No cuts no buts no coconuts! Long Lines and Good Food at the Grub Street Food Fest

So this isn’t really a full on post, more like a recap of some of the flavors of the day last Saturday. We did get some yummy tastes in, but I really wish someone had told me that places would already be out of food and shut down by 2pm. It would have been wise to get there around noon…not that I think I would have been able to get up much earlier…Friday night was a late one! :D

So first of all, that place was crazaaaaay! I mean did it really have to be packed into that little space? There were so many people it was almost impossible to move forward...or sideways...or backward without getting aggressive. It was really difficult to maneuver and get to the tables you wanted to be at, partially b/c some hotspots, obviously Luke's included, had long lines that spanned 3+ stations. These places were the ones that were worth it though, and there was at least a fun sense of camaraderie with the other people who were waiting on line with you…you would all chuckle together when some naïve newcomer would ask to get by so they could get to the table, to which you responded, with a smile, “Haha no sorry. The end of the line is actually wayyyy back there.” And then turn to the person behind you and say, “Sucks for them!” *chuckle chuckle chuckle*

We wanted to hit Luke’s first to ensure we had something delicious to start. The line was ridiccccculous, but luckily the team was moving pretty quickly and on the way was one of the spots I wanted to hit anyway: Cascabel. One chicken taco please. Mmm! So good. I’m usually not a fan of soft-shell tacos--I know I know, the real way is soft shells, but I really like to get some crunch in all my foods…I am a major proponent of potato chips in sandwiches, try it. SO good. (Also, you know that scene in Breakfast Club when the weird girl makes a sandwich out of bread, some cereal (possibly Cap’n Crunch) and sugar, and then bites into it and it makes this huge *crunch* sound? Yea I think I might be the only person who thought that looked REALLY appealing.) Anyway, even though I like a little crunch in my taco, these babies were really good, especially with some hot diablo sauce. In fact, before we left we stopped by again for some pork tacos…these were even better than the chicken. As we discussed in the moment, isn’t pork ALWAYS better than chicken? Yes. Which was followed up with, well unless it is really fatty or dry. (So no, not really, but also yes.)

Back to Luke’s…I decided it was finally time to try the crab roll. Oh. Em. Gee. It was really freakin’ good. I know the lobster roll is supposed to be the highlight, but the crab roll is really SO good. I definitely recommend it. I have totally been converted. Not sure I’ll ever go back. Just look at this picture--seriously, you want to click and zoom in on this thing. Look at it. Ahhhhhhhh. I just want it all the time! 

Anyway, so maybe it was not a wise choice to wait on the Luke’s line first because by the time we were done there, a lot of places were closing down! It was so depressing. Georgia’s Eastside BBQ looked like it had been closed for a while…and just as we were walking up to La Sonrisa they were taking down the sign. So we abandoned empanadas (I know…it’s really really sad…I must have said “I really wanted an empanada” and frowned like 6 times before I just accepted it) So we decided we would get on the really-slowly-moving line for a Pies ‘n Thighs chicken biscuit to round out the afternoon and leave happy. When we were about 8 people from the stand, the unthinkable happens…THIS:

They are OUT of chicken biscuits. Nooooooooooooooo. After deliberating whether to get off the line or wait to try to biscuits with cream cheese and hot pepper jelly, we decided to stay…except hot pepper jelly does not appeal to me so I just had store bought cream cheese on a cold, soggy biscuit. Disappointing. (This is when the second taco stop happened). I guess I’m just gonna have to trek down to Brooklyn to get the full Pies ‘N Thighs experience. And don’t worry, I’ll tell you alllll about it when I do.

I hope some of you were able to get out to the Food Festival, hopefully earlier than me, and try some goodies. The spots I missed are now on my list of places to go and hopefully I will get my empanada, chicken biscuit, bbq, and blondie soon enough.  

- The Wandering New Yorker

Grub Street Food Festival This Saturday!

Another great event is going down tomorrow (Saturday) and trust me, you don't wanna miss it!

NY Mag's Grub Street is partnering up with the Hester Street Fair to put together a giant food fest with some delicious vendors. Grub Street has put together a list of their favorite food vendors to come together for this street festival, so you know it's gonna be amazing. And guess who's gonna be there? Our favorite: Luke's Lobster!!

Booths I'm dying to try (after I get my lobster roll):

- Georgia's Eastside BBQ - I just don't eat enough pulled pork anymore

- Pies 'n Thighs - mm fried chicken...AND pie? Dunno if I'll be able to handle both...

