I have heard so many things about Artichoke Pizza on 14th Street. Good ones and bad ones. Why this place is popular is because people keep comparing them to Di Fara. It’s been such a looooong time since I had Di Fara so I can’t comment on the similarities. Anyways, after few hours at the good ole Otto’s Shrunken Head with coworkers, Matt and I wanted something to eat. Thankfully he was up for Artichoke and so we found ourselves standing under the rain in line at Artichoke around midnight. The place was still packed, packed with kids out drinking. I decided to get the margarita, Sicilian and artichoke & spinach. Don’t know when I’ll go back so why not just try all of them.
Well, the margarita slice was just okay, nothing too special. The Sicilian was just okay as well. Half of the crust on the bottom was burnt to pure black. Oh but the aritchoke & spinach slice. WOW! Ed Levine said on Slice that the artichoke & spinach tasted like a dip. I would describe it as a can of Campbell cream of artichoke soup baked on top of the pizza. But no matter how gross that sound Matt and I thought it was GOOOOOOOD. It was green and creamy and cheesy. If only they do something about their crust. It was thick and hard to chew with a crispy bottom. I wouldn’t mind scooping the top and eat it just like that.

- Artichoke, 328 East 14th Street Manhattan

I can’t tell you how excited I am with Schnitzel & Things. I do think there are just too many trucks serving sweets and tacos. Don’t get me wrong, I love those trucks but I need me some varieties. Yes, there are the Cravings truck and the burger truck but they are no where near me at any time of the day nor week. And yes I can just go to Chinatown and get a chicken thigh over rice or well….pretty much anywhere for a burger but serving nice schnitzel from a truck now thats something.
Come on! Deep fried meat who doesn’t want some?
Click to continue the adventure

Recently my 2 of my friends made the move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. They had settled into the dreaded “Valley” of Los Angeles. When every Angelinos talk or think about the “Valley”, they have a disgusted tone of voice, “eewww the Valley?” Personally I have never been to the Valley nor do I know where the Valley is. When I googled map my friends’ address, it told me it would take 1.2hours. Greeeeaaat. So the next day, I gave myself enough time for the trek and off I went to this magical Valley place. Well 5.5hours later, I was tired, sleepy and hungry. What I nor my friends realized were that we would be sitting on a patio drinking sangria and having some good Mexican food at Hugo’s in Studio City.
Click here to continue with the adventure

So on June 27th, around 11am (I say around because I was 15mins late) Howard, our friend Steph and I met up at Grand Army Plaza to start our food truck journey. We had traveled from Park Slope to Williamsburg to the East Village to Union Square to the Flatiron District to West Harlem to the Meatpacking District to the West Village back to the East Village to SoHo and finally back to Park Slope. We had lost Steph half way through because she had to meet up with a friend. In the end Howard and I spent about 11 hours, 12 trucks, sore feet but loads of fun. *A sad note, the Le Gamin truck had to be in Jersey that day so we weren’t able to try it. Steph had the chance to eat the merquez sandwich earlier in the week and couldn’t stop telling us how good it was. Boo
Click to read which trucks we went and what we thought about them!

On a random Monday night, I was standing outside the Smith and 9th St subway stop waiting for either the Ikea shuttle or the B77 to take me and surprisingly, for a Monday night, a large group of people to Ikea in Red Hook. Finally the B77 bus comes after about 15mins of waiting. It dropped everybody off right in front of Ikea. While on the bus I was debating if I should go eat dinner there or wait till I go home and cook. It was either a plate of yummy meatballs or Korean ramen. I do like ramen but heck since I was at Ikea I SHOULD get some meatballs. Why did I even bother to have that mental debate, when the answer was so obvious.
It’s weird to go into Ikea on a weeknight because it was practically empty. I ran up to the cafeteria and only few people were around. I got my usual Ikea food items, open faced shrimp sandwich and a plate of meatballs. Did every Ikea changed their potatoes to mashed potatoes? I missed those baked potatoes. So while waiting in line for my meatballs, I noticed the person in front of me got the last of the meatballs that were sitting in the counter. It was about an hour before Ikea closed so I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get some meatballs. Thankfully when I ordered my meatballs the lady grabbed a new tray of meatballs from the oven (yay fresh!). Grabbed my food, my drink and paid the cashier. I noticed the sunset was setting and cast a beautiful light into the dining area. I sat down facing the sun. The dining room was quiet. Yummie meatballs. *sigh……..perfect.

- Ikea 1 Beard St, Red Hook Brooklyn

My niece loves madeleine. My sister would go to Starbucks (evil!) and buy a bag of madeleines for her. So I thought why not make them myself. Luckily for Xmas I got a $50 gift card to Williams-Sonoma, so I used it to buy a madeleine pan. I had a choice of regular sized or baby sized. I went with the baby sized thinking that it would be cute for my niece to eat tiny madeleine cakes.
I googled for a recipe and TA DA! The 2nd link is a recipe from 101 Cookbooks. I read through the recipe and found it to be amazingly simple. After mixing everything and was reading to spoon the batter into the pan I realized the baby sized pan was too small. I made a big batch of batter and the pan couldn’t even hold a cup of batter. Anyways, I placed the pan into the preheated oven and waited for 9mins. Ding! After 9mins I took the pan out. Each cake was perfectly golden which was a good sign. I flipped all of them out to cool. I couldn’t wait for them to cool and ate 1. Oh it was soooo good. Warm, light, fluffy and the lemon zests were great. The outer edge was slight crispy. Hhhhmmmmm. I am tempted to buy the bigger sized pan.