Beach Bound

Beach Bound.  No, not me.  For lunch today, I got the "Beach Bound" - one of the summer seasonal salads at Just Salad.

The salad comes with butter lettuce (and a red cabbage mix, but I opted for no red cabbage), red onions, seedless cucumbers, corn, tomatoes, dill, and shrimp.  For my reusable bowl, I got two extra ingredients.  Chickpeas were an easy choice, but I had a tough time deciding on the second extra ingredient.  I ended up going with the black beans and corn (yes, even though the salad already had corn), which had some cilantro mixed in.

The salad was pretty good.  It was a tasty and healthy combination.  I thought I was going to like the butter lettuce more than I did though.  I think I'd rather go with romaine for the crunch because butter lettuce is softer and limper (and I don't like red cabbage for crunch).  I did like the plentiful dill, which made this salad combo different from many others.  I would get this again.

Carrefour Adventure

After lunch, we continued wandering around Barcelona on our "adjustment day."  We went over to Las Ramblas, the famous pedestrian thoroughfare in the heart of the old city, and made a stop at the Carrefour market to do some grocery shopping (mostly with the intent of buying water) and "grocery sightseeing."

As I wrote in one of our earliest posts, a stop at a grocery store is a must-do on our list in any new place.  We love seeing what they have that we can't get at home!  So what did they have at Carrefour that we found interesting?

Lots of gazpacho in the refrigerator case.

Refrigerated tortillas (omelettes) with potatoes, and with or without onions, which reminded us of our snack the night before.

Jamón ibérico, of course.

Since it was less than a month until the start of the European football championships (which are now almost over - we're so slow at recapping), there were lots of snacks promoting the Spanish team in Spain's colors.  (Vamos España!)

These special edition M&Ms were ready to root for Spain.

These Milka Oreo bars were not in Spain colors but were new.  We were very tempted but decided not to get them (this time).  Now, I wish we had gotten more of them since we can't get them at home.

And for the last photo - Coca Cola, an official sponsor of Euro 2012, with football themed soda cans.

Forgot to take photos of the water but it was so cheap! It cost us less than 2 euro for 6 gigantic (I want to say 2 liters, but I'm not good at estimating volume) bottles of water.  Why is bottled water so expensive in the US?

We made other trips to Carrefour during our stay to pick up other groceries (and of course, more water).  It was the most convenient (and affordable) grocery store we could find in the area near our hotel so if you're nearby, we recommend it!

June Custard Summary

June was a light custard month for us since only a few of them were new.  (We like Shake Shack custards but it's probably better for our health that there aren't 7 new flavors!)  Miss a review?  Here's what we thought of this month's custards:

Monday - raspberry linzer
Tuesday - mud pie (from January 2012)
Wednesday - blackberry buttermilk
Thursday - s'mores (from March 2012)
Friday - strawberry cheesecake
Saturday - coffee & donuts (from October 2011)
Sunday - buttery caramel cocoa nib (from March 2012)

Of the new ones, raspberry linzer was the clear winner.  Let's hope this isn't the last time that one comes around (since we only had it once)!

Pans & Company

We got a late start on our first full day in Barcelona because we were exhausted from traveling and still suffering from jet lag.  After our stop for coffee, we decided to get lunch (since it was already 2 pm).  A short walk from our hotel was the Urquinaona area where we found some sandwich shops including the chain Pans & Company.  The sandwiches looked good so we stopped.

We got one combo meal (sandwich plus drink and fries) and one sandwich.  All the menu boards were in Catalan (although they did have multilingual menus that you could look at elsewhere in the restaurant), so it took some time for us to get used to it.  M wanted to try to order in Catalan or in Spanish, but froze and ended up ordering in English. (Fail.)

A got the Provencal sandwich which was a baguette with gali dindi (turkey), formatge brie (brie cheese), enciam (lettuce), tomaquet (tomato) and alfabrega (basil).  M got the special Mitik sandwich which was also a baguette, but with pit de pollastre cruixent (crispy chicken breast), rodanxes de tomaquet (sliced tomato), enciam fresc (fresh lettuce) and maionesa (mayonnaise).

A's review of his Provencal sandwich - I don't really recall seeing or tasting any basil in this sandwich, but even without it this was tasty. The ingredients were so fresh, and the bread was perfect. It had the right amount of crisp to the crust while maintaining the chewy interior. Turkey and brie are a great combination, and the smoothness and creaminess of the brie was great. I really liked this sandwich and wish I could get it this fresh and cheap in the US.