- Cascabel / La Sonrisa - I just can't decide! I can never say no to tacos OR empanadas. ayyyy

- Hot Blondies - gotta have dessert :) How good do THESE look???

Of course I'm not sure I can handle all that food in one afternoon (it's not completely impossible), butttt I'm hoping to bring along some backup to help me sample as many flavors as possible (now taking volunteers!). And if I see something that looks too appealing to pass up, I'll have to divert my focus. Gotta give everyone a fair chance at getting some Mmms and Ooos. Ah I can't wait!!! I will definitely be hitting the gym today in preparation for tomorrow's events...gotta keep up my strength ya know? 

For a full list of vendors Click Here (nymag) or Here (hester st). Let me know if you see one that I just HAVE to try. Also check out Grub Street's recommendations of what to taste at each vendor Here. I am seriously salivating now. Beware hungry readers...

Here are the Deets:
Saturday October 16th (one day only!!)
10am-6pm
@ the intersection of Hector and Essex, Lower East Side

Hope to see you there!!!


- The Wandering New Yorker

Triple Sweet Afternoon at The Chelsea Market

Ladies and gentlemen…I have found my heaven. It involves, surprise surprise, lots and lots of food. I can’t believe I didn’t know about the Chelsea Market until now. This place is amazing--and I only touched on a few of the vendors. Who knows what other deliciousness is waiting for me there?? You can be sure that this isn’t the last you’ll be hearing about it on this blog.

Chelsea spans roughly from
14th-34th, bet the Hudson and
5th ave/Bdwy; Sandwiched between
Hell's Kitchen & West Village
(click to enlarge)

The Chelsea Market is located in West Chelsea, between 9^th and 10^th avenues, spanning 15^th to 16^th street, in what used to be a part of the National Biscuit Company complex, built in the 1890s. Apparently they made some of our favorite snacks there, including Oreos, Fig Newtons, Mallomars, Barnum’s Animal Crackers, and Saltines. In 1959, National Buscuit’s main production site was in New Jersey (lame) so they sold their buildings at this site, and they changed hands until sometime in the 1990s when the ground floor was turned into the windy road of food stores and eateries that it is today. There are some really cool elements from the original building, including this faux waterfall that attracts lots of kids, coins and me. There’s more cool historical tidbits about the location on the Chelsea Market site, click here. 

First impressions: Walking into this place was just so exciting. It was booming with noise and other eager eaters, it was seasonally decorated with tons of fun Halloween paraphernalia (I LOVE Halloween decorations). Ignoring the Anthropologie store right near the 9^th ave entrance, you walk into this cool, underground warehouse type vibe and are surrounded by a huge variety of sweet shops, markets, restaurants and more. Like I said…heaven. Basically, after this trip I made two immediate decisions: 1) On my “Important things to consider when looking for new apartment” List, I have added “Proximity to Chelsea Market” 2) I now need to start a “Important things to consider when looking for new apartment” List…so I can make sure to add stuff like this, and of course "Close to a wine store," but that’s sort of assumed. It's basically on par with functioning shower and sink. You know...the basics.

MmmmmNOPE.

So anyway, here’s how my trip to heaven came to be…I was initially drawn to the market by a Time Out NY review of the RonnyBrook Milk Bar. Let me tell you, they made this place sound great…pointing out a fab deal of $3.50 for two “freshly baked cookies” and a glass of milk. They’ve got flavored milk, milkshakes, ice cream, cookies, the works. It was really promising! So of course I asked to try this great deal, with some cold skim milk, a chocolate chip cookie and a white choc chip cookie. Doesn’t that look really good?

Well it’s not. It’s hard to say what the most disappointing part of the Milk Bar experience was because everything honestly just missed the mark. The first sign of disaster was that the milk was room temperature. Now I am super weird about milk…I need it to be really really cold, so I almost always drink it on ice. And I recognize that this is not normal. But even my normal milk-temperature-drinking companion was pretty grossed out. Needless to say, we requested a cup of ice. I’m not sure how a milk bar can get this wrong, but they definitely did. Next sign: the cookies were legitimately ice cold. When the employee told me she’d have to go into the back to get more choc chip cookies, I was hoping that meant there were some coming out of the oven, but I’m pretty sure she got it from the refridgerator. Ugh. So disappointing! So we asked if she could zap them in the microwave. She was incredibly friendly and helpful, I'll give them that, but it gets worse. The cookies had an interesting smoky taste to them--do you like smoky cookies? No. Because smokiness is not a cookie characteristic. This means they are burned. In addition to the light charring on the bottom, they seemed to be sprinkled with leftover chips of tin foil. UGH. You're not supposed to feed people tin foil. It's not like we didn't still eat the cookies...I mean they werrrre cookies after all, but it just wasn't anywhere near what we thought we'd be getting.  Maybe my experience was an anomaly and it was just because it was late-ish in the day and we got a bad batch of cookies or something, but I'm not really willing to try it again. Booooo milk bar.

