Some readers may remember my first visit to Congee Village. I went for “brunch” and sampled various rice porridge’s (congee’s) with my brother, Joe, and Chris. This time, I returned to Congee Village (their location on Bowery) with my dad, brother, and some of my dad’s friends from Taiwan and New Jersey. When I go to Chinese restaurants with my mom, I usually sit back and relax because she is usually ordering something off the menu or something crazy that I’ve never even heard of (same with my dad and all of my other relatives). Luckily, one of my dad’s friends ordered for us and I just had to sit there and pretend to study the large menu. We started off with a very light bone soup:
The bone soup was too light (not enough flavor) but the tofu was tender and very delicate. The server was really bad at portioning out the soup; everyone’s bowl just had soup and one piece of tofu and all of the meat was left in the large bowl! What was he thinking?
After our soup, we ordered some jellyfish:
The jellyfish was not properly seasoned, the spices were more sweet than savory, and I think it wasn’t all jellyfish because the textures were vastly different. I am a huge fan of jellyfish, but the stuff at Congee Village just didn’t cut it.
Next, we ordered some crabs:
The crabs were seasoned well, but really difficult to eat. I ended up giving my portion to my dad because I didn’t feel like sucking up tiny bits of meat (if Emilie Hirsch asked me, I would tell him that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze).
The spareribs came next:
They were too sweet for me, but my brother was a fan. I think my mom makes better spareribs (Congee Village should use more soy sauce and less brown sugar).
You may think I had a really bad meal at Congee Village, but no, the food kept coming and started to get better as we went on in the night. The first good dish I had was the kong xin cai:
My dad thought the vegetables tasted a little old, but I enjoyed the dish. It is pretty difficult to mess up this dish.
The next good dish was the fried fish with two types of chives:
The first time I tried yellow chives was in Chicago (my marathon shopping trips with my mom always ended at Ken Kee with fish and yellow chives). At Ken Kee, the owner explained that yellow chives were covered from direct sunlight, so they’re the same as the green chives, just without sun (and without sun, they don’t produce chlorophyll). The chive combination was slightly sweet and very garlicky and the fried fish added a nice crunch to the chives. I probably ate the most of this dish because it was situated right in front of me and I didn’t want to be rude and move the lazy Susan.
Chicken came out next:
The chicken didn’t have any real flavor to it; was it supposed to taste like soy sauce? Tea? Just chicken? I didn’t like this dish and didn’t eat much of it.
My second to last dish was the tofu:
The tofu was tender, flavorful, and quite delicious. Definitely worth ordering again. I liked the different textures from the tofu; very tender on the inside, but there was a slight layer of soggy-crunchiness. It’s like when you soak your cereal for a couple minutes to get it to the right consistency (am I the only one that does that?)
My favorite dish of the night:
Steamed fish with black bean sauce. The fish tasted like silky tofu with a slight saltiness from the black bean sauce. It was seriously so good that I contemplated ordering a second one.
Everyone had a lot of fun at dinner and we discussed my dad’s friend’s job (he is a professor at Rutgers and researches some really interesting stuff – Chinatown gangs and prostitution rings). My dad also met up with one of his students (she is a part-time flight attendant and had a two day layover in New York). Finally, my dad’s colleague in Taiwan has a daughter studying finance in New Jersey and she came along as well. In fact, I used to hang out with her when we were in Taiwan (although I don’t remember this little tidbit). Apparently I used to go shopping for barrettes with her:
And the entire table after dinner:
Congee Village was just started to get super busy when we were leaving (around 10PM). Seems like a really fun place to go after a night of drinking on the LES!
For Sara’s last day in the office, Abby, Soren, and I took her out for lunch. One of the luxuries of working in the west village is being so close to great options for lunch (The Spotted Pig, Mexicana Mama, Energy Kitchen, Baoguette, Employees Only, San Panino, and John’s Pizzeria…just to name a FEW). We decided to check out Keste because we were all in the mood for pizza and the last time I went, I was really happy with everything.
