Toby’s Public House

This was my 2nd time going to Toby’s and was our last stop on the Brooklyn pizza tour. By then Mo, Howard and I were stuffed up with pizza but since it was our last stop we went all out. A table full of Old Speckled Hen is pretty eh?

Dramatic lighting on my spicy pecorino pizza. Ah.

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I think Menkui Tei in the East Village deserves more press. They might not have the best ramen in town or have an extensive menu or a drunken happy atmosphere but you know what, does that matter? They do churn out consistently good dishes. I have not had one single bad meal there nor bad experience. A lot of things change in the East Village. Over the 6 years that I’ve been here in NYC I have seen bars come and go, what was once a dominant Japanese dining area is now half Japan town and half Korea town. It’s comforting to know that whenever I go to Menkui Tei, I’ll get a good meal. Though Minca is still my to-go spot for ramen, Menkui Tei is Steph’s, my friend, favorite place for ramen.
My favorite dish to eat from here is the Oyakodon. Chicken and egg cooked in dashi over steamy rice! Add a dash of hot pepper and you’re set. Such a great cold winter night dish.

- Menkui Tei 63 Cooper Sq, New York

-We have reached the last of the Questions to Answers with the LA food trucks. I would like to thank all of the food trucks that took part in this and their time for answering all the questions.

1) Please state your name, name your food truck, the type of food you serve, and how long have your food truck been in operation?
Takeshi Kimura
Fishlips Sushi To go & Catering
Selling and Catering sushi
We started the Middle of June 2009.

2) When and how did you come up with the idea of serving food in a truck and how did you decide on your menu?
Long time ago sushi is more like fast-food style food. Sushi bar restaurant came out less than 100yrs ago. We are trying to sell sushi more easy to eat, with reasonable price. Our menu line-up is the same as any sushi restaurant. We put popular rolls on the menu but ANY KIND OF SUSHI are available upon request. (Please feel free to order your original sushi.)
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So I love burgers but I also love anything Japanese. As some of you may know I like to decorate many food items with Japanese mayo and nori flakes, french fries, bacon wrapped dog and even scrambled eggs. So I was super excited when I first heard about Marked5. Combining Japanese flavors with burgers, gimme gimme. While going through their website and tweets, I found that sometimes they offer special sandwiches. Lucky for me, on the day that I went to Marked5 they had both their specials, a salmon burger with wasabi sauce and a spam and egg sandwich. Tran, from Marked5, was nice to enough to chat with us and explained the menu to us. I wanted to try everything because I wanted to, well you know for research. I ordered the torakku beef, katsu pork and the special spam and egg.
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I came up with this idea when I wanted to use up my miso paste (it’s funny how you invent things because you wanted to use up something). Also I’m a fan of Curry House in SoCal and for their pasta dishes, they fuse Italian and Japanese together. Fish roe pasta anyone?

I usually buy the white low sodium miso but thats just me.
miso paste
pasta, any type
heavy cream
brown beech mushroom, any type is fine
red onion slices, or yellow
garlic
pepper, optional
shiso leaves, optional but preferred

Cook the pasta according to directions on the box. Hit up oil in a saute pan and fry the onions. Add the minced garlic to pan when onions are translucent. About 2 or 3 minutes later add the mushroom. You can season the mushroom now but beware since miso can get quite salty. I usually don’t season until afterwards. Cook the mushroom until almost done then add heavy cream. Add enough cream to the pan according to your taste. Then add a big scoop of miso, stir and let it melt into the cream. When all of the miso are incorporated into the cream, taste it! Add pepper or more miso or salt if you want. Check the pasta and add them to the sauce when it’s done. Stir and mix and turn the heat off. Slice or dice the shiso leaves or you can use parsley and incorporate that into the pasta.
Serve!

As a vegetarian I’ve had a lot of tofu in my life. Some of it has been very good, some of it has been very bad, but it’s hard to tell how tofu is going to be until you eat it. When I saw that SeriousEats was giving away a pair of tickets to a tofu making demonstration at En Japanese Brasserie, I was intrigued. To enter the contest you had to write a haiku about tofu, so I submitted the following “masterpiece”:

people say “tofu”
like it’s a curse or bad word
have they eaten it?

I didn’t expect to win, so I promptly forgot about it. Then late Friday night I got a congratulatory email from SeriousEats, which left me scrambling to change my work schedule and to find a second person to join me at the last minute for a class on tofu.

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