Buka

One year ago today, we were in Brooklyn hitting up a couple of places for our Women's World Cup eating challenge (yes, we're still posting about that, but hopefully will be done soon), and went to Buka, a Nigerian restaurant, for dinner. Neither of us had ever had Nigerian food before, and it was always one of our greatest regrets that we never made it to an African restaurant during our World Cup eating challenge the year before. We wanted to make sure we rectified that for this challenge.

Since we had a late lunch, we skipped the appetizers and each ordered one main course. There was an entire section on the menu devoted to tomato-based stews, which were described as the most popular meal in Nigeria, so we decided to go with that. Each of the different proteins could be ordered with fufu (we both chose the pounded white yam fufu) and sauce (which seemed to us more like vegetable sides) for only a few dollars more, so we both did that and chose different ones so we could try as much as possible.

For A's stew, he got goat and for his sauce, he picked the efo, which was finely shredded spinach with onions and dried fish. The goat was a little tough and hard to eat for the most part. I only tried a bite of the goat, but my piece was okay. That was because A was kind and gave me one of the few tender bites of goat that he had, but a lot of the rest was tough. We both really liked the side of efo. It had so much flavor, especially with the addition of dried fish.

For my stew, I chose the tilapia. I had been picturing chunks of fish fillets immersed in the stew, so when the plate arrived with a whole fish on it, I was pretty surprised. I blame my shock for not deboning the fish the way that we would when we normally order a whole fish, so I ended up with little bones everywhere before I remembered to do it. The fish itself was good, but it was a lot of work. For the sauce, I wasn't sure what to pick, so I asked for a recommendation on what went well with the tilapia. They suggested the egusi, ground melon seeds steamed with spinach and dried fish. We had no idea what that would be like, in texture or taste, but it was pretty good. If we remember correctly, we think we liked the spinach better, but this was still good.

This was definitely a different eating experience for us and why we decided to do WorldEats in the first place. We originally tried to eat it the traditional way, grabbing some fufu (which was so filling) and using it to scoop up some of the stew. They even gave us big bowls of water to dip our fingers in. We had no idea what we were doing but tried to do the best we could, but it wasn't working that smoothly so eventually we gave up and used the utensils that were also provided on the table. We definitely would return to Buka as we want to try more Nigerian food, like the stew of West African land snails that they were out of on the day of our visit. It's a type of cuisine we don't have much familiarity with, and we want to learn more.

Buka is at 946 Fulton Street in Brooklyn.

Lan Larb

We knew that one of the easiest countries for us to check off the list during the Women's World Cup challenge last year would be Thailand, since there are so many Thai restaurants in walking distance of where we live and work. In the end, it worked out that my mom was in the city for lunch one day during the challenge, so we decided to meet up with A and go for Thai lunch specials at a place near his office.

A has written about Lan Larb before, one of the sister restaurants to our neighborhood favorite Larb Ubol (which someday we'll finally write about). He wasn't a huge fan of the drunken noodle there, but we knew that wasn't wholly representative of their abilities since we had some good Isan food there earlier in the year. We were pretty sure that what we would get in our lunch specials would be better.

Although the price point at Lan Larb is a touch higher than I usually prefer for lunch specials, I love that you get a "real" appetizer with it other than just a dumpling. While you could order dumplings or spring rolls if you want, they also give you the option of chicken larb. While we quite like their sister place Larb Ubol, they tend to dial down the spice in the larb appetizer there for the lunch special since it's more mass produced than if you ordered a larb dish on its own or for dinner. But Lan Larb kept it on the spicier side which we really liked. This was really good.

For my entree, I got the kra prow khai dao, which is minced chicken (or some other meat) with peppers, string beans, garlic, basil, and chili, topped with a fried egg and served over rice. This is one of my favorite rice dishes in Thai cuisine, due to the spice, the flavors, the basil, just everything about it. The egg on top just finished it all off perfectly. I've gotten it every time I've ordered a lunch special at Lan Larb, and it's been good every time.

A ordered an entree that I often get for my Larb Ubol lunch special - kao mun kai (which is inexplicably off the Lan Larb Seamless menu at the moment). Kao mun kai is steamed chicken served over ginger rice with a Thai herb ginger sauce on the side. If you're looking for clean eating, this is the thing to get. It's incredibly healthy, so simply prepared, and just allows the flavors of the ingredients to shine through.