The four of us decided to order four different pizzas; Keste cuts the pieces into quarters, so it was perfect for us to share. Sara ordered the margherita:
The pizza comes with tomato sauce, olive oil, and fresh mozzarella. As you can tell, the pizza isn’t a perfect circle; that’s because Keste is part of the Association of Neapolitan Pizza, which requires that dough must be kneaded by hand or mixers which do not cause the dough to overheat, and the dough must be punched down and shaped by hand. The pizza is absolutely amazing; tangy tomato sauce with rich and creamy mozzarella. The dough is also pretty much perfect.
Abby ordered the funghi pizza:
Mushrooms, zucchini, tomato sauce, and olive oil. Abby wanted to get the veggie pizza because the last time she was at Keste, she ordered one with cream and thought it was too heavy. The funghi pizza was good, but was too healthy for a pizza and didn’t have any cheese (practically the best part of a pizza!!!)
Soren ordered the prosciutto and arugula pizza:
This was probably my least favorite pizza; the pizza had arugula (good), olive oil (good), mozzarella (really good), and prosciutto (bad). I’m not a huge fan of prosciutto and ate the meat on the pizza, which made it a lot better.
I ordered the pizza del re:
Yes, I realize it has prosciutto on it and I just claimed that I didn’t like it, but I picked off the prosciutto and it was a mighty tasty pizza. The pizza was topped with mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, truffle oil, and extra virgin olive oil. I was actually glad I only had one piece because it was really heavy and I probably couldn’t have eaten the entire thing.
I really enjoyed lunch at Keste and would go back just for the margherita pizza. If you get it to go, it’s half off ($6 instead of $12). The lines are ridiculously long in the evenings, so lunch is probably a better time to visit.
While my dad was visiting, he wanted to eat some authentic New York pizza. Since he lives in Taiwan, he doesn’t have many opportunities to eat New York style pizza. The only pizza he can get his hands on is some Pizza Hut pizza with crazy toppings, but he doesn’t eat that stuff because Pizza Hut is not exactly the best pizza on earth. David and I were initially going to take him to John’s, but no one was in the mood to wait in line or eat an entire pizza, so we opted for Joe’s instead:
Joe’s Pizza is probably best known for being in Spiderman (in the movie, the phone number on the sign didn’t change so technically, you could’ve ordered a pizza for delivery from Joe’s). They’re right around the corner from John’s, Keste, and Bleecker Street Pizza, but they didn’t have a long line and they sold by the slice, so we were sold. We ordered one slice with mozzarella and one slice with pepperoni:
We saw a dog locked up next to Joe’s trying REALLY hard to get someone’s crust:
Cute, but sad. I told the puppy that the crust was too thin, the sauce was too sweet, and the pepperoni was too oily! PIZZA FAIL. AND! Slices were $3.50 EACH! Seriously, the 99 cent pizza tastes about the same as the stuff you get at Joe’s. I will absolutely NEVER go back to Joe’s, especially since John’s, Keste, and Bleecker Street are all around the corner. Next time, I’m going to order an entire pizza from John’s and just man up and eat the entire thing even if I’m not hungry.
For the past 6 weeks, I have been diligently taking care of my Aerogarden (when I say diligently, I mean I haven’t turned off the lights so the Aerogarden has been able to grow and take care of itself). In the beginning, I had 6 pods with herbs. Now, I have actual herbs that I can use:
Last week, I mentioned that I had to find a new resting place for the Aerogarden because I had to extend the arm due to the basil overgrowth. Well, luckily, someone left me a comment and told me to prune my basil because by extending the arm, I was weakening the other plants. Thank you, Staci, for giving me awesome advice! I pruned the basil last week and now it’s back in my corner (saving me lots of space AND helping my herbs!)
