Happy Monday world. So an update on the apartment — still don’t have working internet (Starbucks on West 4th has been my temporary home for the past week) but all the furniture is done and assembled. Whoot. And I’m slowly easing myself back into cooking dinner because food in New York is either really cheap but bad for you (trust me, if I could, I’d eat at Pommes Frites and $1 pizza parlors all the time) or super expensive.
Pommes Frites. Freakin’ love this place.
Coming from the SGV where food is both delicious and affordable, the adjustment sucks. I did lead a food tour of the East Village for a couple of NYC newcomers though, followed by some serious bar hopping. EV cheap eats + drinks = perfect night out.
But as usual, here are my updates on the Chinese food world.
1) 25 Things You Must Eat In Tainan, The Culinary Center of Taiwan. I get asked a lot what are some good Taiwanese dishes. It took forever to round-up, but I compiled 25 dishes of delicious food from Tainan. These were taken from my summer, 6-week long trip to Asia. Good times, good people, and some of the best food Asia has to offer (but is often overlooked). It’s probably because Tainan is not tourist-friendly at all.
2) A follow-up with the man who ate at 6,000+ Chinese restaurants. David R. Chan has been getting a lot of media requests and invites ever since my story on him broke in June. I was asked to do a follow-up and his answers to my questions were so great by themselves I structured it as a Q&A. The best quote? “Well there were a couple of unusual tweets. One referred to me as the ‘Batman of Chinese Dining.’ And a lady in Canada described me as her ideal mate if I were 30 years younger. Also one of my accountant friends asked for a copy of the Excel schedule of 6,000 restaurants, then came back the next day to point out a couple of inputting errors.”
