The $6 Wundersandwich (aka the “It Could Be Possible To Live Off Nha Toi’s Menu Alone” Post)

Finally. A $6 sandwich in New York City that is everything I’ve ever wanted: Badass baguette that’s so fresh it talks smack: “Oh yah, what. Bring it.” A serious veggie crunch and bold, fresh flavas that stand up to the succulent, meaty, (in this case porky) protein at its core.

There’s more, nine more banh mi on the menu — lemongrass pork cutlet or shitakke mushroom, anyone? — all priced at either $6 or $7 dollars, NSA.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Nhà Tôi.

Don’t blink as you walk past this tiny storefront on Havemeyer Street, lest you miss it (inside, it’s almost all kitchen and about a mish-mashed seats). The bi heo sandwich that I had — stuffed with shredded pork and skin with roasted rice powder — trumps any banh mi I’ve had in the city, including Baoguette’s.

This is the kind of food memory that will make the injustices of that crappy, prepackaged salad lunch in Midtown and overpriced UES bodega sandwich — with all due respect, it’s just meat, cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce, watery tomato, raw onion on a passably fresh roll — all the greater.

But Nhà Tôi’s menu doesn’t stop there. Once you get past the sandwiches, there’s a full menu of pho to explore, as well as snacks. On my visit, I was blatantly oggling the crispy spring rolls at the next table (can’t help it, close quarters warrant awkward seating and wafting smells).

… and the drinks? Well, no booze. However, the lineup of canned Southeast Asian beverages strung up on a chord will keep you perennially interested, e.g. basil seed beverage with “creme soda flavour” ($2). What’s it taste like? Says Nhà Tôi chef/owner Fred, “Well, I grew up with it. So I love it. But there’s definitely a certain texture to it.“

So how does Nhà Tôi keep their prices down? I’d guess from low overhead costs. In addition to being tiny, there’s only one menu, on a sheet of 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper, full of Sharpie cross-outs and tacked-on additions.

Why not print more? Not sure … that’s between a man and his laser jet. I’ll be back to Nhà Tôi in a split second, but I’m not going there.

Nhà Tôi, 160 Havemeyer St., nr. S. 2nd St., 718-599-1820. Cash only.

Reflections on the Village Voice Choice Eats Event (aka the “Meet These Soups” Post)

I love the concept of the Choice Eats event as much as anyone: Restaurants that the Village Voice has reviewed favorably over the past year are given a chance to showcase their food to a ravenous audience — as in, actually hungry as well as hungry for more input, more knowledge, about this city’s fine (and expansive) food culture.

You might romanticize the scene a bit (I did), imagining people mingling and mixing under the Armory’s expansive cover, long rows of decorated tables laden with plates of food tastes for the taking — after all, this is a tasting event, and we’re here to eat.

Arriving about 7:15p — or about 15 minutes after the VIP portion of the event was over and general admission had been let in — the scene was anything but civilized.

The masses of people crowding each table were so thick they blended into the next; not a single vendor could keep up with demand. The crowds were so deep in front of some booths — such as Baohaus — that they impeded the flow of foot traffic down the center of the aisle, which was at least 10′ from the table. It didn’t relent the entire night. (On principle, I refused to push my way through that throng for a taste of Chef Bao’s signature certified angus skirt steak “as seen on the Food Network.” I’d prefer to visit the restaurant and order it.)

in the weeds at Luke's Lobster station

But I give Baohaus, and its neighbor, Luke’s Lobster, a ton of credit for sticking with it and serving the throngs clear through the near end of the event, because a surprising number of vendors — Mooncake Foods, Fatty Crab and Fort Defiance among them — were out of food and packing up by 7:45p, not even an hour into the general admission session.