We may not have tried anything brand new for our WWC Thai meal, but that challenge doesn't require us to venture out to new spots or get new dishes. One more WWC country checked off!

Palenque

We didn't finish our WWC2015 recaps before the end of 2015, so let's see how quickly we can get them up in 2016...

One of our favorite teams during the 2014 World Cup was Colombia, and we felt a little bad that when we did our World Cup challenge meal back then, we had only stopped in for an empanada and a buñuelo. We were hoping to rectify that with a full Colombian meal for the Women's World Cup challenge, but instead we ended up just grabbing a snack. At least this time it was an arepa, which could qualify as a full meal for one of us.

We had gotten Korean mandoo earlier in the afternoon but found ourselves a little peckish as we walked home so we stopped by the Palenque stand at one of the Urbanspace markets. I had remembered Palenque from the food truck that used to roam around town selling arepas, and while they always looked good, they were a little pricey for a work lunch. (I wasn't sure one would be enough, and even the smaller size approached my $10 target.) The arepa prices still weren't that affordable (we seriously miss Farmers so much), but we decided to try them anyway.

To start with, A picked up a Colombian soda, which was basically just like the Peruvian Inca Kola. If you've never had one of those before, they taste a bit like bubblegum.

For our arepa, A chose the one that was made with Colombian chorizo (and in the large 7 inch size). On top of the corn base, they piled on lots of slices of chorizo, tons of Colombian cheese, and arugula, and served it with sides of chipotle mayo and cilantro salsa. The toppings were far more generous than we had expected (a good thing).

We were pretty happy with this arepa. The chorizo and cheese had so much flavor. The only thing we wish it had was a touch more vegetable matter outside of those little green leaves you can see in the pictures. We would probably treat ourselves to this again sometime.

Han Dynasty

The Women's World Cup ended months ago, so we should probably finish those challenge recaps...

After our Women's World Cup challenge lunch at Northern Tiger, we continued our Chinese eating day with a trip to Philly import Han Dynasty. We had both read so much about how good the restaurant was and had wanted to go for a while (but we hate crowds), so we were really happy to get in without a wait (that's rare). We've had plenty of Sichuan food before so we were pretty excited to taste their take on it.

We did some research while perusing the menu and found the things that most people seemed to like when ordering. It seemed like there was near universal agreement on the 2 appetizers to get (we got both), and after that, a lot of the entrees were more of a personal preference. We started off with dumplings in chili oil (spice level 4) ($6.95). (All the menu items indicate their spice level, which was helpful, but we had no basis to figure out what a 4 or a 6 or an 8 meant in terms of our own tolerance.) These were similar to a lot of dumplings we've eaten from various other Sichuan restaurants, and they did not disappoint. We love these types of dumplings and the chili oil is a perfect accompaniment for the dumpling filling. 

The other widely loved appetizer was the dan dan noodles (spice level 6) ($7.95). We had eaten dan dan noodles before, and we really liked them so we figured we should try their offering if it was so highly touted. We're glad we did. There's something different with how they prepare their noodles. There was a subtle sweetness to the dish that you don't find in most places. The Sichuan peppercorns and chili oil provided the same level of heat we're accustomed to, and the soy sauce and scallions rounded out the dish. That hint of sweetness, though, is what really lingered with us and also what made this such a good dish.

For the entrees, the first one A chose was the dry pepper style chicken (spice level 8), which was described as triple flash fried chicken with long hots and dry chili peppers ($13.95). M was a little wary of what a spice level 8 might be, but figured at least it would be offset by our other entree if it were too spicy. It wasn't. Apparently we can tolerate a spice level 8 at Han Dynasty just fine (although we should note that we did not eat all the chili peppers on the plate, so maybe we didn't actually eat it at spice level 8).

This dish was really good. The spice was intense but in a good (and mostly tolerable) way. We felt our tongues numbing from the Sichuan peppercorns, but weren't unhappy about that. The chicken was fried well and packed with flavor. The pepper, scallion, onion garnish that came on top of the chicken reminded us of the garlic, onion, and pepper garnish that comes on top of the pork chops we usually get at Cantonese family dinners, except a spicy Sichuan version that was so good over rice. Overall, we really liked this and would absolutely eat it again.

