Philadelphia: Malaysian in Philly & Amis Trattoria

Best thing about traveling is discovering something new, but Malaysian?  Never thought I would be eating Malaysian in Philly.  I can only name one Malaysian restaurant I've tried in LA, but coworker and I were down to try something new, so for lunch, we walked over to Chinatown, which was about 2 blocks away from the convention center.

Penang

117 N 10th St 

Chinatown

Philadelphia, PA 19107 

penangusa.com

Apparently, Penang is a popular chain on the East Coast.  Good Yelp and Zagat rating too.

Our server was this old dude and he recommended us the Roti Canai.  Said that it was a must. Very glad we ordered it cause it was damn tasty.

Roti Canai, a Malaysian favorite, is a crispy style pancake from India, and at Penang, they give you a little cup of chicken potato curry as dipping sauce.  After I tried the curry, I sorta regretted ordering noodles instead of a curry cause it was fantastic.

But still, I was glad with my Chow Kueh Teow.  It's another Malaysian staple: stir fried flat rice noodles with fresh shrimp, squid, bean sprouts, eggs, soy sauce, and chili paste.  First time trying it!  I got it medium spicy, but totally could have increased the heat level.

Coworker's Mee Goreng, which is Indian style stir-fried egg noodles in a mild dried squid sauce with tofu, potato, shrimp, egg, grounded peanut, and bean sprouts.  It was his first time eating anything from Southeast Asia besides Thai food.  I tried a little bit and gotta say, it is good. Looks like pad thai, but definitely doesn't taste like it!

After eating at Penang, I've decided to seek out some Malaysian restaurant in LA!  A little late to the party, but I liked what I tried in Philly!

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Last time at Philly for the company dinner, we went to Fogo de Chao.  While Fogo is good, I wanted something that I can't get in LA, and with me in charge of reserving a restaurant for the company dinner this year, I chose an Italian restaurant, Amis Trattoria, which is about 15-20 minutes walking from the convention.

Oh also, sorry for the pics... since I was with some of our sales rep from other regions and customers, I didn't want to be rude and hold everybody so I tried to take the picture as fast as possible... resulting in some mediocre shots.

Amis Trattoria

412 S 13th St

Washington Square West

Philadelphia, PA 19147

amisphilly.com

Amis Trattoria.

Menu.  Amis'  menu is actually pretty modern for an Italian restaurant so some of the guests from the Midwest and the South, they were a little bit confused.

Open kitchen.  Very dim everywhere else.

Flying Fish Farmhouse Summer Ale.  Decided to go with a beer since our table were more beer folks.  Pretty good choice though!  Very drinkable Belgian brew from New Jersey.

Since most of the folks didn't know what to order except for their main plate, I ordered a few appetizers and the first to arrive was the Mixed Salumi Plate.  It is all made in house!

Mortadella with Hazelnut Honey.  Love moradella and that hazelnut honey is perfect with it.

Rabbit Terrine.  I think some of the folks at our table was weirded out by the rabbit terrine, but after they tried it, they all liked it!  Terrine is sorta like meatloaf, except this one made with rabbit.

Salami del Giorno with marmalade.  Very lightly cured.  

Meatball with tomato potato.  I wanted to try the swordfish meatball but decided that the old fashion meatball is much more familiar to everybody.

Fried cauliflower with Pecorino and salsa rossa.  I'm a sucker for cauliflower, especially ones that are fried!

I actually ordered something else as my main, but they messed up so I got the Rotini as my main.  Came with a variety of mushrooms and a fresh pea ragu.

Huge fan of the pea ragu and they certainly know their cooking time for the pasta!  Perfect texture.

Overall, good dinner, except for the mess up.  Luckily, my pasta was still tasty and I didn't want to make the others wait.  Not too sure how the others felt about Amis since it was a little different from the Italian they are used to, but hopefully they liked it too because these dinners are so important in developing good business relationships!

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After dinner, a coworker and I decided to walk back to our hotel instead of taking the cab to help digest a little bit.  On the way back, I remembered that two years ago, I went to the old fashion ice cream shop called the Franklin Fountain with the same coworker.  He's a huge fan of the sweets so we decided to make a little pit stop on our 30 minute walk back!

Franklin Fountain

116 Market St 

Old City

Philadelphia, PA 19106

franklinfountain.com

Outside of Franklin Fountain.

Inside. Exactly how I remembered.  They definitely go for the old fashion feel.  

Ordering counter with a list of the homemade ice cream available.  

Rather than ordering just ice cream like last time, I went all out and got the Franklin Mint sundae. 

Holy it was a big sundae and so damn good.  I like mint chip so I went full speed for the first half.  The minty Creme de Menthe helped too, but I definitely slowed down quite a bit after that.  The marshmallow glaze was way too thiiick and in the end, I just ate all the ice cream, with about half the glaze left.  

Got back to the hotel with this crazy sugar rush for a good hour or so!

