Ramen in Your Price Range and Japanese Ambience at Sapporo East

Japanese has to be one of my favorite cuisines. I like it all, form the sushi to the soups and the fried noodles. I was already a fan, but my love for Japanese food was cemented when I spent a month there during high school. Unfortunately, Japanese is often one of the most expensive cuisines to enjoy in the United States. That's what makes Sapporo East on 1st Avenue at10th Street such a great find. We initially went in for the very reasonable prices, but I am so thrilled to have found this little gem right in my neighborhood.

Let me begin with the fact that this restaurant actually reminds me of a place I ate at in Japan. There's a definite Japanese ambience, despite it not looking like the typical Japanese restaurant. It has the vibe of a ramen house during the lunch rush: busy, crowded, and filled with delicious smells. This ambience was offset by gangster rap in the background, which should have bothered me, but somehow I was in the mood for that kind of quirky tonight.

The menu includes many different varieties of Japanese food. There is a full sushi menu, and the prices seemed relatively reasonable. I didn't try the sushi, however, and know nothing about how they source their fish, so I won't recommend one way or the other. There is also yakisoba, various types of curry, and an assortment of rice dishes, but my dining partners and I all opted for soup.

My friend Dekel went with the tempura udon. If you're not familiar with Japanese food, tempura is a way of frying meats and vegetables, and udon is a type of thick, white noodle often used in soups. I thought his broth was sweet and nice, but nothing particularly exceptional. It was a good, standard tempura udon, however for only $11 it was huge and included three large pieces shrimp tempura.

My roommate Pierre and I both opted for Ramen. Yes, the ramen you buy for 2 cents and some pocket lint at the Food Lion is a (completely unacceptable and relatively insulting) imitation of this dish. Real Ramen, however, is delicious noodles in rich broth with all kinds of toppings. The only resemblance to the grocery store version is the shape of the noodles and the name. We got different kinds, and they were both great, but very different. Pierre ordered the Rokuban Ramen, which had a soy broth with ground beef, tofu and bean sprouts. It was incredibly flavorful, but definitely beefy! While I personally found the flavor a little too heavy for my tastes, if you enjoy beef and are looking for a hearty soup, I would recommend it.

I ordered the Sapporo Special Ramen, and let me say, sorry boys, but I win this one. My ramen was killer. The broth was intensely flavorful with a miso base, and if I had just been given a bowl of broth, I think I would have been satisfied. The Sapporo Special, however, comes with pork, fish cakes and vegetables. I have no idea what they did to that pork, but it tasted like it was made for royalty. It was tender with a slightly sweet flavor, and complemented the broth perfectly. The fish cakes were also tasty, but I prefer mine slightly thicker cut than at Sapporo East. This isn't really a complaint though, because it's just personal preference. My noodles were also perfectly cooked. I could have eaten that soup until I died of over consumption. Seriously. This place is on my way to and from school, and I'm not sure how I will walk by it every day without stopping in for a bowl of ramen.

The best part of all is that all of this was in approximately the $10 range. Both bowls of ramen were $9, and the tempura udon was $11. I've checked out ramen menu's in the neighborhood, and this place is an absolute steal.

So, to recap: nice, quirky atmosphere, great food, affordable prices. What more could you possibly want? If you're in New York, go get yourself some ramen!

Indian Tanpura Weekend Lunch Special

This past week was the first week of classes, and let me tell you, PhD school is hard. As a result, my diet has consisted largely of protein bars, whatever I can graze from my kitchen, and some eating out. Since I have been such an irresponsible blogger, you might even get two posts today, but this one is about my surprisingly good lunch at Indian Tanpura on the Upper West Side.

My brother Patrick and I originally planned to go to Saigon Grill, a Vietnamese restaurant where he had eaten before with his girlfriend. They may have good food, but it turns out they don't have good labor practices. There was a picket outside, and it turns out there's an entire community organization focussed on trying to get them to change the way they treat their employees. They even lost a court case to former employees and were required to pay damages, which have apparently not been paid. You can learn more about the dispute here: http://sweatshopfreeny.tumblr.com/. Needless to say, we decided not to eat at Saigon Grill.

Instead, we walked a bit further down Amsterdam where we found a tiny Indian restaurant called Indian Tanpura at 564 Amsterdam Avenue between 87th and 88th Streets. It looked a bit pricy for lunch, but hey, it's Indian food, so we figured why not.

Indian Tanpura is located at 564 Amsterdam, between 87th and 88th Streets

Once inside, it turns out that Indian Tanpura has great, very affordable lunch specials 7 days a week. There were lots of vegetarian options including Aloo Saag (spinach and potato curry), Channa Saag (chickpea and spinach curry), Mixed Vegetable Curry (self-explanatory), and Mattar Aloo (pea and potato curry), all of which were $7.95. The various meat dishes included Chicken Curry, Beef and Vegetable Curry and Lamb with Spinach, and were all priced at $8.50. The lunch specials include rice, a salad dressed with lemon juice and spices, and a pakora, which was particularly exceptional. I don't typically like pakoras except in the sense that everybody loves fried dough, but this one was fragrantly spiced and really delicious.

