Eat in New York City but don't let New York City eat you!

Eat in New York City but don't let New York City eat you!

I live in New York City and I eat, eat, eat my heart out. My city is the best place to be adventurous with food; name it and you can have it.

This guide is made up of many different listings, from the least to the most expensive, from the most local to the most exciting meal you'll ever eat.

Quick Tips:

My mantra (it should be yours, too): Try it at least once and see for yourself before you say no (and that doesn't go with just food).

Best Way To Get Around:

Always take the subway to get around New York City and walk around to skip to different places.

Joe's Ginger
113 Mott Street on Hester
New York, NY 10013
Phone: 212/966-6613

From the Joe's Shanghai team (see other entry) comes Joe's Ginger, which is mainly Shanghainese food with a little bit of Hong Kong dishes. I run to this place now when I see a long line at Joe's Shanghai. It's a lot smaller and less noisy, plus the waiters have time to talk to you about their own suggestions.

Recommended dishes: pork and crab steamed dumplings, deep-fried whole quail, fish with yellow chives, and sauteed kang kong in garlic.

Joe's Shanghai
9 Pell Street between Bowery and Mott
New York, NY 10013-5134
Phone: 212/233-8888

Before Joe's Ginger came into the scene in the summer of 2003, I was always at Joe's Shanghai. Today, more and more people eat here (maybe because of journals like mine!) and it's more difficult to get a table, especially during prime-time dinner hours on weekends. But this place has some of the best Shanghainese food to offer.

Recommended dishes: pork and crab dumplings, steamed flounder, and string beans Shanghainese style.

Bar Jamon
125 East 17th Street on Irving Place
New York, NY 10003
212/253-2773

Jamon is Spanish for ham and Bar Jamon is the most recent translation for the New York City scene. Mario Batali's latest digs is right next to Casa Mono, his new restaurant (and fifth in New York City). We squeezed ourselves in to eat tapas and drink Spanish wine. The space is good for ten people at most, but more than thirty are always inside, even on a Tuesday night. People are ready to jump to the next stool that frees up. A little jazz and a little Wilco were playing when we were there, but it was so faint compared to the collective noise of those who had the same idea as we did.

With two bottles of Tempranillo, we shared two plates of ham cured for fourteen months. We also got the sardines en escabeche and marinated anchovies with migas de chorizo (sausage crumbs). We snacked on a plate of two kinds of cheeses and enjoyed the bread with some good olive oil. We didn't think we'd stay past 9pm, but as soon as we snatched the stools in the back, we ended up staying until 11.

It's a scene all right, but it's a New York City scene and that you can't pass up.

Nha Trang Centre
148 Centre St.
New York, NY 10013
212/941-9292

One of the best phos in NYC is under the code L1 with raw thinly-sliced beef strips for less than $5. The hot broth will cook the beef. Make sure you add all the bean sprouts, basil leaves, and squirt the lime juice in there! Add some hot sauce for a kick--they have a Vietnamese red hot sauce bottle on your table with a rooster logo that I call Flaming Cock. Yum!

If you're not into pho but still want a nice big bowl of hot soup, check out their vegetable soup under code D5. You'll get a nice clear soup with mixed vegetables like broccoli and carrots, tofu, and bean sprouts.

For rice meals, check out the barbecued pork with rice under code L11. It comes with a sweet and sour dip that I always use to drown my rice on my plate.

There's also the usual Vietnamese spring and summer rolls. They're excellent at Nha Trang. The spring rolls are the ones deep-fried and the summer are the fresh ones with raw skins. Both are filled with vermicelli rice noodles and vegetables.

For dessert or for something to drink while you walk off all the Vietnamese food in your tummy, ask for the Vietnamese iced coffee. You'll get a small coffee drip strainer and a glass filled with ice. Once all the coffee is "brewed," stir in the condensed milk at the bottom and pour into your glass. Remember, stir before you pour or else you're gonna get a mass of condensed milk in your glass that would be too difficult to mix.

When you get your table, no reservations needed, you will be given a red menu and a green menu--the red menu has the least expensive choices that you should go through every time you visit; the green menu, I say, is for the tourists.

Viet-Nam Banh Mi So 1
369 Broome St.
New York, NY, 10013
212/219-8341

It's a hole-in-the-wall type of place, but that's a good sign, telling you they have really good food for sale. A Vietnamese sandwich is with fresh French bread that's slightly toasted, pork, and potted meat with carrots, cucumbers, and cilantro. There's a paste in there that brings all the flavors together, and I would tell you what it is but then I'd be betraying the Banh Mi's secret (Banh Mi, by the way, is Vietnamese for sandwich).

You can order the House Special Pork Sandwich, but make sure you ask for the pork to be "medium-spicy." It's almost a foot-long sandwich, priced at $2.75.

Snack Taverna
63 Bedford Street on Morton
New York, NY 10014
212/929-3499

I always write about eating at Snack, my favorite Greek place [see my review on Best Greek], but tonight, I finally made it to its new sister restaurant, Snack Taverna on Bedford and it was gooooooood. It has a more grown-up menu than its counterpart, and I later learned that its chef, John Fraser, cooked at French Laundry in Napa for almost three years. Actually, if you don't know about Snack serving Greek food, you might think Taverna is French because it's a little more elegant and less rustic than the Thompson Street hole in the wall.

