Wechsler's

One German snack we really enjoy (and which we hope to get someday in Berlin) is currywurst. So we continued our food crawl into the East Village and made a stop at Wechsler's to get some!

A started out with a beer - the Köstritzer dark pils ($5), which is brewed at one of Germany's oldest breweries in Bad Köstritz (back to 1543!). It had a lovely malty flavor, and had a nice bit of sweetness to go along with the subtle bitterness of the hops. A had never had a schwartzbier before, but if this is what they're supposed to taste like, he might have to get more of them.

Wechsler's has all sorts of sausages on the menu - lots of German style brats, as well as some from "around the world." But we were there for their signature dish, the currywurst, sliced up bratwurst with their homemade curry ketchup and hand-cut fries.

This dish was everything we hoped it would be. The thinly cut and salted fries and the sausage were tasty, but the star was that curry ketchup. We dipped everything in it. Curry ketchup is great with sausage, but it's also fantastic with fries (which we discovered a few years ago in Amsterdam).

We only got the small size of the currywurst (for $7), and decided to also get a pretzel as a side dish ($4). This was a Bavarian style pretzel with sweet mustard on the side. The mustard to us tasted more spicy than sweet, not quite horseradish mustard but not really that sweet. It also had a bit of a vinegar hit to it. The pretzel was more hard and salty and less soft and buttery like the ones we had on our PA trip. This was a good side, but the currywurst was better.

We really liked the currywurst at Wechsler's and would definitely go back for some more. Maybe next time we'll also try some other brats or maybe the sauerkraut or potato salad!

Wechsler's is located at 120 1st Avenue (between 7th and St Marks) in the East Village.

Brazi Bites

While we were out in Portland last year, we had a discovery in the form of Brazi Bites. They're frozen Brazilian cheese bread (pão de queijo) snacks that come in various flavors and are made by a company based out of Portland. A's mom had bought a few bags and they became part of our Thanksgiving dinner. We love cheese breads, including pão de queijo and the similar French gougeres, so it's not surprising that we kept eating these.

We got to try both the original and jalapeño flavors. We think we liked the jalapeño one better, but both were excellent, cheesy, soft and chewy.

It would be great if we could get these at home, but sadly they don't appear to distribute where we are. Back in November, they only went as far east as the Plains, but it seems like they've now expanded to Florida, so maybe they'll be here soon! I guess we could buy them online, but we don't usually buy frozen food online. Hopefully Whole Foods up in the Northeast will carry them soon!

Craft Two to Philadelphia

One year ago today, we kicked off a long weekend trip to Philadelphia. We didn't have a lot of set plans for the trip other than to go to a Phillies game as part of our neverending quest to visit all of America's ballparks. It was probably a good thing that we didn't have any reservations or set plans since the weather threw all of our plans out the window and we had to just go with the flow.

We left in the morning from the city, ran a few errands, and found ourselves in central Jersey around lunchtime. Philadelphia isn't that far from NYC, but driving this day was really, really slow. We figured it was best to just stop and grab a quick lunch along our route instead of taking a detour since our baseball tickets were for that night. Qdoba was quick, easy, and pretty healthy, so off to Qdoba we went to start our trip eats!

We both got the Craft 2 combination - a quesadilla and gumbo for A and a naked burrito (basically a burrito bowl) and mango taco salad for me. They tasted pretty much the same way they do at any Qdoba, so there really isn't much to say about this visit. Except that it was nice getting to try out their mango taco salad since I don't think I've ever gotten it on previous trips (and now that all the Manhattan locations are closed, even less likely).

Although not the most exciting eats of our trip, Qdoba was a nice start to our getaway. After leaving, we found ourselves smack in the middle of some of the worst Friday summer afternoon traffic. Including errands (which didn't take long at all) and lunch, it took us over 4.5 hours to get from Manhattan to Center City in Philadelphia. Considering how close the 2 cities are, that's pretty ridiculous. At least we got to have a quiet and relaxing break at Qdoba!

