NYC

Random trip to NYC!

I drove down with my roommate after a hard day at work and we had a grand time!  With less than 36 hrs. in the city we didn't waste any moment living it up.

After arriving around 9pm and checking in at the 91 Hotel in Chinatown we walked over to Little Italy and grabbed dinner at Angelo's of Mulberry Street.  I got Rollatine di Melanzane Sorrento and my god was it good.  Harry almost died from jealousy.

One bottle of wine later and we took a cab over to Times Square to see what the big deal was!  Wandered in a bar and had a nice chat with a local who wrote down a few speak-easys that we should check out.  I wimped out instead and called it a night!

Saturday morning we got up and went to work on the reason we were in New York.  Dim Sum.

Dim Sum is the one meal that I excitedly break my vegetarianism for, so it's kinda a big deal.  I'd done a little bit of light research on where the best places were but we still didn't have a formal plan.  A quick search on Yelp and we settled on Red Egg.  

But, it was thoroughly unimpressive.  First off, no carts, and second no one was there!  True it was starting to fill up with families as we left but that's a pretty good indication at 11am on a Saturday morning.

We ordered Turnip Cakes, Shui Mai, and another seafood dumpling but the best tasting thing was the tea.  Luckily Harry came up with the best idea ever, Dim Sum Crawl!

Second stop was Vegetarian Dim Sum House.  I wasn't too pumped since this is my one and only meat meal, but hey, you gotta try it.  We ordered Snow Pea Leaf Dumplings, Steamed Glutinous Rice in Lotus Leaf and Sweet & Salty Dumplings.  It was all pretty bad.  Normally I eat just about anything since I'm so anti food waste (and I think it's rude) but I just couldn't manage any more of this food.  The Sweet & Salty dumplings were the best but they tasted oddly of kettle corn.  The Pea Leaf Dumplings looked pretty but ended up being an odd consistency and tasting like dirt.  And the rice, oh the rice!  I had such high expectations since sticky rice is amazing but unfortunately it was filled with nuts which had turned soft and grainy from the steaming and it was all an unappetizing brown mush color.

I'm sorry.  I tried, I really did.

Things were getting a bit desperate here since we were 0-2 and getting full.  This time the big guns came out and Harry started asking people in the street where we should go.  Eventually we went into a Tea Shop and asked the lady about the best Dim Sum in town.  She told us Jing Fong and wrote down the characters so we could make sure we were at the right place.  Soon, in the midst of construction, we found it!

As soon as we walked up the stairs I knew it was all good.  The clatter of chopsticks on plates was at a roar and I could hear carts moving!  The trip was saved.

We tracked down some of my favorite dishes, Shui Mai, fried dough wrapped in noodle that I don't know the name of, shrimp & chive dumplings and ahhh, stuffed to the brim.  Luckily the first annual Dim Sum Crawl finished on a high note!

First Annual Dim Sum Crawl

That being said I don't think the food was any better than Hei La Moon or China Pearl here in Boston.  Both places along with Bo Lings in Kansas City seemed on par with Jing Fong.  Which is to say, very very good.

Next up we went to iLuminate!  I had no idea what it was but it was quite impressive, the dancers were all amazing of course and with all the lights you could look anywhere and there was something to see.  The story line was a little blah but that's not really the point, it's just dance!

By this point it was snowing on and off so we returned to the hotel grabbing some bubble tea on the way from Cha Time.  Harry and I both got hot milk tea and it warmed us up!  The perfect midday treat.

And finally, on to our second reason for being in NYC, Broadway!  Harry had gotten tickets to The Lion King and without further adieu we were taking the subway to Times Square.

Wow.  The show was spectacular.  I couldn't keep my eyes off the costumes that each actor manipulated exquisitely.  The cheetahs bathed themselves like cats, the birds flocked together, the baboon was baboon-like, it was obvious intense amounts of work and training had been done.  The storyline was the same as the Disney movie which is fine by me but it was definitely the best Broadway show I've ever seen.

After the show we tried our best to find a cool place to relax and grab some food and ended up at La Esquina.  We scarfed down some food, got booted for trying to unknowingly sneak upstairs and ended up just grabbing, pizza, ice cream and beer and watching Olympic Curling in our hotel room.  Great trip.