The last dish we got was the crispy rice style chicken (spice level 0), which, according to the menu, had a sweet and sour sauce with bamboo shoots, tomatoes, black mushrooms, and pea leaves (what pea leaves?) served on pillows of sizzling crispy rice ($14.95). M wasn't sure what to expect with this one, but it wasn't really what arrived. When she hears crispy rice, she always thinks about the crispy rice (topped with tuna tartare) from Koi, which is more like blocks of stickier rice with crispy outside edges. These were more like dried, crispy blocks of rice which dissolved, broke apart, and gelatinized a little bit once they sat in the sauce for a while. Not at all what she thought it would be, but it was what A imagined. He'd eaten this sort of puffed rice cake thing when he was younger so he knew what to expect.

The flavors of this dish were fine, but nothing special in our opinion. The sweet and sour sauce was okay, it was nice to have vegetables to offset the other dishes, and the flavor was nice, but it just couldn't hold its own against the other entree we had on the table.

We really enjoyed our dinner at Han Dynasty and would definitely go back. We wouldn't get the crispy rice style again, but the other 3 dishes we got were all hits. 

Taqueria Diana

We've been meaning to post about Taqueria Diana in the East Village for a long time. I first went there back in 2013, a few months after they opened, and loved the tacos that I got. It had been a while since we visited Taqueria Diana, so we decided to head over there for the Mexico slot in our WWC challenge.

Taqueria Diana is a small shop with limited seating in the back, but so far, we've managed to go at the right times to always get a spot. There's a lot to choose from - tacos, burritos, quesadillas, nachos, and chicken - but until this past visit, we always got tacos. (Just a note that this menu photo is outdated, from one of the older drafts we were supposed to finish, and prices have gone up a little since then. Not a tremendous amount, but this isn't completely accurate.)

The tacos at Taqueria Diana are great. Since it's been some time since we had them, we can't describe in detail the flavors of the tacos we got, but here's a photo so you can see how good they look.

On this visit though, we were there for the nachos. I had heard so much about the nachos there, but my love for tacos had always won out on other visits. We decided to go for the chicken nachos ($9.87) and added guacamole (an extra $1.38). The nachos came with a giant pile of chips, topped with chicken, beans, cheese, sauce, some pickled jalapenos, and 3 scoops of guacamole.

The nachos were really tasty, and the portion was far bigger than we had expected. We thought we might go on a food crawl, but this was enough for both of us for lunch and at a very affordable price (for 2 people). What was great about the portion they gave was that there was enough stuff for all of the chips, which you don't find at some places when it comes to nachos. The chips are all fried fresh in-house, and you can definitely taste that difference. Although we liked the chicken version, we're thinking next time we might get the al pastor, since it always looks so good on the spit at the front of the restaurant.

While the nachos were good, we think they would be even better topped with some pico de gallo or the onion/cilantro mix that tops the tacos, just to give it a little bit more brightness and freshness. Also, there's a lack of vegetables which would be fixed by adding one of those toppings. That said, we would definitely get the nachos again.

WWC 2015 Challenge

The Women's World Cup is officially over and the USWNT won! We're thrilled with their success and hope women's sports will continue to gain more respect in the years to come.

We didn't do that well with our challenge, visiting just 37.5% of the countries involved (although it goes up to 71% if you count the ones we "waived"), but between the July 4th holiday weekend, a bunch of weekends with other things planned, and general fatigue, we did the best we could. We're happy that at least we got to one African restaurant, since we failed to do that last year and were really disappointed about that. Unlike last year's challenge, this time we can say that we visited at least one restaurant for each confederation.

Here's how we did:

Completed (post links to be added as we finish them, hopefully soon)
China (1, 2)
Colombia
Mexico
New Zealand
Nigeria
South Korea
Sweden

Thailand
USA

Waived (see here for why)
Australia, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Spain

Not Completed
Cameroon, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Norway, Switzerland

We feel a little bad about missing Canada since they're the host country, but we did do a Canadian WorldEats exploration before, so at least we haven't completely neglected Canada during our blog's history. Now that the Women's World Cup is over, it's time to concentrate on WorldEats (and writing up all the posts we still haven't gotten to about all the places we've tried) and exploring lots more new foods!

