Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Gluttonday

You get the picture.

I guess Sundays are my "free days," in which I pay less attention to the nutritive value of what I eat. That isn't to say all bets are off (I was offered a late-afternoon cupcake by a friend and declined), but it does mean my standards are lowered a notch.

For lunch, I went to Sunset Park's Ba Xuyen, known for their banh mis. But instead of sandwiches, we had soups, two steamy bowls of pho filled with noodles, shrimp, boiled quail eggs, cilantro, bean sprouts, pork sausage, and boiled beef. I made mine pretty spicy with the help of some nearby chili paste, but regardless, the soup was soul-satisfying. I skipped the boiled beef, which always freaks me out a little. The shrimp was enough protein for me.

Later, I had a birthday dinner planned with a friend, but we were early for our reservation. Walking past Sushi of Gari on 77th and Columbus, we decided that we had to begin our evening with raw fish. Maybe we didn't have to order toro, snapper, and hamachi, but we did anyway. Three perfect sushi pieces came with the perfect compliments. Atop fatty toro, we received a salty radish puree. Hamachi came with lightly pickled jalapenos and my snapper was topped with something deep-fried and something else involving nuts. The pieces were perfect and I think we both wished we had time--and money--for omakase.

But we had a reservation to make down the street, at Dovetail, where the Sunday Suppah is a 3-course meal for $38 (not including extras, supplements, and alcohol). My starter of beef tartare tasted really ketchupy, which I liked, though others at my table disagreed. Perhaps they were put off by the accompanying huckleberries, but I liked the contrast of salty and sweet. Seared foie gras was by the book (served with something sweet--in this case, huckleberries again), and a salt-cooked onion was layered with unexpected shaved black truffles. It was difficult to cut, though worth the challenge. Crab ravioli sang with a smokiness imparted by diced chorizo.

My entree of chicken was tasty enough, left moist and draped with a crack-your-tooth crunch layer of skin. I could have done without feta cheese creamed spinach and I only ate the boring root veggies out of respect for the vitamins they possessed. A cheese plate did us fine. Dovetail pits old world cheeses against their Vermont counterparts. In this case, the Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen Blue lost to a runny and pungent French blue. The sheep's milk cheeses were a tad bland for my taste, though I loved the onion and black pepper jam that joined them.

I would have passed on dessert, had they not arrived in that obligatory "share all" fashion. Apple crumble was fine, though the real highlight of the plate was Calvados ice-cream. I didn't care for the peanut butter and chocolate moussy thing, and could have skipped the sorbets and ice-creams entirely. A warm bread pudding with black mission figs came with a nice glass of malted Ovaltine, not a bad way to end the evening. By then, our heads were swimming from a 2008 Brocard Chablis and a 2007 COS Nero d' Avola. The expensive wine list plundered any notions of a cheap Sunday Suppah. But then, wasn't that to be expected?

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Ba Xuyen

4222 8th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11232

718.663.6601

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Sushi of Gari

370 Columbus Avenue

New York, NY 10024

212.362.4816

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Dovetail

103 West 77th Street

New York, NY 10024

212.362.3800

Reprise

Maybe I'm obsessed with the idea of making leftovers delicious because, growing up, just about half of my meals at home were leftovers.  And not necessarily good ones.  There was a lot of day-old chicken and dry pork chops and cold green beans re-steamed in the microwave.  I'm not unhappy that chapter of my life has closed. 

Yesterday, the rain brought out the homemaker in me and I made turkey chili, the same version I made for the Superbowl in January.  To refresh tired memories, that recipe involves ground turkey, poblano peppers, green peppers, corn, tomatillos, kidney beans, onion, and a tomato base.  It's spicy, hearty, and perfect for wet weather.  

But after a day of chili, I was sufficiently bored.  I started thinking about this sandwich I had a few weeks ago at Baoguette.  It was a banh mi made with the filling from a Sloppy Joe.  

Could I do it?  Could I make a knock-off banh mi with leftover chili?  