M's review of her Mikit sandwich - The Mikit sandwich was a bit like the Burger King chicken sandwich but with better flavor and fresher/more natural ingredients.  The baguette wasn't too crusty or hard, which I appreciated.  Inside there was a chicken cutlet that had been cut into pieces, along with the shredded lettuce and some sliced tomato.  I prefer sandwiches without mayo, so I didn't love that aspect of it.  But it was a tasty sandwich and a good first lunch.

Conclusion: While this isn't one of those "must eat" types of places that we tend to try and visit on vacations, Pans & Company is certainly a great place to pick up a quick and cheap lunch. Very fresh ingredients coupled with well thought out combinations make for great sandwiches. All in all, A was left wondering why sandwich places like this don't exist in the US. Yes, there are chain sandwich shops, but nothing comes close to the overall freshness and flavor of these sandwiches.

Blackberry Buttermilk

Our last new custard this month was the Wednesday custard - blackberry buttermilk.

M's thoughts:

First, I loved the color of this custard (it was more pink than in the photo but somehow my iPhone camera would not capture the exact shade of the custard).  Second, it was really smooth and sweet.  I liked that it wasn't a heavy taste of cream or milk, but that you could really taste the berry flavor.  Not my favorite custard (I think we all know what's in the running for that), but a good one.

A's thoughts:

This was an odd flavor for me. My first bite had a fairly heavy berry taste to it, and I thought I was really going to like it. As I ate more, though, that berry sweet and tart flavor was replaced by more of a creamy, almost chalk-y flavor. I don't know, maybe it was the buttermilk portion, but it really didn't taste that great to me. This certainly isn't a flavor I would be getting again.

Blackberry Buttermilk

A's rating: 5/10

M's rating: 8/10

Atrium Palace Cappuccino

I am afflicted with migraines from time to time. Some of them, I have found, are caused by my apparent addiction to caffeine. Because of this, M was very nice and helped me find places to drink coffee every day. Our first full day in Barcelona was really centered around getting a feel for the city as we really weren't acclimated with anything yet. Luckily, our hotel had a Foursquare special for first time check-ins that offered a free drink from the cafe. M was nice enough to use her check-in to get me a coffee.

I opted for a cappuccino to ease myself into European coffee. Sure I had coffee every morning in Greece, but those were all hotel coffees and not actual cafe coffees. This was still a hotel coffee, but it was at least an actual restaurant/cafe coffee.

Cappuccino

I've never actually had a coffee shop cappuccino before so I wanted to see what this was going to be like. My initial taste of just the foam was nice since the top was dusted with cocoa powder. For some reason I thought it was coffee grounds (which actually would be disgusting) so the sweet cocoa powder was a welcome surprise. The cappuccino itself was nice and smooth. It was also really hot. I'm used to mass produced coffee places like Starbucks that come out decently hot but are often just warm. This hot coffee was a nice change. What it also helped me do was learn how to sit back and enjoy my coffee as opposed to just sucking it down as quickly as possible to get my caffeine fix. Maybe I just need to try better coffee shops here in NYC, but I digress...

This cappuccino ended up being really smooth with the right balance of bitterness and creaminess from the steamed milk. It was a nice start into my European coffee adventure.

Primeras Tapas

We arrived at our hotel in Barcelona around midnight and after getting settled, wanted to look for a bite to eat.  We had read in our travel guides that people in Spain eat late - usually after 10 pm - and that was confirmed on our taxi ride to the hotel where we saw packed restaurant after packed restaurant after 11:30 pm.  We weren't sure how many places would take in new diners after midnight, but our hotel recommended trying one of the nearby tapas bars on Passeig de Gracia (we were staying in the Eixample area).  One of the first that we saw was Divinus, so we stopped in for some snacks. 

The signs outside Divinus advertised tapas and montaditos.  We had never tried montaditos before and there were plates of them in the windows at the bar (where we were sitting) that looked good.  We decided to try a few and got espárragos con allioli (asparagus with aioli), jamón ibérico (Iberian ham), and bacalao gratén con allioli (cod gratin with aioli).

The montaditos were bite-sized snacks with vegetables or meat/fish on top of small pieces of bread.  They were all tasty but the bacalao was our favorite.

We also got two tapas - tortilla de patatas y cebollas (omelette of potatoes and onions) and patatas bravas (potatoes with an aioli-type sauce).