Mandoo Bar

Early in the World Cup, we checked off South Korea for our WWC challenge. Technically, we didn't have to get Korean food at all for the challenge (explanation here) since we did it last year for the men's challenge, but we were having a lazy Saturday, just walking around instead of biking, and Koreatown was close for lunch. We almost went to get Korean fried chicken, just like last year, but decided to try to do something different and headed into Mandoo Bar for some mandoo (dumplings). The menu sounded good and we could see them making the dumplings in the window, so we were hopeful that they would be good.

To start off the meal, they gave each of us a salad. It was a very simple salad - just lettuce, red cabbage, and carrots with a ginger dressing - but it was refreshing and great for a summer afternoon.

They also dropped off a bowl of cold soy-pickled vegetables, including carrots, pickles, and what seemed to us like turnips. These were pretty good, also very refreshing.

We got 2 orders of mandoo. We weren't sure if that would be enough for lunch but with so many options in the city, we figured we could make a food crawl out of it if they weren't. First to arrive were the kimchee mandoo ($11.50 for 10 pieces), which were steamed dumplings filled with kimchee, tofu, pork, and vegetables.

We also got the combo mandoo plate ($14 for 12 pieces), which was 4 pieces each of the boiled pork, vegetable, and seafood dumplings. The pork ones were the white ones, the vegetables were green, and the seafood were orange. Rather than order any of those separately ($11 for 10 pieces in the case of pork or vegetable, $12 for 10 pieces for seafood), we thought it would be better to try out the combo so we could taste more, especially since we didn't know which would be our favorite.

The dumplings were all pretty good, but even though this is a restaurant that seems to specialize in mandoo by their name, we wouldn't say they're the best dumplings we've ever had. The flavor of the kimchee one was probably our favorite. It had a bit of heat to it from the kimchee, but it wasn't that strong or overwhelming. It just lent a nice flavor to the dumpling. However, the outer skin on that one, especially as the mandoo sat longer, got a bit tough and chewy, making it harder to eat.

From the combo, we liked the flavors of the pork and vegetable ones. Our least favorite dumpling overall was the seafood. It was fine, but the shrimp, crabstick, and vegetable combo inside just tasted a little strange in the dumpling, and we preferred the others. The texture of the combo dumpling wrappers was fantastic, just the right amount of chewiness, and that lasted for as long as it took us to eat them, unlike with the kimchee dumplings.

Overall, we had a nice lunch at Mandoo Bar. If we go back, we think we would want to try the goon mandoo - the pork and vegetable pan-fried dumplings - that we saw them making in the window. Those looked pretty good. We love dumplings and it's nice to have a spot where you can get so many different varieties!

Independence Lunch

Today, to celebrate Independence Day, we took part in the closest thing we have to an Independence Day tradition - a morning movie followed by lunch at Five Guys. Cheeseburgers and fries always seem like the perfect way to celebrate the United States. This time, we decided that this visit would also count as our USA visit for the Women's World Cup challenge.

There isn't too much to say about this meal since we already reviewed the Five Guys Times Square location back when it opened (although it's much more crowded there now), and Five Guys is pretty standard across all of its outlets. On this visit, we got some cajun fries, free peanuts, and cheeseburgers (a "little" cheeseburger for me and the regular double patty for A) with lots of toppings as always. It was as good as it always is.

The final for the Women's World Cup is tomorrow, and we're really excited. Go USA!

An Ikea Feast

As we headed over to Ikea in Brooklyn this weekend, A and I talked a bit about our first experiences with Swedish food. Unsurprisingly for both of us, the first Swedish food that we remember having was from Ikea, and it was, of course, the meatballs. I'm not sure I could even tell you what else Ikea offered back when I used to go there with my parents a lot in the '90s. Just Swedish meatballs.

After living in Chicago for a few years which had an incredibly vibrant Swedish community in Andersonville, it's been surprising to us how little Swedish cuisine there is in New York. There's quite a few Swedish (or general Scandinavian) spots at the higher end of the spectrum, like Aquavit, but on the more casual side, they seem to be mostly coffee shops. It would have been so easy to hit up a casual Swedish restaurant in Chicago to check the Swedish box for our Women's World Cup challenge, but it was more difficult here. So we went to Ikea. They're a Swedish chain, so they count.

