things. Now I can finally say I’ve tried cacao the fruit!

A day spent exploring the surrounds of San Pedro Sula, Honduras

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If you look at places to see and what to do in San Pedro Sula, you can tell almost right away that it was never a place built with tourism in mind. There’s virtually zero tourism infrastructure. People obviously live there. Many businesses are located and/or headquartered here, so people come for business travel. But when it comes to sightseeing, most of that is found outside of San Pedro Sula, at least an hour outside the city, where you forget “urban” even exists because of how green, jungle-like, and rugged the area outside of it is.

We didn’t want to rent a car or drive in mainland Honduras, so Chris tried for a while to find a driver who could take us on a day trip, but it was challenging. Some of the drivers he found and reached out to didn’t seem legitimate. Others were quoting such astronomically high costs that they would even be absurd if we got quoted those numbers back home in the U.S. Finally, and unexpectedly, we were able to enlist the hotel manager’s help ahead of time in finding us a safe, legitimate driver who charged a reasonable amount to be our driver for the day outside the city. We were warned he didn’t speak any English, but this was fine because we’d give him our desired itinerary ahead of time. And of course, there was always Google Translate (what a savior!).

We visited a number of interesting places today that made us forget about the city completely. Our first stop was at D&D Brewery and Restaurant in the Pena Blanca area. It’s this little brewery/restaurant/inn that you’d totally overlook when driving passed it because it’s so tucked away. It’s physically inside a rainforest close to Lago de Yojoa (Lake Yojoa). Given they are a craft brewery (that uses mountain spring water), we got a pineapple and raspberry beer along with a slice of very light and fluffy chocolate cake to appease Kaia. We also walked around the property, which really did feel like we were right in the center of a jungle. It was a really beautiful spot with friendly service despite the language barrier.

Our next stop was at Los Naranjos Eco-Archaeological Park, which contains pre-Columbian ruins of a major Lenca city dating back to 800 B.C. That is even older than Copan, the famous Maya ruins also in Honduras that is likely better known. Copan dates back to 400 A.D. There, we got to walk along a long wooden boardwalk that curved through these huge wetlands at the edge of Lake Yojoa. I loved all the unique bird songs we got to hear while walking through it — how beautiful it would be to be able to fall asleep to those nature sounds at night! I also appreciated how relatively covered we felt by the endless large trees from the UV rays (I am officially in my forties now, after all…).

Just past midday, we went down to Lake Yojoa and took a calm, relaxing boat tour of the lake and surrounds. This time, our driver Javier came with us, and he occasionally pointed out interesting things to us, like the famous Goblin’s Cave and the turtle shaped island in the middle of the lake. While on the boat, I was reminded of this time last year when we were in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, for a day trip. And the mountains in the distance here and the faint mist over them reminded me of that time. There are so many beautiful bodies of water in the world to see and explore!

We passed so many street side fruit vendors that I had to take advantage of this. So I asked Javier if he could stop by one so I could check out some fruit. I ended up getting a local mango and my very first cacao fruit — all for 70 Lempiras; more on this tomorrow!

A typical lunch by the lake will include fried fish, fried fish, and fried fish, all caught from the lake, with a side of freshly fried plantains in the same oil. Chris managed to find us a teeny tiny little quaint spot overlooking the water called Comedor Mayra, where a very nice lady was able to communicate with us and get our order in. I asked if she had juice, and though she didn’t have any, she was eager to get it from a nearby fresh juice vendor once we told her what we’d be interested in. We ended up having a hibiscus and mango juice. The fish was delicious, as were the tostones and the juices. And I’m still in shock from how cheap the meal was: an entire whole fried fish with tostones with all the cabbage and pickled vegetable fixings, plus two large fresh juices for just 250 Lempiras — that’s not even $10 USD!

