Category Archives: Food

Long weekend with the in-laws to Rhode Island, with an important stop in New Haven on the way

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One of the things I loved about the East Coast when I first moved here was how easy it was to state hop. Depending on where you are, it could take an hour or even less to get to another state. It could take 20 minutes to take the PATH train from Manhattan into Hoboken or Jersey City. It could take a couple hours by car, train, or bus to get from Massachusetts to New Hampshire or Rhode Island. Maine can be done as a day trip from many places in Massachusetts. California is a large and long state; it wasn’t as easy to do that living there. So all these small states in the northeastern part of the U.S. always fascinated me. I tried to take advantage and see as much as I could of the northeast, while also lamenting that so many people who live here have zero curiosity about neighboring states and people.

At this point, Chris’s parents have most likely seen more of New York City than most New Yorkers. They have definitely seen more of the U.S. than most Americans. They take side trips on their own through the U.S. when they come visit us, but they also get taken on side trips, sometime via road, other times via plane, by us. In recent years with Kaia, we’ve always done a road trip and rented a car. This year, Chris decided on Rhode Island. So it will be our first time back in the smallest state of the country since August 2013.

On our way there, we stopped in New Haven, Connecticut, for some apizza. Little do many people outside of Connecticut know, but New Haven is oftentimes thought of as the pizza or “apizza” capital of the United States (New Yorkers and Jersey people most definitely debate this). New Haven style pizza consists of thin-crust, coal-fired Neopolitan pizza. And one of my most favorite pizzas in all the world is most definitely the white clam pizza: it’s pizza with oregano, grated cheese, chopped garlic, fresh littleneck clams. It does not have tomato sauce, which is why it’s called a “white pie,” and it’s just freaking perfect. Littleneck clams with garlic and cheese is like a menage a trois that dreams are made of. Our first time to New Haven was in November 2020 during the pandemic. We did a day trip to New Haven and went to the three most well known New Haven style pizza joints: Frank Pepe, Sally’s Apizza, and Modern Apizza. We went to Modern last in that visit, which meant that we had already had so much pizza that we didn’t quite appreciate it as much, so we went to Modern as our only pizza stop on this visit. We got the white clam pizza with a small margherita, and amongst the five of us, we left satisfied, yet not stuffed. The pizza was even more delicious than I remember it, with a crust so crunchy yet chewy that I could easily have just eaten the pizza topping-less, and I still would have been happy.

We spent the evening in Fox Point in Providence, where we ate at Dune Brothers Seafood, their first location that has indoor seating (though tiny). I had whole scup fish (porgy!) for the first time and enjoyed it – the fattiness and texture almost reminded me of bluefish (though no one on the internet seems to agree with my assessment). Kaia devoured the littleneck clams appetizer all by herself; she’s most definitely a clam loving baby and enjoys the thrill of opening the clams and pulling them out of the shells. But what was the even bigger highlight of dinner was the indulgent lobster roll Chris and I shared. I always prefer Connecticut style lobster roll (always warm, dunked in butter, on a toasted bun) over Maine style (chilled lobster meat, dressed in mayo with crunchy greens). This lobster roll was stuffed to the brim with huge chunks of both claw AND tail meat, warmed in butter along with various tasty spices; it was likely one of my all-time favorite lobster rolls next to Neptune Oyster in Boston. Though Neptune makes what is likely the best lobster roll in all of the US, I will never go back there because to this day, I remember it as of the very worst dining experiences of my life. I still remember being so angry about how rude the service was that I actually tipped them 11 percent (WHICH I NEVER DO).