Also, last week the light for more nutrients lit up, which was kind of a surprise to me because I thought it was on a bi-weekly basis. I fed the water just because I was curious to see the growth and I wanted to stop the blinking light (you can easily turn it off, but I figured I’d just feed the plants at the same time). Here is the newly pruned basil:
Two days after I pruned it down, it basically grew brand new leaves. I’m going to use the basil to make lemon basil sorbet, something I tried at Whole Foods a long time ago that I thought last week when it was really hot and muggy outside.
There is one single chive sprouting up (quite high, actually), and I’m excited to see more chives come out of the pod soon:
The oregano is growing quite nicely, but one problem I’m seeing with some of the plants is that they need some guidance to grow straight:
The thyme is absolutely a mess now, meaning I need to start using it!:
The mint is starting to grow like a weed (finally!) and it’s starting to mix with the thyme a bit:
Finally, the dill grew a bit this weekend:
Still in very early stages of growth, but hopefully in another two weeks I’ll have something I can use!
Last week, my dad came to visit me and my brother for a couple of days. Since my dad is a huge fan of steak, I decided to make reservations at Sparks Steak House. I read a couple of favorable reviews and I hadn’t been there myself, so I thought it would be a good blogging opportunity. Sparks might be most famous for two mobsters being killed in front of the restaurant after dinner (according to Wikipedia, Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano and mobster Thomas Bilotti were gunned down near its entrance before having dinner in 1985 under the orders of John Gotti):
David ended up eating with our coworkers since it was someone’s last day at the company, but tagged along since we were eating with our dad. My dad just spent the day at Columbia University and I had spent the entire day working and snacking, so we basically had one person that was hungry and two semi-hungry people. We started off with the bread:
The bread was actually served warm, something I haven’t experienced much at steakhouses, which melted the cold slabs of butter. David cut me off after one piece, saying something to the waiter about my carb intake (not funny, David).
The menu was incredibly large (size-wise) and really difficult to handle at the small table, but in the majority of the reviews, I read that the NY Strip steak is the piece of meat to order. Not wanting to look at the menu too long because the menu was so large and uncomfortable for me to hold, my dad and I ordered a strip steak (medium rare), lamb (David’s choice), and mushroom buttons. Everything came out on a little cart (dim sum style):
NY Strip steak on the left, lamb on the right
The strip steak was kind of disappointing; the charring on the steak made pieces inedible (pieces were actually so blackened that when I bit into it, it just disintegrated in my mouth). The lamb, on the other hand, was very tender, well cooked (also medium rare), and very juicy and meaty. My dad was a little disappointed with the steak, but also really liked the lamb. For once, David didn’t like everything (he’s not a picky eater); David liked the lamb and we all agreed that the steak was not that great.
The mushroom buttons:
Originally, we wanted to order the creamed spinach, but David is deathly allergic to spinach, so we went with the mushrooms instead. The mushrooms were meaty and cooked very well, but nothing to write home about.
I usually don’t order dessert at restaurants because I love going to Pinkberry after meals, but David was in the mood for ice cream, so we ordered some chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream:
Three scoops in one order was definitely enough for the three of us (I don’t know how anyone can eat a full order of steak AND order dessert. The ice cream was rich, dense, very chocolately, and well-liked by all of us. The three of us after dinner:
A few things that annoyed me about Sparks and that will make me stay away from the steakhouse in the future:
1. For our 8pm reservation, they weren’t ready and made us wait at the bar. I understand that sometimes reservations aren’t ready if the restaurant is really busy, but there weren’t that many people in the restaurant. I really dislike it when restaurants push you to the bar to get pre-dinner drinks because I don’t drink and just end up standing at a bar waiting for my table that is obviously ready.
2. Their menus were super large and difficult to place anywhere. This is such a small issue, but their menus really made me cringe – why do you have to have a menu that is half my body size when you only serve 7 or 8 things?!
3. Their food just isn’t that great. With so many other steakhouses to choose from, Sparks is definitely not a place I’d recommend to any of my friends, families, or readers. I’d rather go to the Striphouse than Sparks (and that is saying a lot since I got deathly ill after my dinner at the Striphouse).