Other vendors who stuck it out until the end: Agnanti Restaurant of Astoria, Peppa’s Jerk Chicken of Brooklyn, Rajbhog Sweets & Snacks of Jackson Heights and Mumbai Xpress of Floral Park. (::applause::)

Curiously, these vendors are all from deep in the outer boroughs — not Manhattan, and not trendy Brooklyn. Which led me down this rabbit hole:

Q. So are they here the longest because people aren’t as familiar with their food, and so are less hesitant to try? — That can’t be true. Like a locust cloud, this crowd was systematically devouring every morsel in sight.

Q. Are they here the longest because they use inherently cheaper ingredients, and therefore can bring greater volume (e.g., vegetarian street snacks vs. porchetta)? —Well, I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but look at Luke’s Lobster, making bite-sized shrimp rolls with sustainable Maine shrimp, and Baohaus. They’re using fairly premium proteins and they’re still here.

Q. So why are a majority of vendors out of food so soon? I mean, as a vendor, of course at some point you plan to run out — to take anything home would be a waste. But to see so many vendors shuttering up so early was shocking, even by tasting event standards.

…I’m going to leave that one open for debate, although certainly I have my own opinions. Instead, let’s wrap this post up with a short note on two of my favorite unexpected tastes of the night:

The first being Dumont‘s spring chowder, with cucumber scent, mussels, clams, shrimp and an herb pestou. I absolutely adored the color; the seafood wasn’t skimpy and as a bite; and in a bite you got both the traditional chowder flavors — the creaminess, the sea taste of the bivalves — with just a little something je ne sais quoi teasing your tongue around the edges. And green! So fun.

The second being (surprise!) another soup, this one the Cullen Skink soup from the boys at the Highlands, a new Scottish gastropub in the West Village that if I made a three-figure salary (ha!), I’d be there on the regular, working my way through their extensive list of single malt scotches.

I’ve never had Cullen Skink soup before. A quick Google search (and menu confirmation) reveals the soup’s named after the Scottish town of Cullen and that “skink” is an old Scottish word for “soup.” Of course.

The soup is a milky broth, each spoonful studded with soft potato chunks and smoked haddock that otherwise lurk beneath the surface. Mellow and creamy with just the right punch of smokiness and fishiness, I was a fan. (also pictured is the Highland’s vegetarian shepard’s pie.)

The Village Voice Choice Eats event is held every March in New York, NY. More information can be found here. (For contact information for any restaurant mentioned, click on the link.)

Thursday: Zen Palate Fail (aka the “Vanessa’s Dumpling House Comes Through … Again” Post)

I am easily excited about the prospect of a great food deal, like the e-mail I received from SeamlessWeb advertising “Delivery Week” (which actually runs through October 31st). Um, 3-course lunch specials of $12.09, in my shit Midtown West neighborhood? Yeah, what’cha got?

Well, the best offer (at least the day after the Bill’s burger gorging) was: Mmm… Zen Palate. So veggie, and so good-ish for you.

Well, it was the best offer …

until I discovered that my sweet potato fries didn’t even have a hint of warmth (they were hard), and that was after I found a bug in my already disappointing, stalk-filled watercress salad, which was all before I bit into one of the worst veggie patties I’ve ever had — a sad, flavorless, tan-colored thing smashed between a stale bun and a slice of tomato that had been pushed on so long that it’d made a damp imprint on patty.

I don’t waste food. I did on Thursday. … Good thing I had to run to LES and I had the chance to pop into one of my Eldridge Street favorites, Vanessa’s Dumpling House, for a sesame pancake sandwich and a side of soup. Fixes everything.

Friday: On the Importance of Adding Fresh Ingredients to Premade Foods (aka the “Better Soup from a Can” Post)

Fast forward a number of years.

Of all the posts that will comprise the BLD Project at that time, no doubt this one will be regarded as fairly insignificant. But I beg to differ.

The point to note here is not that this is about the organic chicken with white and wild rice soup from Wolfgang Puck’s line of canned organic soups. It’s what else I did: I spent five extra minutes chopping up two-thirds of a stalk of celery and the end of a small red onion and satueed these small bits in the bottom of a saucepan, with olive oil. I added in some chopped fresh parsley, and once that began to cook just slightly, then I added in soup.