And if that was not enough eating, down the street from Dune Brothers was this cute Aleppo Sweets Cafe I had on my list. They won a best new restaurants award in Providence in 2019 and look to be family owned. Though they have a full menu for lunch and dinner, we just went for after dinner caffeinated drinks and desserts. This place is clearly popular with locals because almost everyone around us walking down the street behind us also went into this place! We had a good start to our visit when Kaia ran into the florist shop next door (which I think are owned by the same people). The florist there was so kind that he gave her a fresh, long-stemmed iris, which captivated Kaia; she was so obsessed with her new fresh flower! We sat down at a table and enjoyed Arabic coffee, very strong ginger-cardamom-mint tea in a beautiful and large copper tea pot (brought back from Syria, and funnily enough, NOT for sale, as Chris’s dad liked it so much he asked if he could buy one!), and four different types of baklava and Syrian semolina cake. We loved the ambiance, furniture, decor, and the tea and coffee ware a lot, but the sweets were very surprising. They were stuffed to the brim with pistachios, but the shocking thing about them was that they were not too sweet. And I don’t think in my entire life I have ever described any baklava as “not too sweet,” or really, they were “just sweet enough.” They weren’t swimming or soaked to the brim in sugar. They didn’t make my teeth hurt like some of the Greek or Turkish spots we’ve had them from in Astoria or Bay Ridge. I subsequently read that this characteristic of being “not too sweet” is a defining trait of Syrian baklava and desserts. I am tempted to figure out how to recreate this Syrian harisa semolina cake at home and ensure it’s “just sweet enough.” It was so delicious and lightly spiced with cinnamon and vanilla. We shared four different types, so each of us had a bite each of the desserts, and amazingly, I think I could have had more bites and not felt overly sweetened or stuffed. I still cannot believe how long we talked about the copper tea pot…

There’s so much good food and culture all over the U.S. that it would be quite a shame (and loss) to just stay in one part or place forever and not experience all this richness and fun.

New York City laws for food establishments regarding restrooms

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As someone who admittedly has to pee fairly often (well, I do consume over the recommended amount of water per day), I always prefer to patronize establishments that have restrooms. Typically, if you are going to a sit-down restaurant in New York City, you can pretty much be guaranteed a restroom. With cafes and bakeries, though, this is very much on a case-by-case basis; it’s never a guarantee, and the vast majority of them will not provide a restroom for customers. So the rare times when I do find a restroom for customers, like at the popular bakery Almondine in Dumbo (likely one of my all-time favorite almond croissants, plus their hot Valrhona chocolate is more than worth it), or Paper Sons Cafe (a relatively new, family-owned cafe with excellent coffee drinks) in Manhattan Chinatown, I always appreciate it so much. And when I share these businesses with other people, whether it’s in public reviews or just by mouth, I always make sure to highlight it. It’s just a really big nice-to-have for a smaller establishment like a cafe or bakery. It ultimately just shows kindness and empathy to the customers who are frankly keeping you in business.

So you can imagine that I was pretty annoyed when I found out that a Japanese restaurant that had opened in East Village last year called Okiboro House of Udon, had no restroom. I was shocked. You’re charging $23 a bowl for udon, and you cannot even be considerate enough to your customers and have a bathroom? For the first 6-8 months when this place first opened, I was constantly seeing it all over social media; it had lines around the block and waits of 2-3 hours. People would just stand there for hours on end to sit and eat there for 30-40 minutes and leave. I knew I wanted to eventually go once the hype was over. So my pregnant friend suggested that we go there for dinner tonight; neither of us had ever heard of Himokawa style udon before, and we obviously had never had it. Unlike regular udon, with its fat and rounded noodles, Himokawa udon is a traditional, wide, and flat udon noodle that is known for its smooth, chewy texture and is often served hot or cold with a dipping broth. I said we could — but only if we went right at open time to avoid any potential wait. I warned her, especially given she’s pregnant, that it didn’t have a bathroom, but she said she could go to a cafe nearby after where her friend works, and she could use the restroom there. For her sake (and well, partly mine), I checked the latest Google reviews to see if they had added a bathroom. Unfortunately, we were out of luck: all the latest reviews still noted and complained about the lack of restroom. The owner kept responding to the reviews noting the lack of restroom and saying that because the restroom they had was only accessible through the kitchen, customers were not allowed to go through the kitchen to use it given that violated NYC health code. So, they could not allow customers to use it.