Kotmadam

After the Argentinian and Portuguese stops on our Independence Day food crawl, we took a break and watched the (infuriatingly frustrating) Brazil-Colombia quarterfinal game, which allowed us a few hours to digest our lunch. Then we biked down to Union Square, hoping to get some Persian food but we were a little too late for the place we were going to hit up. We noticed one of the Wafels & Dinges carts near the bike station, and we hadn't yet done Belgium for the World Cup challenge, so wafel time it was!

Our visit to the Kotmadam cart was definitely not our first Wafels & Dinges experience. (See here, here and here, and those are only the visits we got around to blogging about.) We love their soft and chewy liege wafels with various dinges (toppings). If you've never had a liege wafel before, they're a little denser and chewier than the waffles you normally get here in the States and they are delicious.

Although I love the Nutella and strawberries combo I often get, I am always up for trying something different. A suggested topping our liege wafel with Belgian chocolate fudge to try to relive our experience from the yellow waffle vans in Brussels (which we still haven't blogged about, but that's what we got), and that's exactly what we did.

The wafel was nice and crunchy on the exterior but soft and chewy on the inside, and the chocolate was incredibly rich. This was a great snack to continue our World Cup food crawl!

City Sandwich

M and I continued our World Cup 2014 eating challenge by visiting City Sandwich in Hell's Kitchen for a Portuguese sandwich. Our original idea was to go to Newark, NJ as there was a Portuguese restaurant we wanted to try, but our idea was squashed when Hurricane/Tropical Storm Arthur blew through and washed out pretty much the entire night.

It wasn't our first visit to City Sandwich, but we saw some new stuff on the menu. We opted for the LGBT sandwich as it not only sounded like a really good sandwich, but some of the profits for the sandwich went towards care and research for people affected by AIDS and HIV. 

The LGBT stands for Linguiça (spread), Goat Cheese, Bacon (Portuguese Pancetta), and Tomato. Sadly, they had run out of goat cheese so we ended up having to substitute in mozzarella. Even with that change, the sandwich was delicious. The bread was a nice crusty roll with a perfectly chewy interior. The linguiça was smoky and a touch salty, but it was tempered by the lettuce and tomato. The pancetta wasn't as salty as I thought it would be, but it added a nice crispy texture to the sandwich.

We really liked this sandwich, and it's something we'd certainly try again in hopes of getting one with the goat cheese to see how it's supposed to taste. We also really want to go back to try some of their other sandwiches.

Mercimek Köftesi

One of the Turkish dishes that I absolutely love is mercimek köftesi (which I was first introduced to when ordering from Antalia, a local Turkish restaurant). These cold red lentil patties were one of my go-to dishes when I used to work late at the office. But as the price kept going up over the years, I decided this was something I had to learn how to make myself. (It's now up to $7.50 there for 4 lentil patties, which is $1.50 more than 2 years ago. A 25% increase in such a short time just feels like a lot to us.)

Order of mercimek kofte from Antalia... Our "gold standard"

Last year around the time of the Super Bowl, I decided to tackle mercimek kofte for the first time. I searched online for lots of recipes, picked and chose different parts of them (it's been so long that I can't even remember which ones I looked at), and came up with my own combination that I thought would best approximate the ones at Antalia (even though I have tried many, they are still my favorite ones). That meant a visit to a Turkish grocery store to pick up some fine bulgur and biber salcasi, which was fun considering my love for grocery stores.

I made the mercimek kofte that night. They were okay but a lot drier than what I was expecting. They also weren't as red in color and didn't taste as good as the restaurant version. Not as flavorful as Antalia and not as satisfying, but a valiant first attempt.

First mercimek kofte attempt... At least it looked pretty

A few weeks later, I tried again. I adjusted all of the measurements to try to increase the flavor and the moisture of the patties. I re-read a lot of the recipes, and found a few that suggested adding a lot of the ingredients while the lentils were cooking, so I tried that. This time they were too wet. (This sounds like a Goldilocks tale.) They just would not stay together. That was even more disappointing. I'd rather have a slightly drier patty that stuck together than one that liquified. But the color was more accurate.

