Beard Papa's, Egg tarts, and hot pot

okay, so like a true fat kid I did the following: 1. got to excited about hotpot that I forgot to take pictures 2. had two desserts.

I did photo the desserts, however. Here we have some cream puffs/chocolate fondant cake from Beard Papa's, i give these cream puffs A+, because they were quite good/moist and the packaging was pretty cute.

So here's the cute packaging, with a little santa/baker/awesome for the cream puffs.

Now, you'd think that because this was more like a cream bun it wouldn't be that great in terms of dough:cream ratio, but let me tell you, it was delicious and not too doughy or creamy. that's also what she said.
Here's the chocolate fondant, which was not as good as the cream puffs (maybe because it was supposed to be microwaved...) but still quite good.

Now, my second dessert, home made egg tarts, courtesy of my auntie. yay. om nom nom.

Richmond, BC-Sushi/Bubble Tea

Hello all, Carrie here doing a guest spot on fatkids. I'm stuck in beautiful Canada right now, and for the next 9 days it's going to be chinese food, chinese food, and more god damn chinese food, so get ready:

Let me just give you a feeling of Richmond/Asia of the West:

Apparently a store called Big Crazy-I think it's a shopping market, but no one should pick those color combinations, ever.

Bright in dark paper.
Caution signs on bubble tea- let me tell you about bubble tea, i've been drinking a lot of it, and everyday, and it's better/cheaper than US bubble tea...

Now onto the noms- today we had jumbo sushi, now I'm not a fan of jumbo sushi, I like that the Japanese do all cutsie little things. But, this sushi in terms of quality was pretty much as good if not better than US (I'm talking about regular Yama quality sushi, not like, NY sushi or something redonk like that). Also for the price, basically you can't lose here, I think all of the food on the table was ~80 Canadian, ie around 75$ US or something:

Oh speaking of bubble tea, i hate the United States, here not only are things actually open til like 2am (that aren't bars), but there's also this little contraption:

For those of you who can't tell what's going on, this is a little remote at each table that allows you to summon your waitress for water, the bill, or anything else, then if you make a mistake you can cancel it with the little x below. Leave it to asians to come up with something this awesome.

I'm out until tomorrow, when I will eat until I die a little on the inside again.

Taste of Venezuela

Jenn came to visit from DC! I took Johnny and Jenn to El Cocotero, a Venezuelan restaurant at 18th St., between 7th and 8th. It seemed appropriate since Jenn just blogged about Chavez, here.
I <3 El Cocotero! It's not the biggest restaurant (I wouldn't go with more than 3 other people), and it's always full, but the wait is never too long. The only annoying thing about El Cocotero is that it's really dark sometimes. It was hard to read the menu...but everything on the menu looks amazing. And everything I've tried so far has been amazing.



Arepas! So good. Corn bread stuffed with yummy things.


Yuca fries with garlic sauce. Nyum nyum.

Great sangria.

Rice to Riches!

Whenever I go to Soho, I make room for Rice to Riches.



Flavor: Surrender to Mango with Lime. Delicious. I also really like Stubborn Banana (perhaps because I AM a stubborn banana)
You can also get toppings like pound cake, graham crackers, jelly, and coconut granola...

Hillary came to visit from LA!

Tea Party!

I love scones. I love cucumber sandwiches. [like the ones we had at Professor Joyce's house on last day of classes!] I love tea. I love tea parties.

If I could, I would go back to London just for afternoon tea at Claridge's!

My favorite scones of all time:
Tea sandwiches:
Pastries:
And of course, tea:

Tea at Harrods was fun too! We missed their afternoon tea, but we got tea and ice cream/sorbet.
Cool ice cream/sorbet. Tiffy and I got flavors of London and flavors of Asia.

In NY, I thought Alice's Tea Cup was fun. I brought my little sister, and there were lots of little kids with their parents. There are a few locations. We went to the one @ 156 E 64th St..
The scones are bigger and a bit greasier. But the pumpkin scone was delicious!

Alice's feels more like a restaurant than a tea room. I wouldn't really linger for hours the way I would at other tea places...but everything was pretty yummy.

The last tea room that I went to was Lady Mendl's @ 56 Irving Place, NY. (near Union Square). The food was better than the food at Alice's, and it's not as kid-friendly, which is fine with me because I'm not a mom. Haha.

Anyway, everything was beautiful.

This place has great cucumber sandwiches.

Scones!

Such lovely sugar cubes!
Thanks to Chanda (below) for pictures!

Afternoon tea with best friends is the best!

Favorite scones: Claridges
Favorite cucumber sandwiches: Professor Joyce's house, Lady Mendl's
Favorite sorbet: Harrods
Favorite TV show: 30 Rock. Haha. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Not-so-sloppy second.

Dan and I were supposed to have lunch at Mara's Homemade today because I have been wanting to go for a while, and Dan has never had crawfish before. However, upon arriving, we discovered that they are only open for dinner. EPIC FAIL. But I will definitely be going/blogging about it next time I'm home. [Going back to DC tomorrow. The Embassy calls.]

