This past weekend was the 4th annual New York Food Film Festival. Basically they show food related films and people come and watch and eat. There were about half a dozen different events throughout the city but I only went to the food truck drive-in on Saturday. In the end this event was a bit disappointing. Hopefully they’re fix it somehow for next year. One of the few problems the event had was that it never got crowded which was good for me because I hate crowds but that left a lot of the food vendors standing around waiting for customers to come. Few of the vendors even packed up and left early. It was a free event but they capped the number of tickets to 3000. Later the event even tweeted that they were opening it up to the public. Also the event was a bit tooooooo long, noon to 10pm.

Though few of the vendors, the Cooking Channel gave free popsicles from People’s Pops, The Krave Truck and Wafels & Dinges, had a constant stream of customers. I definitely was guilty of being in those lines. Sooorrrrryyyyyy but The Krave Truck is like the closest we have to the Kogi Truck and they’re from New Jersey. Also who doesn’t want free popsicles?

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I had no idea it was THIS difficult to find a decent breakfast place in Tribeca. But thanks to Serious Eats I found Locanda Verde which perfectly was connected to the hotel that my sister was staying while she was in town. Though I thought I had found a new place to eat but she had already gone there for breakfast the day before. Ah oh well it was new to me.

There weren’t that many things I wanted to eat on the menu but finally decided on Uova Modenese poached eggs with cotechino hash, spinach, and tomato hollandaise. I didn’t know what “cotechino” was and wasn’t having high expectations. When the dish came I still wasn’t expecting much seeing how tiny the dish was, yes yes I eat a lot. It does look pretty though. With the fork I got a some eggs, spinach and sausages and ate it. !!!!!!!!! WOW!! The tomato hollandaise sauce was amazing! It was my first time having hollandaise sauce with tomatoes in them and I’m sure without them this would’ve just been a plain dish. I really wanted to eat slowly just to savor the moment and wished there was more bread.

- Locanda Verde 377 Greenwich St New York

Oh Mile End, I like how you bring a TON of people onto Hoyt Street every weekend during brunch hours. No I don’t actually. I hate waiting with big crowds, I’m hungry and I want to eat right away but for some odd reason I don’t mind waiting for dim sum. Weird. Anyways the only time I’ve been to Mile End was just to go and pick up my Montreal bagels.

Yes I’ve been wanting to go try Mile End for a while now but they close too damn early everyday and with the crowds over the weekend I’ll never get to go! Oh wait they just did announce their brand spankin new dinner hours! w00t! Maybe now I can get my smoked meat finally?

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Hype is a very dangerous thing. It can help or hurt you. I have heard a lot of great things about Egg and the crazy wait during brunch hours. I have also heard that its only an okay place and its just all hype. Still I couldn’t help but be curious after staring at their menu. Fried chicken! Duck hash! Biscuits and gravy! Yes yes yes please!

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Couple weeks ago my friend Anh had her “Breakfast in Brooklyn” get together where she made breakfast for everyone. I was pretty excited because she promised to make a Vietnamese omelette! What’s a Vietnamese omelette? It’s an omelette with diced onions, chicken liver pate and pork roll! Genius! Its everything I love in 1 dish. I had tried to make this couple nights before but I wasn’t sure about the proportions. Also the recipe she gave me didn’t include the pork roll, what da? Anyways, this was a really yummy omelette, I wanna eat it all the time.

Texas omelette, home fries, baked eggs and Vietnamese coffee were also on the menu. I brought the St-Viateur bagels and others brought biscuits and pastries from Ladybird Bakery.

I’m not really keeping up with my food news. I had no idea Mile End, a Montreal Jewish Delicatessen on Hoyt St, was even there AND I live so close to it! So last week I bumped into a friend at Union Hall while at the Via Audio show and he told me he had just reserved a dozen Montreal bagels from Mile End for $20. I asked him…”Huh? Where?” He told me where and that I have till noon on Friday to get them.

Now I know next to nothing about bagels from Montreal except there are big debates on the web comparing bagels from NYC and Montreal. I do know that a fresh baked bagel with veggie cream cheese is a pretty damn good thing. But a not so fresh bagel tires my jaw so quickly.

On Saturday after lazily waking up and got dressed, I walked over to Mile End to pick up my dozen bagels, half poppy seed and half sesame seed. At 10:30am the place was packed, though the place was tiny. I would like to go there, grab a seat at the counter and have a proper meal there.

Anyways back to the bagels. People from Montreal rave about how good their bagels are. I do agree with them on some points. The St-Viateur bagels were denser which made it very easy to slice in half. Plus. The bagels were smaller and thinner which meant less room for cream cheese. But here’s the 1 reason why I still prefer NYC bagels over Montreal bagels, taste. After having eaten 2 on Saturday and 1 on Sunday I have concluded that there was no flavors in the Montreal bagels at all. I can’t even say it was bland, it had no flavors whatsoever. Even after toasting it a bit, there was just nothing. The sesame seeds had no flavors in them as well! WTF? Both Mo and Matt agreed that these bagels weren’t that great, so it wasn’t just me. BUT my friend that told me about these bagels loved them and found the bagels to have great flavors. So…..I don’t know.

I’m not gonna give up on these bagels just yet, not until I had a proper 1 from Montreal in Montreal.

But if you REALLY want a dozen St-Viateur bagels go and order from Mile End.

- Mile End 97 Hoyt Street Brooklyn