Second mercimek kofte attempt... These are not patties

So when Turkish week rolled around, my task was obvious. I had to tackle this again, even though I had left it alone for over a year after disappointing myself with my attempts. This time, I wanted to get it right. I tinkered with the recipe a little more, mostly using the same ingredients as last time, but less water, and changing the cooking method a little bit (which ended up changing even more since the lentils cooked faster than I expected). 

I still wasn't pleased with the result at the end of our Turkish dinner. But after eating the leftovers from Turkish night, I think I've finally found a version of mercimek kofte I'm satisfied with. I'm going to keep tweaking the recipe, but at least this one will work for those inevitable moments when I am craving mercimek kofte. I should mention, even though it's probably obvious, that I'm not Turkish, I don't know what an "authentic" mercimek kofte contains as I don't have some family recipe passed on through the generations, and I'm just doing my best to approximate what I've had at 3-4 different restaurants, which I assume is what it's supposed to taste like. I truly do love this dish though, so if there is something that needs improvement, please tell me!

Anyway, back to the 52 week challenge. The ingredients for my mercimek kofte were:

- 1 cup red lentils ($1)

- 2.5 cups water ($0)

- 1/2 cup (scant) fine bulgur ($0.50)

- 1 tbsp olive oil for sauteing and a little more for stirring later ($0.30)

- 1/2 large yellow onion, finely chopped ($0.40)

(can probably use 1 regular sized onion, but our onions are enormous this time)

- 2 tsp cumin ($0.10)

- 1 tsp salt ($0.05)

- chili flakes to taste ($0.05)

- 1 tbsp tomato paste ($0.45)

- 1 tbsp biber salcasi ($0.40)

- 1/2 bunch green onions, finely chopped ($0.60)

- 1/2 bunch parsley, roughly chopped ($0.80)

This made 12 or so lentil patties of about the same size as the restaurant ones. The cost of the lentil patties came out to about $5 (some of the costs are approximate since we bought the stuff last year), and the romaine lettuce adds on about $1 to that total. So for less than the cost of one order of mercimek kofte in a restaurant, we could make 3 times the amount of lentil patties. Not bad.

The way that I made the mercimek kofte this time was:

1. Rinse lentils. Add to saucepan with the water. Boil until lentils are tender and water is reduced.

2. While lentils are cooking, cook the onions in a separate pan until they soften and brown a little. Ideally, these would be ready at the same time the lentils are, but the lentils cooked much faster than I thought they would this time.

3. Once lentils are tender and water has reduced, add bulgur, cooked onion, cumin, red pepper flakes, salt, tomato paste, biber salcasi. Stir it all together until well-combined. It seemed very dry to me, which was probably because I had the lentils on low while I waited until everything else was done (and I was still doing prep on the parsley since I thought I had more time). I added a tsp or so of olive oil to the lentils to make them easier to stir. They were still pretty dry though, which had me fretting a bit.

4. Add green onions and parsley and mix it all together some more.

5. Form the patties. Although the patties were a bit dry and crumbly, they stayed together for the most part. They're not fried so they're going to break up a little, and all the ones we get in restaurants are soft and do that too. The easiest way (in my opinion) to make the patties is to take a handful of the lentil mixture and flatten it in your hands, turn it sideways, flatten it again, do it a few more times if it needs it, and then roll it between your hands until it is an oblong shape.

6. Refrigerate for a few hours, or even better, overnight. Serve over romaine lettuce. This, I think, is the key. (The refrigeration, not the lettuce, although the lettuce is an important complement.)

As I said in the beginning, I wasn't pleased with these patties when we ate them for our Turkish dinner. We were running late (as usual, I was slow) so I didn't have any time to refrigerate these at all. I think in the past, I let them cool a little bit, but probably not more than an hour. This time they were room temperature. They tasted okay. They were certainly edible and had flavor, but they just did not measure up to the ones from the restaurants. That disappointed me. Why couldn't I get this recipe right? Was it going to be the bane of my existence? Was it going to be the one dish that would torment me for years, never getting close to the one I was trying to emulate?

