Comfortable, easy deliciousness at Prune

I'd passed Prune a million times but had never gotten around to actually eating there. RZ was game to check it out, and after not seeing her for almost a year, it turned out to be the perfect place for a weekday girly catch-up date. The place is cozy and bright, with a friendly staff and a playful vibe.

None of the main dishes appealed to us, so we asked our waiter how we ought to manage our selections. He assured us that getting two appetizers and a vegetable from the main menu and a few small plates from the bar menu would be just fine, so that's what we did. But when our trio from the bar appeared, I knew we were in trouble. What came out—radishes with butter and salt; sardines with triscuits, cornichons, and mustard; Spanish goat cheese with buttered brown bread and red onions—was far more than I expected.

I was totally charmed, though; everything just looked so rustic and agreeable. Eating the fresh radishes and butter—which I'd never tried—made me understand the appeal of the ruddy little globes at last. They were crisp and spicy, and when paired with a smear of creamy butter and a sprinkle of salt, were refreshing and decadent at the same time. I hadn't eaten sardines before either; my only knowledge of them was that they were small and came packed in their proverbial cans. The fat, meaty filets we were given weren't anything like what I had imagined, and in a good way.

After these three I was already near-full, but the march had to go on. So out came the tender asparagus tips in browned butter with an egg yolk, and huge fried sweetbreads with bacon and capers, very different from the ones I had in New Orleans.

Followed by roasted marrow bones. The tall tubes seemed enchanted—each was an endless well of smooth, unctuous, beefy fat. The vinaigrette-slicked salad of parsley, capers, cornichons, and pickled red onions was just the right accompaniment to keep the marrow from being too crazy rich.

Dessert was an odd concoction of chocolate-cherry bread, raw goat's cheese, and a weird pine nut butter which somehow tasted like pork fat. All together or in various combinations, none of the three seemed to quite work together. I was happy to just eat the excellent cheese by itself, but also so stuffed at that point I was beyond real enjoyment.

Prune is a place I could easily imagine being a regular spot. The food is unpretentious and delicious, the environment delightful and welcoming. Our check arrived with two chubby hunks of dark chocolate sitting on top, just for fun. Since both RZ and I were mourning the fact that Prune was out of their monkfish liver with buttered toast that night, it's only a matter of time before I head back!

I roasted garlic!

So it's not even that much of an achievement, because roasting garlic is dead easy. Slice off the tops of several bulbs, nestle them on foil inside a pan, drizzle olive oil and a wee bit of salt over them, wrap up with the foil, and roast at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes. They're done when the cloves slightly rise out of their paper skins and feel soft and mashy. Let cool, and once you squeeze them out of their little pockets, they're ready to be spread in sandwiches, tossed with pasta, baked into bread, or used however you please.

I did about twelve bulbs and set out some at the house party with some toast wedges, and also gave another container to my brother. The rest entered MH's stomach in one frenzied go, and she smelled like garlic for two days afterwards—making her the human equivalent of these grapes.

Farewell scaffolding; Flatiron roundup

For the past five years that I've worked in the Flatiron building, it has been surrounded by scaffolding. Now summer has really begun, and as I prepare to start a new life on the other side of the country, the scaffolding seems to have come down for good. I'd call it a metaphor, but that would be too easy.

Things I've eaten in or near this office (click on the photos for a link to each post):

Chocolate-covered marshmallow; liege waffle

"Shack-cago" dogs and fries; brownie

Almond bar; crab "Christmas" roll

Duck pad see-ew; roasted turkey sandwich

Pastrami sandwich; egg custard tart

Carb me up: Saigon Bánh Mì So 1, Deluxe Food Market

After Brighton Beach, I stopped off in Chinatown to pick up some groceries, and just as I stepped out of the station I got a text from MH: "Where are you? Are you coming home for dinner?" She had been stuck in the apartment all day studying for her finals, and knowing she had looked for bánh mì just the week before to no avail, I decided to bring a few back to ease her pain.

