January 3, 2009
Top Ten Most Memorable Posts on TGWAE
Happy 2009! I completely fell behind on my plan to sum up 2008 before 2009 began, but here are my picks for the "Ten Most Memorable Posts" anyway, "memorable" entailing the good and the bad (although mostly good). If my writing sound wonky, it's because I'm thisclose to flumping my head on the table with an intense case of the sleepies.
- Beer.
Charlottesville, Day 5: Happy New Year, Vietnamese Dinner Explosion, and Back to Jersey (January 21): New Year's Eve in 2008 was nothing like the laid back celebration I had a few days ago. It was memorable for the wrong reasons: awkward social situation, surrounded by alcohol I didn't drink, surrounded by people I didn't know, stayed up late cleaning up alcohol-related debris left behind by people I didn't know, etc. But it was a worthy experience to get under my belt and I had some really good friends within arm's reach to make sure I didn't go insane.
- Observe.
Robert Arbor: Personal French Chef in a Tiny East Village Kitchen (February 2): What do you do when an awesome French chef offers to cook in your tiny East Village apartment? You let him. And then you feast on home cooked pork chops and bok choy and wonder how this surreal experience came to be.
- CAKE.
Brighton Beach and Beyond, Part 2: Carrot Cake, Durian, and Pupusas (March 3) Damn, that carrot cake from M&I was awesome. Many cool things were eaten during that day in Brighton Beach while accompanied by some of the funnest people I know, but in the end I mostly remember the Best Carrot Cake Ever. ...Along with the slight intoxication I felt from drinking all that vodka.
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Posted by roboppy at 12:31 AM | Comments (5)
December 31, 2008
Top Ten Posts of 2008 on TGWAE
Since we've been doing year end navel-gazing posts on Serious Eats all week, I got the idea to do it for TGWAE as well. Here are the top ten posts of 2008 based on hit counts, according to my Google Analytics report. Unfortunately, this leaves out any post made after May, so I'm going to do a round up of my top ten favorite posts as well. Thanks for reading and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
- Fish ribbons!
1. Momofuku Ko: Yup, I Went There: I managed to shoot some Ko porn before David Chang banned photography in the restaurant. I guess I didn't help with that. Oops. David, I love your food; please forgive me.
- Kathy, NOM NOM!
2. Brighton Beach, Part 1: Dumplings and Vodka: That was the day I drank all that vodka and feigned sobriety. I also learned what a Russian suitcase was. Man, all the good times happen at Brighton Beach.
- Hello there.
3. The Spotted Pig: Burger Vs. Cubano, Plus Some Banoffee Pie: The burger is a looker, but the cubano is the winner in deliciousness. Porky deliciousness.
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Posted by roboppy at 1:45 AM | Comments (15)
My Twitter Is Now Open To Your Stalker Eyes
- Twitter...I haz.
Haha, just kidding; I know you're not stalking me.
...
For the past one and a half-ish years that I've had a Twitter account, I kept my updates private. "The public world does not need to know my every bite, burp, and emotional fart." I rejected loads of people I didn't personally know and felt free to Twitter life-changing events such as, "sitting in my pjs, about to do some homework", "donuts. ...d...d..DONUTS OH DEAR GOD", and "my manatees do not pat nor flap, but PLAT."
I have just un-privatized my Twitter so that anyone out there in Internet land can follow me, see how boring I am, and then go back to unfollowing me. Since I'm opening the flood gates, I'll Twitter links to new blog posts as I make them, which isn't very often. But I'm not Twittering this one because that's pointless.
Posted by roboppy at 1:34 AM | Comments (6)
December 29, 2008
Moving Day Sustenance: Patty Melt and Falafel
Note: This entry originally took place on December 20, aka moving day hell.
I love burgers, but up until December 20 I had never eaten a patty melt. Considering how often I'm disappointed or underwhelmed by hamburger buns—from my experience, a bad bun has the ability to nullify the deliciousness of a juicy, flavorful beef patty and destroy all the happiness I possess at the moment I bite into that burger, so abhorrent a bad bun is—I like the idea of a patty melt since toast is, at least, reliably tasty. Or reliably un-shitty. (Having said that, the next time I eat a patty melt it will probably come on toast that is sliced too thinly, is covered in third-degree burns, and looks like it was just the victim of a vicious fork stabbing.)
- Patty melt
The patty melt from the recently reopened Kellogg's Diner came open-faced—one side topped with a slice of American cheese and the beef patty, the other topped with another cheese single and a heap of sliced grilled onions, and the two sides bridged together by three strips of crispy bacon.
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Posted by roboppy at 11:55 PM | Comments (14)
December 25, 2008
String Beans and More (String Beans) from Famous Sichuan
I'm obsessed with a certain foodstuff. And it's not wheat based. Or sugar based. Or fat based.
BUT ROBYN, WHAT ELSE COULD BE WORTHY OF YOUR OBSESSION?, you ask. In italics.
Sautéed string beans. Specifically, the ones from Famous Sichuan. Observe the time line of my madness.
- NOM NOM
November 18: My first visit to Famous Sichuan and my introduction to their string beans—solid, slender pods blistered to a crisp with a hint of chewiness, and bursting with beany, garlicky, salty, sweet juices. The seed for addiction has been planted.
- More!!
November 30: My third visit (the second being on the day before) and my second time ordering the string beans. They taste as good as they did the first time. The addiction grows.
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Posted by roboppy at 3:05 PM | Comments (24)
Merry Christmas, Unless You Don't Celebrate Christmas, In Which Case, Nevermind
- Ho ho ho.
I'm not a hardcore Christmas following, but I assume most of you are. So to all the awesome Christmas-celebrating readers out there...