I felt like this was a total cop out, and frankly, it’s just bullshit. They would have known this was a law before deciding to lease the space and take over it as a restaurant. They could have easily incorporated a restroom into the design of the restaurant while it was being constructed like every other restaurant does. They’re making an excuse for something that they were just too lazy and cheap to do. I went to look up the local health code laws, and I found this out: If a food service establishment has 20 or more seats and opened after 1977, it must provide a toilet for its customers. I quickly counted the number of seats in the small space that is Okiboro House of Udon: those bastards — they have 18 seats! It’s like this purposely did this just to avoid having to build a damn bathroom that was accessible to customers!!

Was the food good? Yes. Was it good enough for me to want to come back given all the other incredible food establishments across New York City, plus the fact it lacks a basic bathroom? No.

The hype has died down. Okiboro House of Udon — good luck to you.

Chinese dinner banquet-style eating will never be the same

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Tonight, we went downtown to Chinatown to pick Kaia up from school before heading off to one of our old standbys for dinner, Wu’s Wonton King. We started going here way back in 2016-2017 when I first discovered it. While they are obviously known for their delicious wontons, they are also known for their high quality Peking duck, which pre-pandemic, they used to present whole to you, and then beautifully slice up table side and insert each carefully cut piece into a little hot and steamy mantou bun, then dress it with a bit of hoisin sauce and thinly sliced scallions. They would place all of these pieces in a neat steam tray, then also give you a plate on the side with the whole duck legs. Chris said that his parents being in town was a good opportunity to take advantage of ordering more things given we’d have more mouths to feed.

Yes, in theory, that is the case. But alas, with age, all of our appetites have declined, especially his parents’. And well, Chinese dinner banquet style eating will never quite live up to the same memories or expectations I had when I was growing up, when we’d have semi-regular Cantonese feasts out with my grandma, parents, Ed, three cousins, and their parents. My grandma would always do all the ordering. We’d always start with a hearty soup, followed by various massive platters of seafood, meats, and vegetables, along with a huge family sized portion of rice. And the meal would always end with a complimentary dessert soup. It was usually red bean, but if we got lucky, it was taro sago. You would never leave this meal hungry.

Tonight, we ordered a whole Peking duck, a whole steamed fish (which I think was rock cod), egg tofu and vegetable casserole, and a platter of stir-fried pea shoots with garlic, plus rice. Was it more than we usually order when it’s just Chris, Kaia, and me? Of course. But the variety of food will never hold a candle to the variety I had as a child in my ten-person-family meals out. You really need more hungry mouths to feed, as well as mouths that appreciate variety. Plus, the things I really crave, like ginger garlic sauteed lobster or crab, his parents wouldn’t really appreciate much.. and frankly, neither would Chris. His dad always says he doesn’t “take” crab or lobster. His mom seems ambivalent to it. And well, the apple never falls that far from the tree: Chris thinks that crab and (lesser so) lobster are never worth the manual labor. Kaia enjoys crab and lobster if it’s fed to her, but she doesn’t quite go “crazy” over any seafood that much.

Who knows — maybe one day in the not-so-near future, we’ll have a group of friends who would be willing to indulge like this. And with prices on literally everything rising and inflation going nuts, that time seems like it’s quite far away. For Lunar New Year this year, I spent about $22 on a whole fish and steamed it ginger scallion style as I usually do. This whole fish at Wu’s, which was about twice the size of the LNY one, was almost $70. Are we paying for the labor? Yes. But while it was nice to have someone else make it for me, I couldn’t help but feel like I was kind of being price gouged.

When hosting becomes an excuse to make dessert

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I grew up in a large household, in a duplex where my parents, brother and I lived on the second floor unit. My three cousins and their mom and dad lived on the third floor. Until age 9, my grandma lived in the basement/ground level. We had 9-10 total people to share food with, so whenever I baked anything, whether it was cookies, brownies, or bread, there was always lots of people to share the food with and eat it. There was never a worry about “who is going to eat all this?” or “are we going to have too much sugar/fat?” because when you’ve got at least eight or nine people around, that food is most definitely getting eaten one way or another, and pretty darn quickly.