New York: Sandy Party

What do New Yorkers do when a super storm comes shuts majority of NYC down?  Eat and drink!

That was what we literally did when Edwin, Link, and I got stuck in NYC cause our flights got canceled.  We, along with Jimmy, Janice, Allison, and Tim, just stayed in the living room playing drinking games all day. Somehow the small living room fit all 7 of us :P  We were lucky since the power, TV, and internet did not go out where we were, so we didn't feel Sandy as much as others.  There were even a few pizzeria and food places opened, doing deliveries during the storm!  Probably got hella business haha.

Like all of NYC, we went to the market and bought a bunch of food, ended up only cooking 3 meals, bought pizzas and beers during the storm, and even went to an empty Times Square at 2am.  It was definitely a different NYC experience.

The living room.  Where Edwin, Link, and I slept for a week.  Seriously though, thank goodness we didn't have to stay at a hotel.

When I woke up the morning Sandy hit on Oct 29th, breakfast was already ready!  Thanks to Janice, Allison, Tim, and Jimmy.  They even had a tub of King Taco's red sauce.  They were prepared haha.

Avocado scrambled eggs.  Fancy!

Pancakes!

What to do after breakfast?  SANDY PARTY!  We spent the majority of the day playing drinking card games.

We actually ran out of beer pretty fast so we went out to a market nearby that's still open to get some more: Bud Light, Yuengling, Heineken, and sake.  I wanted ice cream so also got some Edy's Mint Chip haha. We passed a dollar pizza place and they were still open!  Usually a whole pie is $8, but that day they were charging $10.  

Cheese pizza.  Not bad.  The crust wasn't as good as some of the other $1 pizza places.

We added a ton of garlic, oregano, and red chili flakes haha.

Always have Cup Noodles ready!

For dinner, we decided to pan fry the chicken thighs we bought, and make some curry.

Pot of curry slowly simmering.  We added onions and carrots to it.

It's a pretty and delicious plate if I say so myself :P  Add some green onion some Korean furikake... perfect.

Another plate.  

After spending a whole day drinking and staying indoors, some of us were getting a bit restless.  Luckily, the storm pretty much passed NYC by 2am, so we decided to go for an early morning walk.  

I've never seen Times Square so empty.  Only a few people walking, but most of the people on the streets were NYPD.

This was Edwin's first visit to NYC, and he got to see an empty Times Square.

Just a few blocks away, it was completely dark since power went out, but Times Square was still lit.  Sorta pretty how the light just reflects off the water.

On our way back, we decided to stop by Papaya Dog, which is right around the corner from Jimmy's.  No, it's no the popular Gray's or Papaya King, but good enough when most storms were closed.  I went for a corndog.

Edwin's Philly Cheesesteak with fries.

Lean steak, cheese, mayo, ketchup, and veggies.  Sorta odd to have ketchup in a cheesesteak, but for what it is and the price, not bad actually.

It was definitely what Edwin, Link, and I imagined when we came to New York City, but good friends and alcohol always mean a good time haha.  Homemade meals may not look as good as high end restaurants, but there's always that comforting feeling you get from a meal like that!

New York: Visiting Old Favorites, Katz's & Eataly

"Finally home!"  That was the first thought that popped into my head after being stuck in NY for a week and landing in LAX.  Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, my weekend trip to NY for Halloween turned into a week long vacation... and used up all my PTO!  Can't really complain though since we were safe and thanks to good friends and Jimmy housing us, it was a very very bromantic and eventful week.

Started the weekend off exactly how we planned, and then all of a sudden, Sandy showed up, forcing all airlines to cancel their flights from Sunday night and on.  Instead of flying out on Monday, Edwin, Link, and I didn't know when we would be able to leave.  We just kept calling the airlines or going online trying to find out, and it wasn't until the afternoon we realized we were gonna be in NY for awhile.  I kept trying to see if I can fly out of Newark, but after seeing the news, I changed my rebooked flight from Wednesday to Friday to be on the safe side.

Of course, being stuck in NY for a week, I ate a lot more there too.  Rather than posting it day by day like I usually do, I'll just post it in groups.  I actually lost my sense of time for a bit thanks to being stuck in doors and having a random week long break haha.

Started off the trip visiting a few old favorites: Katz's and Mario Batali's Eataly in the Flatiron District!

Since I took the red eye flight on Thursday night, I stopped by a Dunkin' Donuts near Jimmy's apartment.

Chocolate Glazed and Blue Cream.

Both were... meh.  I want Krispy Kreme :P

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Link and Edwin got there on Thursday, and after a night out, they were still sleeping when I got to Jimmy's.  By the time they got ready to go out, it was already past lunch time and what better way to start off NY than a visit to Kat's?

Katz's Delicatessen

205 E Houston St 

Between Avenue A & Essex St

Lower East Side

New York, NY 10002 

katzsdelicatessen.com

Yea, I love Katz's.  Pastrami orgasm.

Cool neon signs they have.

Katz's is all you need :P

The craziness that is Katz's.  Always so many people.