We've had both of these before at tapas restaurants in the US but neither was exactly like the ones we had before.  The tortilla we had before also consisted of egg, potato, and onion, but the Divinus one had much more egg.  The patatas bravas we had before were fried similarly but came with a red spicy sauce, while this one was more of a creamy aioli.  After a long day of traveling and eating, both of these were a little heavy.  The tortilla also came with two pieces of bread topped with something red.  It was their version of pan con tomate/pa amb tomaquet (bread with tomato), but since it was our first meal, we didn't yet know that it was a Catalonian specialty.  This bread was not toasted and a little bit soggy from the spread, so we didn't love it.

Our meal at Divinus was good for our first meal - an introduction to the food of Barcelona and a starting place for understanding Catalonian food.  If we went back, we figured we would get more montaditos and maybe some vegetable tapas instead.  We never ended up going back (but with hundreds of places in Barcelona, we only made one repeat visit the entire trip and that was for our last meal) but it was a good place to stop for a late first bite!

AMS to BCN

Our flight from Amsterdam to Barcelona was relatively short (a few hours).  It was a late flight and after our day trip, we were quite tired.  Considering the flight was so short, we thought they would just have a snack and nothing else.

We passed out and ended up sleeping through sandwiches, but I woke up in time to get one of these:

Stroopkoekje (literally "syrup cake") by Punselie's, a company located in Gouda.  Inside the wrapper (I forgot to take a photo of the inside on this leg but remembered on the return flight) was a big cookie/cake/biscuit that was like a stroopwafel but a thicker cookie.  We liked stroopwafels on our last trip to the Netherlands and I was excited to try the cookie. It was sweet, crumbly and a bit gooey from the syrup, just as I thought it would be.  It was a nice snack before our Barcelona adventure!

Mediterranean Sandwich Bar

Our last meal on the Amsterdam segment of our trip was back at Schiphol Airport at the Mediterranean Sandwich Bar.  Traveling seems to make us hungry (or at least we always want to eat), and we thought it would be best to get one last snack before getting on the plane to Barcelona.

We decided to keep it simple and split a sandwich and bottle of water.  There were a bunch of sandwiches to choose from and I just let A pick out one that looked good.

One thing he picked up that we really liked was this Sourcy vitamin water in lychee-lime flavor.  By its look and flavor, it seemed like it would be most similar to the Multi-V lemonade flavored Vitamin Water we get at home. But, similar to the lemon passionfruit water we got in Haarlem, the fruit flavors in this bottled water seemed more natural.  We wished this were an option at home.

The sandwich we got was a chicken and olive sandwich.  It was on a soft ciabatta roll with pieces of grilled chicken, greens, tomatoes and a creamy kind of sauce (but not too much of it).  The olives appeared to be baked into the bread.  The sandwich was fine, but neither of us remember that much about it one month later.

The sandwich bar was a nice place to stop for a snack, but it won't be replacing another Schiphol spot (which we will write about much later on - hint: it's a place we've visited before) as our favorite.  On to Barcelona!

Het Friethoes

On our last trip to The Netherlands, we did everything we could to try pretty much every fry shop we walked by. It was no surprise that when we made the trip out to Haarlem we opted to try one of the local offerings. From the minimal research that we did, Het Friethoes seemed to be the place to go.

 Het Friethoes Storefront

The first thing that we found back in 2010 was that the fries with mayonnaise were the thing to get, and they were also delicious. There's something different about the mayonnaise out in The Netherlands that just makes it taste better than the offerings that we get here in the US. On that note we opted for their haus mayonaise (house mayonnaise) for our topping. 

 Fry Cup with Logo

Fries with house mayonnaise topping

The way they double fry the fries is clearly superior to how we fry fries in the US, and that's part of the allure. They are crisp on the outside while staying moist and soft on the inside. Also, because they start out so crisp, they don't wilt under the toppings placed on them. As for the house mayo topping, this was the best mayonnaise we've ever had. Whatever they added to this to make it special made this amazing. We both tasted some garlic hints to it, but there was also something else that we just couldn't pinpoint. Obviously we couldn't find out since it's a proprietary mix, but if we get the opportunity, we would gladly have more in the future.