I had to make pickles first.  My pickles were a sweeter kind that I thought would be closer to the Vietnamese style.  I didn't use daikon, but I did use thin-sliced pickling cucumbers, shredded carrot, sliced hot green peppers, and white onions.  I salted them to draw out the moisture and then rinsed and dried them before putting them in the brine I had boiled and then cooled.  The brine was an apple cider vinegar-base brine, with the addition of kosher salt, cane sugar, allspice berries, cloves, mustard seed, a bay leaf, whole corriander, and water.  Most pickling recipes will tell you that pickles need to sit for days or weeks before they're done.  But with a mild sweet pickle recipe like this one, a few hours is more than sufficient.  

Next, my own version of kewpie mayonnaise.  Kewpie mayonnaise is the Asian condiment of choice and it appears on sandwiches everywhere.  It's mayonnaise with MSG added and it's pretty delicious, but not exactly good for you.  I made my own spread with olive oil-based mayonnaise, sriracha, and a teaspoon or so of fish sauce (a traditional condiment used on banh mi).  

I used whole-wheat baguettes, sliced and toasted, as my banh mi base.  Then the mayonnaise, the pickles, the chili and, finally, fresh-torn cilantro.  The sandwich tasted very much like the banh mis I know and love.  

Changing Weather

On Thursday, I went out to Park Slope to see a friend's show and decided to stop for a bite on 7th Avenue at a tiny place appropriately called Little D Eatery.  Little D has all kinds of small plates, but I kept it simple.  A running nightly special includes a whole grilled fish, and on Thursday that fish was striped bass, a fish I like very much.  I asked for the bass filleted, and it came with bright green olive oil and preserved lemon.  

Pickled red cabbage was deliciously crunchy and roasted asparagus did right by us.  As a reward for such a healthy meal, I ordered the root beer float, made with root beer ice-cream and served in a cold mug with Virgil's root beer.  It was a little too root beery; it might have been more clever to serve root beer ice-cream with vanilla soda.  

Friday was a series of small meals.  I grabbed a slice at the new Roman-style pizza joint on Park Avenue called Golosi.  Roman-style means the pizza is sold by the inch, and it also means that you can get tiny portions of a lot of different varieties of pizza, which, for someone like myself, is kind of heaven.  

I only wish the pizza had been better.  It was crispy, sure, but it was also fairly flavorless.  The sauce had no bite.  It was like flatbread, only less interesting.  I thought a scoop of birthday cake gelato would redeem the mediocre pizza, but, alas, the gelato was grainy and not at all creamy like it is in Italy.  

Later in the evening, I stopped by Kampuchea on the Lower East Side for another small meal.  The pickle plate involved cucumbers, white onions, daikon, and spicy cabbage.  Yum.  Grilled corn came topped with kewpie mayonnaise, chili pepper, and toasted coconut.  Sound gross?  It isn't.  Mayonnaise and corn is effing amazing.  Kampuchea also offers, for a scant $17, a tasting of their sandwiches (choose three).  I chose a bacon sandwich, a meatball sandwich, and a barbecue pork sandwich.  All resembled the classic banh mi (baguette, pickled veg, cilantro) and none was as good as my recent banh mi adventures, but for the price, I could hardly complain.  

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Little D Eatery

434 7th Avenue

718.369.3144

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Golosi

125 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

212.922.1169

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Kampuchea Noodle Bar

80 Rivington Street

New York, NY 10002

212.529.3901

E. And G. Adventure In The E.V.

Around six, we put our names in at Ippudo, who claimed to have an hour and a half wait.  We walked down to St. Mark's and I saw the sign for Ramen Setagaya and couldn't be persuaded to wait for the city's best ramen.  So Setagaya it was. 

We had soy sauce eggs (ok, I found out my sister doesn't really love eggs the way that I do, so I had the soy sauce eggs by myself) and a bamboo salad that was dressed with soy, salt, and pepper.  Fatty rounds of barbecued pork melted in our mouths.  Oshinko was served traditional style: cucumber, eggplant, and whatever that sweet potato thing is.  