The first time I ever tried a bánh mì, almost a decade ago, it was from Viet-Nam Bánh Mì So 1. I was enchanted after my first bite: the combination of cucumber, sweet marinated pork, pâté, pickled carrots, sriracha, and slices of pork roll between crisp French bread was like nothing I'd ever tasted before, and I considered the sandwich one of my greatest finds. Viet-Nam Bánh Mì So 1 has therefore always held a special place in my memory, but it had been years since I'd gotten one from here.

Now the place is called Saigon Bánh Mì So 1, but as far as I could tell nothing else had changed...aside from the sandwiches, that is. The two I brought back to my apartment (one house special, one pâté) were nothing special: coarsely prepared ingredients layered between a load of dry, hard bread. I suppose they could have always been this underwhelming and only my inexperience had made them delicious—I have eaten a number of other bánh mì since—but still, they were disappointing.

Luckily there were other good things to be had: the mai fun I got from a random street vendor, who spooned a thin, oily peanut sauce over the pile of stir-fried rice noodles before closing the lid, and nuòmǐ fan from Deluxe Food Market, glutinous rice prepared with sweet, fatty Chinese sausage, roast pork, dried shrimp, shiitake mushrooms, and cilantro. I only had several bites of each, considering everything else I had eaten that day, but both were quite delicious.

Bright-eyed in Brighton Beach: Cafe Kashkar, M & I International Foods, La Brioche

Ah, Brighton Beach. I've long wanted to check out this intensely Russian area of New York City, but only a handful of friends would even entertain the idea of venturing out to the tip of Brooklyn for a day. Luckily, AT is one such friend, and on one beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon, we met up on a train platform in Astoria to head towards Little Odessa. When I stepped off the train at the end of the Q line I was tickled to see how much the area looked and felt like Jackson Heights and Woodside, with Russians replacing the Pakistanis and Columbians and Filipinos.

The first stop we made was at Cafe Kashkar, one of the only restaurants in NYC serving the food of the Uighurs, who are "not Chinese, not Russian, not Uzbek, not Kyrgyz." How could I pass up the opportunity to eat food by a people who are defined by "nots"?

Though the list of salads on the menu was long, when we tried to order it was a different story. I pointed to one after another only to be told they weren't available, until finally our waiter directed me to the refrigerated glass case where what they did have was on display. In the end we chose an eggplant salad, and while the marinated peppers, garlic, and carrots tasted fresh and vibrant, the fried eggplant had sucked up a bit too much oil (as is its wont) and needed a good dousing of the chili-infused vinegar on the table to cut its richness and to bring the dish to life.


Both the manti and the samsa contained essentially the same filling of spiced, fatty, tender ground lamb. The only difference was the dough: while thin pasta skins held the filling for our four manti, the large samsa used a flaky baked crust. Unfortunately, despite appearances the samsa wrapper was tough and chewy, as if it had been baked and then nuked extensively in the microwave.

The lamb-filled dumplings weren't much more than tiny versions of the giant, round manti, but served with sour cream on the side, which is still a strange combination to me. Where's the soy sauce? The black vinegar? The chili-garlic paste? So now, after having tried both Turkish manti (tiny, with chewier skins, and heavily sauced in yogurt) and Uighur manti/dumplings, as well as numerous Korean and Japanese varieties, I still conclude: Chinese dumplings kick all ass.

We made it through about half of what we ordered, and then packed up the rest. Plenty of other delights lay ahead, after all.

At La Brioche, a charming, rustic bakery, AT picked up a sweet bread filled with poppy seeds and a ricotta muffin of sorts, and we were helped by a very serious little girl who did her best to sell us even more until the very end.

We stopped in at a market (I don't know the name) that had one of the most impressive by-the-pound displays I'd ever seen: three or four long, massive buffets filled to bursting with roasted meats, pastries, pickles, salads, and stews. We didn't get anything here, but I was sorely tempted.


And then at M & I International Foods, a wonderland of Russian groceries and prepared food, we stopped in awe before the giant slabs of cake on display, slices of which were sold by weight. Having read about the virtues of their carrot cake here and here, I gestured for a wedge, which at nearly half a pound ended up filling almost the entire container. We also got a smaller piece of the impressively Rococo creation that you see in the top right photo, above.

