Well, well, well

Hi, everyone.

There is so much I've missed writing about over the last year: visits from friends and family; celebrations of birthdays and holidays; the successful completion of my first year teaching college composition; travels to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan.

Over the last twelve months there were meals like the the omakase at Zenkichi; the fried chicken lunch at Momofuku Noodle Bar; the Colorado reuben (made with buffalo meat) at Choice City Butcher & Deli; dips and Greek pasta at Kefi; a classic Greek feast at Taverna Kyclades; steak frites at Le Relais de Venise; and dinner at the "secret" Japanese restaurant Bohemian…as well as all the awesome things I ate while in Asia.


There were also recipes I never posted, like for butter mochi; banh mi–style hot dogs; honey-soy baked chicken wings; Gruyère and black pepper cream scones; a roast of brussel sprouts, bacon, and butternut squash; pad see ew; pao de queijo; cinnamon buns; and bacon and bleu cheese cornbread. Thinking about all of these omissions pains me greatly, but I'm gradually accepting that there will be no catching up for a while, and no way that I can make up the complete backlog. I'll just have to pick up again once my thesis is completed.

Which will all be soon, of course. My last year in graduate school is going to fly by, much too fast, and be over before I know it. My consolation is that blogging about these events will give me something to remember later, but it won't actually fix things in time. What else to do, then, but simply enjoy myself while I can?

Missing you all,
Soopling

Coloradoan Roundup

Here are all the articles I've written for the Coloradoan, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, since I started profiling local restaurants a year and a half ago. Starting from the most recent:


"Road 34 earns deli designation"
"Vietnamese comfort food worth trying at Pho Duy"
"Las Salsitas keeps it simple, fresh"
"Stuft burger bar offers BYOB of choices"


"Mahalo Yogurt is exactly what Fort Collins needed"
"Moe's Original BBQ tickles your ribs with down-home flavor"
"Visions of France at La Creperie"
"Ras-Ka brings zest to Ethiopian cuisine"


"Bondi Beach Bar: Australia by way of Colorado"
"Funky Monkey Crepe Cafe doesn't monkey around" (CLOSED)
"Get local, fresh Southwest cuisine at Cilantro Grill"
"O2: Take a hit of energy"


"Panino's: A place to satisfy cravings"
"La Luz's Mexican flavors hit the spot"
"Fish dishes up the freshest"
"Backcountry Provisions serves sandwiches of note"


"Fill up at Tasty Harmony"
"Rodizio a carnivore's paradise"
"No regrets at Taj Mahal"
"Surprising Thai fare at Ti Bar"

"Visions of France at La Creperie"

Click here to read my review of La Creperie in Fort Collins, CO!

"Ras-Ka brings zest to Ethiopian cuisine"

Click here to read my review of Fort Collins Ethiopian restaurant, Ras-Ka!

"Bondi Beach Bar: Australia by way of Colorado"

Dear Blog,

I miss you. I don't know when we will be reunited. It looks like that won't happen until the end of the semester. All my intentions to post once a week have turned out to be wicked lies, and I apologize.

But I can offer a sort-of recent dining profile, which is here. Ignore the weird and inappropriate hyphenation, or just imagine a robotic voice is reading it aloud. Also, forgive me.

Up to her neck in school,
Soopling

Skoolin'

Flowers my sweet neighbor SD left in my bike basket on my first day of teaching

Well, I can't even tie this one in nicely with the changing of seasons, because autumn has already swept in, ushering summer well out the door. With autumn came the beginning of a new semester, one which piled an internship and teaching two sections of undergraduate composition on top of my regular classes. So adapting to the changes in my schedule, and to the relentless new demands of lesson planning, homework grading, paper grading, auditing, office hours, and otherwise keeping track of students' various needs has been…interesting. And by interesting I mean borderline insane.

So that's a brief explanation of why I've fallen off the face of the (blog) earth. There just hasn't been any time to write here, though I still faithfully take photos, swearing to myself I'll get to posting about them soon. The good news is: I am aiming to start putting in a post a week, so I'll only be two months behind, say, rather than three. In the meanwhile, you can catch a preview by looking at some photos from summer and the beginning of fall. And I promise, at some point, I will be back.

