I’ve been lurking quietly for a while.
We’ve done more take-out than dining out lately. My recent favorite is the soy garlic Korean fried chicken tenders from Cravwings in Yonkers as long as they are made fresh. They are shatteringly crispy and moist. Husband likes the buffalo (loves their bleu cheese sauce) and son prefers hot pepper soy wings. Their beet and radish pickles are standard but good.
I love the beef japchae from the Yonkers H-Mart. One order feeds 2-3 people and is consistently good. Their pan-fried pork and cabbage dumplings are one of my favorite snacks. They are sometimes a little oily, but usually are spot on.
We really enjoyed the lomo saltado at Purple Corn in White Plains. The beef was surprisingly tender. The chicken chaufa was also good but a little dry (chaufa is generally a little dry). Their salsa verde really helped. The alfajores they serve are probably outsourced but were nonetheless delicious.
We had a pretty good Chinese New Year dinner at O Mandarin. They didn’t seem interested in advertising their special menu, so here’s a photo. We had the Crispy Roasted Pig appetizer (crackling skin was amazing), Rainbow Scallops, Braised Berkshire Pork Belly (I wish they had removed the star anise pieces from the mix before serving) and a few things from their regular menu. We would have ordered the Spicy Long Beans, but were warned that they were minced rather than kept long. I know they are harder to cook when kept long and wouldn’t have minded if they quartered the length to fit better in a wok, but having them minced didn’t interest us. They are serving their New Year’s menu for at least another week.
We were also pleased with Calabria Mia’s food (Yonkers). Their orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe was pretty close to perfect. We also loved their stuffed mushrooms. I’m trying to avoid bread, but the sauce produced from the mushrooms forced me to eat half a loaf with few regrets. It may have been the (fontina?) cheese and (marsala?) wine that put it over the top. I will have to try them again to make sure.
We were craving Halal Guys’ chicken over rice with white and hot sauce, but didn’t feel like going to the city. Instead, we tried Halal Chicken in Yonkers. We were shocked at how good and reasonably priced it was. Even their fried chicken was really good. It wasn’t overly salted and had a great light coating. We ordered before noon so everything was freshly made. I was psyched to see they were using a rice cooker.
Off the Hook in Haverstraw had some delicious fried shrimp and collard greens. The greens had huge chunks of what I think is smoked turkey but it’s been a while so I could be wrong. The restaurant is extremely low key with just a few tables. All of the fish and seafood is made to order, so you may have to wait a bit. They are 3 minutes from an Aldi’s, so that gave us some extra incentive to make the half-hour drive.