This miniscule bit of additional prep not only made the soup more appealing to look at, taste better and improve its overall character — I also just fit in an extra half-serving of vegetables. Fresh vegetables. And nothing, nothing in package foods can compensate for the taste, texture or overall vibrancy of fresh vegetables. And most of us don’t get enough.

I’ve been thinking about Mark Bittman’s blog post about convincing fast food chains to offer more healthful options all week. “The fact is that fast food isn’t “bad” because it’s fast — it’s bad because of crummy ingredients,” he writes. We can’t all eat splendidly all the time — let alone make chicken with white and wild rice soup from scratch.

So if you are making a quick lunch at home by heating up some soup from a can — or any prepackaged food, for that matter — improve it. Add some fresh vegetables. A drizzle of olive oil. Some fresh herbs. A little seasoning. A little goes a long way in making a meal taste better, and be better for you.

Thursday: Finally, Free Meal at Brasserie Comes True (aka the “$19.59 Three-Course Good Value” Post)

It’s true. I wound up at Brasserie in Midtown East on Thursday night, enjoying a free, three-course meal, plus a couple of not-free cocktails from their $9 Vintage Cocktail menu, because of Twitter.

More precisely, because of a tweet from my friends at Wined & Dined (who I’ve leveraged previously for some food deal hookups) announcing that Brasserie, in celebration of its 50th Anniversary, was offering a free lunch on Sept. 17 until reservations were full.

Lunch was booked up by the time I called, but the restaurant gave me an even sweeter deal: A complimentary three-course dinner, on the night of my choosing (before November 1), so long as the reservation was booked for 9 p.m. or later.

And, surprisingly, there was no other catch. We were comped the restaurant’s “$19.59 after 9″ menu, which is on through the end of October. Since there was two of us, we decided to just order the whole thing and do a mini tasting.

Here’s the breakdown:

Appetizers

French onion soup: This molten, cheese-crusted bowl of soup didn’t skimp on portions, and we ended up using pieces of the fresh baguette (one comes with every table) to sop up the broth and polish off all that cheese. Great for two people to split; a really large portion for one.

Pâté de Campagne: My favorite of the two. Better portion size, a savory pâté, plus, I always love the “some assembly required” appetizer: layering spicy French mustard, pâté, a slice of cornichon, a touch of frisée.

Entrees

The Brasserie burger: A towering burger, stuffed with cheese, more cheese melted on top and garnished with frizzled onions. Served between sliced, toasted halves of a French bread loaf and served with a heaping side of hot, fresh French fries. I tried my best to finish my half — but no go. This burger is a serious meat rock.

Poulet, frites and salad verte: Again, the portion of this plate is so, so generous. It comes with an entire half of a roasted chicken, bones trimmed up in the French style, plus a heaping portion of fries and a dab of salad.

The chicken was well-executed and moist enough,  if a bit bland — I was wishing for more evidence of herbs and seasoning. But that was sort of the modus operandi for everything that came out of the kitchen — well-executed, if a little ordinary. Maybe “playing it safe” is a better phrase?

But generous meal for free? In no way am I complaining.

Dessert

The desserts, on the other hand, I could have skipped. (Trade out for a cocktail?) The beignets unsure of their beignet-ness — a little bit doughnut, a little bit churro and a little bit beignet, and not so fresh.

And the creme carmel, too, didn’t impress. Then again, this might have been my stomach having reaching its capacity, vetoing any more intake.

Verdict

The $19.59 special is a great value if you’re hungry, and a little overwhelming if you’re not.

…On the other hand, the $9 Vintage Cocktail menu, which includes a specialty cocktail from each decade of Brasserie’s history (you can find a copy of the menu here) beats out just about any others you could possibly scour up in this part of Midtown, at least in terms of price and strength. Imbibe and enjoy, carefully.

