Food Vacation in NYC: Day One

Most people plan trips around various sights to see and things to do. Meals are planned because they are convenient to the things you want to see. I always wanted to plan a trip around my next meal and fill it in with things to do until my stomach emptied out a bit so I could eat more. That's where the idea of going to New York for a weekend of eating, dining and snacking came from.

On Saturday, we arrived in NYC and immediately headed to Buttercup Bake Shop. I had a red velvet cupcake, my friend had a german chocolate cupcake :) The red velvet cupcake was everything I imagined: fluffy red cake and dense cream cheese frosting....I was in heaven. I wished it was bigger because I immediately wanted another. But, I was holding out for our next stop....Chinatown!

We got lost on the way to Chinatown and ended up stopping at Rice to Riches, a gimmicky shop of about 20 different rice puddings. We got some tiramisu rice pudding and then went to Chinatown looking for some dumplings at The Dumpling House. Four homemade dumplings for a dollar...sounds fantastic! Unfortunately, we cannot follow directions. We wandered around the ghettos of Chinatown for a very long time....

We couldn't find any restaurants. In Chinatown! There weren't any people, either. After a lot of searching, we came across a group of quiet restaurants and settled on something that was similar to a diner in Hong Kong. The menu had a lot of spam, ramen, french fries, and some random Chinese dishes. We ordered fried wontons with sweet and sour sauce, "Portuguese style" pork (this was actually pieces of pork chop served over rice with cream of chicken soup poured on top), and some flavorless noodle soup with mediocre dumplings. It was awful. The saddest panda in the world....



















Five minutes away from the restaurant was the Chinatown we were looking for. At least 100 awesome looking restaurants. People making homemade noodles behind windows. Homemade dumplings. Bustling streets. Bakeries. And The Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Too bad we had just filled up on sad food. But, there's always room for ice cream :) I got some mango ice cream and it was delicious but very cold.

Day Two: bagels, Chelsea Market and Lupa!