Part 2 of 4: Dinner-on-Tour

Hope you liked my first couple adventures in the Empire State.  It’s always nice to get away for a weekened!!!  I’ll just continue the tale where I left you hanging last time…

Lunch with college friends was a feast to behold!  Tucked away inside one of my favorite holes-in-the-wall, Cafe Asean, we consumed a fantastic rendition of tradition-gone-fusion in the style of Southeast Asia.  I wrote about Cafe Asean last time I went to New York to visit the Penn friend who lives there, Eric.  Yet this time, I fortunately experienced a whole new side of this little dive: an outside courtyard, sandwiched between classic New York low-rises so common in the Village.  We all decided to split some appetizers, each ordering his own entree but providing ample samples to all at the table.

Our appetizers included two varieties of delicious dumplings: shrimp of some sort with veggies and a dipping sauce on one side and wild mushrooms and herbs with an equally delicious yet different dipping sauce on the other.  The mushrooms were tender yet meaty with the unmistakable quality of freshness so ubiquitous in fantastic little dives like this.

For our meals we all received some sort of stir-fry or curry.  There was a brown curry for one of our group, rice noodles with beef/chicken for two others, tofu and narrower noodles for another, and veggies with tofu and rice for yours truly.  I was not a fan of the white rice, though it did soak up the flavors nicely from the rest of the stir-fry.  The tofu: veg ratio was off for me, but I can’t expect all restaurants to get it right just for me!  It was all delicious, but the veggies ran out so fast, followed by my hunger, for this was 2nd lunch.  I tried the noodles, and I must say that the rice noodles were reminiscent of the steamed rice rolls so common in dim sum carts everywhere.  Everything looked and smelled fantastic, too.  Cafe Asean is fantastic, and I could not recommend it more highly as both a neighborhood gem and and sorrowfully overlooked location for excellent, authentic, cheap SE Asian meals to suit all tastes.

After lunch we wandered the village, popping into some cafes and various stores while seeing classic sights and experiencing the village as best we could. Then came dinner. Oh my was it quick but incredible on the way to the theatre to see Next to Normal, an excellent musical about a manic depressive woman who projects issues onto the rest of her seemingly normal family. It is about the trials and tribulations of family life: humorous yet simultaneously serious. Dinner was eaten on the run at a hole-in-the-wall falafel shop.

I got a warm pita filled with chunky hummus (just as delicious though surprisingly different than the hummus offered the night before at Caravan) and extra Israeli salad. I wolfed it down with passion, savoring the incredible flavors and differences of the hummus both nights. I love the way a similar food can be expressed in so many different ways, imprinted with personal preferences and regional differences of the various chefs. The others received falafel sandwiches stuffed with crispy falafel, salad, and a generous dollop of tahini. Tahini on its own is not one of my personal favorites, but it does go well with a strongly parsley-ed falafel. We all really enjoyed this small place where we could grab to go and eat outside. Nothing else could’ve remotely satisfied my craving for Middle Eastern fare. The funny thing is that I had no idea that was my craving! I recommended the place, since I saw it and just got the feeling for pita with hummus.

After the show, it was about 10:30, and several of our group were ready for some more classic New York eating diversity.  We decided on Our first stop was for some excellent Japanese food: ramen.

I don’t like eating a lot late at night, so I sampled some pickled radishes…yum! My friends got various styles of ramen off the traditionally scant menu. We sat around a low bar, close together, with the ramen-dealers hovering over us ready to take our orders, refill our waters, and provide us with excellent, friendly service. Leaving ramen-ya, Rai Rai Ken, in the East Village led us to one of the oldest Italian cafes in the area, where the crew indulged in some Italian desserts and other cafe goods. At this point it was about one o’clock, which rendered me out of my mind with tiredness. Walking back to our downtown residence for the night, I grabbed a huge apple and two delicious nectarines, and we subsequently chatted until about 2:30, at which point we crashed into bed and rested up for another shot at New York life, Sunday-style!

Check back tomorrow for the last installment of this epic weekend adventure!

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