Wednesday, March 26, 2008

New York City Food

So I'm back from NYC, and it was awesome seeing all of my friends. It made me miss NYC because there's just so much to do and so much good, cheap food to be had. It's really awesome when you look on yelp and see multiple 4 star restaurants within a block or two of where you're standing.

The places we went to eat were awesome. So delicious you can't imagine. The halal food cart is just amazing...amazing. I did a slack ass job of taking photos, but here are some:

Chiedo and I took the free Staten Island ferry which offers great views of the NYC skyline, the statue of liberty, and ellis island. One weird thing is I got linked to by some other blog. I noticed this because I usually get like 2-3 visitors a day and then one day I got 50, and I was wondering why the hell this happened. The blog doesn't really have his facts straight (I've been to NYC before and my list of things to do in NYC was in no-way ranked), but I'm flattered I got linked to. And he's right about the staten island ferry -- I think it's a great tourist destination.


One of my friends, Jaun, took us to this place way back in the day. It's a great Latino fried chicken place located in Harlem (157th and Broadway).


We brought some back for our gracious hosts, and they fought over the chicken like little kids.


Ummm...delicious. I plan on trying fried chicken again soon. maybe marinating in lime and some spices first. I just wish I could find a resonably sized container of peanut oil to use (not too big and not too small and expensive).


Another great place we went to is Lombardis. The waits a little long, but totally worth it. it's awesome pizza.

This is one of Chiedo's many failed attempts at trying to create a cool new profile picture for Facebook.


And a close-up of the real-deal.


All right, so it was a great trip overall. I got to hang out with a shit ton of friends from back in the day, and we had a good time.

I have some good stories about the halal food cart. The first night, we order, and I want both white and red sauce, but I'd never put it on myself (they've always done it for me at "my" place). So I decide to put equal amounts of white and red (and a lot of both). I go up to the guy to ask for a lid, and he gives me a crazy look. He asks me if I've ever had this hotsauce before. Well I have, but it's been a while. I took a bite of this shit, and I was trying to suck in cold air the whole way home. When I got there I tried water, milk, and whatever I could get my hands on, but it didn't help much. It was so delicious though, and I had trouble stopping. In the end, I only ate about half of it, and gave the rest to my Korean friend who finished it off without a drop of water....

The second night we go to halal food cart, as soon as we pull up there's some gang fight going on. One guys getting beat up in the corner, people are holding others back, etc... It cools down for like a minute and all seems quiet and then all of a sudden this red SUV squeals up, and starts trying to run over the other people. They're like running around trying to get out of the way. All the while the 30+ of us waiting in line are just standing there watching, chuckling a little (but really scared), wondering wtf is going on. The driver didn't hit anyone and then sped off as the other people tried to chase him down. The security guards in the building are on the radio, wondering what's going on outside. I assumed police would be there in a little bit, and I finally see a car show up, but all that happens is he skips the line, pays the man, and grabs his food...where are the police when some maniac is trying to runover people on the sidewalk?? Oh well. All in all, a pretty exciting night by the halal cart.

Anyways, NYC was awesome. Weather wasn't fantastic, but I'm sure I'll be going back.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What halal cart did you go to?

Ryan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ryan said...

We went to the famous one that's open really late on 53rd and 6th. However, back inthe day I used to go to one on 50th b/w 6th and 7th for lunch.

Greg said...

Cool, yeah 53rd & 6th is the best place. They even opened up another cart across the street, the lines were better b/c no one knew it was the same owner.