Farmers Rotisserie

One of our favorite places in Hell's Kitchen for a casual dinner is Farmers Rotisserie.  Over a year ago, I wrote about the delicious arepas we had there and I think we've gotten arepas every single time since then.  But somehow, we've never written about the rotisserie chicken that the restaurant is named for!  We went to Farmers again a couple of days ago, so it's time to talk about the chicken (and everything else).

For appetizer we once again got the arepa con queso.  The corn cake was crispy and the cheese was delicious, as always.

The rotisserie chicken comes with a salad, which is usually the first thing to arrive at the table.  The salad has romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, carrots and beets, along with bottles of oil and vinegar that you can mix to your liking.  Simple salad, but they include lots of non-lettuce vegetables which is nice.

We ordered a half-chicken with rice, beans and plantains.  You have a choice of red beans and black beans; we've tried both but usually end up going with the black beans.

The rotisserie chicken at Farmers could be the best rotisserie chicken we've ever had.  The chicken is seasoned well and incredibly moist and juicy, even the white meat.  Whatever they do to it is better than everyone else, and we keep going back.  The rice, beans and plantains are all solid, but the real star is the chicken itself.

The chicken is also accompanied by two sauces - a chimichurri sauce of parsley, garlic, olive oil, vinegar and seasonings, and a green spicy sauce.  Adding these to the already flavorful chicken just makes it even better.  I may also add the green spicy sauce to the plantains... and the beans... and the rice...

We often split the chicken and an arepa, but we were a little hungrier this time and decided to try one of the new specials - tostones con pollo y guacamole (green plantains with chicken and guacamole).  You can't see the plantains in the photo below but they are flattened and fried and placed under the chicken and guacamole.

What a great dish!  The combination just works, as did each individual part.  The chicken tasted so familiar but I still can't place where I've had those flavors before.  A thinks it tasted like an amazing chicken stew.  We would get this again, but it is quite filling.

If you're in the mood for rotisserie chicken, we highly recommend going to Farmers.  Laid-back, casual, tasty food, amazing rotisserie chicken.  Can't go wrong!

Chai Thai

Over the years that we've lived in Hell's Kitchen, we have been to Chai Thai (55th & 8th) a number of times, especially after long walks through Central Park.  We haven't been there in about a year, but found ourselves in the area yesterday and decided to check it out.

The menu had quite a few new additions since our last visit.  We decided to put together a menu of mostly small plates, focusing on the new part of the menu.

The first dish to come was the "homemade Thai dim sum" aka steamed chicken, shrimp and water chestnut dumplings aka kanom jeeb (4 pieces, $6).  We get kanom jeeb at a lot of different Thai restaurants because we really like steamed dumplings.  It's also a good way to compare restaurants.

Each dumpling was topped with bits of peppers, green onions and fried garlic.  It also came with a sweet soy sauce on the side.  They were pretty good, but probably not the best kanom jeeb we've had.  Even though they were supposed to have water chestnuts, they were only slightly present (in my opinion) or barely there at all (in A's opinion).  The flavor of the meatball inside the wrapper was good, and the wrapper was thin, which was nice.  Even without the water chestnuts, it was a pretty good appetizer.

We tried to order the garlic chive cake (another new item we hadn't tried) but they were out of that.  So we ended up getting curry puffs instead (2 puffs, $5).

The curry puffs had a good curry flavor but the insides were different from what we were expecting.  Instead of a smooth paste-like curry mixture, there were individual seasoned pieces of chicken with vegetables (corn, string beans, etc).  It was good, but there's something about those soft, squishy, gooey curry puffs that are really tasty that was missing here.  The relish appeared to be the usual onion and cucumber relish, but it was sweeter than some others, which was a little odd for us.

The third dish to arrive was our salad - minced chicken, shrimp and cellophane noodles (aka yum woon sen) ($8).

This was exactly what we thought it would be - a bed of lettuce, topped with grilled shrimp (2 pieces), minced chicken, tomatoes, red peppers, red onions, cellophane noodles, green onions in a dressing of lime juice, fish sauce and herbs.  It was tasty and light and very flavorful.

We also got one noodle dish - chicken pad thai with cellophane noodles ($12).  We've had a similar dish before at Qi (the special pad thai made with cellophane noodles and seafood in an egg white crepe).

It was good but we prefer the one at Qi because that one is really unique and this one was a little more salty.  This one was basically a good pad thai made with different noodles.  Good pad thai makes us happy!

It was a good dinner at Chai and it was nice to try something different from the lychee fried rice or the grilled chicken we usually get.  Maybe next time they will have the garlic chive cake!