That all changed once I moved to New York and just had a roommate. We shared food only occasionally, but not always. It’s pretty hard to make food just for one person or meal. I still baked, but when I did, I’d usually share it with her and even my colleagues. The food had to go somewhere, and I would never want to waste the food. And even now with Chris, I can’t bake too much because we probably shouldn’t be eating that much sugar and butter, anyway. We’re also trying to limit Kaia’s refined sugar intake. So whenever I know I am hosting friends or relatives over, whether it’s just for one meal or for an extended duration of time, like with Chris’s parents staying with us on and off for about three weeks, I look at these as opportunities to make dessert: what kind of sweets can I make? What have I been dying to make for the last several months that I haven’t had an excuse to make?

So the short list for now looks like this:

Mango and coconut sago, maybe with coconut milk and juice agar agar jelly

Gulab jamun nut bread/cake

Brown butter chocolate chunk cookies (The Food Lab)

Lemon ricotta cake

Orange blossom almond cake

I was chatting with my friend about this, and she could completely relate. She lives alone, and she sees her brother a lot since he lives nearby. Once, she made cookies and he inhaled the entire batch in a single sitting. When she has friends or family over, it’s also her excuse to experiment with baking, especially since she’s more comfortable cooking and has shied away from baking. Yesterday for Easter brunch, she made egg yolkless tiramisu, which turned out really well, so this has given her more confidence to bake other things. It’s been fun to have a friend who is really into cooking and food and to have them around to share food fun stories (and the nightmares of the last several days) and know that they can empathize and understand your situation from experience.

Twelve-years-aged tangerine peels from my friend’s mom

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When I met up with my friend for lunch this past Monday, I was shocked when she told me that her mom had brought me back a gift from her trip to China. Over a year ago, I told my friend that I was taking on “old Asian lady” habits by attempting to dry a bunch of mandarin peels that winter. In the winter time, we eat so much citrus that it felt wasteful just to dump the peels out. One winter during the pandemic, I was taking citrus peels and making homemade house cleaner with it, but I eventually got bored of that. I felt like a better and tastier way to use the peels was to preserve them via drying for future Chinese dishes. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, aka TCM, preserved mandarin or tangerine peels are known to be a warming ingredient that can warm your spleen and regulate your qi. It’s supposed to help with dampness and disperse phlegm from the lungs. But in general, even if you don’t believe in TCM, aged tangerine peels give an interesting, complex, complementary flavor to savory courses, such as braised pork belly, beef noodle soup, or tangerine beef or chicken dishes. In a lot of traditional homely Chinese soups, a single peel or two can be thrown into the pot for an extra flavor note.

So, when I shared this with my friend last year, she told her mom, who I’d only met once back in 2018. I went to her house so that I could meet my friend’s then new baby. And since then, she’s shared lots of stories of what I cook with her mom and also showed photos and videos, and I guess her mom has been very impressed. She remembered this story about my drying mandarin peels, and so she picked up this individually sealed bag of 12-years aged tangerine peels for me and carted it all the back from China to New York! If you are not aware, dried tangerine peels get more expensive with age (the color also gets deeper and darker brown), so 12-years aged tangerine peels cost a small fortune here.

I was honestly in shock when my friend told me this, and I felt like my eyes were going to bulge out of their eye sockets when she presented the bag to me at lunch on Monday. I kept on staring at the bag and turning it every which way, admiring how thin and dried and deep brown they were, and even trying to see if I could smell some aged citrus fragrance from the sealed bag. I was just so touched that her mom would not only think of me, but even be so generous as to buy me a highly prized Chinese cooking gift while in China and carry it all the way back here for me. I’d only met her mom once — ONE TIME. And somehow, she has remembered me AND gifted me something now! I love a lot of things about this scenario, but I guess I especially love it because it is such a unique gift, one that not just anyone would appreciate. Her mom thought specifically of me, how I dried mandarin peels, and knew I’d appreciate this a lot. And I really, really do. I am beyond grateful and felt so blessed in that moment — not just for her thoughtfulness and generosity for someone she only met once, but also for having this friend who would have a mother who would do something like this for me!

