NEW YORK CITY: (MOSTLY) VEGETARIAN DINING

 July 21-22, 2021

Our son recently moved to the edge of Chinatown in New York City. For months we drooled over his descriptions of the new restaurants and dishes he and his girlfriend were discovering in the new-to-them section of the city, so it was fun to visit a few of the restaurants and taste some of that food. They are vegetarians, and we are trying to have a healthier diet, so we were happy to have someone guide us to the best NYC vegetarian eats.

We tried to cram in as many local eating experiences as we could during the two days we spent in the city. We even ate at two different restaurants on our first evening, beginning at Xi'an Famous Foods. (We had been to Xi'an in China and had some great food there, so we were excited to try this one!)

Knowing that our main meal was ahead of us, we tried not to over-indulge. The three of us shared an order of Spicy Hot Oil-Seared Hand-Ripped Noodles . . . 

. . . and an order of Chang'an Spicy Tofu.

AMAZING. It was as good as what we had in China and definitely a place I want to go back to.

A few hours later we had an incredible vegan meal at Jajaja Plantas Mexicanas on 162 East Broadway. We started with some delicious nachos.

We followed that with an assortment of equally delicious dishes: hearts of palm ceviche with avocado and plaintain chips, a tamale, mushroom tacos, chayote "fish" tacos . . . 

. . . and an Azteca chile relleno.

We had TWO desserts: churritos and dip . . . 

. . . and blueberry cheesecake. My mouth waters just looking at the pictures!

We enjoyed double-dating with these two.

The next morning Bob was intrigued by a long line at an order window for a tiny Chinese restaurant near our son's apartment.

Apparently Wah Fung #1 Fast Food almost always has a line like this. The place is famous for its "Chinese roasted pig."  

Although Bob had been eating vegetarian, he could not pass up an opportunity like this. He bought the small-size roasted pork over rice for about $4.00. He said it was good, not knock-your-socks-off good, but good.

That was First Breakfast. Second Breakfast was at Factory Tamal. 

We had an exceptionally tasty soft-egg and avocado sandwich. I could eat one of those for breakfast every day.  

After a morning of activity, we were ready for lunch. Our son gave us the book Cooking for Artists for Christmas, and I have enjoyed trying several of the recipes in it. In fact, every member of our family now has this cookbook, and on a few occasions we have all cooked the same recipe in this book.

Mina Stone started out as a fashion designer. Twenty years ago she took up catering as a way to support her fledgling clothing line, and before long she was invited to cater a dinner at art dealer Gavin Brown's downtown gallery. Soon she was cooking for events at several other art galleries. The cookbook above was generated during those days. In November 2019 she opened her first restaurant, Mina's, in MoMa PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. We had a double reason to go there. Besides enjoying the cookbook, our son's girlfriend was working at MoMa PS1, so we went there to join her for lunch.

The food had a Greek flair (Stone is half Greek and spent her summers in Greece during her youth). The bread selection was unusual and very tasty, and the lemonade was fresh-squeezed. We had a spinach pie very much like the spanokopita we ate years ago in Greece. There were also coriander olives and beet dip and one of the most beautiful salads I've ever had--slices of watermelon radishes nestled in miniature leaves of butter leaf lettuce. Each dish was appropriately artistic.

We shared a slice of olive oil cake for dessert.

We ate the meal outside in the art courtyard, a wonderful setting with great company.

One of the places I was most excited to visit on this trip was the famous Levain Bakery. I've been making a knock-off version of their chocolate chip cookies for a few years, and it is my new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. There are five locations in NYC, and after our lunch and a walk through MoMa PS1, we took the subway and walked about 20 minutes through Williamsburg to get to the closest location.

Now, which cookies to try? At $4.75 each, they are pricey, but each cookie weighs 8 oz. and can feed at least two people.  I bought a half dozen in assorted flavors, and my favorite ended up being the chocolate chip walnut version.

It took us (mainly me) three days to polish off all the cookies, and in my opinion, they were worth every penny and every calorie.

We visited a few more sites, and at the end of the day we needed some food that we could save for breakfast in the morning, so we stopped at Superiority Burger, a vegetarian hamburger and salad joint in the East Village. Our son is a pro at finding hole-in-the-wall eateries, which are my husband's favorite kind of restaurant. This one had a long line, a testament to its popularity. I got a kick out of their brutally honest whiteboard menu: The SB Tokyo Megamouth is the"8th best vegie burger in NYC!" The Daterini - eggplant - RST pepper is the "Best thing on the menu."  And the Burnt Broccoli Salad is "cheap" but "classic."

We ordered at the door and then waited about 20-30 minutes for our name to be called and our bag of food delivered to us. But it wasn't like we could just leave without something to eat. There is nothing like a couple of scoops of ice cream to shorten the journey home.

Overall, we had two very successful days of eating, don't you think?