Since we had 3 salads that night, we had about a third of these left over at the end of the night. I stuck them in the fridge, and was not very excited about eating them for lunch the next day. I like eating leftovers, but I was just so disappointed at failing yet again that I just felt like it would be my failure staring back at me from the dish. Needless to say, I had such low expectations at lunch. Then I took my first bite of the leftovers and everything changed.

At that point, the mercimek kofte had been refrigerated for about 12 hours. It made such a difference. There were flavors throughout the lentil patties that I only had a hint of the day before, which were so much more present when eating them the next day. I was so surprised. I know giving certain dishes time for the flavors to meld is important, but I just hadn't imagined that it could make such a dramatic difference.

Is it as good as the restaurants? Probably not. Can I make some more improvements? Sure. But, for now, this will definitely work. Finally.

Goodbye Crumbs

A few hours ago, I read on Twitter that Crumbs Bake Shop abruptly closed down all of its stores today. I knew they were having some financial issues, but I never thought they would shut down without any warning whatsoever. That completely sucks for their workers and it's certainly not going to help unemployment in this city...

I've had plenty of cupcakes from Crumbs over the years. Mini-cupcakes at work parties, afternoon snacks, free promotional cupcakes like one I got earlier this year for going to the Aerial America exhibit in Times Square. The cupcake craze may be over, but I didn't think they would just shut down everything all at once. I thought they would just close more of their stores, but I guess the stores were a lot less profitable than I thought. Crumbs was the only cupcake chain I really went to (not a fan of Magnolia, Sprinkles is not close by, and Baked by Melissa is so expensive for such tiny cupcakes), so this is kind of sad for me.

My favorite Crumbs cupcake was the vanilla coconut, especially in the mini size. The cake was always soft and fluffy, the icing wasn't overly sweet, and the shredded coconut was the best topping. If only they had publicized that they were closing even a day in advance, people could have gone to get one last cupcake and say goodbye. I know that I would have braved the 90 degree weather to get one more vanilla coconut cupcake and maybe an assortment of minis.

I remember reading a few months ago that BJ's was going to start carrying Crumbs cupcakes, so I don't know how this affects those sales. But even buying those wouldn't be the same as just stopping in to the store and picking up a cupcake on a whim. Goodbye Crumbs. Thanks for the cupcake memories!

Nohut Salatası

When looking for Turkish recipes for the challenge other than mercimek kofte, one of the first ones I found was this recipe for a Turkish chickpea salad. It looked delicious and I followed it almost exactly (other than some adjustments of seasoning to taste).

We had most of the ingredients at home already and just needed to buy some fresh green onions and parsley. We needed:

- 2 cans of chickpeas ($1.50)
- 3 tbsp olive oil ($0.60)
- 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar ($0.50)
- salt to taste (about 1/2 tsp salt) ($0.05)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice ($0.10)
- 5 green onions, chopped small ($0.70)
- 1 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped ($0.75)
- 1/3 cup (or more) feta cheese, crumbled ($1)

The total was a little over $5. Not too bad for a big bowl of salad with leftovers.

Making this salad was really easy but for best results, you need to start at least a couple of hours before. I noticed this the first time I read the recipe, but for whatever reason, when I re-read it the day before making it, I didn't see it (maybe I only looked at the top of the recipe where it said the prep time was 20 minutes). It was like the Fainting Imam dish all over again. At least this time I read all the recipes again over lunch on cooking day which gave me time to start the marinating early enough.

First, rinse and drain the chickpeas.

Put chickpeas in a shallow dish and add the olive oil, apple cider vinegar and salt. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). I would have done overnight if I read the directions correctly the day before, but at least I was able to get 3-4 hours of marinating in. I do think marinating helps augment the flavor of the chickpeas.