“That’s my mom’s love language: remembering random things I tell her about friends or me and then taking action on it and gifting something related!” my friend exclaimed. “She’s bad at most other things, but she’s really good at this!”

As with most things that matter, if you know, you know #iykyk. And if you know, you know that 12-years-aged tangerine peels in Chinese cooking is like aged fine wine.

Crispy bottomed guo tie / potstickers in New York City

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When I first moved to New York City almost 17 years ago, my cousin had already pre-discovered a high quality, local dumpling shop for me in my then new neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens. It was called Lao Bei Fang and was on a side street along the main Broadway drag of Elmhurst, in an area that you could easily consider like a mini Chinatown. Back then in 2008, the owner hand-pulled almost all the noodles that were sold; he also hand rolled all the dumpling skins while his wife and helper filled them with meat and vegetable fillings. When I’d go during off times, I could get lucky and enjoy my hand pulled noodles or crispy bottomed potstickers while listening to him sing random Chinese operatic songs. The fried dumplings, aka potstickers, aka guo tie, were always perfect: they were crispy bottomed, perfectly steamed, and had juicy, rich fillings, stuffed to the brim. And I still cannot believe how cheap they were: back then, you could get four fat, stuffed, juicy dumplings for just $1! Eventually, they raised the price by a quarter, then two quarters. I’m not sure what they are charging now.

Since then, they’ve gained notoriety throughout New York City. Even tourists go there now. They had to keep up with demand and their growing business, so they started hiring more staff and grew out of their hole-in-the-wall on Whitney Avenue and moved into a much larger, more spacious restaurant along the main Broadway strip. And that, sadly, is when the quality notably declined. Once, I went and got fried dumplings that barely had a crispy bottom and were borderline cold. The noodles were irregular and almost gummy. The owner was nowhere to be seen. My favorite dumpling/hand pulled noodle place had changed forever.

At that point, I wasn’t sure what my reliable hand-pulled noodle/dumpling spot would be. I’ve found a few places in Manhattan Chinatown and Brooklyn Chinatown that do reliable steamed/boiled dumplings and hand pulled noodles. But I have yet to find a really good crispy bottomed guo tie/dumpling spot. There’s a divey spot under the Manhattan Bridge called Fu Zhou Wei Zhong Wei Jia Xiang Feng Wei, and that’s it. There are so many dumpling spots in New York City, almost too many to keep track of, but not all of them are going to have the same crisp and glory that Lao Bei Fang once had for me.

Exploring SoHo, LES, and Chinatown in Manhattan

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One huge benefit of having Kaia at a Chinatown-based school, as Chris mentioned when we enrolled Kaia in her current school, is that it gives me an opportunity to further explore businesses that are in this general area. Since I now have four coworking space passes to use each month, I am taking advantage of them and working down here about once a week. On these days, I do school dropoff and pickup, and I also try to meet up with friends who are flexible enough for either lunch or coffee/dessert. If that doesn’t work out, it’s still an opportunity for me to be in the area and try new businesses that are on my list.

Today, none of my friends were available to meet up, so I ended up going on my own during lunch time to check out some new businesses. Originally, I attempted to go to a pop-up onigiri stand in SoHo, but when I arrived, I realized that the pop-up… was no more. The entire building was locked. That was fun to find out.

Then, I went to a relatively new Korean spot called Lululala on Hester Street. Their logo is “Finding happiness in little bowls.” They make relatively inexpensive Korean style rice bowls, kimbap, and different types of banchan. I got a beef kimbap roll, which was quite generous at 12 large pieces for $9. I was pretty satisfied with my purchase, especially since I haven’t had kimbap in ages.