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
I hope you find a cake at least half as awesome as the one above. Read more about it in this ancient entry from 2005. The cake comes from Fay Da Bakery in Chinatown—who else would put two Santa figurines on one Yule log, along with other mismatched pieces of holiday flora? (Actually, it's a Euro log, not a Yule log. Fay Da is breaking down all barriers of tradition!)
Today I'm eating a home cooked dinner with my mom and brother. Christmas is an excuse to hang out with my family, which is probably a good thing, even if I'm still on my computer half of the time. I was so unaware of the coming of Christmas and the whole "giving gifts" thing with my head wrapped up in work and moving that I'll probably end up surprising everyone with random gifts in February.
Posted by roboppy at 12:29 PM | Comments (5)
December 23, 2008
Buying Groceries › Late Night Snacking › Shame, Tasty Shame
I was going to write a glowing entry about Famous Sichuan, my new favorite restaurant in Chinatown, but instead, this happened:
- Do you know how long it takes to find that perfect level of enthusiasm-bordering-on-insanity without actually crossing the "insanity" line? It's hard! And I don't even think I succeeded.
And all my new readers just closed the window.
I made the mistake of opening a bag of garlic-flavored plantain chips from Denise Snacks at around 12:30 a.m., despite that I was still burping the semi-digested fumes from the dinner I finished at Snacky a few hours prior. (Actually, the real mistake was impulsively buying the chips in the first place.) But my brain defied my stomach and said, "Yes, Robyn, go to the kitchen and open that bag of plantain chips you bought last night. Yes....that's a good girl. I'm fattening you up for the slaughter—I mean, I love you!" So I obeyed my innermost desires and grabbed the bag. I inhaled the garlicky fumes that will probably be seeping out of my pores until morning. And I hurled a handful of the little round chips into my black hole-of-a-mouth.
GODDAMN IT, THE CHIPS WERE DELICIOUS. I mindlessly hurled handful after handful into my mouth while violently crushing them between my molars. Plantain chips have the most pleasantly crunchy texture, more solid than a potato or corn chip—although not too thick to make it difficult to chew—and less likely to shatter and send greasy detritus all over your shirt, pants, and keyboard that you are probably eating in front of because you spend all your time on the Internet, or maybe that's just me, um, or something. I am not the only one who has fallen victim to the garlic-laden, carb-based Spears of Doom shot out by Denise Snack's plantain chips.
I bought these chips at the Fine Fare at 385 Broadway in Brooklyn (right off the Hewes Street J/M station) but you can probably get them at...a bunch of places. Maybe I'll keep my eyes open for them. Or not. Because I can never buy these chips again, lest I want to be up in the wee hours of the morning burping fried plantains, like I am right now. I'm not proud of myself, but I assume someone else reading this has been in the same position as me. Or is in the same position right now...
...Which would be eerie.
Posted by roboppy at 1:30 AM | Comments (18)
December 21, 2008
Moving Hell is Over
- My room, a work in progress.
I moved. THE HELL IS OVER!!!
...That is, the hell of moving. As opposed to those other hells.
If anyone has advice for where to eat around the Nostrand Avenue stop on the A/C line, please reveal. I walked around the neighborhood with a friend yesterday in search of food and in the end I decided to take us to Taim in the West Village. I know there's food in this area; I just don't know where it is, exactly.
- This is the best cup on the face of the earth, no doubt about it.
But I do know that the discount store a minute away on Fulton Avenue sells mugs with illustrations of MANATEES for only 99 CENTS EACH. I could hardly believe my luck. Those cups were just made for me. I bought two of them. Hell, I should buy a case of them and give them away as Christmas gifts.
Regular food blogging shall resume shortly. :)
(Many thanks to Ken, Mom, Tristan, Karen, and Chris for helping make my move a smooth one.)
Posted by roboppy at 7:09 PM | Comments (22)
December 18, 2008
No, I Do Not Have a Hangover
Sorry for the infrequent posting lately. Been busy and failing at task management, and, oh, I AM MOVING ON SATURDAY, OH CRAP, I've packed like 30% of my stuff so far. Wish me luck.
- What horrors does this cup hold?
"Are you ready for round four?" asked Raphael.
"...Yeaah. While I can still put it on Serious Eats' tab."
- PEOPLE, NOT FOOD!!
On Tuesday night, Serious Eats had its first holiday party at The Gutter, a bowling alley in Williamsburg with a Bring Your Own Grub policy. Erin wrote about the Fornino pizza, but I'm just here to talk about the booze. And the bowling. And maybe a bit about the food.
To bring you up to speed, I'm known for not drinking. It's not a moral issue; it's a taste issue. "But people never start off liking the taste," is what I'm frequently told. Ohhh no, no, no, if those people can get over the taste issue, they're definitely not tasting what I'm tasting. The day I take a liking to alcohol is the day my taste buds die. It's just bad—the sharp, eye-tearing sting of multifaceted bitterness piercing the inside of my mouth and burning the back of my throat. Why am I supposed to drink this liquid—an expensive liquid at that?
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Posted by roboppy at 2:30 AM | Comments (25)
December 12, 2008
Cuban Sandwiches and a Serious Eats Round Up
- WIN.
I hadn't eaten the cuban sandwich from El Castillo de Jagua in over a year when I tried it again about two weeks ago. Thankfully, it's still an awesome combination of a pile of pork topped with a slice of ham, gooey cheese, and tart pickles in a mayo-smeared roll, grilled and pressed to a crisp. The last time I had the sandwich the pork was more shred-like and threatened by dryness—the newer version featuring fat meat chunks oozing with sweet pork juices is better. Few sandwiches this satisfying and filling exist for under $5.
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Posted by roboppy at 10:56 PM | Comments (22)
: This is the 