Our last stop for the day was at Cataratas Pulhapanzak (Pulhapanzak Falls), meaning “white river overflow in Mayan. “Pulha” as it is known is 43 meters/140-feet tall, located on Rio Lindo about an hour’s drive outside of San Pedro Sula. The area served as a pre-Hispanic center, likely overlapping with the Mayan civilization. Before the Spanish arrived here, the falls were deeply revered as a sacred, mystical site by the indigenous Lenca people. Now, it’s fully set up for tourism, with the option to do cave walks, behind-the-water splash adventures, river tubing, and even multi-course ziplining. There is a big “Pulha” sign for photos with the large waterfall in the background, complete with a large platform to which you can walk up to get the perfect photo opp. It felt like mostly locals and maybe domestic tourists when we went. A lot were getting into the water and swimming in calmer, shallower areas. The whole area felt like a big family-friendly outdoor hangout, and a very natural one at that! I do not recall seeing a single obviously foreign tourist there other than ourselves. The falls were beautiful, and the mist went much farther than it appears it would. We had a feeling that we probably came on a lower flow day because the actual fall itself was relatively small.

We packed a lot into today, with the day planning done by Chris and Claude/Gemini, and some occasional help and friendly pointers from our driver Javier. We ended the day with yesterday’s Power Chicken leftovers (a very popular fast food spot with HUGE portions all over Honduras that should be visited if you ever come!) and a good night’s sleep. And luckily by midday today, my right butt cheek stopped hurting and burning, so I hope I’m on the short road to recovery from these coral reef scrapes.

Sloths, extremely premium coffee, and lunch in a mangrove

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We started our first full day in Roatan at Daniel Johnson’s Monkey and Sloth Hangout, where you can see and interact with monkeys, sloths and parrots up close. There was a time when the Hangout would allow you to hold a sloth for a few minutes, but unfortunately (for us, anyway), Honduras passed a law prohibiting this. Sloths are native to Honduras (mainland), but not to Roatan. The sloths and monkeys at the Hangout were all rescued. Some came from abusive, dirty, dingy environments. Some of the monkeys were even former pets of people who just tired of them (that type of thing makes my blood boil).

The sloths, for the most part, were… sloths. They were mostly sleeping, occasionally waking up to look at us and scratch themselves. “Sloths don’t do anything. They’re lazy. Sloths are just like koalas, just uglier,” Chris remarked. While it could be interpreted as a bit mean, he’s got a point. We watched them on their trees, and then eventually moved on to see the green and scarlet macaws up close. The macaws, if given an incentive (something tasty), would fly onto people’s heads and arms. For the second time in my life, I got to have a macaw perch on my arm. She was a lot lighter than I thought she would be. It’s likely my dad’s influence since he loves birds and most animals, but I’ve always loved these creatures. Seeing this scarlet macaw up close with her beautiful vibrant red, yellow, and blue feathers, all so tightly preened, was so much fun. Kaia was a little scared when she saw the macaws and didn’t want to get too close, but when she saw one on my arm, she immediately was intrigued. I think she is definitely more like me than Chris in this regard: Chris doesn’t care to get close to any animal unless it’s on his plate. Kaia loves looking at and petting animals.

The last stop was the spider monkeys cage, which we were warned could potentially result in us getting pooped or peed on. Given we were already there, I figured I’d be okay with that risk. Plus, I wanted Kaia to experience getting close to the monkeys. The monkeys would jump from person to person, either on our heads or shoulders, in a circle. While the monkey never climbed on top of Kaia, a monkey did get on top of me, which Kaia was super excited about and giggled endlessly for. I just loved seeing her reactions to the different animals and hearing all the questions she would ask about them and what they were doing. This animal experience definitely piqued her curiosity.

