East Village & Beyond

A roundup of the notable eats from the past 2 weeks in NYC. Despite the long commute to work, East Village sure has its charms..especially when it comes to all of the great food. The night before I moved to NYC, I created a spreadsheet of 100+ restaurants/foodtrucks/holeinthewalls that I had to try. Fortunately, I've manage to slowly chip away at the list (while concurrently adding even more).

1) Asian Goodness

Totto Ramen: Spicy ramen with egg + char siu pork, Extra intense ramen with extra pork, egg and other goodies
Prosperity Dumplings: BEST DUMPLINGS I have ever had (and $9 for 50 of them???)
Brick Lane Curry House: Lunch buffet for 10 bucks!

BCD Tofu House: New K-town obsession. Spicy cold noodles and spicy hot tofu :)
Sao Mai: $6 bucks Bah Mihn and Pork Bun.Yummy and one of the cheapest eats in EV.

2) Flushing

Hahm Ji Bach aka the most famous Korean BBQ in Flushing, Queens. Michelin recommended to boot.
Pork Belly & Gal Bi

Li's Noodles, Kung Fu Bubble Tea, Xiao Long Bao from Nan Xiang Dumpling House, Portuguese Egg Tarts from
New Flushing Bakery.

 3) Drinks

Cucumber cocktail, Punch bowls from CienFuegos, happy hour at 10 Degree Bar.

4) Gourmet Fast Food

Crif Dogs Hot Dog
Luke's Lobster Lobster Roll

  
5) Good Old Fast Food

Japadogs: Beef hot dg with spicy mayo, seaweed and other Asian flavors
Mark's: Bacon, regular, and pulled pork sliders & cheese fries

Federal Donuts

Federal Donuts has slowly found itself in the Penn lexicon of must eats of downtown Philly. Fortunately for us, the recent opening of the Sansom street location has made it a whole lot easier to savor the goodness of fried chicken and fried dough. Even more fortunate is that you also don't have to journey down at 8am (as I was previously told) to get your hands on some fried delicacies. But if you do want the best selection, you probably have to go earlier than noon which was when we finally managed to arrive.

They were out of the "fancy donuts" (think Maple Bacon, French Toast, and Cherry Almond flavors) by the time we got there, so we opted to for the "hot fresh donuts". Probably didn't need to get one of each flavor as we also ordered a massive amount of fried chicken but hey, it is Valentine's Day...

The fried chicken selection comes with the choice of dry seasonings or glazed and breast, wings, drumsticks or any sort of combination. We opted for the fried chicken wings. The chili garlic glaze was not very spicy (in my opinion) but still very delicious in an Asian-fusiony kind of way. The Shabazzi seasoning had middle eastern accents and was fried to perfection. Juicy chicken on the inside and just the right amount of seasoning on the outside. Oh yea, you also got a honey donut with every order of fried chicken...

We capped off the adventure with some serious jenga playing and bubble tea at TeaDo in Chinatown.

+ Milk Bubble Tea
+ Hot Japanese Green Milk Tea

Snapshots of Travels

Left: Crab tostada over salad
Upper Right: Seafood mix, empanada over beans
Bottom Right: Sausage Sandwich from "The International Accordion Festival"

An impromptu stop at Crumbs after a NYC trip (for the first time!)
I've never been the biggest of cupcakes (give me an insomnia chocolate chip cookie any day) but these cupcakes just about live up to all of the hype

Shown: Coffee Toffee
We also got an insanely caloric cookie mania something or other to go but that got devoured later...

Some absurdly delicious bubble tea
Milk tea with Boba
Green tea smoothie with grass jelly (my favorite) 

One more exam and the semester will be officially over.

...Fried Chicken & Lychee

Probably not the best combination to try together....If you haven't had the chance to try Lychee bubble tea yet, get on it!
After walking 10 blocks from the Chinatown bus stop, this was the perfect thirst quincher on another sweltering summer day. The fried chicken had a really unique blend of spices and was served with thai basil.

Dim Sum at Golden Unicorn (NYC Chinatown). Now that is some real shrimp shumai.

Chocolate Froyo at Forty Carrots (Bloomindales NYC). A well trusted NY foodie told me this was the best place to get Froyo and I think I have to agree. You know its good stuff when you don't even need a single topping.