This time I requested a leaner cut, with more bark.  It was definitely a bit tougher compared to other times.

Still, so damn good with that mustard.


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Afterward Katz's and walking around for a bit, we were out of time pretty much since we were attending Friday night's Sensation in Brooklyn.  We got back to Jimmy's and changed, and decided to grab a quick bite before heading to Brooklyn.

Go! Go! Curry! is actually a transplant from Japan with over 50+ locations worldwide and literally just one block away from Jimmy's!  The Midtown location is extremely small and a hole-in-the-wall.  First look, you wouldn't even think much of it :P  Too bad I didn't have my camera with me since I didn't want to lose it at Sensation and took these pictures with the iPhone.

Go! Go! Curry!

273 W 38th St 

Between 7th Ave & 8th Ave

Midtown West

New York, NY 10018

Small two man open kitchen, and probably seats around 20-25 people.

The four of us decided to get two plates of their famous Grand Slam Curry Plate to share, and damn, it's a lot of food.

Comes with pork katsu, chicken katsu, fried shrimp, Kurobuta sausage, and egg.  Go! Go! Curry! is actually certified to serve Kurobuta pork, which is Japanese Berkshire.  Curry's darker than other's I've tried, and a heavier dosage in terms of spices.  Very good though!  All the toppings were fried, except for the egg.  I like how they also drizzle katsu sauce on top of the two katsu.


Afterwards, we took the subway to Brooklyn for Sensation, decked out in white :P  Here's some pictures taken on my iPhone.  Good times!
  

Click to enlarge

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On Saturday, slept till noon... so by the time we got ready to head out, it was around 1pm already.  Checked out the 9/11 Memorial and stopped by a favorite of mine, Eataly.  Actually visited Eataly several times in March and loved the place (check out here and here).  Even though it is very touristy, can't deny that there's just a lot to see, smell, and eat there!

The pool where one of the WTC tower used to stand.

Afterwards, we were off to Eataly since Link and Edwin's never been.  Definitely excited since I can probably spend a whole day in there.

Eataly

200 5th Ave

Flatiron

New York, NY 10010

eatalyny.com

Crowded as usual!

Again, stopped by the espresso bar!

The barista and the crazy espresso machine.

Whole beans available.

Single espresso shot.  Lots of caffeine to get the day started.

Gotta have the biscotti cookie!

Single espresso macchiato.  

After the espresso shots, we walked around a bit.  Saw this rotating display full of caviar.  Damn I want it.

Fresh uni and shellfishes!

The butcher shop.  Every single piece there had this nice fresh look to it.

Where you can get fresh made pasta.

La Piazza, which is this area in the center of Eataly where you can grab a table and order as if you are in Venice.

Charcuterie and cheeses.

The fresh mozzarella station where they make mozzarella right in front of you.

We wanted to dine at Il Pesce but there was a wait so we decided to grab a standing table at La Piazza to get some food first, and just like last time, got the Grande Piatto Mistodi Salumi & Formaggi.  Comes with Prosciutto Cotto, Prosciutto di Parma, Prosciutto di San Daniele, mortadella, salami, and speck.

Also comes with Ricotta, Parmigiano Reggiano, Caprino, and Gorgonzola.  The only cheese that was different from last time was the Caprino, which is a type of Italian goat cheese.  Very smooth and creamy.  The fresh ricotta is still ridiculously good.

Almond infused honey, preserved fig, and preserved apricot.

We also got The Classic, which is traditional fresh mozzarella with basil and extra virgin olive oil.  Jimmy said the last time he had it, it was very rubbery, but it was perfect that Saturday.

Had to get a bottle of wine with all that good food. 

Went for the Serfaini & Vidotto Bollicine Rose, as recommended by the waiter.

Right when we finished, they called and informed us our table was ready.  Perfect timing!  Menu from Il Pesce, which is the eatery inside Eataly that focuses on seafood.

Specials of the day.  We actually only ordered from the board instead of the menu :P

Artisan bread to start with.

Grilled local squid with Italian parsley& chili.  We were thinking about this already and when we asked the waiter how it is, he said it was an appetizer but that the size of the batch that day was big enough to be an entree.  Awesome.

Simple prep, but so good!  Grilled perfectly so it doesn't have that rubbery texture.

Small microgreen salad.  Light dressing.

Jimmy kept talking about this razor clams special he had the other day, but it wasn't on the board, so went with the Peruvian razor clam ceviche instead.

Acidic, citrusy, and refreshing.  Razor clam is definitely one of my favorite shellfish.

We had to get a whole fish too, and went with the special Branzino al Forno.  Branzino is also known as European sea bass.  Simple preparation and oven baked.

Delicate white fish.  Squirt some lemon over it and it's perfect!

Another fun visit to Eataly, especially when I got to try something new.  Even though it was simple and nothing too fancy, freshness is what matters and the dishes were great!  

Afterwards, took a few pictures of the Flatiron building, then headed towards Chelsea Market.