After marinating, put chickpeas in a bowl, and add lemon juice, green onions, parsley and feta cheese. I also included any of the excess oil and vinegar from the chickpea marinating that was left in the dish.

Mix everything together and adjust seasonings to taste.

This was a really good salad. The chickpeas benefited from the marinating, and mixing feta, scallions and parsley together is always a good combination. Very healthy, easy to make, refreshing and light, perfect for summer. Would definitely make this again.

Nieuwe Haring

It's always puzzled us why NYC doesn't have or can't sustain a Dutch restaurant. We've had so many great Dutch foods that we think people would embrace, like pannekoeken, frites, herring, ossenworst, poffertjes, croquettes. (Seriously, a FEBO in the East Village makes perfect sense to us.) For a while, we thought we might have to do a rijsttafel for the Dutch portion of the World Cup challenge, but even though that's a hallmark of cuisine in the Netherlands, that's really more Indonesian cuisine, so we were hoping for something else. Luckily, before the World Cup started, the perfect idea hit me - we could go to the Grand Central Oyster Bar and get some of the herring that they specially fly in from the Netherlands every summer!

We visited Amsterdam back in 2010 and it was there that we had our first taste of Dutch herring. We went in the fall so it wasn't the season for "new herring" (nieuwe haring in Dutch). New herring is the first catch of the season, the newly matured fish, and we've been going to the Grand Central Oyster Bar every year for the past few years to get our herring fix. Although the Oyster Bar has lots of varieties of seafood, this definitely counts as Dutch for us since they fly the herring in daily from Scheveningen in the Netherlands (a seaside area near the Hague that we thought about visiting except the day we visited the Hague we were running late and it was raining).

Source

We prefer sitting at the counters at the Oyster Bar (instead of the dining room), so we headed over there and placed our order for some Dutch herring. After ordering, they gave us our complimentary plates of bread and butter. Those flatbreads are crisp and tasty.

We each got an appetizer of nieuwe maatjes herring filet ($7), which comes with one piece of herring (split), some egg crumbles, grated raw onion and chopped chives.

Before our first visit for nieuwe herring, we had only really had it in sandwiches in Amsterdam. It's quite good on a plate like this, very refreshing and light. The fish is so fresh and doesn't have an overpowering fishy flavor at all. Eggs, chives and raw onions are a great accompaniment. The traditional way to consume this is to lift it by the tail and eat it. A tried that method one year, but we usually just eat it piece by piece with fork and knife. Lasts longer and we can savor every bite.

We didn't want to get main courses after our herring plates so we decided to split another appetizer. We got the grilled Spanish cuttlefish (sepia) with lemon oil and French gray sea salt ($11.95). That was really good. It had a delicate flavor and the cuttlefish was grilled just to the point of tenderness. It was almost like being back in Barcelona with their amazing grilled seafood tapas (other than the price tag).

We initially decided to go to the Oyster Bar for our World Cup visit, but we're also going to count this visit towards our WorldEats challenge. We've been talking a lot about WorldEats and our slow journey through the Caribbean, and we've decided yet again to evolve the challenge a little bit. Instead of attempting to do it geographically (but allowing ourselves to go out of order), we can jump around freely, but we'll still try to do each country we pick as a single unit so we can really get a taste for the cuisine. Since the new herring is the only thing we know of at the moment for the Netherlands, I guess WorldEats for the Netherlands is done for now. We would definitely go back and visit more places if any should come up in our journey. We'd love to have a FEBO here!

100 Montaditos

When we were in Barcelona a couple of years ago, we saw a bunch of 100 Montaditos restaurants around. We never had time to try them when we were out there, but they looked popular and affordable. They opened a branch in NYC late last year, and A suggested we try that out for the Spanish stop on our World Cup eating challenge which was a great idea.