I also went to pick up soy milk from Fong On, and on my way back to the coworking space, I also went to an OG Chinese bakery called Ka Wah on Eldridge. Unfortunately, this bakery was a miss: I knew it was grungy and super no frills going into it, as I had originally learned about it in a Manhattan Chinatown Reddit thread. But the lao po bing (old wife cake/winter melon cake) I got had a crust that was too thick, without much actual winter melon filling (that’s the whole point…). The outside pastry wasn’t very flaky and was quite dry. I also picked up a large sponge cake as a treat for Kaia, but until I get home and let her try it, I won’t actually know how good it is. Either way, there are several other reliable Chinese-style sponge cake spots I like for other items in Chinatown, such as Kam Hing Coffee Shop (the original), Spongie’s (spun off by a former employee at Kam Hing), Double Crispy (they rarely go wrong on anything), and Manna House, so I have other places I can rely on for this that also have more variety.

You win some, and you lose some. I am getting through my massive bookmarks list down here, though, which is only growing since more and more new places keep opening!

Family style eating goes awry (in a work setting)

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I’ve spent almost 17 years working full time. My happiest times with my colleagues were likely for about two years while at my second company, and about 1.5 years at my last company. Both times, we had a good group of people of different backgrounds, from different parts of the country (and occasionally, world), most of whom loved food (and drink) and were just fun to be around. I didn’t always feel compelled to talk about only work with them. In both situations, I was often known as the “foodie,” so whenever group happy hours or dinners had to be arranged, I was given the responsibility (and privilege) to choose where we would eat/drink, and to make the reservation. Price was rarely an issue, and the company (or vendor) always paid for it. And most of those times, we would share food, and people would leave full and happy… and occasionally tipsy to drunk.

Well, fast forward to today, when I’m on my fifth year with my current company, and my entire team is fully remote. We don’t get to spend much in-person time together. If we have regular “catch-ups,” they are usually on Zoom and inevitably 99 percent about work. We don’t really know each other that well. Though most people know I’m into food and cooking, my manager has been told that he has to stay within really tight budget guidelines for team meals. So he half jokingly told me he doesn’t trust me choosing a restaurant for us, though he has no doubt it would be amazing. Given this, when we’ve had team meals out, he typically will choose a place off the cuff, and it’ll be fairly basic. Other people on the team have made side comments to me that our manager’s taste in food stinks (he is known for his addiction to Coke and eats way too much fast food, particularly chicken wings, burgers, and bad pizza), and that our team meals are rarely things to look forward to because of it. He has plenty of strengths; diversity in or knowledge of food is not one of them.

For this past Wednesday’s team meal, he chose a family-style Italian restaurant right next to our hotel. When I’ve had family-style Italian meals in the past with colleagues, the great thing was that whenever the powers-that-be ordered, we’d always have a good variety of dishes: starters, vegetables, pastas, proteins/plant-based proteins, dessert. I always felt like the meal was well rounded, and we always ate well. This time, however, it wasn’t that well rounded, and I felt limited because of the limited palates of my teammates.

We started with a caesar salad with croutons, which I loved because the caesar dressing was particularly pungent with extra, extra garlic. We got a “Tour of Italy” plate, which was essentially a mixed plate of cold cuts, antipasti, cut baguettes, and cheeses — this was pretty disappointing looking, and I didn’t touch this. Then, for mains we had… pasta. Just pasta. No parmigiano. No vegetables. Nothing else. Our manager chose four pastas: baked ziti (this felt like it was for toddlers with how basic it was; I wouldn’t even order or make this for Kaia), spaghetti bolognese, meatballs with vodka sauce and spaghetti, and carbonara. I insisted from the beginning that we must have clam linguine. The table was silent. No one wanted to eat clam linguine with me other than one other colleague. My boss conceded and said we’d get a smaller portion of the clam linguine just for my one clam-eating colleague and me. One colleague said she had a shellfish allergy. Another said shellfish made her mouth itchy. A third said she’d have some (just one bite; she ended up taking none). A fourth insisted she would try “just a small bite” and didn’t touch it. On a team of eight people, only two of us ate the clam linguine. It was freaking delicious, by far the best pasta on the table. There was so much leftover clam linguine (well, actually, we had so much leftover of ALL the pasta) that would ultimately go into the garbage bin. It always hurts a little to see how much food waste we generate at these team meals. But that is the way with corporate life and corporate dining out in general, sadly. We were served family style, so everyone got a little bit of each pasta (minus the clam linguine, which the two of us served ourselves) on our plates doled out by our server. But almost every single person looked like s/he barely ate half their plate. I had felt bloated most of the day, so I only ate my clam linguine and a bite each of the other pastas.