I'm gonna have to say that it's my first excellent dinner of 2004. I started with veal cheeks and hostas. This was a difficult choice because there was also crisp lamb's tongue in the menu. My friend picked the loukaniko, hot sausage with oh-so-savory fennel and diced pear. For our meal, he had the super soft braised lamb shoulder with dandelions, and I went for the monkfish. We had a mix of Cabernet and Merlot from Greece, which was excellent with all our dishes. For dessert, I couldn't resist the chocolate soufflé with raspberry sauce--we were warned it was going to take another fifteen minutes for it to rise so they served us baklava on the house while we waited.

Snack will always be a big favorite Greek spot of mine but now that Taverna is open, I'm gonna have to name it Best "New" Greek.

Daniel is one of Daniel Boulud's New York City restaurants and has been rated by Michelin and The New York Times with four stars more than once. It's that kind of restaurant with those kind of people, so my boyfriend and I needed a big event to celebrate for us to have an excuse to eat here. We're not getting married anytime soon so the best we can do is to celebrate finishing my boyfriend's first year of med school.

A few weeks before, I had spoken to chef Alex Lee when he was interviewed for an online magazine, generationrice. We talked about his becoming-a-chef story and his history with Daniel Boulud. We were also given a tour of the Daniel kitchen that counts as one of my most amazing experiences in New York City. He let us in before dinner time and we saw the production kitchen, the coffee kitchen, the French and the American kitchens, plus the dessert room where we tasted chocolates made in-house from layers and layers of trays in the fridge.

Of course, all that only added to the real dining experience. We returned a few weeks later for dinner and Alex Lee did not forget us. Our waiter kept serving us different dishes from the head chef himself even though we'd already ordered our appetizers and main dishes. Wine was brought out to match each course and in between meals, there were cheeses, chocolates and soups.

We were just delirious with the whole experience and when the bill came out THREE hours later, we could have detached our arms and legs to pay for it (or promised our future children to sell) but then read the note that said, "70% complimentary" on it.

You see? It's all about WHO you know!

Sushiden Madison Avenue
19 East 49th Street
New York, NY, 10017
212/758-2700

There are two Sushidens in New York City, one on Sixth Avenue and this one on Madison. Whichever branch you pick, make sure you ask to be seated at the bar so you can talk to your chef and get the chance to eat sushi that's not on the menu.

Whenever I go to a sushi restaurant, I always start off with the uni, sea urchin--if it's excellent, then I know the place will have more of the good stuff coming.

At Sushiden, after the uni, the chef always asks me what I want next, and this is when I tell them, "whatever you want me to taste." They'll only ask you if you're allergic to anything, and after I say no, I will sit for the next hour eating sushi after sushi that melts in my mouth like butter.

One of the most memorable experiences was when our chef brought out some fresh shrimp, disassembled the heads, and used tweezers to pick the brain. He put all the gray and orange matter on top of Japanese mackerel, together with the shrimp body itself. When we were done bowing in appreciation and glee, the chef deep-fried the shrimp head shells and offered it to us to snack on. No part of the shrimp was wasted.

Check out some of my photos below.

Snack
105 Thompson St.
New York, NY 10012
212/925-1040

The best Greek food in Manhattan is at Snack. I'm not kidding. I eat at this place every week, no fail, until feta is almost coming out of my nose.

Fortunately, they have a slightly different lunch menu from dinner, so even if I come back for dinner after an already full lunch, I'm not sick of their Greek food.

When it's warm out, I order my lunch to go and sit outside on one of their benches, or else at the park right on the corner. For dinner, I avoid the peak dining hours from 7pm to 8pm because I don't like waiting for one of the four tiny tables inside. But if you wait, it's worth it. Some of my favorites...

Lunch:
1. artichoke chicken salad - If there is food that WILL come out of my nose, it will be this. The potatoes, the butter beans, and the string beans mixed with arugula is one of the best salads in the city. I sometimes ask for tuna instead of chicken just so I don't feel too fat after devouring a healthy serving.
2. roasted 1.0 - A nice sandwich of portobello mushrooms, red peppers, and arugula with feta on stirato bread. What more can I say?
3. Greek salad - No matter how good I can make my own Greek salad at home, it has no say to how Snack makes it. It's like I have a Greek grandma right next to me.

Dinner:
1. keftedakia - Don't worry, you can just point to it on the menu without pronouncing it. It's veal meatballs with almonds, pine nuts, and prunes served in red wine reduction. Heavenly.
2. boneless lamb rib - Oh man, just writing about this dish makes my mouth water. It's one of the best-smelling dishes you'll ever have because of the cumin. The tomato sauce balances out the flavors.
3. braised lamb stifado - It's this or the previous lamb dish that compete for my appetite. This is cooked with apricot and you will wonder how they can make the lamb so soft it melts in your mouth.
4. vegetarian mousaka - A classic Greek dish. Eggplants, mushrooms, potatoes in a bechamel sauce. Even if the world is ending, I will never be a vegetarian, but this dish will make it easy for me.

I think I'm heading over there ri