New York City, Day 2 (Part 1): Brooklyn Flea, a food post

Day two of our New York City trip was spent exploring Brooklyn. We first went to the Brooklyn Flea market on Lafayette Ave, where we spent all morning browsing through the wonderful vintage shops and eating some very good food, and then took the train to Williamsburg to go check out the Brooklyn Library of Art, Pies & Thighs and then grabbed a coffee at Bakeri. It was a nice day, made for walking, and had a good time just ‘sight seeing’. We somehow managed to not get lost that day, which was ggrreaaat.

The Brooklyn Flea market was amazing. I would move to Brooklyn in a heartbeat just so I could go there every weekend to pig out and look at pretty vintage stuff all day. I had seen pictures of the item vendors on the internet before, but I was really surprised to see that there was such huge and diverse group of food vendors. (I was sort of just thinking there’d just be hotdogs). There were people out there making and selling wood fired oven pizzas, lobster rolls, iced chocolate chai tea, specialty doughnuts (Dough – we got the dulce de leche, which was so light and fluffy), and loads of other stuff. We even saw a table for Momofuku Milk Bar shared with a group called Maiden Preserves, they make very delicious fruit preserves.

We left the market with satisfied tummies and some food to take back to Toronto. We got two jars of Maiden Preserves‘s Rhubarb and Lemon & Vanilla preserves and King County Jerky Co‘s Korean BBQ and Orange Ginger beef jerky. We also bought cute little letterpress blocks..more on that later!

pulled pork sandwiches two ways

Turns out that once you get a slow cooker, making pulled pork is easy peasy. Poaching an egg on the other hand….

New York, Day 1 (Part 4): Ippudo, second dinner

Leo and I are divided about this. I loved Ippudo, but he thought it was completely overpriced and just ‘okay’. At about $14 starting price for a bowl and a ridiculous wait time of an hour and half to get a table, it was admittedly not really worth it. However, the service was fast and the dining atmosphere really fun once you get past the weird loungey club feel of the front/waiting area.

Since we were full from our first dinner at Graffiti, we just shared an appetizer (pork buns) and got a bowl of ramen each. (Because a bowl of ramen is totally light fare!) It’s been too long and I don’t remember which ones we got. Mine was plain and Leo’s was some extravagant thing in a red bowl. The pork buns were so-so and could have done without the mayo. As for the ramen, I really liked them. The noodles were a bit starchy, but I didn’t mind the texture. Leo, however, hated them and thought it was just poorly made and stale or something. I think we at least agreed that the broths were pretty amazing. They were just so deliciously layered with flavour that had I not been full from our first dinner at Graffiti, I would have drank it all…….but I only got through half of my bowl before I reached that terrible block…you know…that point when you realize you really can’t continue eating, but you really want to…but…:(

As far as ramens go, I think Ippudo is definitely one of the best. A hearty bowl of rich soup….a little bit pricier than usual, but still good.

Ippudo
65 4th Ave | Website | Yelp

New York City, Day 1 (Part 3): Graffiti NY, first dinner

Graffiti was the turning point to what looked like was going to be a really bad evening. After a terrible afternoon spent searching for a  camera store that took two hours to find, rushing to go visit MoMA before it closed, and then once again wandering around in circles trying to find the restaurants on our list for the day, getting to the first restaurant of our choice (Ippudo) and then being told that we would have to wait over an hour to get seated, I was ready to call it quits. At this point it was about 9 o’clock and the only thing we had eaten were the pastries from Bouchon and some ice-cream. Needless to say, I was starving. I was becoming increasingly passive aggressively and petulant, and somehow Leo kept his cool throughout the entire ordeal and managed to pacify me as we retraced our steps back and went looking for Graffiti instead. That was honestly the best thing we did that day.

Graffiti was just superb. Excellent service and quality food at a reasonable price. We ordered the Green Mango Paneer ($7), Pickled Ginger Scallops with Candied Chilli ($12) and the Green Chilli Shrimp ($15), which were all light and delicate dishes.  At first they didn’t seem spicy at all, but the heat built up quite nicely as we ate. We skipped out on dessert because we didn’t want to be too full for our second dinner, but it seems like that was a mistake, because most of the reviews rave about their sweets. I would love to go back again and try more dishes, like their Braised Pork Buns…yummm.

Graffiti
224 East 10 Street | Website | Yelp

Brooklyn Flea on panorama

Really nice shot from Leo’s panorama camera he bought at the Salvation Army. He was expecting it to be 4×6, but got something like a 4×12 instead.