Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

I have a coworker who has, for the last two years, been telling me about this sushi spot with which he's absolutely obsessed.  I've heard its name uttered in many conversations with many different people.  It often starts with a bunch of people sitting in the kitchen at lunch and someone asks, "what's the best sushi in New York?" I've been sworn to secrecy about this sushi spot.  But after my coworker brought me there last night, I can actually attest that it's probably the best sushi spot in New York.  Either that, or I have a lot of expensive omakases ahead of me. It really helps that this restaurant is about three blocks from my apartment.  My coworker lives around the corner from me, which probably also explains why he frequents so frequently.  We decided on a whim to dine there last night, after listening to him brag about how many of his friends he's converted, how he knows the chefs and waiters and owners like best buddies.  A large part o...

Chinese geography is still fairly confusing to me, even after I've been to these places.  The next stop on our trip was Jiangmen, which is still part of the Guangdong province about an hour and a half away from Guangzhou by car.  My dad's older brother picked us up in a car to take us to Jiangmen.  It turns out my uncle is kind of a big deal: he is a history professor at Wuyi University, the major university in Jiangmen.  He's been involved with getting UNESCO World Heritage status for several historic villages nearby and sometimes the local TV stations interview him about local history and culture (my dad gets Chinese TV on satellite and he'll sometimes holler at me to come over to see my uncle on TV). A lot of people from Jiangmen eventually wound up in San Francisco and New York City during the main waves of immigration in the late 1800s and 1990s. We arrived at the Palace International Hotel in Jiangmen, which conveniently had several restaurants ...

On a recent visit upstate to my friend Julia's, we crossed over into Connecticut and went to the Danbury Mall.  I thought all suburban malls were equally sprawling, but Danbury's was massive .  Of course, walking through and shopping left us exhausted and starving, so we popped into nearby Korean/Japanese restaurant, Edo II.  Julia and her mom had just been there a couple days prior, so the fact that she insisted we go back must have been a good sign. It was definitely a good sign. The restaurant is tiny - maybe 6 small tables - and is sort of like a hole-in-the-wall that you could completely miss if you didn't know about it.  The whole place was very endearing since it seemed like a very family-oriented/family-run establishment with dad as the sushi chef, mom in the back kitchen, and son (young, handsome, and ever so gracious, mind you) serving. Julia had this beautiful Naruto roll: paper-thin cucumber wrapped around crabmeat, tobiko, and avocado, like...

This summer, one of my girlfriends was on a very health-conscious diet, which was great for her but difficult for us to pick places to eat.  One of the places we discovered turned out to be a great find right around the NYU area - Ellary's Greens.  The restaurant has opened just recently and has a shiny awe-inspiring ambiance.  You feel like you're sitting under the canopy in a rainforest: a green metal trellis filters the light down through leaf-shaped cut-outs.  The menu has a variety of vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous options. The first time we ate here, I had the stuffed zucchini with quinoa and yogurt and the chicken sandwich with arugula and lemon ricotta.  The stuffed zucchini looked like vegetarian sushi.  It was light and refreshing, although it lacked any flavor of yogurt and instead came on a pool of tomato sauce.  I'm not a big fan of quinoa but having it stuffed in the zucchini masked the texture well.   The sandwich was...

If you're ever in Edgewater, New Jersey, chances are you are there for one thing and one thing only: Mitsuwa Marketplace.  As an Asian person living in New York City - with its three distinct Chinatowns (maybe more, depending on how you parse), Koreatown by Herald Square, and even a little Japantown near St. Mark's Place - I find Asian markets to be old hat so I'll be honest, I wasn't thrilled or eager to visit Mitsuwa, a Japanese market across two rivers from my house.  I can go down 86th Street and have two Chinese supermarkets within a block of each other. Mitsuwa impressed me, though!  It was definitely the cleanest Asian market I've been to.  The aisles are wide and bright, and none of the packaged foods looked dingy or sketchy like some often do in my local markets.  There wasn't an extensive butcher or seafood section, but you can probably find a section for everything else in your Asian dietary needs: tofu, dried fish, snacky-snacks. The biggest ...

In my neighborhood, there is a restaurant called Hong Kong Tea & Sushi.  If you live in Brooklyn, you might know HK.  If you are Asian, you probably love HK.  If your last name is Moy, you probably have eaten a hundred times at HK. Okay, slight exaggeration, but HK Tea & Sushi is definitely one of my favorite places to eat.  Although it's billed as a sushi restaurant, don't be surprised that all the waiters are Chinese.  Also, I only get sushi about half the time - the other times, I save my stomach for something really special.  Their sushi is good and there is a wide selection.  A maki roll (California, Boston, Alaska, Philadelphia...I'm running out of American states and cities) is, on average, $3.  Their special rolls are a bit pricier and because I am a cheap eater, I stay away from these.  They serve other kinds of fare that is typical of Japanese restaurants: tempura and teriyaki, uni and udon.  My favorite thin...

"Have you ever been to Panya Bakery?" a friend inquired recently.  "They have a bacon-flavored macaron." She said the two magic words.  Bacon and macaron.  I was repulsed and Alex's face lit up. So today, I needed a quick bite in between my hectic schedule and decided Panya was a good spot to hit up.  For bacon macarons, or whatnot. Like a normal person, I bought some sushi.  Like a fanatical foodie, Alex got macarons: raspberry-rose, chocolate-passionfruit, and white chocolate-bacon.  Complete with bacon bits, apparently.  While I ate my abnormally-sized California roll (aside: I will usually never pay for a California roll because I'm a little bit of a sushi snob, but the rice-to-filling ratio was so high and I needed to get my money's worth for a long evening of calling babies; don't ask), Alex thoughtfully chewed over some of Panya's macarons. Number one, the raspberry rose.  He bit into it and made a face.  This ...