Moving Forward...I was actually not planning on sampling multiple stations in the Chelsea Market, but after that disappointing first taste, I felt like I needed something else, and then having only two flavors to talk about just didn’t seem like enough, so I stopped at a third shop to round it out. And after the Milk Bar, my taste buds definitely got a lot happier!

Enter L’Arte del Gelato. The milk bar is pretty close to the 9^th ave entrance so we decided to go all the way to the end of the market before landing on our next stop. It just so happened this place was the last stand and was very appealing, so we went for it. We got half dolce di latte and half vanilla bean (I know vanilla is not that exciting, but I figured if the vanilla was delicious, I could say with confidence that the rest of the flavors must be delicious as well!) This gelato was AMAZING. I can’t say it’s the best gelato in the city or anything nearly that bold only because I haven’t had much gelato in the city, or anywhere outside of my adventures in Firenze (averaging about 2.5 gelatos a day for the duration of my stay). But I can say that this gelato was damn good. Super creamy and flavorful…it definitely merits a second visit. Checkout their other locations too: Lincoln Center Plaza (in the summer months) and West Village (7th ave & Barrow st).

Onward! Our final stop was actually one of the first places we spied and I just couldn’t resist it. Eleni’s Bakery. It was so big and bright and colorful, I just couldn’t help but peer in the window. Also Eleni is a Greek name so I felt like I had to go in. Gotta support the brethren! (Or whatever the “sister” form of this word is. You get the point). Also I don't even know if Eleni is Greek...or a real person...I can't seem to find anything on her. Anyway, so it was an easy decision that this would be the third taste of the evening. The specialties appear to be sugar cookies and cupcakes, so we got one of each. To my fellow  Dukies, picture Mad Hatters cookies (my FAV Durham treat): fun, seasonally decorated simple cookies. Eleni’s was just perfect, exactly what I wanted. As for the cupcakes, she has a lot of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with colorful buttercream frosting, red velvet, and some supercool, very appealing flavors like Oreo Madness and something (pictured over there <<<) topped with chopped walnuts, but the real star was the Pumpkin Cupcake!! IT WAS SO GOOD. Even hours later, which is actually when I ate it, the cake was super moist and, although I would have expected a cream cheese frosting, the vanilla buttercream was perfect. I usually try to stay away from buttercream because it is too sweet for me. It itches the roof of my mouth—another thing people tell me is weird, but it’s totally true! But anyway, this buttercream was really nice and fluffy and not too sweet. I’m in love. The pumpkin flavor is obviously seasonal so get out there and get your cupcake soon! Unfortunately Eleni’s only other spot is way up on 91^st street and Madison, but they do take large orders online and a lot of food stores (like Dean and Deluca, Zabar’s, Amish Market, etc.) sell her goodies. I’m sure I’ll be returning to the Chelsea Market soon enough and will certainly stock up on some of her yum cupcakes and cookies. It definitely feels more like they are made with love than those mass-produced cupcakes you find all around the city. And they are actually NORMAL sized cupcakes! In the age of giant Crumbs cupcakes and an obesity epidemic, it’s nice to have a cupcake that you can actually pick up with your hands...and that also happens to be delish. You've gotta try these!

I really urge you to make your way over to the Chelsea Market and try some of these treats for yourselves (except probably the milk and cookies) and explore some of the other great vendors/restaurants they have in there. The Green Table, a sustainable/organic/farm-to-table restaurant looked nice and yum. I will definitely be giving that one a try sometime soon…maybe with some gelato or a cupcake for dessert. :D Happy drooling!

- The Wandering New Yorker

Nigerian Independence Day

The Nigerian Independence Day celebration was a blast. It was definitely a scene. We caught the end of the parade, which included floats packed over capacity with dancing Nigerians...in addition to those dancing in the street. It was great! Huge turn out! I tried to take a pic to show how many people were there, but I just couldn’t get everyone. Here’s the best I could do. Everyone was decked in the country's colors: green and yellow or in more authentic garb. Who knew there were so many Nigerians in NYC? It's cool to think about how so many different countries celebrate their Independence Days in the city. And it's nice to partake in the multicultural events. I mean, if nothing else, there is always delicious ethnic food to be tasted. Onto that...  