100 Montaditos offers literally 100 different varieties of montaditos, which is what they call a mini-sandwich throughout Spain. They range from the original montaditos with meatballs or shrimp, to "premium" montaditos which include tuna and serrano, as well as special gourmet combinations and sweet dessert montaditos. Since choice can be overwhelming, they also have preset selections with 5 montaditos each (meat lovers, veggie, Mediterranean, chocolate, and "black label"). The menu also has non-montadito options like variations of fries and potatoes, meat and cheese plates, and even paella.

We arrived for a late lunch in the middle of the first half of the Korea-Algeria game, and got a table in the brightly lit back room which was equipped with multiple TVs. We decided to go with two of the pre-designed combinations - the meat lovers ($7) and the Mediterranean ($9) - and an order of fries ($3).

For the fries, we chose the fries with cheese sauce and Serrano bites. These came out first and were a great snack during the game. The fries were really crispy on the outside, like they were double-fried, but the insides were still nice and soft. The cheese sauce was well-distributed and melted. The pieces of Serrano ham were also fried up and crumbled, and were a nice replacement for bacon. Although the montaditos ended up being way more filling than we expected by the end of our meal, so much so that we didn't really need the fries, these fries were our favorite part of the meal!

We both split all of the sandwiches so we could try them all. After we ate them all, we ranked them and then averaged our scores. Although our exact rankings weren't the same, the averages sorted them out into roughly four tiers. In order of least favorite to favorite, here's what we tried (with the montadito menu number listed since there are a lot of similar sounding ones).

10. Smoked salmon and blue cheese with crispy onion and honey mustard (#75, from the Mediterranean set).

This was the sandwich we both liked least. You could taste the salmon, the blue cheese, the onions and the honey mustard. But they didn't go well together at all in our opinion. The mustard and salmon weren't too bad together, but the blue cheese was just weird with it.

8 (tie). Garlic pork loin with fresh tomato, lettuce and mayo (#52, from the Meat Lovers set).

This was the first montadito that M tried and all she could think was that it tasted like a boring turkey sandwich with mayo. A found it bland and boring and perhaps put it best as, "what's the point?"

8 (tie). Smoked salmon and hardboiled egg with lettuce and mayo (#72, from the Mediterranean set).

M thought this was okay. She could taste the salmon, mayo, and egg but there was a bit too much mayo in her opinion. A thought the smoked salmon didn't come through at all, and it tasted just like mayo, egg, and lettuce.

6 (tie). Chicken with green pepper, fresh tomato and ali oli (#45, from the Meat Lovers set).

Ali oli is basically Spanish garlic mayonnaise (aioli). It's hard to go wrong with garlic mayo. A thought this was nothing special and that all the flavor came from the ali oli. M thought this was going to be green bell pepper when we ordered it but it seemed more like poblano peppers. She liked that the chicken wasn't dry and thought the garlic mayo was a good match for it.

6 (tie). Philly steak with cheddar cheese, piquillo pepper (roasted red pepper) and crispy onion (#29, from the Meat Lovers set).

The main thought we both had about this one was that it was incredibly salty. The beef didn't have much flavor on its own, but M liked that the texture was chipped meat like an actual cheesesteak and not larger pieces. The cheese was the same as the one in the fries - like a salty cheez whiz type of sauce - but it all just seemed too salty.

2 (tie). BBQ pulled pork with cream cheese, bacon and ali oli (#47, from the Meat Lovers set).

This sandwich had a good BBQ sauce flavor. A found the ali oli here to be an odd addition and kind of weird with the sweet pulled pork, but M really liked it here mixed with the BBQ sauce. Probably why M ranked it 3rd on her list but A had it a few spots lower on his. The bacon was also a strange addition and not really necessary. We didn't notice any cream cheese.

2 (tie). Anchovies with fresh tomato, mayo and pepinillo (pickles from Spain) (#77, from the Mediterranean set).

We both agreed that the anchovies were a bit fishy, but in the end they're anchovies. The mayo added a bit of cool richness, and the pickles were great. They weren't overly tart, but they offered a really mild, balanced flavor. In the end, it reminded A of a slightly salty herring sandwich from Amsterdam. M didn't quite get the same flavor connection when she ate it, but also thought it was good.

