Saturday, April 10, 2010

Leopold's Kafe with Joyce

So Joyce and I visited Leopold's Kafe wayyyyyyy back in the day for some delicious Austrian fare (with a flair?) Heehee. I really don't know too much about Austrian food, the chief memory that I have about it being that terribly awkward scene in the movie Amadeus when Salieri offers sweets to Mozart's young and naive little wife. When she asks what they are, he goes, "Nipples of Venus!" and then she giggles because she's uncomfortable but still wants to have one.

I think this is Salieri's hand holding the dish.

In any case...



Joyce's mushroom tart.

My croque monsieur.



Delicious little pastries captured at an awkward angle!

There were macarons in the display case!

3315 M St NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 965-6005

Friday, April 9, 2010

A Really Overdue Post!

I finally got a new USB cord for my camera! And so, here are photos from the summer of last year (eek!)


I went to Shake Shack sometime in August for the first time, after having heard many strange and wonderful things about it...I'm making it sound like some sort of fairyland, aren't I?

It came in a convenient little box.

The burger! Was it mind-blowingly awesome? Did it make me have revelations about the way food should REALLY be made? Not at all, but in its defense, it wasn't a terrible burger either.

My ice cream cup!

The incredibly long line outside of Shake Shack. There was such a big crowd that as I started walking into msg I thought that there was some kind of street fair going on.


Shake Shack
Madison Ave and East 23rd St.
Southeast Corner of Madison Square Park
New York, NY 10010

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

It's snowing


There's something irresistible about footprints in snow.

Doesn't it make you feel meditative and a little sad? No matter who you're with, you inevitably end up walking in silence through the snow as it falls around your shoulders, unable to resist looking at your feet, at the footprints that we make and those we leave behind us.

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

Sunday, December 6, 2009

A New Voyage


I am starting a new project but it is a secret.

Hopefully I will have most of it finished by early January.

It's a mystery!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

My apologies

I like to tell myself that my personal life philosophy is simple...I tell myself that I must always love others and that I must try to stay appreciative of my blessings. The sad truth is that I never seem to act on what I pretend are my principles. Theoretically, I believe in it with all my heart, but realistically, my selfishness always gets in the way of how I want to behave. I pursue what I want without considering how my actions might affect other people… I hold other people to a standard that I myself can never match up to… I make selfish demands for love and friendship that I don’t necessarily deserve.

I think that I am happy most of the time. And really, it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy. Sometimes my happiest moments are based on really trivial things, like finding out the best way to organize my socks/underwear drawer, or having someone rush by on their way to class, only to stop for a little hug, or making doodles of anthropomorphic animals having adventures in the margins of my terrible class notes. My mom always said that I was good at entertaining myself, and I am.

I wish I could be more mature.

It’s not as if guilt just springs out of nowhere…there must be something you did that made a part of you cry out in dissent. Maybe you muted that voice then, and covered it up in excuses and frivolity to try to forget, but it has a way of resurfacing from time to time. Sometimes I have mornings when I wake up a bit too early, and look out the window to find a grey, silent sky… and resting my fingertips on the cold glass, I suddenly get the sense of a drop of rain hitting a well hidden somewhere inside myself.