Suya

Corn, plantains, whole fish!

As promised, I hit up the All Things Roasted vendor and had some seriously delicious chicken. I mean seriously...delicious. We must have really been enjoying ourselves, letting out mms and oos and licking our fingers, because a random girl, who had nothing to do with the food vendor, came up to us and asked "You like our chicken?" Hell yea I do. This particular chicken was brined overnight (no kidding around at this booth), grilled and seasoned with secret Nigerian spices. I tried to get more details, but no dice. I couldn’t even begin to guess what spices were in it, but it was definitely hot hot hot! After we devoured the chicken, we moved onto the suya…which earlier I described as West African shish kebab, but I’d say it’s closer to a satay. Really, though, it’s just suya! I mean meat on a stick has its own name in every culture, but it's not the fact that it's on a stick that makes it delicious, it's the meat that is delicious. So onto suya...this was sliced beef on a stick cooked on the grill as you can see in the pic, and again topped with those great spices. Somehow this was even hotter than the chicken, but so good! We took our suya to go (and finished it, I promise!) and walked around a bit more, checking out the cool tees and random circles of people dancing. It was a great vibe and a great time. 

Thanks to the All Things Roasted chefs for waking up my taste buds this Saturday! Any idea where we can get delicious Nigerian food in the city? Or do we have to wait til next year's festival? Hope not!

Craving that chicken...

- The Wandering New Yorker

Something to do this Saturday! One Day Only Street Festival

Nigerian Independence Day Street Festival

I want to make sure to write about things that everyone can go checkout for themselves after reading, but sometimes there are cool things going on only once a year and I don’t want to tell you about it after the fact…so here’s a pre-post on one of the things I’m doing this weekend: Nigerian Independence Day Street Festival!

Flag of Nigeria

I’ll be posting some more about it after the fact, but I wanted to let you know about it now so you can enjoy it as well.

Nigerian Independence Day is on October 1^st and celebrates the country’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1960. Doesn't it seem like every country has had to win their independence from the Brits at some point? Greedy! Anyway, woohoo for Nigeria!

In celebration, this Saturday October 9^th, there will be a parade and street festival.  Now I’m not a big parades girl, but if you are…the parade starts at 11am and will be on 2^nd ave from 54^th to 44^th streets. I am, however, a big street festival girl, so I will be hitting that up, at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (what?) on 47^th bet 1^st and 2^nd aves from 10am-6pm.  Since I am more than anything else, a big delicious-food-eating-girl, I will most likely be lingering around the “All Things Roasted” booth, where they’ll be selling some yummy Nigerian treats. Check out the flyer below (note: suya is a West African version of shish kebab. mm!).

Click to Enlarge

Of course I wouldn't let you go without some fun facts about the country (thanks to our friends at Wikipedia):

- Nigeria is located in West Africa, sharing its borders with the Republic of Benin on the west, Chad and Cameroon on the east, and Niger to the north

- Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the 8^th most populous country in the world

- Although the official language of Nigeria is English, there are over 500 documented languages spoken throughout the country (whoa!)

- For more fun facts, checkout the Facts Page of the Organization for the Advancement of Nigerians website

Alright so you'll know where I'll be. I'm super pumped because I don't really know what to expect, but I know there's going to be tons of food and clothing for sale and lots of entertainment. Maybe some dancing? (maybe I'll just be dancing, you don't wanna miss that!). Hope to see some of you there! More photos to come post-event. 

HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND

- The Wandering New Yorker 

No keys for this girl. Hell's Kitchen Flea Market!

For my inaugural NYC exploration post I decided to go with something a little off of my beaten path, but not too obscure: the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. It’s not like those traveling markets with look-a-like jewelry and shish kebab stands. This market is always in the same place and is full of unique jewelry, tons of random knick knacks, leather goods and fur coats, ethnic goods, antique cameras, records, trunks, and who knows what else can be found. Technically the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market refers to 3 different markets: the major one is the Hell’s Kitchen Flea, all outdoor, tons of vendors, but you can wander downtown a bit and hit up the Antiques Garage, an indoor market, and then finally the West 25^th Street Market, which mostly resembled a junkyard, both looking and smelling. I definitely went for too much on day one.  I can’t say I really got the full Antiques Garage experience since my feet were yelling at me from the second I walked in—as promised, I walked over to the HKFM and all the way down to 25^th (and back!).  So I’m just going to focus on the HKFM. 

