NYC is The City

After a quick stopover in DC to see Grandma, it was time to hit the city, New York City.  This trip was my first time riding Megabus, which gets a plus for free WiFi and a minus for a pretty horrible bathroom.

Upon arrival, my cousin and two of her friends took me to ABC Kitchen, which is interestingly enough part of the ABC furniture store in both a financial and a physical sense.  The decor is has a Gothic theme but is spacious enough that it was not tacky.

The advantage of going to someone else's favorite restaurant is that I had to do very little to get delicious food.  We started with three appetizers/market tables of Roasted Butternut Squash with parmesan and pumpkin seeds, Roasted Brussel Sprouts, and Cured Meat with local cheese.  The squash was nice and soft, with the pumpkin seeds adding a contrasting texture.  I am not a fan of Brussel Sprouts (at all), but would be willing to eat these again (without any threats, which is saying a lot).  Not a lot to say about the meat and cheese.  It was fresh and thinly sliced and delicious like I expected.

Squash is warm and delicious.

Browned green balls

A plate of meat and cheese is a plate of meat and cheese.

All the pizzas on offer by the restaurant are whole wheat.  We tried an intriguing one with clams, mint, parsley, and fresh chilies.  The clams were clearly added near the end since they were cooked just-right.  Also, no sand/grit in the intestines means that these were alive in clean water for some time.  After polishing off a bottle of wine and four savory dishes, we decided to split two desserts between the four of us.  The chocolate cake with malted chocolate ganache and toasted marshmallow icing was okay.  It tasted fine but in no way blew me away.  The sundae of salted caramel ice cream, candied peanuts & popcorn, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce was far superior.  The candied popcorn was very much an out-of-the-box idea and worked amazingly well with the cool softness of the rest of the dessert.  This along with the squash are worth revisiting.
Another friend of my cousin plays trumpet in a band and had a gig at a small music bar, so that is where we headed after dinner and drinks.  It was a cozy bar with a small corner stage.  The live music was interesting although not really my kind of thing.  Most people were having beers on tap, but I finally got the mojito that I had been craving for days.  We shifted to a dance club/bar later in the evening and ended at 1:30am.  Thus ended my first explosively exciting night in NYC.

No fancy names: you get exactly what is written on the menu.

Nothing to write home about. 

The next day was much more relaxed.  My cousin and I met up with one of my friends from Amherst who is working in the city in client advertising.  We strolled about shops in SoHo.  The day was blistering cold, so we ended up wandering into all sorts of stores.  One of our only targets was Sabon, a store for handmade soaps, lotions, and scrubs.  The store has floor to ceiling shelves full of product (2 stories worth!).  They even have a little fridge for their handmade body butter.  Most ingeniously, there was a fountain with warm water in the middle of the store.  Now, you can actually try that scrub or soap before committing.  This is great both to get an accurate feel for the effect on the skin and to smell the result.

The upper wrap-around is pretty much just storage for product.  Cluttered product.

Four at a time can wash.

For lunch, I requested Xian Famous Foods to make me forget all about the disgusting and inaccurate ethnic food that I had at Shaang'xi Famous Food in LA.  I got my hands on really authentic liangpi 凉皮 and cumin lamb sandwich 孜然羊肉肉夹馍.

Unlike this other restaurant whose name I am trying to forget, this liangpi had the sauce, the vegetables, and the texture.

Dinner was at Mono+Mono, an Asian tapa-style restaurant.  The decor was very much the most enjoyable part of the meal.  The restaurant had a old style DJ booth up high in the back, along with two whole walls of records and a rotating track on the circle with what I suppose are some of the highlights of the collecting.  However, the food was generally fairly greasy.  Their self-acclaimed "Best Korean Fried Chicken" didn't sit too well after the rest of the dishes, nor was it tasty.

Dessert, at Cha-An, was a whole other story.  We got in ten minutes before closing with no shame of using the reason that it was my last night in NYC.  I felt transported back to Kyoto when I stepped into the restaurant due to the decor, the attitude of the staff, and even the menu book style and format.  There was even a tatami room, likely for tea ceremony.  Food looks like light Japanese home fare rather than fancy restaurant food; they had to be saved for another visit though due to having just finished dinner and the lateness of the hour.

I started with a matcha latte with red bean paste.  The red bean paste was unnecessary, but the latte itself was done fairly well.  Enough sugar was added to round out the flavor of the latte without cutting out the strength of the matcha too much, although I do prefer my matcha latte with a little less sweetness.  All of the desserts were tasty, but I definitely enjoyed my choice, the three mochi balls with green tea or chestnut paste inside, the most.  This is the kind of Japanese dessert experience that I am missing in the West Coast, which is unbelievable given how much closer Japan is.

Great shareable dessert.

Very fresh mochi, likely self-made.

The cuteness does, in fact, add to the flavor.

So much stuff in one little glass.

The next morning, it was a quick brunch with two friends who just got engaged to each other before hopping on a Megabus up to Boston.  With that, my adventures in NYC were at an end.