My sister's ramen came in a salty broth with toothsome noodles, a soy sauce egg, and roasted pork.  The broth lacked the depth of flavor that Ippudo's is known for (they use roasted pork bones as the base of their stocks), but it did have the brininess of fresh seaweed.  That may not appeal to all.  My noodle was a thicker variety--the name escapes me--and came separate from a gelatinous, fishy broth.  I liked the texture of the noodles, though the soup was a little too ocean-y for my taste. 

Ramen mission accomplished, we slipped across the street to the newest version of the Murray Hill hot spot Baoguette--the downtown plot is called Baoguette Cafe--for some takeout sandwiches.  The line is long and they only take cash, but, hey, the banh mi are pretty delicious.  I ordered the classic, topped with country pate, pickled cucumber, carrots, daikon, cilantro, and sriracha, as well as the 'sloppy bao,' made with curry beef.  Baoguette makes their baguettes in house.  I didn't eat the sandwiches until later, though they were lovely.  Next time, I'll be ordering the grilled corn with dried shrimp and scallions. 

Finally, sweets were in order.  We hiked (ok, drove) to 2nd Avenue and waited in the excessive line at Momofuku Milk Bar to see what the hype was all about.  A half hour later, once I could finally see the display case, I noticed that all the cookies were gone, with the exception of two.  Most of the cakes and breads were gone.  I had wanted to try the blueberry cream cookie that I watched Christina Tosi make on Martha Stewart.  Instead, I ended up with three compost cookies that tasted suspiciously like my Aunt Linda's mocha chip cookies, a slice of dulce de leche cake (too sweet), a slice of cinnamon bun pie (good concept, with the cream cheese frosting, but, again, too sweet) and a cup of donut-flavored soft-serve.  A note on the soft-serve: the chocolate donut flavor actually has the doughy consistency of the pastry, while the jelly donut flavor tasted more like mediocre sorbet.  I should have gone for a set of pork buns and the bavarian cream soft-serve, but, like the line, it would have been too much.  

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Ramen Setagaya

34 St. Mark's Place

New York, NY 10003

212.387.7959

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Baoguette Cafe

37 St. Mark's Place

New York, NY 10003

212.380.1487

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Momofuku Milk Bar and Bakery

207 2nd Avenue

New York, NY 10003

212.254.3500

The First Warm Day

I made it all the way to Sunset Park and the Greenwood Cemetery.  Before I climbed the hill, rumored to be the highest point in Brooklyn, I stopped by the legendary banh mi joint, Ba Xuyen for a sandwich and a bubble tea.  My honeydew bubble tea might have been a tad on the sweet side (coconut is my favorite, but they didn't have it), but the sandwich outright ruled.  Ba Xuyen offers eight different types of banh mi, ranging from traditional to wacky (you couldn't pay me to eat the sardine version).  We ordered the meatball banh mi, basically a smart and cheese-less take on the meatball sub.  A baguette housed tender meatballs, pickled cucumber/carrot/daikon, fresh cilantro, fish sauce, and cilantro. It was spicy.  It was salty.  It was sweet.  It was crunchy.  It was over way too fast.  

Having had our fill of tombstones, we walked to Park Slope, back to the neighborhood I lived in as a very little girl.  Once there, we stopped at the legendary, 30-year-old Smiling Pizza on 7th Avenue for a slice.  Mine hadn't been reheated enough, but otherwise demonstrated what a perfect New York slice is: crispy but still pliable, thin-crusted, yummy.  

Eventually, I found myself back in Astoria, where I ordered delivery from the new 30th Avenue chicken joint, appropriately named Chicken Shack.  Chicken wings were crispy, though not slathered in hot sauce the way I like them (it came on the side).  Pork ribs were as perfect as they get for delivery.  They were also spicy.  And pretty darn cheap. 

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Ba Xuyen

4222 8th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11232

718.633.6601

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Smiling Pizza Restaurant

323 7th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11215

718.788.2137

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Chicken Shack

3502 30th Avenue

Astoria, NY 11103

718.721.3035