After the Hangout, we made a stop at the beautiful Spirit Origin Coffee, where we enjoyed an extremely meticulous and premium coffee tasting flight (that cost almost $50 USD!). We got to see views of the water on both sides of the building. And while I sat with Kaia on a comfy couch overlooking the ocean and we took turns drawing on her doodle pad, Chris got to sit at the coffee bar and listen to explanations of how the coffee was made and the stories behind it. I occasionally went up to the bar to share tastes and also to sniff the differences between the whole beans versus the ground beans. In all three bean scenarios, the ground vs. whole scent was a world apart! I never would have guessed the grounds were from the same whole beans. This place is so fancy that they even do a coffee omakase experience, where downstairs, you can have a full tasting menu meal with a coordinated cup of coffee to go with each course. They sent us home with two packets of coffee — each valued at about $9 USD each. The 12 oz. bags range in price from $36 to $69; we’ve never paid that much for coffee in the U.S., so I think this definitely gave us a sense of exactly how luxurious this Honduran coffee truly was.

And after the very premium coffee stop, our next stop… was a confusing one because Chris didn’t know how we’d get to the restaurant he wanted us to get to. The land ended, and there was water we’d have to go through to get to this, place, and it was unclear how we’d do that. The further east side of the island is far more local and residential feeling. We were driving in a very grassy area when a random guy came out of nowhere and asked us where we were trying to go. Chris told him he was looking for a specific restaurant that was out in the mangroves, so this man told us that we could pay $10 to park in this private spot (a patch of grass in front of someone’s house), and his friend would help boat us over to the bar. We went through the mangroves and onto a rickety floating bar setup to eat some fried pork, fried red snapper, and tostones, all in the company of the bar attendant and another local. They were likely wondering how the hell we even found this place. But Chris does like to work his magic. The food was really good and fresh. The service was very friendly and helpful; everyone was warm and spoke excellent English. And we got to have lunch in the middle of a mangrove — how often does this happen? Kaia even got to see a baby jellyfish up close because our boat guy found a tiny one and flipped it over so we could see its tentacles up close.

And with that, we went back to West End to pick up some excellent jerk chicken from Anthony’s Chicken & More and then went back to the hotel for more sunset pool time (and more fighting over the floaties between mama and Kaia, then a delicious dinner in our temporary apartment.

We’re not normally resort people, but I must say that I really, really love this hotel property. I love the pool setup and how it’s steps away from the beautiful white sand beach with clear waters. The service has been extremely warm and hospitable. I love the decor and the layout and the different types of living setups, from regular hotel rooms to apartments with balconies to bungalows. And I even love the little details, like the bathroom layouts in the common areas and the open circle swings randomly placed inside. I love that you can see the ocean and the sunset right from the hotel pool, and we’ve been able to enjoy that to get in our “resort time.” I also like that the resort fee includes rentals of snorkeling equipment (everything from the snorkels to the fins) and life vests — and even sand castle building tools! This is very important for my little Pookie!

The amazing pizza guy in Washington Heights who sent me home with a huge sample of his Calabrian chili oil

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On Chris’s parents’ last full day with us before they head back to Melbourne, we took them up to Washington Heights. Chris decided our lunch “appetizer” would be at a local pizza spot that opened about 1.5 years ago, which happens to be just next door to a really good Singaporean hole-in-the-wall we’ve dined at a couple times.

Niccolo Pizzeria was a tiny spot, but was so, so memorable today! We got two cheese slices, which were excellent – super thin crust and crispy. The cheese, tomato sauce, and the crust were all perfection! But what truly, truly blew us away was the super warm and friendly hospitality from Cleber, the manager/owner. He was extremely kind and explained the menu and ingredients to us right away — he made us feel like family there. He even humored Kaia and gave her a VERY generous helping of their daily in-house made soft-serve gelato, which today was white chocolate-pineapple. When we told him we live on the Upper West Side and came just to try a few things in the area since Chris’s parents were visiting from Australia, he was so shocked not only that we came from another neighborhood, but also brought international visitors to his restaurant! So he gave us a second generous sample of their soft serve gelato. He also insisted we not miss his Calabrian chili oil. He told me he imports the Calabrian chilies in oil from Italy, then simply adds high quality extra virgin olive oil to them and allows the chilies to infuse the olive oil. He doesn’t add anything else! At that point, we’d already finished our pizza share, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to try a new chili oil. So I poured a few drops onto my plate and licked it, and WOW! The Calabrian chili oil had this really delicious smoky, fruity flavor with a huge hit of heat at the end, which was really addictive! I told Cleber how much I loved it, and he was so thrilled that he PACKED ME A GENEROUS SAMPLE OF THE CALABRIAN CHILI OIL TO BRING HOME. I nearly passed out from Cleber’s kindness and generosity. In a city as big and packed with endless good restaurant options, sometimes hospitality takes a back seat to food and atmosphere, but most definitely not here.

