New York: Artisan Ice Cream at Je & Jo

One of the best surprise this trip was going to this artisan ice cream & cafe shop in Hell's Kitchen.  After lunch at Tabata, we went to Je & Jo for some dessert, and yes, it was cold, but good ice cream is always worth it!

Je & Jo

515 W 47th St

Hell's Kitchen, Midtown West

New York, NY 10036

jeandjo.com

Small place, sorta hard to find since it's under scaffolds too.

A look outside from inside the shop.

They are known for the artisan organic ice cream with all types of cookie dough!

All natural ice cream & cookie dough.

Drinks menu.

I went for the Fresh Mint with Lemon Lavender Shortbread.  

How small the cup is.  Quite pricey for the size.

I was expecting the ice cream to be green, but it's more white, with little specs of green. They actually have fresh mint in the ice cream! The mint is light but just enough for you to taste it. The shortbread cookie dough had a strong lavender flavor to it. Can definitely see this be really popular with girls.

My favorite, Honey with Salted Rosemary Shortbread.

Sweet & salty works well here.

Of course, with so many cookie dough options, they bake their own cookies!  I had to get a chocolate chip after seeing another person ordering it and they went straight to the kitchen to get it since it was still on the cooling rack!  Warm chocolate chip cookies??  YES.

Other's lattes.


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Since we still had a bunch of food from the market we bought in preparation for Sandy, we decided to stay in for dinner.  Thanks to Janice, Allison, and Sunny for cooking!

Pasta with meatballs & garlic bread.

Meatball... turkey?  I forget :P

Garlic bread!

Since it was just the day after Sandy had passed by, we didn't venture out too much, but it was a whirlwind of eating for the next couple of days until our flights back!

New York: Tabata Noodle

Rather than staying in and cook, we decided to go out for lunch and waited 40 minutes for Tabata Noodle Restaurant.  It's sort of a weird restaurant... they serve Japanese ramen, but rather than traditional ramen, they have fusion ramen.  The main cooks aren't Japanese either.  Rather, the majority of the staff is Burmese, so there are some very Southeast Asian touch in some of the ramen.

Tabata Noodle Restaurant

540 9th Ave 

Between 39th St & 40th St

Hell's Kitchen, Midtown West, Theater District

Manhattan, NY 10018

Outside of Tabata.  It's very close Port Authority.

Part of the menu.

Yea, we laughed at this for awhile, but I actually thought about ordering it cause it was in one of the newspaper in NYC. 

Inside of Tabata.  Fairly cramped.

Instead, I went with the Tabata Ramen.  Chicken broth with soybean powder, coconut, red onion, cilantro, and spicy chicken.  This was one of the ramen that was more Southeast Asian.  I was expecting flavors more like tom kha but it's more like laksi.  Spicy chicken sorta got lost it in.  Janice liked it, but I just though it was average :P

Link decided to get the Dark Men.  Turns out it is actually chicken broth with black sesame paste and ground pork!  I like it a lot since the flavor's a lot heavier.  Sorta has a hint of the Chinese fermented black beans.

Link and I also decided to share a few rice dishes and first to arrive was chahan.  Solid fried rice.  In fact, one of the better fried rice I've had at a ramen place!

Sutamina Don.  Pork & veggie sauteed with spicy garlic sauce.  We expected it to be so much more but it tasted just like a Chinese dish.  Not spicy enough.  Jimmy got the ramen version of these.  I didn't try it since I was sorta disappointed with the rice version of it.

Lava Men.  Chicken & pork bone broth soup with beansprouts, eggs, and pork.  A much more traditional style ramen.  Good bit of kick.

Fried octopus I believe.  Traditional Japanese fried food batter so it's light and good with sprinkle of lemon!

I wasn't that big of a fan for Tabata, but probably my own fault.  I figured... can't go wrong with ordering the namesake ramen, but didn't expect the ramen to be so coconut-y (don't like coconut).  Other stuff I tried was way better than what I ordered.  I can see why this place is popular though since it does have a wider selection, and for the price, the portion's reasonable too!

