"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?

Beer garden grub at Studio Square

For better or worse, the new beer garden Studio Square has grown immensely in popularity, drawing patrons from all corners of the city to its location in Long Island City/Astoria, Queens. On any given night the place is packed with a surprisingly diverse crowd, and maybe the menu is a reflection of its clientele—you can get a bratwurst with sauerkraut, a pulled pork sandwich, a portobello mushroom "burger," or skewers of chicken souvlaki, among others; you can also order sashimi or maki from the sushi menu. At the condiment bar, giant barrels of spicy brown mustard, sweet-hot mustard, and honey mustard sit alongside packets of soy sauce and wasabi.

When there with MH a week or so ago the idea of chowing down on a spicy tuna roll while swilling Hoffbrau Dunkel didn't sit quite right with me, but eating chicken tenders, fries, and a giant soft pretzel did. The chicken tenders tasted like giant McNuggets, but the fries were perfectly adequate, as was the hot, fresh pretzel, which was delicious at least until it cooled down. Best to consume those quickly.

Seoul Garden, for cold noodles on a hot evening

TL and I, in search of late-night eats after catching a showing of (500) Days of Summer (a good flick, unless its story happens to mirror your own, in which case the movie is torturous) wound up at Seoul Garden, which was still hopping at 11pm. The night was hot and muggy and I had naengmyeon on the brain. I barely even touched the panchan when it came out—all I wanted was something cold.

I hadn't had naengmyeon in ages, but I fondly remembered the thin, intensely chewy buckwheat noodles; the icy beef broth shot through with hot mustard and citrus; and the garnishes of sliced pear, hard-boiled egg, beef, and ribbons of pickled daikon and cucumbers. The best versions I'd tried had included a handful of ice cubes or crushed ice in the broth, too. It's a strange dish, to be sure, but it's also one of the most refreshing variations of cold noodles I can think of, beating out both cold soba and hyashi chuka.

At Seoul Garden the clean-tasting beef broth was deliciously cold, tangy, and sweet, but I was surprised at how clumpy the noodles were—when the server snipped the mass of noodles in four with his scissors, they remained into four solid sections instead of collapsing out into the broth. After failing to loosen up the noodles with my chopsticks, I gave up and ate some of the clumps whole. Otherwise this version wasn't bad, and actually I kept thinking about getting my hands on another bowl for a whole week afterward. During the humid summer days of NYC, a meal of naengmyeon just can't be beat.