Trying Calabrian chili oil today was also very good timing because I was just reading Samin Nosrat’s book Good Things, in which she includes a very labor-intensive, 20+ ingredient recipe for her Calabrian chili oil, which is essentially a mash-up of Italian (Calabrian), Sichuanese, Japanese, Mexican chili oils. The description sounds like it could potentially be the perfect chili oil. I was debating whether I really wanted to go to such lengths to make it, but I was intrigued because I’d never tried Calabrian chilies before, nor tasted their oil… until today. And now, I might actually be sold to put her Calabrian chili oil on my growing “project cooking” list.

Morning corn muffins gone awry

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This June will officially mark 18 years that I’ve been living in New York City. I have lived more of my life now on the East Coast than the West, and that feels kind of strange to acknowledge out loud. When people think of things that mark their new lives in a new place, especially in a concrete jungle like New York where tiny apartments and even tinier kitchens are the norm, most of them probably do not think about the kitchen gear they started with.

But I do. I still remember when I had to build my original kitchen from scratch, I slowly but surely made visits to the Kmart (RIP — one at Astor Place in Manhattan, which has since been replaced by the massive Wegman’s) and to Target at Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst, Queens. I remember some of my very first kitchen purchases quite fondly: my two tempered glass Anchor brand lasagna/casserole pans, my cheap $8 nonstick cookie sheets that lasted over 10 years, my Corelle dining set (with a design that I really dislike, but I was cheap at the time, so I got it since it was the cheapest option), and my standard sized metal 12-muffin tin.

I don’t have all those kitchen items anymore. Many I gave away, like some Corelle pieces that were duplicates of things Chris had when I moved in with him, or the smaller Anchor casserole pan that I rarely used (gifted to another friendly Buy-Nothing member!). The cookie sheets actually failed, warped, and somehow managed to snap in the oven — they literally went out with a bang — a pretty terrifying one! The muffin tin was heavily used when I lived in Elmhurst, but only sporadically since I moved to Manhattan. And then today, this 18-year-old muffin tin unfortunately saw its demise.

I got inspired to make muffins again during our recent May weekend up in the Finger Lakes/Ithaca with Chris’s parents. Along the way, we made a quick breakfast stop at this delicious, popular spot called Dottie Audrey’s Bakery + Kitchen. There, we ordered two perfectly made breakfast sandwiches, a walnut sticky bun, a sour cream coffee cake slice, and a huge, fat corn muffin stuffed with strawberry jam. While I loved everything we got from here, I will say that immediately, my first thought was that I wanted to try replicating the super crunchy corn top of the corn muffin. I loved the crunchy muffin top texture so much contrasted with the gritty, coarse, yet fluffy, not-too-sweet muffin innards. I remembered that a friend told me she used a blueberry corn muffin recipe she liked a lot from NYT Cooking, so I decided to go with that. The only swap I made was replacing half the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour for extra whole grains.

Well, I didn’t have muffin liners, so I generously oiled the muffin tin and filled them with batter, then baked it. Unfortunately, the muffins didn’t beautifully dome the way I was hoping. Instead, they kind of flattened on top of the tin, and I realized immediately that I was going to have a frustrating (and messy!) time popping these muffins out. And it was super annoying: several of them broke apart as I removed them from the tin. One almost completely disintegrated into a pile of massive crumbs, and I ended up eating the crumbs by the handful. They were tasty, but they didn’t have a beautiful dome, and they were nowhere as crunchy as Dottie Audrey’s Bakery + Kitchen.

