First Stop Queens: Country Kitchen and Annie's Roti Shop

Redneckhunter and I were flying out from JFK for our honeymoon, so we got up to Queens early to avoid NYC rush hour traffic. So with some time to kill we decided to start our trip with a mini food safari (after all parts of Brooklyn and Queens almost feel like foreign countries - all the Cyrillic seen in Brighton Beach, Indian in Jackson Heights - hell, Edison, NJ is a foreign country!)

So a quick chowhound search brought up a thread: Where to grab a bite within 15 minutes of JFK airport. We were able to hit 2 of the spots mentioned: fried chicken and black eyed peas at Saratoga Country Kitchen on Atlantic Avenue; and curry chicken with chickpeas and potatoes with the biggest roti I've ever seen at Annie's Roti Shop on Rockaway Boulevard. I wanted to try Fish and Wings (also on Atlantic Ave.), but we couldn't fit in the food we had gotten as it was. I had to bring my curry and roti and eat it at the airport!


Saratoga Country Kitchen
1991 Atlantic Avenue

Annie's Roti Shop
127-07 Rockaway Boulevard

Parc, Philadelphia

For brunch after our girls night, me and the last 2 ladies standing went to Parc, Stephen Starr's new French bistro in the old Bleu location on Rittenhouse Square. It's a great replica - right down to the woven chairs on the sidewalk and the Edith Piaf on the sound system.

We got Eggs en Cocotte to share - crisp buttery toast fingers to dip into a runny egg. The toast was super buttery - reminded me of "dong dong dan" that my dad used to make (translated from Chinese "hole hole egg") - egg fried with the hole cut in the toast for the sunnyside yolk - so yummy...

Then still in my soft egg and polenta mode from dinner the night before, I ordered it again for breakfast -- 2 poached eggs, with rapini and red peppers on top of creamy polenta.

My friend got steak and eggs -- a petite filet with 2 sunny side up eggs, mornay sauce, and a side salad. My other friend got pancakes with blueberry compote and maple syrup.

Parc
227 South 18th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 545-2262

Osteria, Philadelphia

More recap of the past couple months... the girls took me to a couple of great places during my bachelorette weekend. Dinner Saturday night was at Osteria, Marc Vetri's second restaurant in Philadelphia.

We started out with the antipasto, served on a huge wooden plank in the middle of the table. Kim and I were in the same mindset of craving soft-cooked egg, so we also got the "ciareghi" house made cotechino sausage with polenta and sunny-side up egg.

I got the gemelli with sweetbreads, asparagus and parmigiano. The other girls also got other delicious looking pasta dishes.

For dessert, we ordered the chocolate flan with pistachio gelato. It was really more like a molten chocolate cake than flan... but that's just semantics.

Osteria
640 North Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19130
(215) 763-0920

Le Grainne Cafe, NYC

Sorry for the lack of posts as of late... but we'll try to make up for the spring. On our last girls shopping day, petiteseour and I ate at Le Grainne Cafe in Chelsea. She's a big fan of the Oeuf Mason, a poached egg on a goat cheese potato cake with ratatouille. It's the perfect comfort food -- all the rich flavors melding together. I had a savory crepe with merguez sausage and red peppers. The coffee is also excellent, and that day we had not one, but two, celeb sightings...

Le Grainne Cafe
183 Ninth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
(646) 486-3000

Fougoo's Wedding Reception

Sorry all for the lack of updates. Fougoo just got married. Congrats to her and Redneckhunter.
For dinner, they got a whole roasted pig. I ate a whole foot and some cheek meat. Yum.

Shanti Soup Curry Dining

In Harajuku in Tokyo, we had lunch at Shanti, a soup curry restaurant. This kind of curry, I read, originated from Sapporo, Hokkaido, and consists of a light broth made of spring water and various spices with vegetables and various meats added in and served with a side of rice.
I got the special "Black-Eyed Peas" soup curry (yes, the named after the band). It had corn and black-eyed peas mixed in. The flavor was nice.
We had the option of getting the spice 1 to 10. I got a 6 which was really actually quite mild. The Japanese are not much for the heat I guess. We also got a nice side of fried naan with our meal.

Honoraly Harajuku Bldg.2F
3-26-11 Jingu-mae
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
03-5772-6424

Super Takoyaki Balls in Tokyo

On our first day in Tokyo, we went to a section of town called Akihabara, aka "Electric Town", an area know for it's electronics and "otaku" stores. We walked past some food vans, and I immediately knew I wanted to try a cart that featured giant Takoyaki stuffed with 10 ingredients.

Normal takoyaki, consists of a ball of batter filled with squid, but these takoyaki advertised 10 items including squid, clam, sausage, cabbage, mashed potato, quail egg, mushrooms, corn, and 2 other things I could not identify (sorry). They were also about 3-4 times larger than the usual takoyaki- about 3-4 inches in diameter.
The ball is then topped with okonomiyaki sauce, bonito, and mayo. The cart offered alternate toppings like cheese, kimchee, and onions as well.
It was like eating a giant spherical Japanese hot pocket- yum.

McDonald's in Tokyo

Kelly and I were in Tokyo last week, and I've got a few upcoming posts from the trip, but I figured I'd start with some fun.
With Japan recently winning the World Baseball Classic, the Japan McDonald's was promoting the special McHotdog. Oddly enough, it was meant for breakfast!?!
I ordered it as a meal one morning with a coffee and hash brown. The McHotdog was actually a decent hot dog on a whole wheat bun with ketchup, mustard and relish.

I did not get the try to advertised McPork, which I'm assuming was a take on the Japanese Katsu style deep fried pork sandwich.
Kelly's favorite item was something we got at Narita airport as we were leaving Japan, the Green Tea Oreo McFlurry. It was pretty great- if they had this in the US, I would be in trouble- the green tea flavor complemented the Oreo cookie so well.