Tuesday, June 05, 2012

30 Days of Queens: Day Five – Barone Pizza

Everyone loves New York thin crust pizza. My neighborhood pizza joint (in Flushing on Main Street of all places) is right under the LIRR bridge. Come to think of it, my favorite scallion pancake place (should be a dedicated post all together) is also under the bridge on the other side of the street.

pizza

My regular order is a slice of mushroom pizza with a shake of pepper flakes and a bottle of Snapple. I keep on meaning to try the other items like chicken rolls (J’s favorite) or ziti but always fail to make the leap.

In the summer, Barone Pizza opens up an Italian ice stand that probably offers the best tasting and best priced sweets on the street. Very frequently on a hot day, I would literately walk by, pick up an ice, and eat it on the way home. By the time I get to my apt, the ice would be gone and I would have been much cooler.

Will have to be on the look out for the new neighborhood pizza place…

Monday, June 04, 2012

30 Days of Queens: Day Four – RenRen Restaurant

When people get “take out” in Flushing, it’s not quite the same as regular take out. As an example, one of my favorite take out places is Ren Ren Restaurant on Main St, next to the library and a liquor store. The English title is No.1 East Restaurant, ambitious title much?

41-27 Main St
Flushing, NY 11369
http://www.yelp.com/biz/no-1-east-flushing

shanghai

They always have takeout combos available for 5-6 dollars and it comes with main entrée (usually meat), veggies, pickled veggies, fried egg, rice, and soup. The style if Shanghainese, so if you don’t like that style (typically good seafood and saucy meats, meat tend to be cooked in sweet sauce), don’t even bother. I had spent a summer in Shanghai and crave sweet and savory from time to time. Good thing I don’t always have to go to a fancy sit-down to get the food.

My favorites, in order of frequency:

  • meatball - 狮子头. If you haven’t had Chinese meatball yet, you’ll enjoy this.
  • fatty pork - 东坡肉. Dong Po Pork is literately pork belly braised…if you don’t put enough sweetness into this, the dish is ruined. of course, trying to explain to my entire family who don’t like/appreciate Shanghainese food is sometimes not worth the fight. So I just order it for myself to my heart’s content.
  • ribs -无锡排骨. Not sure I haven’t ordered this more often. I just had it today and loved it. I think I was always worried they were going to ruin the sauce with some vinegary stuff (which is another style of ribs)

The restaurant also offers a good sit-down meals there since they have a nice set of fancy tables/chairs ready. The place always has enough business to fill on weekends but not crazy enough that you’d need to wait in line or anything. Most places in Flushing get so hectic and waiting staff try to hurry people along.

According to Yelp the place is also great for breakfast. I suppose I will have to come back and see next time.

Sunday, June 03, 2012

30 Days of Queens: Day Three – Payag

I attempted two Meet Up outings in one day. First was the origami group [previous entry], second one was a foodie get together in Queens Filipino restaurant Payag.

Didn’t get a chance to take photos because I was too busy eating and chatting with all the cool new people. Funny that after all these years of living in Queens, I’ve never been to the 52nd St. Stop. The area actually looks nice, with a park and the restaurant etc. I’m going to miss all the ethnic foods in Queens (after all, they say the best international/diversity is around Queens).

Payag
51-34 Roosevelt Ave
Woodside, NY 11377
http://www.yelp.com/biz/payag-woodside

The best dish was Kare-Kare, a curry peanut beef stew. If you go with a small group I recommend getting this and maybe a vegetable dish. The cheesy mussels were also tasty to get as appetizers. The menu is really extensive so I think everyone can find something they like. I can’t seem to find the menu online so I suppose I’ll have to use yelp as reference.

I ordered a squid dish cooked in squid ink that tasted great but looked a bit scary. In the past I’ve had squid ink dishes from Spanish restaurants before, but don’t remember it being this dark! The other dish I ordered was a vegetable medley, including bitter melon, okra, eggplant, and bell papers. I couldn’t get enough of it. Other dishes we tried were pork and crepe with minced meat. The pork was on a sizzling plate and very spiced up and flavorful. Everything goes amazing with rice.

I didn’t order any fancy drinks but they do have an impressive drink list. I like how their regular tap water has lemon and cucumber slices in them. I do that with my own water at home sometimes to add additional flavor.

Last but not least, awesome service must be noted for everyone who wants to try the place. Our waiter was attentive and gave a brief explanation of all the background/overview of the dishes and even travel trips for Philippines.

Art in East Village

One can live in New York for years and still miss half of the fun stuff that goes on around the various neighborhoods. I found out about the Howl Festival in Tompkins Square Park through a MeetUp group called Origami MeetUp Group (or O.M.G.).