It feels spoiled and bratty to complain about this, especially given I’m traveling on my company’s dime and won’t be paying for any of my meals during this work trip. But I couldn’t help but feel annoyed at how unadventurous my colleagues were in terms of their palates and what they were willing to eat. I felt like I was the “different” one and slightly being “othered” once again, and in this case, it’s crazy because it’s just clams in pasta we are talking about! It’s like they generally lack curiosity about different foods… and perhaps it could even be extended to say that they lack curiosity about other cultures and the world outside their own bubbles. I mean, how else did we get into the crappy predicament we are in with our current government?

Ba Xuyen – the OG and best banh mi spot in NYC, still to this day in 2025

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When I first moved to New York in June 2008, it took me a while to get my bearings here. I had to figure out what my staple spots for go-to dishes would be. One of those “go-to” meals had to be a banh mi, which is the best damn sandwich in the world. There is no one who could possibly convince me otherwise. The ideal banh mi consists of a crisp but soft, airy, feathery light baguette stuffed with various cold cuts, head cheese, cha lua; it is accompanied with thick layers of pork/chicken based pate, house-made mayonnaise, chilies, fresh cilantro, and pickled daikon and carrot, and there you the best sandwich in the entire freaking world. It has all the key flavor elements and textures: savory, salty, sweet, sour, crispy, crunchy, creamy, soft, airy. My mouth is watering just writing all these adjectives out.

I tried a few reputed banh mi spots in Manhattan. They all fell flat. I kind of gave up hope until I really went down a Google rabbit hole and started looking in other Asian areas outside of Manhattan. And then, in the winter of 2008-2009, I found what I later found out would be my go-to banh mi in all of New York City, if not all of the U.S.: It was at Ba Xuyen right on the edge of Brooklyn Chinatown out in Sunset Park. It was over an hour subway ride from where I had lived then, in Elmhurst, but it was love at first bite and worth every minute of that long commute. My loyalty to this banh mi has never swayed while living here in New York. While some spots like Banh Mi Co Ut in Manhattan Chinatown and Joju (in Elmhurst, Midtown East, and now Upper East Side, which by the way, consciously modeled their baguette after Ba Xuyen) have come close, they haven’t quite hit the same mark that Ba Xuyen does. And just to add to Ba Xuyen’s state of incredible is that they have consistently always made the most delicious durian, jackfruit, papaya, and other fruit smoothies, along with excellent Vietnamese style iced coffee; they make their own perfect cha lua (which I ALWAYS buy when I go there to stock my freezer), and endless seasonal/timely Vietnamese snacks, such as banh da lon (Vietnamese mung bean and pandan layer cake), banh it tran (savory glutinous rice balls filled with pork, mung bean, and shrimp), banh beo (mini rice cakes topped with shrimp), amongst many other Vietnamese bakery delights that were originally snacks and meals fit for Vietnamese royalty. If you get there early enough, all their snacks are still steaming hot upon purchase as they are freshly made.

I introduced Chris to Ba Xuyen within the first year of our relationship. Of course, he was immediately hooked and silently (through eating) agreed that my declaration that this was the best New York City banh mi was, in fact, correct. He even dragged his parents out to Sunset Park for Ba Xuyen banh mi at least twice, once without my even being there last year! I’ve been a huge supporter of Ba Xuyen and will sing their praises to literally anyone who is even remotely into Vietnamese food or banh mi. It’s crazy to think how far I’ve come in my 16-year long relationship with them. Back in February 2009, which I think is when I first had them, the banh mi was only $3.75. I have no idea how they operated with such low prices back then. Today, their special banh mi (#1) is $8, which is still a total steal given all the crazy inflation we’ve been experiencing. I am happy to say that my relationship with Ba Xuyen has been alive almost as long as I’ve been a NYC resident. And it will continue to be a love that I am quite devoted to. Even now, Kaia is obsessed. When we went today, she initially protested and said she wanted no banh mi. Then of course, as we waited for our sandwiches to be made, she insisted on standing to wait with me. And finally, when the banh mi were ready to eat, she dug in and demanded more meat and bread! She is definitely part of our Ba Xuyen loving banh mi family.

