I like my trips to have some sort of motto, theme, or theme song. A trip out to Southern California in October 2009 had Super Mario Brothers as the theme song, for some reason. During a roadtrip to Boston from Toronto with one of my best friends, I started singing HMS Pinafore as sung by Sideshow Bob in the Cape Feare episode (we got really bored by the end of that drive), so “Oh little buttercup, poor little buttercup'” became the theme song for that trip. Sadly, my NYC didn’t get a theme song, but it definitely did have a theme (food, of course), and a motto, Go Food! (which came late Sunday afternoon when my brother-in-law tried to text my sister that he got food, but with typing on an iPhone too quickly and having big fingers, it came out as Go food). It was definitely a Go Food! kind of weekend.
Smorgasburg in Williamsburg, with the Empire State Building in the background (and how cute is that little girl). It’s a flea market with nothing but food vendors, definitely my kind of thing. Not that cheap, but definitely fun and tasty. Our favourite thing was spicy ginger slushes from Kelvin Natural Slush. SO GOOD. We need some of those here.
This is false advertising. They didn’t rub us.
This stand spoke to me. Unfortunately they were just taking orders for whole ducks. But it was an indication of things to come later at Momofuku.
Will, Steve, and Aileen enjoying Vietnamese street food.
Black cherry and blackberry popsicle from people's pops. Real fruit puree, nothing artificial. It was hot, so something sweet and cold was very refreshing.
We also saw Jeffrey Steingarten there, but I won’t call it a celebrity sighting because he’s so not a celebrity . (If I’d seen Anthony Bourdain, it would have been a different story). He was wearing a suit jacket in the heat, and he was looking around as if he was waiting for someone to recognize him (foodies, come worship at my feet!). Nobody did.
momofuku ssäm bar – the famous pork buns. SO GOOD. I could have eaten five of those. I’m usually pretty good about being gluten free, but I eat wheat occasionally, when I think it’s worth it. This was worth it.
The rotisserie duck lunch. SO GOOD. Duck sausage wrapped in duck skin on rice, lettuce and mint, chive pancakes, picked carrots and daikon, and a ramekin of the duck drippings with ginger and scallion. SO GOOD. Did I say that already?
The duck sandwich. I didn’t try it, but I was told it was really really good.
We didn’t get a chance to try the other momofukus (we could have spent the entire weekend only eating at momofuku – I’d like to come back and go to Noodle Bar and reserve the fried chicken, and also try milk bar and má pêche), but I definitely recommend ssäm bar. I’ve heard there can be quite a lineup, but we were there at 2 pm on Saturday and we didn’t have to wait.
Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery at Rockerfeller Centre. I brought a package of bouchons back for my friend Michelle; last year we’d made them from the boxed mix from Williams & Sonoma and thought they were nothing special, so we wanted to know what the real things were like. We still thought they were nothing that special.
I had a giant caramel macaron and it was SO GOOD (are you noticing a secondary theme here?). It was $3.25, so I would have been highly disappointed if it hadn’t been SO GOOD.
Fried quail and waffles at brunch at Restaurant Marc Forgione. Marc Forgione is the newest Iron Chef, and my sister really wanted to try his restaurant. But it was only okay. Not SO GOOD. I would have rather gone back to ssäm bar, to be honest. My brother-in-law ran into Marc Forgione at Bloomingdale’s in SoHo later in the day; he should have told him that brunch was somewhat unsatisfactory.
We also went to Birreria at Mario Batali’s Eataly (beer, sausage, and sauerkraut on the rooftop with a great view) and il laboratorio del gelato (everyone raves about this place, but personally I think the gelato in Toronto is better), but sadly no more food photos.
I’m getting hungry just looking at these photos again. So I’m off to the kitchen, dreaming of pork buns but eating something else instead. Back tomorrow with the shopping post.