Brasserie, 100 E. 53rd St., near Park Avenue, 212-751-4840

Saturday: The $5 Meal at Vanessa’s Dumpling House (aka the “I’ll Be Back for You, Sesame Pancake” Post)

Journalism 101: All lists are subject to the opinions, experiences and, ultimately, taste of the author. There’s no such thing as an authoritative list.

Nevertheless, when a food blog with New York cred, like the Village Voice’s Fork in the Road, posts a list called “Our 10 Best Chinese Restaurants” and only two of the entries are in Manhattan, and I haven’t been to one of them — you bet that place just moved onto my radar.

And so the Eldridge Street location of Vanessa’s Dumpling House was filed away under: Chinatown, sub-category, “cheap, fast, no-frills.”

Which means it’s going to be busy, if not crowded, all the time. Don’t expect to get a seat — if you get one, you are very patient and/or fortuitous. Be prepared to take out your food and find a bench or curb nearby — the benches in the newly-renovated median of Allen Street are the closest — or stand along a wall while you shovel 4, 8, 10 or more dumplings — varieties include pork and chive, pork and cabbage, Chinese vegetable, chicken, shrimp and more — into your mouth.

On a solo first visit, I opted to try just one of the dumplings so I could sample more of the menu and still get in and out for $5 (so cheap!):

— Order of pork and cabbage fried dumplings (4 ct., $1.50)
— Pork wonton soup (large, $2)
— Sesame and scallion pancake with vegetables ($1.50)

—
$5

I was so prepared to fall in love with the dumplings, which turned out to be just okay. The casing was too thick for my taste, and a little gummy; inside, the meat-and-cabbage ball slid around in a pocket much too big. Frankly, I prefer the dumplings I’ve bought frozen at Deluxe Food Market to Vanessa’s.

On the other hand, the sesame pancake, now that’s something I’ll be back for. First of all, it’s more sandwich than pancake: A triangular slice of a giant, circular seeded bread is cut in half and stuffed with julienned vegetables and fresh herbs, all drizzled with a light, and lightly spicy, oil.

The pancake has a lot of the same fresh flavors and attributes that have turned the whole city onto that Vietnamese staple, the banh mi. Priced at $1.50 ea., I’m certain I’ll be back here around this time of month — the making-it-stretch-’til-payday-days — in the near future.

Vanessa’s Dumpling House, 118 Eldridge Street, between Broome and Grand streets.

Tuesday: Seeking Chicken Soup for the … (aka the “Table for One at Ben’s Kosher Deli” Post)

We pick our battles. Sometimes factors like convenience, cost or health-conscious mindfulness are cause enough to restrain from indulging in that desire of the moment: fancy sushi, duck fat fries, chocolate.

Other times, we just give in. And on Tuesday I was all but ready to dive in, face first, into a pot of noodles, matzo balls, kreplach, roasted chicken, diced vegetables all swimming in broth — that Jewish delicatessen staple, aptly called “chicken in a pot.” It’s like chicken soup on steroids, for when you need a prescrption-strength dose of chicken soup’s soul-and-stomach-soothing goodness.

Then I discovered that going price for chicken in a pot at Ben’s Kosher Delicatessen, the closest source for this comfort nectar, is $16.99 — also known as an instant $20 lunch.

My fail safes kicked in: I just can’t justify spending $20 on an ordinary Tuesday lunch. Not this Tuesday. Things aren’t “that bad.”

Instead, I treated myself to in-restaurant dining, which, being a party of one at Ben’s, meant a pot of pickles and a tray of cole slaw all to myself! And I treated myself to the “Double Dip” combo: Half a deli sandwich and a bowl of the soup of your choice, $11.49.

So in the end, I got my noodles and my chicken broth, my pickles and my cole slaw, and a hefty stack of corned beef on rye. And along the way, I found a little peace.

The Brocton, NY Edition: As the Sun Sets Over Lake Erie

On certain hill rises in this area, you can look toward the West and catch a glimpse of blue. Just for a second, it looks like the ocean. … but it’s Lake Erie.