“Haute” Chinese cuisine at Yingtao NYC

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Last night, Chris and I went out for an early nine-year wedding anniversary celebration at Yingtao NYC. The restaurant is a short walk from our building, and I was aware of it since even before it opened. Given it’s in our neighborhood, when I would go on walks during the day, I immediately noticed the stylized Chinese writing spelling out “ying tao” or “cherry” in Chinese. I figured it would be some fine dining establishment only open in the evenings. Yingtao finally opened in December 2023, so it’s been about a year and three months of being in existence. The owner is originally from China and had also lived in New Zealand before coming to California and finally New York for school. The cuisine is clearly Chinese, but with lots of regional influences from Xi’an, Shanghai, Guangdong/Hong Kong, and Sichuan. It’s a bit of Chinese meets European/French/Polish, and the more I read reviews about the place and all the restaurant review write-ups about Yingtao, the more I wanted to finally come here. Since Kaia has been born, we’ve really only gotten a babysitter for comedy or theater, plus two parties. The only time we’ve gotten a babysitter for a meal out has been for my birthday two years ago, and our former nanny looked after Kaia. So this is the first time in ages when we’ve gone out, just the two of us, for a fancy meal. And it most definitely exceeded all expectations and was beyond worth it.

To sit in the dining room of Yingtao, everyone has to opt into their tasting menu, which is 10 courses: three starters/appetizers, four mains, and three desserts. You also have the option to add supplements to certain courses, as well as to add items from the a la carte/bar menu. In addition to our ten courses, we also had an eleventh bonus since Chris shared with the team that it was our anniversary: they gave us a fourth dessert from the bar menu, which was an incredibly rich and moussy ube cheesecake with a red shiso sorbet.

Every course was memorable and well executed, but I will say that the most memorable bites for me were the tuna with black vinegar, giner, and kumquat; the Royal Reds with flavors of “kou shui ji” or “mouth water chicken;” the wagyu with mizune, carrot, and doubanjiang; the snapper with milk broth, doufupi (tofu skins), and goji berries; and the rose with greek yogurt and lychee. The tuna had an interesting sweet-savory-smokey complexity going on, and I figured it must be due to the black vinegar used. When I asked the server what kind of vinegar was in the dish, she immediately presented a 10-year aged bottle of Baoning black vinegar, which I had previously been eyeing on TheMalaMarket.com, as they are the exclusive importer of this vinegar in the U.S. I knew I had to have this vinegar. What most people do not realize about Chinese culinary traditions is that a lot of fermented foods like vinegar take the same love, labor, and intensity as the most well known, respected, and pricey Italian balsamic vinegars. It’s just that most of society is quite prejudiced and has historically respected European food traditions more than Eastern ones. The wagyu was made with a very complex and savory doubanjiang (Sichuan chili bean paste), and no surprise that when I asked to see the paste, the server once again brought out a packaged paste that was also from TheMalaMarket.com, aged three years and also something I had looked at! We also loved the tempranillo wine that Chris ordered, and then were introduced to a taste of a different (and very unique) California grown tempranillo that finally made Chris feel impressed when drinking a U.S.-made wine. It was like a night of learning at Yingtao for the both of us. We left very happy, very full, and with plans for future home purchases to stock our pantry and alcohol reserves.

We took photos of both bottles of wine. I also made a note of the fancy black vinegar and doubanjiang. While I am eager to try these in my own cooking, I cannot help but wonder how they will make my far-cheaper versions of black vinegar and Sichuan doubanjiang at home feel when they get neglected in favor of these fancy, super complex versions. That’s the thing: literally having a taste of finer, nicer things can really ruin all the regular, everyday things for you. If there were just a few words I’d use to sum up this Yingtao dining experience, it would be these: complex, layers and layers of flavor.