Gazpacho

It was hot today - 96, felt like 100, at lunch - which made me not want to eat anything other than popsicles (happy about the Clinique-Sweetery promotion), ice, cucumbers, and gazpacho.  I went from place to place, looking at lunch options, going into 4 or 5 different places, but nothing was appealing.  Everything looked and felt so heavy in that heat.  Apparently my brain was also working really slowly because it took awhile before I realized that I could go to Hale & Hearty for some soup, since they would probably have cold soups... like gazpacho.

Before going for the gazpacho, I decided to try the chilled carrot ginger soup.  I have had the hot carrot ginger soup before, which is especially good in the winter.  It has a warm, comforting flavor and the spice is really tasty.  But I couldn't finish the sample of this soup.  It had no ginger flavor, tasted completely like carrots, and somehow, even though dairy-free, was really rich and creamy.  Not for me.

The gazpacho, on the other hand, was light, full of flavor and refreshing crunchy vegetables, and perfect for the hot weather.

The gazpacho had tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, roasted red peppers, celery, red onions and a mix of herbs.  It was perfect and the H&H version was so tasty.  I wished I had an extra-large container of just gazpacho (and oyster crackers), as the light, clean flavors are exactly what you need in this weather.  I'm thankful to Spain for coming up with gazpacho.  It's no wonder why they did it.  The south of Spain gets much, much hotter than the heat we're suffering through now and gazpacho is a healthy and cooling dish.

I also picked up a half sandwich - my usual and favorite one, the chicken, sundried tomato and mozzarella sandwich - which was just as good as always, but a bit oily today.

 

It was a successful lunch, even if it was the 5th or 6th choice on my mental list.  I think when I was younger I had some not very good gazpacho so before our Spain trip, I didn't love it.  But now I'm 100% on the gazpacho train!

Ice Pops

When it feels like 100 degrees out, popsicles are a priority.  Luckily, Clinique has been teaming up with the Sweetery truck yesterday and today to celebrate their Chubby Stick lip color, which meant free ice pops at lunch!  (They have been out all day the past 2 days but I only had a chance to go during lunch today.)

The truck, decorated for Clinique

There were 3 flavors of ice pops - voluptuous violet, oversized orange and chunky cherry.  I was hoping to get violet but when I got to the truck, they were giving out cherry.  Works for me!

Cherry ice pop

The ice pop was good - a little on the watery side so it broke apart and melted quickly, but I'm not sure if that was how it was made or the fact that it was sunny and 96 degrees.  The hardest part for me was getting the ice pop out of its plastic bag so it became even more of a drippy mess.  But it definitely tasted like cherry and it felt so good after trekking through the heat to get there. Luckily we have 4.5 more boxes of ice pops in the freezer at home because I am definitely in a popsicle mood!

Chapulin

This is a post I was supposed to write a very long time ago. El Rey Del Sabor is a Mexican food cart that M and I both love a lot. Every year they import a special order of chapulin to offer to their clients. I don't know if it's the same dish every year, but the year I went it was quesadillas.

A little pricey, but this was definitely worth the experience

Quesadilla platter with guacamole and pico di gallo

Oh, I didn't tell you what chapulin are? They're grasshoppers. This is something that I had been looking forward to trying ever since I heard that they do this yearly.

Grasshoppers!

The grasshoppers themselves didn't really have that much flavor to them. They were seasoned, and what I remember is that there was a slight sourness mixed into the saltiness of the seasonings. The sauce was nice and garlicky, and it finished off the quesadilla well. The grasshoppers also added texture as they had a good crunch to them. Overall, the novelty wore off fast as the legs had a habit of getting stuck in my teeth. The flavors were nice, but it was a little expensive, and it wasn't so overly great that I thought I had to have it again. In the end I can cross off grasshoppers from my eating list.

Summer Ribbons

Today I went to Jean Georges for lunch with some of the summer associates at our firm.  A and I have previously gone to Nougatine, the more "informal" dining room next door to Jean Georges, for their lunch prix fixe, but neither of us had been to the Jean Georges dining room before.  I was excited to see how the experience would be different.

The meal started out with a three-part amuse plate, with sashimi, a strawberry mozzarella cube, and watercress sorbet.