If we didn’t have Chris’s parents over as guests (or any guests for that matter), I’d never make muffins because Chris isn’t that into them, and I can’t bring myself to eat this many muffins. And then Kaia prefers the mini ones. Muffins are kind of like dessert to me: they are a special occasion-at-home bake like cake or cookies are. We need more mouths to warrant the effort to make them. But with this, I realized that the end of this muffin tin’s life had finally arrived. So after rinsing it, I said goodbye to it as I chucked it into the recycling bin (it’s metal, so it must be recyclable, right?!).

Now, I am debating whether I want to buy a replacement regular-sized silicone muffin plan, or if I should just live with a 6-muffin silicone pan I was gifted at graduation in 2008, plus the mini muffin pan I use for Kaia’s healthy muffin treats.

Unexpected finds: deals at Eataly!

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For our extended family gathering on Saturday at Chris’s mom’s cousin’s place, I originally had planned to make a mango tiramisu to bring over. Unfortunately, the two places walking distance from us were no longer selling ladyfingers, so I had to go with a Plan B option pretty quickly based on my pantry. And because my pantry is pretty well stocked, I had a lot of potential options. But I stuck with my mango theme and ended up making mango lassi butter mochi cake from one of my favorite food bloggers Milk and Cardamom, and it was a huge hit. Since I had to open a large can of kesar mango pulp, I had a lot of pulp leftover. I had already purchased the heavy whipping cream and mascarpone to make the tiramisu, and I didn’t really have the headspace to figure out how to repurpose them. So I decided that for Chris’s dad’s birthday coming up this Thursday that I would make my original dessert of mango tiramisu repurposed as his birthday cake. But that meant I had to find those damn ladyfingers.

Chris insisted I was overthinking it and told me just to buy them on Amazon. So I went on Amazon, found a decent brand from Italy, and purchased two 7 oz. packs of imported ladyfingers for… almost $20. Yes, I thought it was expensive, but I chocked it up to inflation. Chris saw the email receipt from Amazon and balked at the price, asking me why they were so expensive. I told him my rationale, and of course, he didn’t think it was enough. So he started doing searches on ladyfingers and somehow found out that Eataly right here in New York sold a 14 oz. pack of Italian ladyfingers for $7.99, so less than half of what I would have paid on Amazon. He cancelled my Amazon order, and yesterday, I went to Eataly Flatiron to check out the ladyfinger stocks.

I think the last time I stepped foot into an Eataly was pre-pandemic, so over six years ago. I have zero reason to go to Eataly because I usually get my Italian groceries from Little Italy in the Bronx, or at other Italian grocery/specialty stores. Eataly has always just been too packed and touristy for me to enjoy. I always hated going in there and feeling like a sardine; walking in there was never a comfortable experience. But walking in there today (at an off hour, obviously), I was pleasantly surprised. There were a few interesting sample stations set up to entice visitors to either order interesting new drinks or treats. There were also a good number of sales when it came to grocery items, whether it was cocoa-hazelnut spreads, Italian olive oils, pistachio cream spreads, and multiple types of Italian cookies. Then, I found the Eataly brand of ladyfingers, a 14-oz. bag, for even less than what Chris saw online — it was $6.49! So I ended up spending less than a third of what I would have spent if I had bought a similar product on Amazon. Who would have guessed that the cheapest ladyfingers I could find would be at Eataly of all places! I just assumed they would be more expensive there, but I was obviously very wrong. In addition, I picked up a jar of wild strawberry jam from an Italian brand that I hadn’t seen in years — also on sale!

Now that I had this positive experience at Eataly and saw so many interesting items on sale at pretty reasonable prices, I realize that I have more of a reason to occasionally pop in there to browse, especially since there is an Eataly in SoHo, not too far away from Kaia’s current school. So, maybe I will be more intentional about stopping in there when I am in the mood to browse Italian groceries. It’s always fun to find good deals on tasty things!