2 (tie). Tuna and hardboiled egg with piparra (mild Spanish pepper) and mayo (#22, from the Mediterranean set).

We both really enjoyed this sandwich. The tuna wasn't fishy at all since it was cooked, and we both thought the mayo paired really nicely. M thought the egg added some creaminess, and A thought that the piparra acted like relish even if M didn't remember it being there. A described it fairly aptly as something of a deconstructed tuna salad sandwich.

2 (tie). Tuna and piquillo pepper with crispy onion and ali oli (#23, from the Mediterranean set).

The piquillo peppers were both sweet and sour and were really good with the crispy onions and tuna. A didn't think the onions added any flavor, but they added a lot of crunch. M liked it more than A, but he still thought it was good.

1. Meatballs with bacon (#11, from the Meat Lovers set).

Three meatballs in tomato sauce with a piece of bacon underneath them. The meatballs had a lot of flavor to them, which made this our favorite sandwich. The tomato sauce gave it a bit of an Italian taste as well as Spanish. The bacon was probably unnecessary. It didn't really add much to the sandwich. A thought maybe if the bacon were like Serrano ham, it was just added to make the sandwich taste more Spanish. There are some other meatball montaditos with manchego cheese and other stuff that we think sound really interesting for next time. At least we know the meatballs themselves are tasty!

The food at 100 Montaditos doesn't scream Spanish since some of these sandwiches could be found in other cuisines, but we know it's definitely Spanish since we saw the chain while we were there. It's a solid and relatively inexpensive option that we were glad we took advantage of for the challenge. We both agreed that the fries topped with cheese and crispy Serrano ham were our favorite thing to eat, but we'd certainly go back to try other sandwiches and their other food.

100 Montaditos is at 176 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village.

The Argentine

The World Cup eating challenge is definitely not easy. There's 32 days to eat food from 32 countries. Eating a full meal out every day isn't feasible for our schedules or wallets, and even if you devoted every weekend and holiday meal to the challenge, you would still come up short. On top of that, there's still plenty of non-World Cup stuff to do during the month since summer doesn't stop for the eating challenge, so it's pretty much set up so that you won't get to all 32 countries by the finals (at least for us).

With only about a week to go until the end of the challenge, we still found ourselves in the single digits in terms of visits, so we had to step it up a little. The best way to do that? Food crawl!

For our 10th World Cup eats visit (we're posting a little out of order), we headed over to the Nuchas kiosk in Times Square in honor of Argentina. It was my third time visiting Nuchas (although my other visits were at the truck) and A's first time trying the empanadas. Although Nuchas has all different types of empanadas (not all of which are traditional Argentinian flavors, like the jambalaya one), their origins are Argentinian, and they have an empanada on their menu called the Argentine (in addition to some Argentinian sweets). We had some other Argentinian options on our list but couldn't bear going to another steakhouse or meat palace after last week's Uruguayan meat extravaganza. A snack like empanadas was a much better idea.

Since this was our first stop of the day, we each got one empanada ($3 each). Of course, we each got the Argentine. We thought about also getting dessert, but were trying to pace ourselves for the rest of our lunch crawl.

The Argentine empanada consisted of Pat LaFrieda ground beef (mmm, Shackburgers), onions, peppers, scallions, potatoes and olives in a pocket of white dough.

I'm a big fan of Nuchas because they aren't cheap with their empanada fillings. This one had lots of ground beef, which was really well-seasoned. We were pleased that the olives didn't overpower the empanada (which sometimes olives have the tendency to do) and that the potatoes were nice and soft, and we thought that all the vegetables were very complementary. The blend of flavors was quite good. The filling was nice and moist, not dry at all, and the empanada was baked just the right amount. It's been a while since I had the spicy chicken empanada so I don't know which of the two is my favorite, but this is definitely up there. A was pretty happy with his first taste of Nuchas as well.

We have lots more Argentinian food to explore when we do it for WorldEats but for the World Cup challenge, empanadas were the perfect choice!