The food here is always good. First time in a long time I’ve been without someone who is not from a Soviet bloc country or the former USSR, which made for a different ordering experience.
My friends who are from the region usually pile the table with all the familiar foods they want bites of (with the intent of taking home lots of leftovers), and I add on one or two things I really want that they didn’t cover .
We were very circumspect in this order, by comparison, and one dish short in anticipation of Caffe Panna to follow.
We had the smoked fish platter (salmon, sable, and sturgeon served with dark brown bread), sauteed mushrooms, onions, and potatoes, cheese pie / adjaruli khachapuri, and blinis stuffed with shredded beef.
The blinis were fantastic, I always love the mushroom dish, and the smoked fish is hard to complain about (the salmon, especially, is lovely). The cheese pie was different than when I’ve had it before – it was larger, cheesier, heavier.
We didn’t have space for pelmeni or the delicious beef stroganoff, so I’ll have to go back (or make a quick trip to Tashkent market for frozen pelmeni).
I was with an ice cream lover who ranks this their #1 NYC ice cream, so we stood in line.
The price point is very reasonable for the offering, given what a single scoop of gelato or ice cream goes for these days – plus it includes a hefty dollop of the namesake panna, a liquid topping, and a crunchy topping.
The ice cream itself was very good, but the generosity of the panna dollop was almost to much. We groaned our way home after finishing the lot if it – can’t waste!
my wealthy pickleball friends order fresh seafood from dorian’s seafood market at 83rd and york. for the past year or so they’ve been offering fried seafood sandwiches in the $10 range, probably good quality.
I am such a sucker for xian and with the inkind app it’s a drop dead bargain. hopefully hmart will have good prepared food but I’m not really a fan of what they offer in ktown.
In the Hunter radius, if you go a bit further east, you’re in the overlap zone for the Cornell hospitals, with lots of decently priced lunch options of many cuisines.
There’s an abundance of choice around there, but Hui and Evergreen are good Chinese options with lunch specials, Lungi’s lunch is excellent for eat-in on a hungry day, there are many Thai options in that stretch (Up, Lenox, etc), and there are several middle eastern / levantine options for quicker / easy wraps / bowls. (I haven’t been to Kuu yet, but I have my eye on their shrimp katsu sandwich.)
There are also some interesting coffee shops of different nationalities with corresponding snacks, if you don’t want a whole meal – Padoca is brazilian, 787 is Puerto Rican, and Sophie’s cuban is always good for coffee and a snack.
And if you’re in late lunch mode, Bondi has a great happy hour food-wise (starts at 3), as do Maya (4pm) and Boqueria (3pm) a bit further up.
Hui, Evergreen, Up and Lungi are known to me (I’m at 71st & 2nd). Kuu looks very promising. There used to be a great Korean place called Helen’s (ha!) near the 63rd St. F station, but now it’s Korean Express and not nearly as good.
Wednesday specials: Fish broth and callalloo at Bake & Things. I was regretting not getting some sort of side starch, but the broth had both dumplings and potatoes. Also carrots, a leafy green and a lotta bony fish pieces. Eat this alone at your desk!
Reliably delicious. Tried a couple of new things in addition to old favorites — fried artichokes with cacio e pepe cream, and a pork chop with watercress salad with candied walnuts.
Both were delicious — and we needed more focaccia to sop up every bit of the parmesan cream!
if you’re making a trader joes run, @Saregama introduced me to the delicious rava masala dosa at Adyar ananda bhavan though it is more food and $ than typical for my occassional lunches. Perhaps @Saregama and I could meet you there for lunch one day.
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