The Japanese experience of having different matcha ice cream levels right here in New York City

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I’m still sticking with my goal of trying at least one new business in Manhattan Chinatown (or the surrounds) while Kaia is in school down here. This week, I tried another new matcha place called Aoko Matcha. They started in the West Village, then opened two other locations in Bayside, Queens, and in Manhattan Chinatown. While it has different matcha drinks and desserts, what it’s unique in doing is offering five different matcha levels for matcha intensity in its matcha ice creams. Matcha cafes are opening up left and right in New York City; I don’t think you can get by in any neighborhood here without either seeing a matcha-specialized cafe, or at minimum, seeing a matcha or two (probably a crappy, low quality kind) on a drink menu. But the levels of matcha intensity are definitely a differentiator. I have only ever seen this in Japan, and most notably in Kyoto almost 11 years ago now. I remember trying the very high intensity level and shaking at exactly how bitter it was! I guess at this point, the matcha ice cream would cease to truly just be an indulgent dessert, and could even be seen as a health food…?!

So I’ll be honest and say that after lunch, I didn’t feel up to having an ice cream all by myself, so I didn’t end up sampling any different matcha levels for ice cream. But I did get the matcha coconut cloud drink, which was matcha cream, coconut water, fresh coconut fruit shavings, and coconut jellies. And given how delicious this drink was, I’d say that I have very high hopes for all levels one through five for the matcha ice creams!

Banh xeo love for the family

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Although I am half Vietnamese, I never ate banh xeo until I was a teen. My mom never made much Vietnamese food at home because her favorite Vietnamese dishes were so laborious. Plus, cooking was done out of necessity, not passion, so she could feed her family economically. So when we ate Vietnamese, it was at the occasional Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, during a day trip to San Jose (along Story Road), or down to Westminster, California, which has the biggest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam. With banh xeo, it was love at first bite for me: the banh xeo, or sizzling crepe, was crispy, almost chewy in the center, fragrant from coconut milk, and generously dotted with mushrooms, shrimp, and pork pieces. Banh xeo is usually stuffed with mung bean sprouts, and the most traditional ones have mung bean in the batter and also scattered inside with the mung bean sprouts. The sizzling crepe gets an even bigger hit of flavor once you add fresh Vietnamese herbs, roll it in lettuce or rice paper, and then dunk it into nuoc cham dipping sauce. 

Banh xeo is not a weekday meal, as it has multiple steps. its batter needs to be soaked, ground, then rested. And each crepe takes at least 12-14 minutes to make, end to end, assuming you are making it properly, have your mise en place ready to go, and are allowing the crepe to get fully cooked and crispy at the edges. It’s a true labor of love. The cooking part on the stove can be tricky and is where I have personally messed up a number of times because I’ve rushed it — a true rookie move. Some take the easier way out by shallow or deep frying the Banh xeo, as this cooks the crepe much faster. I stick with the traditional and less-oil/less caloric method of pan frying. And once the banh xeo is ready, it ideally needs to be eaten within 20-30 minutes to be enjoyed at its peak, otherwise it will quickly get soggy and even mushy, and the magic will be finito. So it’s hard to make for large groups unless you have multiple pans going at the same time. They don’t keep well warm in the oven, sadly. One of my Instagram food friends said that when she makes it, she has everyone gather around her kitchen counter and wait for the next banh xeo to drop, and the second it comes off the pan, she serves it immediately and they literally dive right into it. Once that one is done, it’s onto the next one. As the chef, she eats it all while cooking and standing up. The rush is real!

Well, I had the craving and ingredients, so I wanted to make it for Chris’s parents’ arrival back from their Nevada, Utah, and Toronto travels. So we did have to start cooking dinner right before we ate to ensure peak crispy banh xeo. But I think it was worth it: they got to experience something super fresh and authentic, and I got to witness Chris’s dad try to roll and wrap rice paper with his “I can’t stand eating with my hands” mindset. Kaia even got to enjoy another rice paper roll. Joy for all!