There’s a reason why Lake Erie is perpetually underutilized: It’s freezing cold, used to be polluted (still is?), and is dangerous. Storms move in faster than you can get out, even on a boat. And they’re wicked. There are a number of known shipwrecks in the deep freshwater lake, and those are only the ones that were noticed.

Lake Erie does have great sunsets. I’ve enjoyed them, but for all my years visiting this area, I’ve never seen a restaurant attempt to capitalize on Erie’s sunset’s like ZeBro’s: Here, weather permitting, you can sit outside; there’s live music weekend evenings in the summer, possibly even a raw bar. I’ve never seen it, but who am I to judge? It sounds great.

On the other hand: Who really needs “outside” when you’ve got these giant plate-glass windows — there are plenty of restaurants in San Francisco and north whose charms don’t rely on beach access. And what about an over-the-top, wood-paneled, nautical theme inside? And the good company?

ZeBro’s has plenty of charms. Like a lot of spots that can rest their laurels on the setting, their food is a mixed bag. I’ve had good food here: I love their warm cornbread muffins that come with optional honey butter or cinnamon honey butter. I think their French onion soup, in its individual crock, is both classy and satisfying. The fish fry is good.

What I ordered on this occasion, the Barcelona top sirloin ($15.95) — an 8 oz. sirloin served over a grilled Portabella mushroom and topped with wild mushroom pesto — was just okay. … I think (I know) part of my problem was indecision; when I don’t know what to order, one strategy is to look for house specialties, which usually mean something, whether tried-and-true or unique, and to just pick one.

In this case, the steak (bottom right corner) ended up just being greyish and messy  — although I should have seen it coming. As soon as our waiter couldn’t answer the question: “What’s mushroom pesto like; pesto is normally made with fresh herbs, etc…” I should have abandoned ship. Yet somehow he talked his way out of answering.

I’m pretty sure I was staring out the window.

Ze’Bros, Harbor House, Westfield, NY, 716.326.2017

Lunch: The Discovery of a Lunchour Oasis (the “This Is Not My Building” Post)

Check out this serene little inside oasis I discovered today! (Yeah, much more exciting than the soup, which was picked up at Pax, about 3:30p, so late that lunch was almost an afterthought.)

It’s serene in the hustle and bustle way: The revolving door almost never stops spinning, conversations approach and pass; the elevator bank continuously dings to some unknown beat.

It’s not my office building, but as the Pax Foods has a door to the interior, I chose to believe the indoor seating is open to anyone. It’s a public lobby, yes? So much more pleasant to watch the car traffic and the people traffic ebb and flow on Eigth Avenue from a cool, shady, art-adorned lobby removed by thick panes of glass.

And if rain’s threatning, like today, well … I’m sure I won’t be the only one to consider this retreat a good idea. But that doesn’t make it any less good.

Lunch: Tuesday, May 5, 2009

I’m again on the stump for Dean & Deluca‘s hot soups, this time for a black-eyed pea soup with collard greens, which has a wonderful smokey flavor and is dense enough to be approaching chili-like stature. Perfect for a day like today (Day 4 of the last five that have been gray, cold and rainy, with no apparent end in sight.)

I’m just impressed with D&D’s soups overall. They’re priced competitively — a large (16 oz., $6.25) is right on par with any of the soup factories in the area, such as Hale & Hearty and Cafe Metro on Seventh Avenue — but the variety of soups is much more interesting and the flavors are complex and satisfying.

The other contender today was a creamy Jerusalem artichoke soup with a bit of a citrus kick at the end. It would have been perfect in an 8 oz. portion with half a rustic tuna sandwich, except that D&D had run out of small soup containers.

I’ll be on the lookout now for the split pea, which is one of my favorites. And judging by the fact that it was sold out by 1:45 p.m., I’m guessing I’m not alone. …

PREVIOUSLY:

Split pea soup. I just can’t get enough, just can’t get enough (March 25, 2009)
New obsession alert: Mushroom and barley soup at Dean & Deluca (April 5, 2009)