Luke had the opportunity to go to New York for a conference so I decided to tag along. We dropped Latte off to be a wild woman at the kennel and started our road trip. For the first night, the number one thing on our mind was food….GOOD FOOD!
DAY 1:
We had dinner in on 32nd Street and Broadway. BCD Tofu house is a big Korean food chain specializing in…tofu! More specifically, tofu hotpot, a popular dish for Koreans.
Luke had Korean BBQ Squid. Luke loves squid!
After our fabulous dinner, we walked two doors down to what would become our newest obsession in dessert: Pinkberry!
Here is there menu: notice the calorie labels since it is a requirement in New York.
So the idea is that you pick the flavor of frozen yogurt, in my case, green tea flavor, then you choose your toppings: mochi, mangoes, chocolate, and captain crunch!
Luke chose the passionfruit flavor with: mochi, strawberry, mango, and granola
This was delicious! We talked about it for the next 4 days, none stop!
On this night, we bought tickets to see Phantomof the Opera. If you are Broadway first timer, I highly recommend this show to start. It’s the longest running show on Broadway. Even though the show is old, the music is always wonderful and special effects are still great by today’s standards.
DAY 2
This day was a very rainy day. Because of the rain, we canceled our plan to go to Chinatown and the World Trade Center memorial as their are quite far. We decided to walk up 5th Avenue and look at all the stores and decorations. Luke is a big fan of basketball which meant the NBA store was a must stop for him.
Here is Luke vs. MBA players in height:
Here is Luke’s hand size vs. Dirk Nowitzki’s hand size:
FAO Schwarz had a huge store on 5th Avenue. Check out this nutcracker soldier made of candy:
This was my favorite Christmas tree on this trip, inside the Westin hotel we were staying at:
Tonight was also a very important night, we were going to a Japanese restaurant called En, recently reviewed on Food and Wine magazine. I made the reservation 3 weeks in advance to eat here. I was especially interested in this restaurant because their own hand made tofu got a very good review in the magazine. Since I work for a tofu company and eat lots of tofu, I had to try En’s tofu at least once. After getting there and looking at their menu:
Luke and I decided on the Kaiseki set, which is a set menu based on ingredients that are in season. Our first course was called O-Banzai. It’s came in 3 little dishes. The flavors ranged from very light (right) to strong (left) to start off our palettes.
Then we had sashimi:
Before moving on to the next course in our Kaiseki dinner, our special ordered tofu hot pot came: The tofu was made in the pot since it was in the pot’s shape. The garnish included dehydrated seaweed, green onions, and radish. The sauce was an acidic sauce, not very salty. It was a very special dish, the tofu was very light, softer than silken tofu and had a nice beany flavor.
Then moving on with our Kaiseki dinner to miso marinated black cod:
The next course was also tofu, which En made themselves. Instead of hot, this time it’s served chilled: the chilled version actually seemed a little firmer than the hot pot version, probably due to the time the coagulant had to set. It was paired with light Japanese soy sauce as the only added flavoring. Very very good again.
Next was the main course, which was pork belly in the original menu: I thought it was really funny that this dish came with a Chinese version of soy sauce marinated egg.
Instead of pork belly, I traded for sea bass:
The next course is the traditional bowl of rice to end the meal. Keep in mind by this time we were very very full already. Usually in Taiwan we get a steamed bowl of sweet rice with fish roe on top. En decided to do Ochazuke, which means rice in tea, or fish sauce. This is the perfect dish to have on a warm day. First it comes with the fish sauce on the side, a clear broth and the rice in a bowl. You are suppose to pour the broth into the rice and mix everything together.
Last but not least, dessert finishes this perfect meal: pumpkin ice cream! Even though I was really full and couldn’t finish my ochazuke, I had no problem finishing my ice cream here!
While we were there, I think we were the only table that ordered Kaiseki. The other tables ordered individual dishes from the menu. We’ll have to try that next time, definitely worth coming back again!
New York also has numerous cupcake bakeries. I think Crumbs has the best cupcake though. The Magnolia bakery cupcake was quite small for the price. Crumbs cupcakes came in many flavors: Boston cream, Smores, Cappuccino, Red Velvet, Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Mint…etc. Just remember, one cupcake is not for one person. Eat only a couple of bites at a time as each cupcake has about 500 calories! Even though cupcakes are a great dessert, we still like Pinkberry! Pinkberry rocks!
New York’s night scene is also very beautiful since you get to see the Christmas decorations light up. Rockfeller center had a huge tree and looked beautiful with all the lights.