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: Fried Chicken Dinner at Momofuku Noodle Bar

Sandy was hitting Manhattan Sunday night, so we contemplated about whether or not we should head out for our reservation at Momofuku Noodle Bar for the Fried Chicken Dinner.  Eventually we decided to make it to our reservation since we were gonna be stuck indoors for the majority of the next day.  Might as well get the most out of our trip before Sandy shuts everything down! 

The Fried Chicken Dinner is Momofuku Noodle Bar's large format dinner like the Bossam Dinner at Ssam Bar.  They give you a plate of Southern-style fried chicken and Korean fried chicken, and you can make your own wraps or just eat it straight up.  Of course, it is served family style, for 4-8 people, at $100, and you have to make a reservation for it!

Momofuku Noodle Bar

171 1st Ave 

Between 10th St & 11th St

East Village

New York, NY 10003

momofuku.com

Oct 28th dinner menu.

We found out the fried chicken itself is probably not enough food, so Edwin and I decided to get everything on this part of the menu, except for the dried noodles :P

Momofuku's famous Pork Buns, with pork belly, scallions, cucumber, and hoisin sauce.  I posted about it before and mentioned how it is very similar to Taiwanese guabao.

The super fatty and delicious pork belly.

Shrimp Bun.  I didn't try this at Ssam Bar last time.  It's essentially a fried shrimp cake, with spicy mayo, pickled shallots, and iceberg lettuce.

Fried shrimp cake.

I didn't think I'd like it since I don't like mayo-based sauce, but it's actually very good!

Usually there's a 3rd bun on the menu, and they change it up all the time.  That night, they had the Shiitake Bun.

 Fried shiitake, scallions, cucumber, and hoisin sauce.  Very similar to the pork bun, but flavor's totally different.  Crunchy shiitake is great, although a few pieces were overcooked so it was a bit bitter.

The Momofuku Ramen.  Soup base is much lighter versus tonkotsu-based broth.  Ramen noodle is great, but I wasn't too crazy about the soup.  

Pork shoulder and poached egg topping.  Pork shoulder was more like shredded pork.  Kinda got lost in the soup though.  Poached egg was awesome since once broken apart, the yolk slowly immerses itself with the soup.

Pork belly.  Same as the Pork Bun.

Spicy Miso Ramen, with smoked chicken, scallion, and sesame.  This was a big disappointment for Edwin and me.  Couldn't taste much of the smoke flavor from the chicken, and it just wasn't spicy enough.  Not much miso flavor either.

After the ramen, they started to bring out everything for the Fried Chicken Dinner.

Hoisin sauce and gochujang.  Chinese + Korean combo here.

Scallion sauce.  This was probably my favorite from the bossam dinner at Ssam Bar.  Glad to see they provided here too.

Soy sauce dressing with garlic and jalapeno.  A little bit of sweetness too.

Herb basket (basil, mint cilantro) with baby carrots, red ball radishes, shiso leaves, and bibb lettuce.

Mushu wraps.  They provide these so you can make your own wraps.

The fried chicken arrives!  The two types: Southern-style fried chicken & Korean fried chicken.

Southern-style chicken is fried with a buttermilk and old bay batter.  Extremely hard crust.  It was like biting into a shell.  We wanted it to be crunchy, but not break our teeth off..  Seasoning was good though.  Drumstick and smaller pieces were pretty juicy but some of the bigger pieces were really dry.

Korean fried chicken is triple fried and served with a light spicy glaze.  I definitely prefer this over the Southern-style.  The glaze is mouthwatering and goes really well with all the sauces.  Crust is not as hard, more on the crunchy side probably due to a lighter batter?

Making a wrap with the mushu wrap.  Chicken, cilantro, scallion sauce, basil...

I added a bit of the hoisin sauce to give the Southern style a little Asian flavor.  It was the only wrap I made though.  When the wraps got cold, it became extremely chewy and hard to eat, so we didn't eat much of it.

It was a meal we were looking forward to, but I think the hype killed it for us.  We were expecting a lot out of the ramen, but none of it really delivered for us.  We're spoiled with all the ramen spots in California.  The Fried Chicken Dinner sounded awesome, but it was just too good to be true..  I gotta admit though, Momofuku knows how to make some bombass buns.  I would order all 3 that I tried in a heartbeat.