Origami
The Meetup event was to fold origami to include in the mural submission for the festival. See below for a close up of the origami works (power in numbers!) and the final product (portrait of Allen Gainberg, even the glasses are made out of paper). Check out Sok and crew at the Origami MeetUp Group and also at http://creased.com/

photo 3

photo 2

The group went to a restaurant called Westville which featured a delicious gazpacho that had jicama and avocado as ingredients, in addition to the usual suspects like tomato, cucumber, red pepper, and onion. The market plate section also featured so many good looking veggies I just have to come back. Three locations in the city, too.

Art
I also took the opportunity to walk around the park to take in the other artworks. If you haven’t been to the Howl Festival before, you should mark your calendars for next year. Art in action offers so much creative energy!

This is one of my favorite paintings around the park. I didn’t get a chance to meet the artist but he did leave his info: http://clarkcarr.cc/

photo 1

I met Sam, the artist for this work below (my photo did not get the entire picture which spells out READ):  http://samita.us/ Now I just need to look into his pop up books.

photo 4

I did not get a chance to jot down this artist’s info but awesome composition as well.

photo 5

More Reading
Allen Ginsberg: http://www.allenginsberg.org/
Howl text: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381
Howl on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50
Tompkins Square: http://www.city-journal.org/article02.php?aid=1155

and finally, I leave you with a peach colored rose from the park.

photo (1)

Saturday, June 02, 2012

30 Days of Queens: Day Two – Kane’s

Brunch is a big deal in Manhattan. We’ve all heard and witnessed the long lines, the hype, the overpriced lox omelets, the underwhelming fresh juices or mimosas. How about brunch in Flushing? The only line I’ve seen for brunch are for dim-sum joints and soup dumplings. I don’t like to participate in either hype and I hate how loud those places are (I don’t know about you, but when I’m groggy in the morning, I like to sip my coffee and not deal with screaming people). As such I only reserve dim-sum for 10am (early bird) when family is visiting. and I go to the soup dumpling places for dinner on a week day so I don’t have to get with the crowd.

For a lazy Saturday or Sunday morning, and by morning I actually mean between 10:30am-1pm, I go to Kane’s for brunch. My philosophy around brunch is that I shouldn’t have to take 30min getting there and that I shouldn’t have to wait for more than a few minutes getting a seat. The breakfast food shouldn’t suck (if a place can’t do eggs they really should just close down) and the menu shouldn’t cost more than a normal dinner. Kane’s meets my brunch philosophy perfectly and even offers me a booth when I only have party of two. Try that anywhere else and they’ll tell you they only give booths to four or more…

Photo courtesy of a Yelper (placeholder until I take my own photo):

At Kane’s I always start with a pot of coffee, whether I need it or not. Then I take about ten minutes (this drives my companions bananas) to leaf through the colorful laminated menu made out of magazine cutout of celebrities. When I came to Flushing I could swear the menu was more scandalous. The current and newer version is much more tame. Anyhow, in between the celebrity pictures, you’ll find plenty of food options.

In no particular order, various recommendations:

  • sunny side up eggs
  • garden omelet
  • spinach feta omelet
  • French toast (their version is superb)
  • breakfast sampler
  • morning kiss breakfast combo
  • bacon (it should be part of most combos, skip the sausage)

Other things I like about the place are the photographs on the walls and the funny looking lights. There also used to be a nude statue holding take-out menus at the entrance which may or may have been removed.

Kane’s, thanks for for all those weekends when I’m too lazy to cook or have visitors from out of town. In my search for my new neighborhood diner, I hope to find a place that has a healthy combo of cozy atmosphere and tasty eats. Maybe I will come back for some French toast when I come for a afternoon Mets game in the future.

Friday, June 01, 2012

30 Days of Queens: Day One–Unisphere

I’m moving out of Queens in July. In the last 30 days I will try to hit places that I haven’t been to. As a tribute to my time here, on days when I don’t explore a new place, I will write an entry on a frequent hangout.

Ideas below:

Unisphere, Queens Museum of Art, Citifield, Library, Botanical Gardens, various food places, Meadow Lake, various supermarkets, various bakeries, etc.

IMAG0402

I first heard about unisphere from the movie Men In Black. I haven’t seen the movie since I moved to Queens but probably should see it again, just to compare notes. If you remember the scene where Will Smith and co are battling aliens who are trying to fly away in flying sauces, you’ll recognize the above. At the time I had no idea where the scene was, so when I moved to Flushing, it was quite nice to see the unisphere from the subway and plan a trip to there.

The flying saucers themselves are not that interesting since the structures are quite old and there doesn’t seem to be much going on. On a sunny spring day, the unisphere is surrounded by cherry blossoms and can make for a nice photo op for tourists (although there are few… who wants to trek all the way to Flushing just for this?) You will also find plenty of skateboarders using the area under the unisphere as a place to practice.

The different placards around the unisphere explain the world fair history. It’s kind of strange to read about the grand exhibitions when most of the structures have been torn down. I suppose the good news is that at least the area had been converted into green space and public park for all to use.

For more reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_New_York_World's_Fair
http://www.westland.net/ny64fair/
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fmcp