A little history and geography: 

The original market was started in 1976, with only 11 vendors, in a lot in Chelsea.  It was around for 30 years, known as The Annex Antiques Fair & Flea Market, but in 2006, an apartment building displaced the market and the owner decided to break it up into three pieces. The Antiques Garage and West 25^th Street Market were moved to 25^th street between Broadway and 7^th avenues, but the big outdoor market was moved up into Hell’s Kitchen, now residing on 39^th between 9^th and 10^th avenues.  Now onto the geography lesson.  For those of you who don’t know where Hell’s Kitchen actually begins and ends (I didn’t), here is a little map. The area goes from (roughly) 34^th-57^th starting at 8^th avenue and reaching all the way to the river.  It is north of Chelsea and south of, in the most general sense, the Upper West Side.  There are some other opinions on where the actual boundaries are and of course there is overlap when you bring in Midtown West and Clinton, but we’ll just focus on the HK we find on Wikipedia.  There is also no agreed upon etymology of the name Hell’s Kitchen, which is unfortunate, because I’m really into that stuff.  But anyway, onto the day!

You’ll know you’ve arrived when you see the giant blow up devil boy, complete with triton, who welcomes you at the entrance.  Does anyone know where this comes from??  He’s cute and scary at the same time.  

At first there only look to be a few vendors nicely arrange in a straight line, but once you really get in there you realize there are tons of tables arranged with no logical path to stick to (think first scene in Aladdin, but fewer swords and no food).  So just go at it! There is definitely a lot of junk to sift through and lots of copycat stuff, but some really fun tables. My favorites are the knick knacks—one of the first booths you see when you enter the main area had a pretty wooden square with a star protruding from the middle of it, which I thought would be great to hang up for decoration…and it got even better when the vendor explained to me that it was used as a mold to make star shaped Christmas ornaments.  I’m sorta mad I didn’t get it, but it was so early in my journey I wanted to see more before buying anything. (Maybe it’ll still be there next weekend…)

Haggling efforts thwarted:

One vendor had boxes of hundreds of old keys and I thought hmm…wouldn’t it be cool to fill a decorative bowl with antique keys instead of fake rocks from Pier 1? It was genius. So the keys were listed as $5 each—ridiculous right? I think this is just a starting point for haggling. So I am feeling pretty confident I’ll get this guy down, I spend a few minutes picking out the 10 keys that I want and I hold them out to him and say “how about 5 dollars for all these keys?” (that’s 50cents a key). He literally laughs in my face. “not in a million years.” (Ok, so that was a low offer, it’s just part of the game). So I up it to $1 per key thinking it would be a fair deal, or maybe I’d go to $1.50/key and pay $15 for the 10 keys. Well, I might as well have called his mother a whore. At this point he gets offended and angry, telling me that these are rare keys (that he has 100+ of) and you can’t find keys like that anymore and not on his deathbed would he sell them for a dollar a piece and that I was crazy…and then he walked away.  I couldn’t even try for $2/key. This man hates me. Utter failure. No keys for this girl. 

Haggling success:

I don’t think it’s super common for people who visit this market to go home with African masks, but I just really loved them. There was a big tarp laid out with all of these really cool wooden masks and figurines. I asked the vendor what the story was behind all of his goods and he told me that he brings them in from Africa and they are all from different parts of the continent (Ivory Cost, Congo, Gabon, Nigeria were some that he pointed out). Now you can choose whether or not to believe him but he seemed pretty authentic to me…since I could barely understand him through his 1 ½ teeth and heavy accent.  I found these two masks that seemed to be a pair and just kept coming back to them.  The initial rate per mask was apparently $35, but I brought him down to $40 for the pair – not bad right? They are about the size of my palm…one is a man and one is a woman. He told me they are from the Ivory Coast and the masks used to be a form of identification, like a passport.  So when traveling, you would show this wooden face as your ID. They don’t have enough wear and tear to actually have been used this way, but the idea is there. I did some research and more or less confirmed what he had to say. They actually are referred to as passport masks. Pretty rad. Solid purchase.

All in all I really enjoyed the flea market and will definitely be returning.  It’s a great place to spend the day with some good friends who are happy to each roam free and meet up randomly to compare purchases.  There is a lot of great jewelry that I didn’t have enough time to really comb through and I am definitely thinking of stopping in again before Christmas for some cool one-of-a-kind gifts…and to spend some more time on the vintage purses.  And maybe I’ll try the key man again, but this time I’ll start with a more respectful bid.