Amazing Asian fusion in NYC
At the tail-end of my trip to London I had the opportunity to go to NYC for just a few days to catch up with amazing people and of course eat a lot. A dear friend of mine once said that I “Ms. Pac-Man” my way through New York, essentially eating everything. (I have chosen to take this as a compliment to my ability to find and eat at as many food establishments as possible during the short periods of time I am there.) This trip, I decided to mostly focus on Asian fusion (with a few bakeries thrown in here and there) and ate at two fantastic restaurants I hadn’t tried before.
One evening, we went to Family Recipe, a tiny restaurant in the lower east side based on Japanese food with a sort of tapas-style flare. The service was annoyingly slow but the food was delicious. They had all sorts of innovative dishes in nicely small portions so we could try multiple things. This was several weeks ago and as any good restaurant should, they’ve already changed their menu, so I’ve just given my best guess as to what everything was and forgotten the specifics, but hopefully you get the idea.
Edamame with peanuts and lime. I can’t see edamame on a menu and not order it, and this was a great twist on the traditional dish
Delicious dumplings and so artfully arranged too!
Pork belly buns in the front and the vegetarian version in the back with eggplant. Both fantastic – I might have even liked the vegetarian one better
Watermelon and mango salad with prawns and seaweed. I love a good simple seaweed salad but all the additions here just enhanced it in the best way
On the left, salmon over an amazing apple slaw with avocado sauce, and on the right, perhaps the most innovative of them all – cauliflower steak over a pappadum-esque thing. The cauliflower was so meaty and filling that a typical meat eater would hardly believe how vegetarian a dish it was. I absolutely loved it.
Overall it was a great restaurant, but the restaurant we went to a few days later totally dominated it. Gobo is another Asian fusion place in the West Village with the twist that absolutely everything is vegetarian. This is a heavenly restaurant for someone like me and I was just blown away by the quality of the food and how great the service was. The food was definitely Asian inspired but really from all over the world.
To start they served bread with a sweet potato spread. SWEET POTATO SPREAD. What an inspired idea.
We went a bit nuts with this menu. From left to right, new england rolls with a zesty tomato sauce (they were like spring rolls but had tofu skin around them and fried), a scallion pancake with mango salsa, and vietnamese style fresh rolls. These were all ridiculously good. Seriously I wanted to eat absolutely everything on this menu (which is quite extensive).
Spinach and orange saute with cashews. Yes. Please.
An adorable skillet of roasted seasonal vegetables
Absolutely fantastic tofu dish – bean curd, red pepper, and onion stir fry. I loved how everything in this dish was in strips and even though I was basically full by the time it came, it was just so addictive that I couldn’t stop eating it.
Oh New York. There is just no other place quite like it in terms of sheer vast amount of food culture of all types. Eating in NYC is always a fun experience and I am always grateful when visiting for the amazing variety and innovation in the cuisine there!
merrifood 