Saturday, January 30, 2010

Tea Time

Most of my good friends know this about me- I love tea dearly. I think that I usually drink about 5 cups of green tea a day, which along with the coffee I enjoy having, makes for an incredibly dehydrated and caffeinated me. Hooray.

So I went grocery shopping at H-mart today and got a box of the tea that I have at home.

Upon closer inspection, I saw that the english name for this type of tea is Seal tea. Seal?

Closer...

Even closer....

Bingo! Now isn't that precious.

And here is that precious seal again.

The name of the tea actually originates from the markings on the root of the herb, which supposedly resemble the star of David. Seal--> Solomon's Seal--> ...what?

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Go Go Curry and Joe's Shanghai

I visited quite a few restaurants over break but didn't take any pictures except for at Go Go Curry and Joe's Shanghai. Neither are particularly expensive and delicious meals can be had for around ten dollars.

Go Go Curry...I have nothing but praise for this place. The combination of katsu and curry is deceptively simple- the katsu should be crisp and freshly fried, and the curry should be warm and savoury, possibly with the addition of a few vegetables. Somehow, the katsu and curry at Go Go Curry goes above and beyond this, making for a ridiculously tasty dish. There are a handful of foods that I've encountered in my yet short life that I can safely say taste nothing like anything else I've had before. Go Go Curry's curry is one of them. The same can be said for Pat's cheesesteaks, Pierre Herme macarons, and pizza at Otto. They have a taste as distinctive as your mom's cooking-the kind of flavour that you can pick out of a crowd in a flash.

I like their logo a lot too :)

To tell you the truth, I forgot to take a picture of the actual food, so I had to settle for a picture of the plastic display. In my defense, this is pretty much what the actual dish looks like so there isn't much of a difference.

The theme of Go Go Curry is 55, which is Matsui's jersey number, so the staff wear baseball jerseys and incorporate little quirks into their daily operations, like giving a free topping on the 5th, 15th, and 25th of every month, and opening at 10:55 and closing at 9:55.

And now for Joe's Shanghai, that delicious bastion of soup dumplings in Chinatown.

This is an image I stole from Google showing the swarming crowds fighting to get into the doors. I've never seen it as crowded as it is in the picture, but I would imagine that there would be more foot traffic in the summer.

This colour isn't green, it's imperial jade.

Pork soup dumplings!



The subgum pan fried noodles. I always thought that subgum was a type of foreign vegetable, like taro, but it actually means a mixture of everything. In this case, the "subgum" referred to a combination of different meats. I wonder what it stands for...Shrimp Usually Bring Giant User Manuals? Sometimes Useless Bears Give Unsatisfying Massages?

Go Go Curry
273 West 38th Street
New York, NY 10018

Joe's Shanghai
9 Pell Street
New York, New York 10013