We were so hungry by the time we got to the cafe on the day we went (it was late and we had sat in traffic for about 30 minutes (while hungry) to go less than a mile; we could have walked faster) that we ordered a serious feast of Swedish food for lunch. I'm not sure we've ever gotten that much to eat at Ikea before.

A ordered the Swedish meatball combo ($7.99 with the Ikea Family card, which is free so why wouldn't you get one?), which came with 15 meatballs, gravy (cream sauce), mashed potatoes, and lingonberry jam. This is the plate that Ikea's had for as long as we can remember, and it pretty much tastes the same to us as it always has. We love these meatballs, the rich gravy, the creamy potatoes, and the sweet and tart lingonberry jam. Ikea's the first place either of us had ever tried lingonberries, and they're delicious.

The combo came with a drink (we got lingonberry juice, a lot of it) and our choice of soup or a basic garden salad. The soup was aromatic chickpea soup, so of course, we got that. Despite being the middle of June, it was quite cool and in the 60s outside, so soup was welcome. The soup was just okay, probably our least favorite part of our feast. It wasn't bad, just not as "aromatic" as we were expecting. There was some black pepper and some herbs with the chickpeas, but it wasn't as herbal or flavorful as we thought it would be. But it did seem healthy, so it balanced out a lot of the other stuff we had.

I ordered the chicken meatballs (and A and I swapped a few meatballs from each of our plates). This was the first time we'd eaten at Ikea since they introduced the chicken meatball option, so we wanted to check it out. The chicken meatball plate ($4.99) also comes with gravy, mashed potatoes, and lingonberry jam, but there are only 10 meatballs instead of the 15 regular ones. The chicken meatballs are a little bit bigger than the original ones, a little softer and spongier in texture, but full of chicken flavor. They were tasty meatballs, and I would consider getting this again instead of the original one in the future.

Normally we would just get meatballs, but we were so hungry that everything looked good as we walked past the refrigerated cases. I picked up a plate of the gravlax salad ($4.99), since gravlax is one of the most Swedish foods there is and we like salmon. This was good, but definitely not the best gravlax we've ever had. It came with a side of mustard sauce, some sprigs of dill, and a pile of arugula.

To finish off our Swedish meal, we indulged in a slice of Swedish apple cake ($2.49). The pastry part of this was soft and a bit dense, and the apples were sweet and delicious. We also tasted hints of spices in there, possibly cinnamon or cardamom and maybe some others. It came with a vanilla cream sauce. All together, it was a pretty good slice of cake. We were glad that we were so hungry that we picked up dessert since we don't usually try it there. The apple cake was flying out of the refrigerated case and luckily we got the very last slice. Now we know why it's so popular!

It was great to take a break from the frenzy of Ikea and dismal weather to grab some Swedish food, and it knocked another place off the Women's World Cup challenge. Unfortunately, it's now kicked up our craving for Swedish meatballs, and we didn't bring any home from Ikea!

Northern Tiger

Hudson Eats at Brookfield Place, the giant food court down in Battery Park City, opened a little over a year ago (and we were supposed to post about it so many times before now), but the last kiosk to finish off the collection, Northern Tiger, featuring northern Chinese food, only opened earlier this year. The first weekend of the Women's World Cup had some gorgeous weather, so we decided to bike over and try Northern Tiger to kick off our WWC eating challenge.

The options at Northern Tiger aren't that cheap, but they're not really that different from the prices at the other stands at Hudson Eats. Even though the spots are more similar to fast casual places, all of these food halls and outdoor markets (like Smorgasburg or all the Urbanspace places) can really push the limit if you're trying not to spend more than $10 per item. You can't really compare them to hole in the wall places in, say, Chinatown, because it's just an apples and oranges comparison. Anyway, since we were planning to try out various spots over the course of the day, we decided to just get one shaobing wrap to split ($9).

The shaobing wraps came in 3 options - beef, chicken, and tofu - and consisted of your choice of protein "rolled in our homemade flakey flatbread with a fresh veggie slaw." We chose the Cascun Farm's chicken, and were really curious to see what the wrap would be like. A ate shaobing a lot while growing up, but it's not really the type of thing that one would call a "wrap." (If you want to know more about shaobing, Wikipedia defines it here as a baked, layered flatbread with sesame seeds on top.)