Indian Tanpura doesn't deal in high end, gourmet Indian food. It tastes the way I imagine the food would taste if it was made in somebody's kitchen for a weekend lunch. In fact, I think that is approximately what you are eating. The place is tiny, and there was a bit of a wait for them to prepare the food, but it was seemingly very fresh.We ordered the mixed vegetable curry and the aloo saag (a curry made with spinach and potatoes), and neither was a disappointment. The spices are not quite as subtly balanced as in some higher end places you may have eaten, but the bold assertive flavors work, and take any pretension out of the food. While both dishes were good, I think that my aloo saag was particularly great. I asked for medium, and it was perfectly medium, just enough kick without overwhelming the flavor. The gravy was flavorful and warming, and the entire meal left me feeling full and comfy. Perfect for the end of a stressful week.

Patrick's mixed vegetable curry was more truly mixed vegetables than in many Indian restaurants I have tried. Often you get a somewhat disappointing mix of mostly carrots, peas and potatoes. This version included green beans, big pieces of carrot, potato, broccoli and tomato, for a really healthy mix!

Look at Patrick's face and decide for yourself how the vegetable curry was. ;-)

The service was also particularly nice. Admittedly, we were the only ones in the restaurant (we came a bit on the late side for lunch, but they serve the specials until 3:30), but the server, who seemed like he might also be running the place, was both friendly and attentive, without overdoing it. I asked, and at least he is from Bangladesh, not India. I wonder if some of the spice differences I noticed were regional, but don't know enough about regional variations in South Asian cuisine to comment for certain.

If you are around the Upper West Side, I recommend giving this little place a try. With the lunch special prices, we paid $10 each including the tax and tip, making this a tasty and affordable option. The dinner prices also seemed reasonable, given that it is Indian food, but were slightly more than what you would pay at lunch. If you're in that neighborhood, they also deliver.

Enjoy your meals!

Chinatown Dim Sum

This What's for Dinner is actually a What's for Lunch, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. After this lunch, all I could manage for dinner was some veggies and cottage cheese!

Dim Sum. The word alone is enough to make my heart skip a beat, so when I learned that NYU was sponsoring a Dim Sum lunch in Chinatown for new grad students living in NYU housing, I'm really mostly just lucky I remained conscious. The experience was great before we even got to sit down and have food. We walked from NYU down to Chinatown, which was a fascinating experience for me, since I haven't spent much time there. I saw the most BEAUTIFUL chinese long beans, I wanted to knock over the bystanders blocking my path and just snatch them up, but unfortunately I was with a group, and that sort of behavior tends to be frowned upon. I decided that the long beans would probably be there another day, but my pride once lost was lost forever. Hey, a girl's got to make friends! I also saw at least 4 varieties of mushroom that I couldn't identify, including some beautiful shiny black ones with wide thin caps and slender stems. I'd like to go back with a camera and figure out what all of them are. All of that to say, I will definitely be returning to Chinatown at some point when I can fight through the crowds without shame.

When we got to the restaurant there was a huge mass of people waiting on the street, and no wonder! Jing Fong (http://www.jingfongny.com/) is a Chinatown institution. We had about a 30-40 minute wait, and just to give you an idea of how popular this place is, the dining room seats 800...and we had to wait 30 minutes. Luckily, grad students are creative, and we decided to get bubble tea while we waited. For those of you who have never had bubble tea, it's a milky, sweet iced tea with giant black pearls of tapioca in it, making for a sweet delicious drink with a chewy after-bite. It's delicious, and another one of my favorite things. I'm almost glad we had the wait since it meant getting bubble tea.

Once we finally got inside, everything happened very quickly. For those of you unfamiliar with dim sum, it is a traditional way of eating, most particularly in Hong Kong. You sit at a table, usually with a group, and waiters with carts roll by and offer you an absolutely blinding assortment of delicacies. Most people know dim sum for dumplings, but there is so much more than that. Within seconds of sitting, our table was filled with steamed pork buns, doughy on the outside and filled with sweet, barbecue pork, several types of dumplings including small shu mai shrimp dumplings wrapped in clear rice wrappings, vegetable shrimp dumplings, and pork dumplings. The most interesting item we were served, however, were the fried taro dumplings. These were deep fried, slightly sweet mashed taro root, covered with wispy threads of fried dough, wrapped around pork, scallions and a sauce fit to make you faint. On top of the incredible dumplings, we had soft-shell crab fried with spicy red pepper, tiny fried whole fish which were salty and delicious, and two different types of barbecue pork. Even the little touches, such as the sweet, crunchy soy beans under the pork, were perfect. All of this was washed down with an endless supply of jasmine tea, and finished off with coconut foam and sesame dumplings filled with sweet bean paste for dessert. The meal was perfect, and giant. I was somewhat concerned that I would need to be rolled home, but I managed to walk. I actually thought that it was possible that I had died, and this was heaven. But, no. This, my friends, was simply Chinatown, although I'm beginning to doubt whether those two things are all that different.

Enjoy your labor day weekend, and if you have a chance, get a group together and grab some dim sum! You won't be sorry!

End Note

While it will be impossible to truly capture what happened yesterday, Jing Fong's website has pictures of some of what we ate here: http://www.jingfongny.com/dimsum/. The taro dumplings, which I think are the hardest to describe, are the third from the left on the top line.