LuckyRice Night Market

I couldn’t make it to the night market event tonight, but my brother was able to attend…and he took this picture of David Chang and Jeffrey Steingarten:

Did you go to the night market event? Was it fun? David said he drank and ate a lot of good food and that even though it was really packed, there weren’t any lines for food. He had a great time and he said it was a really well executed event!

Hula Hoops

Have you ever had the British chips called Hula Hoops? They come in different flavors (my favorite is the salt and vinegar) and they’re little hoops you can eat off your fingers! I found out about them through my ex-boyfriend, Chris (he studied in London for two years) and I recently saw them in Morton Williams and picked up a bag:

Look at how fun they are to eat:

They come in four different flavors – original, salt and vinegar (the best one, in my opinion), cheese and onion, and BBQ beef (a little weird, if you ask me).

Angel’s Share

After watching The Irish Curse a couple weeks ago, Joe and I were both starving so we took a cab to the east village and walked into Village Yokocho for a light meal. Joe treated me to dinner at the bar (lots of good food that I’ll post about later) and afterwards, we walked into a little lounge attached to the restaurant. The lounge, Angel’s Share, serves all types of interesting cocktails (similar to Death and Co, Pegu Club, or PDT). The mixologist has little colorful vials behind the bar and also a lot of tea infused vodkas. You enter through Village Yokocho:

The girls next to us at the bar were drinking some slushy drink that was multi-colored, so I ordered the same (not having any clue what it was). It ended up being a really good mix – frozen lychees, Curacao, infused rum (I think it might’ve been Jasmine):

Me and Joe:

The drinks we had were all really good and the bartender/mixologist really took his time to taste his finished product before serving them to any of the guests at the lounge. Angel’s Share is good for small groups (no more than 4 people in a group) or for a first date. Drinks are a little expensive ($15/each) but they’re definitely worth it!

How to Make Ginger Ale

When I saw this recipe posted on Amateur Gourmet, I knew I had to try it with my sodastream. Sodastream comes with a ginger ale syrup that is on the sweeter side (without the kick of chile peppers), so I figured this would be a fun drink to make. I served the syrup with Pimm’s and it was actually a big hit (at the lobster roll party). If I made it again, I’ll use less chili peppers – they really add a kick at the end!

Homemade Ginger Ale
recipe by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
adapted from “Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef”

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh ginger, unpeeled and cut into small dice
5 dried chili peppers
3/4 cup sugar
1.5 cups water
Soda water

I used five or six chili peppers because I wanted a really hot ginger ale. If you don’t want to burn your tongue or start sweating from drinking a cold soda, use less peppers.

Place the peeled ginger and the peppers in a blender and add a little of the sugar water:

Blend:

Pour the blended mixture back into the pot that was used to melt the sugar water:

I poured the mixture back into the pot just to make sure all of the sugar was melted and that everything was combined. After everything is combined, strain the mixture:

When the mixture is cool, you can pour two tablespoons into a glass and add soda water (and Pimm’s!)

Have you ever made your own syrup? What combinations have you tried?

Fairway Cafe

A couple of weekends ago, I found myself on the upper west side looking for something to eat. Originally, the plan was to get some cookies from Levain Bakery and then eat in the park, but afternoon rain put the kibosh on that plan. Instead, my friend and I ran into Fairway to look for something to eat and ended up eating in their upstairs cafe:

I would consider moving to the upper west side just to be closer to this Fairway grocery store. I love walking around their fresh produce aisles and the store seems to carry absolutely everything (the second floor grocery store is like the same stuff as the first floor, just organic! Why does this fascinate me so much?). I’ve heard that the cafe actually serves decent food, so we stopped in to grab a quick bite to eat.

The cafe was actually setting up for dinner service, but allowed us to order from their lunch menu since we still had 10 minutes before the actual transition to dinner (white tablecloths and candles for their dinner service!). I settled on a burger with blue cheese and fries:

Cooked medium rare:

And my friend ordered the chicken salad on Irish soda bread:

We weren’t expecting much but the cheeseburger really surprised us – the meat was juicy, cooked well, and seasoned just right. Two things: 1. I wish it were larger (when I saw it, I was a little surprised at how small the actual burger was) and 2. I wish the blue cheese on the burger were larger because some bites had cheese, some were not so lucky. The chicken salad was also pretty good, but the Irish soda bread was probably the worst bread choice to go with chicken salad. Fairway’s chicken salad was not bursting with flavor, but since I was not really exposed to this “chicken salad” phenomenon until an adult, I’m intrigued by any combination of chicken, celery and mayonnaise. However, eating the semi-dry chicken salad with crumbly Irish soda bread was like chugging bread crumbs; everything was dry and kind of sandy.

We didn’t stay for dessert, but the guys that sat next to us had chocolate shakes that looked really good and Fairway has a bunch of pie slices that I’ll get on another visit.