When we stumbled upon an outdoor cafe area upstairs, AT and I knew it was time to sit and sample the goods.

Armed with cups of coffee, we unpacked the carrot cake, the hunk of swirled cake, and the poppy-seed pastry and ricotta muffin from La Brioche. While the poppy seed bread and the Napolean-like swirled cake (studded with walnuts and layered with custard, and just sweet enough) was tasty, it was the carrot cake (right) that stole the show—people write paragraphs about this cake for a reason. Though I would venture to call it less a carrot cake and more a concoction of baked fruits and nuts bound with only the barest of carrot batter.

The ricotta muffin, on the other hand, was ehh. The texture was heavy and rough, almost to the point of grittiness, and the flavor was overwhelmingly lemony.

We sat for a while with our coffee and pastries, feeling like we were in another country, or at least not in New York City. Soon enough though, it was time to go. We did make it to the boardwalk however, and walked to Coney Island for a gander at the Wonder Wheel and Shoot the Freak before we got back on the subway.

Our time in Russia over, I would also stop in China—aka Chinatown—before the day was done....

69 Bayard Restaurant: Dolla dolla bill, ya'll

I thought this place was closed for good.

69 has long been one of the go-to spots among my friends for disturbingly cheap, old-school Chinese food in the wee hours. The place is known for being covered from floor to ceiling with dollar bills, which people write their names or draw pictures on and then tape to the walls. I don't think I've ever put one up myself, but I know plenty of people who have. In the above photo, which I took about a year ago, the currency wallpaper was probably several layers deep.

Back in March, I saw that the place was shuttered and didn't know if 69 had finally bitten the dust or if it was just one of their purges—in the past the owners had occasionally taken down all the bills and applied the money towards renovations. (I have no idea how much it would all add up to, but I imagine it's a pretty decent amount.) Luckily, it turned out to be the latter, though when I stopped in with DT several weeks ago, more had changed in the restaurant than usual. In its latest incarnation, 69 is called 69 Bayard Restaurant, there are new teapots on every table, and sadly, the menu had been shortened and the prices raised.

Still, prices were rock-bottom despite the dollar or two tacked on, and sitting there with DT felt approximately like old times. We had come from Les Enfants Terribles nearby and the hour was late, the place was filled with other post-drinking eaters, and even with only about twelve dollars between us we still managed to feed ourselves with both coin and grub to spare. Though the food at 69 has never been spectacular, the duck chow fun and the cold sesame noodles we ordered that night tasted better than usual.

I don't think I'd ever recommend 69 except for when it's 4 am and my friends are craving Chinese food, but should the restaurant ever close for good instead of simply for renovations, it'll be a sad day in my world. Though with a new crop of scribbled bills already sprouting on the walls, 69 just might be open for a little while longer.

Sauce selection slight at Pho 32 & Shabu

Don't be fooled by the numerous little plates of condiments on the table above: the small sauce selection at Pho 32 & Shabu leaves much to be desired. At Chinese places such as Minni's or the now-closed Happy Shabu Shabu there are usually tons of choices to play with, but here there were only seven or eight: soy sauce, chili sauce, sesame sauce, fish sauce, ponzu, chopped scallions, vinegar, sesame oil, maybe one or two others. For a condiment freak like me, this is a sad state of affairs.


I ordered the beef shabu, which came with the above plate o' veg (I wasn't that impressed with the veg selection either, which was mostly napa cabbage and bok choy with a handful of other items like fish cake, squash, mushrooms, tofu, and corn). All of our orders came with a small salad of shredded lettuce drizzled with peanut sauce that was fine if not memorable, and the choice of getting udon noodles instead of rice. You cook the udon in the broth yourself, and I found the fresh, chewy noodles quite good; I'd say having this option is the one thing Pho 32 has over the other places.

In the end Pho 32 wasn't bad, but I think the main problem here is that while other places charge around eight or nine dollars for their shabu, Pho 32 charges fifteen. That's almost double the cost for shabu that isn't much better in either quantity or quality. Still, I really like hotpot, and even though the lack of condiment options made me sad, having overpriced shabu is better than having none.