A buffet gamble

Walk along 40th Road in Flushing, Queens at any given time and you'll find a row of charter buses, all waiting to ferry gamblers to Atlantic City or nearby casinos like Mohegan Sun and Turning Stone. The companies that run these buses also offer remarkably low-priced fares: typically ten or fifteen dollars per person for round-trip transportation, a meal at the casino's buffet, and a ten- or twenty-dollar voucher for table gambling money. As long as you refrain from losing everything you own at the casino after you arrive, you have a pretty good deal. (But if you do lose all your money, you'll still at least have a ride back!)

Taking advantage of one of these offers, my parents and I headed to Foxwoods Casino for an afternoon. Since none of us were interested in gambling at the tables, we traded off our vouchers (i.e. sold them to the guys waiting at the bus drop-off for people like us) and headed for Festival Buffet to eat lunch instead. The food is just as you might expect for a buffet in a casino—some items were good (the surprisingly tender slice of London broil, the shrimp cocktail, all things battered and fried) but most of them were mediocre (all of the food at the Chinese and Mexican stations, any attempt at seafood). Still, while sheer quantity doesn't usually make up for quality, in this case some combination of both factors made the meal decent enough.

Thus fortified, we spent the next few hours at the penny and nickel slot machines. Once we blew about twenty bucks we took the bus back and called it a day. What can I say? My parents and I may love a bargain, but gamblers we are not.

A sandwich served sans smile at Num Pang

Now that I no longer work in NYC or have my own place in Astoria, when I'm back visiting it's a rare occasion that I arrive to Manhattan early enough to have breakfast on my own. My parents' house is deep enough in Queens so that by the time I wake up, shower, pack my bag, and make my way downtown the clock is usually ticking toward noon; plus, there's so much food in the house there's no reason to wait until I reach the city to eat.

But one day last week I had stayed with TL, and woken up when he left for work. With nothing else to do in his apartment, I decided to head in to Think Coffee for the afternoon. I could have gotten off at a closer subway station, but I arrived to Union Square around 9:45am, fully intending to eat a fun breakfast first.

I hadn't decided where until I passed the sandwich shop Num Pang, which I'd been wanting to try for a while. The girl at the window informed me that they wouldn't be open until 10. And I'll say this—while she wasn't unfriendly, she certainly wasn't friendly, either. Maybe I've grown soft from hanging out in Colorado, where strangers smile and say hello even when you are simply passing them in the aisle of a grocery store, but to me her vibe seemed unnecessarily aloof, given that for a while I was the only person standing on the sidewalk outside of the shop that morning. Whatever. I decided to wait anyway.

At 10:01am, she took my order. Having had ample time to consider what I felt like having, I asked for the blood orange lemonade and one of their daily specials, a lemongrass chicken liver pate sandwich. I was order #0001 on the receipt.

And then I settled myself upstairs, in front of a window facing out onto the sidewalks. I must admit I felt quite luxurious, leisurely sitting down for breakfast while cab after cab clogged the street below, ferrying people to work. I was glad to be waking up my sleepy tastebuds with cold, sweet blood orange lemonade instead of rushing to an office.

As for the sandwich, it was good. I'm not sure how much I would sing its praises beyond that. At $7.25 for a relatively small sandwich, it wasn't cheap. The chewy toasted roll was delicious, but too stiff to properly hold its contents without squirting them out the sides and bottom—I ended up splitting my sandwich into two open-faced halves, not wanting to deal with a landslide of pate each time I took a bite. The pate itself was studded with coarsely ground peppercorns and had a loose, chalky, vaguely gloppy texture; the advertised grilled pickled red scallions made no impression; the garnishes of cucumber, mayo, cilantro, and pickled carrots were fine. All the elements seemed of decent quality, but there was just something about the sandwich that felt like it had been executed with a lack of soul.

Or perhaps I was just responding to that girl at the counter. Sometimes you just want a little friendliness in the morning, you know?