Anyway, we ended up going to Momofuku Noodle Bar at 171 First Ave. btwn. 10th and 11th St. [6 train to Astor Place]

We decided to get a whole bunch of dishes and split everything.

First, we had the pork buns. They had cucumber, scallions, hoisin sauce and of course, pork. They were quite juicy and delicious.
Next, we had the corn and miso dish. More scallions, bacon bits, potatoes, corn and miso. Loved the miso. Steph would have liked this dish.

Chicken wings were okay...nothing compared to the crispy, deliciousness of soy, garlic chicken wings at Mad For Chicken. I'll probably have another blog entry just for that wondrous place...
Momofuku Ramen. NOT like the ramen you make at home. Pork, scallions, fishcake, poached egg, declious broth.

Dessert was a cherry, limeade sorbet twist with crushed coconut macaroons sprinkled all over. Pretty yummy.

You can sit at the noodle bar, but you can also sit at normal tables.

Everything came out to $50.94. The service was okay. Waitress was friendly, but not very attentive. She forgot to bring us extra bowls for the ramen, and later messed up the check, but whatevs. Overall, it was pretty nom nom.

Surf and Turf!

After getting an ENG yesterday morning near Madison Avenue Park, which was a rather dizzying experience, I decided to take my mom to Shake Shack for the first time. I guess it's like New York's version of In-N-Out. It's right in the middle of Madison Avenue Park off of E23rd and Madison Ave. Usually, everyone and their mom is in line to get burgers and shakes and custard, but the shack opens at 11 AM, and we got there at about 11:20 AM, so the wait wasn't too bad.
My mom's verdict: a little too greasy (we both had single shack burgers and cheesy fries), but pretty good as far as burgers go.

I also really liked the Burger Joint at Le Parker Meridien at 119 West 56th St. You walk into the lobby of Le Parker Meridien, and look to your right to see a dark curtain and a small neon lit hamburger above it. Prices are pretty similar at Shake Shack and the Burger Joint.

Michelle and I also ate at Island Burgers and Shakes last summer. (OMGSH. I can't believe it's already been a year since then!) Those were pretty yummy delicious too. They have much more variety than Shake Shack and Burger Joint. It's more like Bartley's in Harvard Square.

Later that day, I met Christina, Chanda and Wini at Water Taxi Beach @ South Street Seaport. Even though it was a Wednesday, we still got oysters for $0.50 each. Sweet deal! Beer was also $3/cup. (half off)
We also tried the fish and chips which were pretty good. Next time, I'm definitely going to try the fish tacos!
The oysters were decent, especially because they were $0.50 a piece. I had one really gross one, but the rest were good.

Funny story: Christina told the fish and chips lady that she would be back to pick up her food after getting a drink at the drinks stand. The woman looked at her and said, "oh, those are only alcoholic drinks over there." Christina looked at her blankly and said, "I know." Haha. Oh, to retain one's youth!
It reminded me of when I went to get a haircut and the hairdresser said, "you graduated? from high school?" When I said, "no, from college," she replied incredulously, "not from high school?!" I felt like I had to walk her through it, so I said, "well, I graduated from high school, and then I graduated from college."

Anyway, back to food. Oysters were definitely yummier at Oceanaire. They had really good Kushi oysters from Japan, but I probs would not go there again because everything's so expensive.

Christina, Chands, Wini, Joanne and I went to Aquagrill last winter and had good oysters too. Christina, since you asked at Water Taxi Beach, these are the ones we had that night:

Peale Passage: Washington...the ones where Chanda was like, "why are these creamy?" blah.
Fanny Bay: British Columbia. They were kinda sweet. We liked.
Moonstone: Rhode Island. Fuller. You all liked...I didn't like that it had an aftertaste.
Duxbury: MA. I don't remember what these tasted like, so I guess they were okay?
Raspberry Point: PEI. These were the smaller ones that had no aftertaste. Nyummy. (Tina, you were missed) Is it weird that I like the ones that taste like nothing the best?



Chands and I had another dinner after Water Taxi Beach with lovely Wellesley kids (XYN, Tiff, Alice) at One if by Land, Two if by Sea. The restauarant was once Aaron Burr's carriage house! Apparently, this restaurant gets the most proposals per week in NYC (28/week). We were sitting by two couples, but were disappointed in the end. Nobody found diamonds in their dessert...although being proposed to at this restauarant, in this manner, is on my list of how NOT to get proposed to. Haha.

We all had the Restaurant Week option ($35 for appetizer, entree, dessert) and ordered a bottle of white wine. I don't remember which wine...I'll have to ask XYN. [insert: white wine from Mondavi Winery]
I had the tomato gazpacho which was spicy. I liked it a lot. I ordered the snapper for my entree and that was also pretty good. The nutella cake didn't taste like nutella at all, but I inhaled it because it was so yummy. It was bits of popcorn, chocolate, popcorn flavored ice cream, and spongy slices of cake.

I think I need to invest in a digital camera...