Disappointing NYC pizza

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So after years of following a certain very popular downtown Manhattan pizza spot, I finally went today to get a single slice of their version of margherita. Given it was a Monday at around noon, there were none of the usual crowds, just a few tourists. It was standing room only: no seats at all. If you wanted to eat just outside, they created “makeshift tables” out of the tops of huge garbage cans (really classy). I went and ordered a single slice of pizza and waited for them to reheat it.

And when I got it, I touched the bottom of my plate and noticed that it actually wasn’t that hot. They did a bit of a rush job to reheat my pizza. When I bit into it, it was even worse: the botttom was soggy; there was no crisp or crunch on the bottom despite the reheating. And the tomato sauce tasted so sweet that it was as though they added sugar to it to make up for lackluster tomato sauce. It was actually really embarrassing given the reputation this pizza joint has in lower Manhattan. I knew I would never be back.

The cherry on top was that I went back and looked at the pricing: they charge 15 percent extra if you pay credit card, plus tax. If you pay cash, which I did, you get a 15 percent discount and don’t have to pay any sales tax. Wow — 15 percent? That’s a lot higher than the 3-4 percent that Visa and Mastercard are charging the business. It’s almost like they want to profit even more off you for dealing with your credit cards! I will definitely never be back — I don’t care how good the other slices are supposed to be. One bad move with pizza in a city as pizza-rich as New York, and it’s game over forever.

Taking advantage of the last several months regularly being downtown

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Before I know it, Kaia will be having her preschool graduation in June, and so will begin her very last couple of months going to school in Manhattan Chinatown. August will be the last month she will be in school down there, so that will mark my last month having an excuse to go down to Manhattan Chinatown almost daily. I’d been thinking about this since September when she started Pre-K. So, I made a mental note to myself that every week, as long as I had time, I’d “take advantage” of my time down there and try at least one new business. That could mean a restaurant, takeout spot, bakery, cafe — something that was new for me. I’ve long shared with anyone that while I like where I live, I don’t necessarily love it. The Upper West Side/Hell’s Kitchen are not a top food/eating destination for me at all in New York City — this is obviously my opinion, and I am sure many people will disagree. I would far prefer living further downtown closer to where most of my favorite places are, and where most new fun places open.

My Google Map list is pretty out of control. If you took a look at it for the Lower East Side/Chinatown area, it’s almost covered in green flags for “to try.” So trying new spots is never a challenge; it’s more figuring out which one I feel like trying when. On Wednesday, my friend and I went to 1915 Lanzhou Hand-Pulled Noodle, so that ticked off one box (and I am definitely going back there — the noodles and broth were soooo goooooood). Today, I forgot my water bottle and got thirsty during my walk around SoHo/Chinatown, so I used that as an excuse to finally try Matchaful on Mulberry. There, I had an Indigo Glow matcha, which included four grams of ceremonial grade matcha, taro, maqui berry, maple syrup, and oat milk (very satisfying and not too sweet). And for our usual Friday takeout dinner tonight, I stopped by the very new Grandma’s Dumpling House on Pell, where I picked up two types of dumplings, Chinese chive pockets, and shredded potato salad. Here, the dumplings were filled and cooked to order (so fresh!) and super juicy, and the chive pockets were stuffed to the brim. I rarely see shredded potato salad on any Chinese menu, so I decided to try this out here — it was very refreshing and crunchy, though I would have preferred if it were spiked with freshly ground Sichuanese peppercorn, which I still remember having from a very delicious and authentic Sichuanese restaurant in Framingham, Massachusetts, of all places. The dumpling skins were particularly good — they weren’t too thick at the fold part (which I usually can’t stand), but they also weren’t too thin that they’d break easily.

So many things to eat, and never enough time: ’tis the dilemma of someone with limited time in downtown.