According to the servers, the first thing to try was the sashimi.  I missed what type of sashimi (big group) but it came with fruit (cantaloupe, I think) and a thin slice of pepper, on top of a mustard-like sauce.  It was a good mix of sweet, tart, spicy and tangy, on top of the clean flavor of the fish.  I liked it.  Second was the strawberry on top of a small block of mozzarella which came with a balsamic vinaigrette sauce.  The mozzarella was rich and the strawberry was sweet, but the combination of the 2 wasn't my favorite.  Last was the watercress sorbet topped with creme fraiche.  This was interesting although it had mostly melted into a green soup by the time I got through the other 2 parts of the amuse plate.

The Jean Georges prix fixe menu consists of any 2 plates (appetizer or entree size) for $38.  I decided to go with one appetizer and one entree.  For the appetizer, I got the yellowfin tuna ribbons with avocado, spicy radish and ginger marinade.  I had been trying to decide between the ribbons and the hamachi sashimi, and the server recommended the ribbons for the more "classic" JG dish, which worked for me.

The tuna was fresh, so soft it could melt, and cut into thin ribbons.  Surrounding the tuna ribbons were small pieces of radish and on the bottom of the plate, mashed avocado like guacamole.  After bringing out the tuna, they poured the ginger marinade on top and around the ribbon pile, which added a lot of a tangy flavor.  I liked how light the appetizer felt, especially in comparison the goat cheese gnocchi some of the others got.  Later in the afternoon I realized why this dish felt so familiar.  It was the same flavor profile (and the same ingredients) as the tuna tartare that I got when I went to Nougatine with A a few years ago!  The only difference was this time it was tuna ribbons and last time it was tuna tartare.  I guess this is just a winning combination!

For the entree, I wanted something light and healthy (partly because it was 90 degrees outside). I thought, of all the fish options, the cod sounded best because it wasn't crusted with anything.  According to the menu, it was a steamed cod, with baby bok choy, black bean vinaigrette and chervil.

Out of everyone in our group, I happened to pick the 2 dishes that had sauce poured on them after they arrived on the table.  When I first got the cod, it was just the cleanest, purest piece of white cod that you could find, on top of what appeared to be steamed bok choy.  That looked so healthy and I was really happy with my choice.  I completely forgot there was sauce for it until the server appeared next to me.  The sauce was a black bean vinaigrette with actual beans and some other vegetables.  It fit the fish and vegetables, as it was full of flavor but very light.

I really enjoyed the Asian flavors that came through in this dish.  Everything worked perfectly together and was the right choice for the summer day.  The fish was flaky and soft, the bok choy was crisp but not hard to chew, and the black bean sauce was full of rich flavors but still not heavy.

We decided not to order dessert but the meal ended with some sweet treats. 

There were 4 different types of chocolate, a plate of homemade marshmallows that were soft and gooey, and some mini strawberry macarons (soft, sweet and flaky).  It was a nice ending to a delicious meal!

Momos and Manchurian Sauce

The Chinese Mirch truck has been roaming the streets of Midtown for a bit, but I never had a chance to try it until today.  They specialize in Chinese-Indian fusion cuisine, offering momos (Tibetan dumplings), rice bowls (momos over basmati rice and vegetables), thukpas (momos in noodle stew), and sliders (baos).  The truck is apparently an offshoot of a restaurant, which has multiple locations in the Northeast area.  I haven't tried the restaurant but was excited to try something new from the truck!

I decided on the rice bowl with chicken momos.  Each bowl comes with Manchurian sauce or garlic sauce.  They suggested Manchurian sauce if you can take spice, and I took the recommendation. The primary ingredients in Manchurian sauce are ginger, onions, cilantro and green chili, and the spice definitely comes through.  It's nice to have a sauce where they don't hold back on the spice.  

Each momo consisted of chicken mixed with chives and other herbs.  On their own, topped with cilantro, and in the Manchurian sauce, they were really flavorful. The wrapper was soft and not too doughy, allowing the chicken inside to be the dominant flavor and texture.

The basmati rice under the momos was mixed with peas, carrots, green peppers, red onions, lettuce and cabbage.  The flavor of the rice bowl part came predominantly from the sauce but it was nice to have the vegetables.  It felt like a really healthy meal.

The portion of the rice bowl wasn't exceptionally large and I was hungry again a few hours later.  But I do recommend the rice bowl.  My favorite parts were the momos and the Manchurian sauce.  Those alone make this worth getting again. (Or you could just get momos on their own.)  I'm also curious to try the thukpa but considering summer is here, hot soup may have to wait!