When we opened up the wrapper, what we got reminded us of an open-ended Chinese burrito. Instead of the shaobing A remembered, this was more like a scallion pancake used as a wrapper. Inside the wrap, we found chicken, cabbage, scallions, carrots, cilantro, and hoisin sauce. Everything was really tasty and the flavors were well-balanced. Further, the vegetables were all fresh and crunchy, so the wrap felt nice and light. The scallion pancake-like wrapper worked better (in our opinion) than tortillas do in burritos, and we loved the unique texture that brought to it. The wrap was also a good size, fairly filled, and in our opinion, worth the price. We could each definitely see ourselves eating one for lunch and being at least mostly filled up.

We really liked this wrap and kind of wished we had gotten 2 of them, so we could try either the beef or the tofu as well. We would definitely go back to Northern Tiger for another one of these wraps, and maybe to try some other dishes as well (like maybe the zha jiang mian). This is a great addition to Hudson Eats!

Women's World Cup 2015

I started thinking a lot about the Women's World Cup* during Memorial Day weekend**. Somehow the year has blown by, and until that weekend, I didn't even realize that the competition was just around the corner, the same day as the final game of the Champions League. (In fact, the opening game could start during the finals. Great planning, FIFA.) We're looking forward to it and hoping that the US team pulls off the victory, but it's just made me think a lot about how different the experience has been this year, compared to last year's Men's World Cup.

(* I considered just calling it this year's World Cup in this post, instead of the Women's World Cup, but for the sake of clarity, left it as the WWC. Then I read this article and now I'm definitely doing that so FIFA doesn't throw a fit (not like they would about our little blog, but still).)

(** Yes, Memorial Day weekend, back before all the indictments of FIFA officials for corruption, money laundering, and more, and before Blatter resigned. So much has "changed" in FIFA since then, but so much remains the same as it's not like anyone is treating the women's game any differently.)

We usually catch a lot of the games in the Women's World Cup but even our treatment of it hasn't been the same as the men's game. We haven't been eagerly anticipating the first game of the competition the way we counted down the days in the men's tournament. At the point when there were only 2 weeks to go until the tournament, we didn't have an eating challenge planned for all the countries competing like the way we planned out possible stops for the men's tournament by that time. Heck, right now we can't even name all the countries in this year's cup, compared to last year at this time when we could name not only the countries but their groups. We're currently following the men's qualification for the next Euro, but the only team we followed in the women's World Cup qualification at all was the USWNT. We don't have the same dedication where we try and catch every single game that we possibly can (and neglect our DVR in the process). It's just not the same.

Wonder if they have displays like this at sporting goods stores for the women's tournament...

In many ways, this is due to the way FIFA runs things, the way the tournaments are promoted, aired, and highlighted in the media, and also the way countries themselves treat women's sports. (Artificial turf, are you serious?!) But, by not treating the women's game the same (especially when the women's team is arguably much better than the men's here), aren't we also contributing to putting the women's game on a lower level? And as far as our blogging here is concerned, if we didn't do an eating challenge, wouldn't we be just as bad?

While that thought made me feel really guilty, I also couldn't deny that the World Cup eating challenge is actually really hard and all-consuming. While there are 8 less teams in the women's tournament, we didn't even hit 24 in our challenge last year, so it's still a difficult task. There's the planning and research, but also just trying to hit 24 different spots in one month while not going out most days of the week. It restricts what you can do with the rest of your summer since the entire month is mostly devoted to or built around where you are for the challenge. Every 4 years, that's somewhat manageable, but 2 consecutive years out of every 4 would be very hard.

So how to compromise? How do we both honor the women's game but not lose our entire summer to another challenge? The best solution I could come up with (somehow wandering the streets on an 87 degree humid afternoon made my brain work!) was to treat the 2 tournaments as sort of 2 parts of a whole. Whatever teams are in the women's tournament that we hit last year, we can skip if we want, but we'll really try to hit up spots for teams that are only in this year's tournament or that we missed last year. That cuts the number in half, and while we probably still won't get to them all, it's a much more reasonable ask and attempt. As far as skipping the others, they honestly don't really feel that long ago and we're still blogging about tons of stuff from last year, so it seems fresh enough that it should count.

The Women's World Cup kicks off tomorrow. Let's see how we do with the challenge!