cheap eats
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Big Daddy’s Still Makes Me Feel Like a Kid/Alcoholic Again
I’ve written about Big Daddy’s, a diner with a focus on absolutely delicious/disgustingly fatty throwback foods, before, but I just found some photos in my archive and need to show them to you in case you need a reminder of how amazing/awful/amazing this place is. I understand entirely that this is the sort of food meant for children and drunk people. And I’m both of those at heart. Bow Wow Wow Breakfast on a waffle: buttered waffles, scrambled eggs, Canadian bacon, American cheese, hash browns. A completely nutritional dinner. Real “Mac” Coy A burger, covered in mac & cheese and crispy bacon, served with sweet potato (excuse me, sweet potater)…
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North Restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, and One of the Best Things I’ve Ever Eaten
My boyfriend was in Providence, Rhode Island, for a couple of weeks on business, and people kept telling him how up and coming the food scene was. I was skeptical, because everyone from everywhere loves to tell me how comparable to NYC their town’s food scene is, but Jack took me up there to find out for myself. There were two restaurants everyone seemed to be talking about in Providence, and one of them was North. Honestly, despite the reviews, I was convinced I wasn’t going to like it. I wanted to fine dine, and this sounded like some hipster hole-in-the-wall with a teeny menu where nothing looked interesting and…
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Brucie NYC Blew My Mind with Brussels Sprouts
If you’ve been reading donuts4dinner since its inception, you know that the original purpose of this blog was to chronicle my rise from a farmgirl to a three-Michelin-star dining powerhouse. Well, since I became a full-time resident of a new Brooklyn neighborhood and also unemployed at the same time, I’ve been focusing on local restaurants and healthier living. It’s been great for the most part–there’s not a lot that’s more satisfying than finding delicious food that’s a short walk away–but part of me has missed the beautiful plating and mindblowing bites of the finest eateries. But then, thanks to my roommate/landlord/former co-worker/boyfriend, I found Brucie in Cobble Hill. The menu…
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A New Era of Grimaldi at Juliana’s Pizza
I’m writing pizzeria reviews as Examiner.com’s Manhattan Pizza Examiner. I know it shows that I have the palate of a 5-year-old, but pizza’s easily my favourite food, so you can count on me for plenty of fangirling over crust and sauce in these articles. There are two reasons you’d try Juliana’s Pizza in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood: 1) You respect Patsy Grimaldi, who’s been making pizza in NYC for over seventy years. 2) You’ve heard about the two-hour lines at Grimaldi’s and already waited that long for a cronut earlier today. Read the rest here.
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California’s Umami Burger in NYC
There’s nothing a New Yorker loves more than feigning disinterest in other cities. We have everything worth having here, and Chicago can take its sparkling blue lake and shove it. But somehow, when it comes to food, New Yorkers have a fascination with everything from everywhere. Maybe it’s just that we want to say we’ve had it. Maybe it’s just that we want to be able to intelligently naysay it. Maybe it’s that we want to put it on a cronut. In any case, I found myself at the made-famous-in-L.A. Umami Burger on its fourth day in NYC. Partly because I had planned to go to the park and it…
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Mission Chinese Food: Crazy Spicy, Crazy Delicious
The first reviews of San Franciso’s Mission Chinese Food outpost here in NYC were written by professional critics and were, by my estimation, universally adoring. The New York Times said James Beard Rising Star Chef award-winner Danny Bowien “does to Chinese food what Led Zeppelin did to the blues. His cooking both pays respectful homage to its inspiration and takes wild, flagrant liberties with it”. The blog reviews that came soon after were less excited. I read complaints about the prices, which range from $4 for the vinegar peanuts to $14.50 for the mapo la mian. I read complaints about how everything was overwhelmingly spicy. Then I read complaints about…
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April Bloomfield’s Salvation Taco
Having eaten a whole suckling pig at Chef April Bloomfield’s The Breslin a couple of years ago, I was excited to see what she could do with one of my comfort foods: tacos. What made Salvation Taco even more appealing to me is that it’s on 39th Street, just south of my boyfriend’s apartment, in this part of the Murray Hill neighborhood that’s mostly filled with highrises and Irish pubs meant to attract the after-work crowd. (It was ridiculously dark in the restaurant, so please excuse my heavily-lightened pictures.) 5 Island Rum, coconut horchata, cold-brewed coffee, Fernet Vallet, cinnamon and vanilla I’ve secretly loved the totally-Americanized horchatas I’ve had with…
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Congee Village: Craveable Chinese
I know it’s not couth to admit this, but I don’t care much for Chinese food. I love the ponzus and wasabis of Japan. I love the chilis and kaffir leaves of Thailand. I love the, well, everything of India. I love Vietnamese, Cambodian, Iranian, and Korean. But when I think of Chinese food, I think of brown sauce. To me, it’s bland and sugary and does nothing to make plain chicken any more exciting. If I’m eating Chinese, I’m going to avoid the brown sauce by ordering sweet and sour chicken–because breading automatically makes things 100% more delicious–but I know that sweet and sour chicken is the last thing…
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7 Green and Grain
When we’re not enjoying gut-busting tasting menus, I keep my figure girlish with a low-carb diet, while my boyfriend eats low-calorie to remain a bronzed glamorboy. And since we don’t cook, much of our evenings together are spent laboring over what to order for dinner. I want burgers on English muffins; he wants sushi. I want steak; he wants salad. I want comfort food; he wants adventure. It’s not fun. But luckily, his adventure-seeking led him one evening to find on our favourite delivery app, Seamless, a brand new restaurant called 7 Green and Grain. I’ll admit that I basically had to be forced to order from the place. It…
- 4.5, american, cheap eats, east village, jeans-appropriate, meat sweats, restaurant reviews, sandwiches, weekend brunch
Bobwhite Lunch and Supper Counter is Frying Up Chicken Right
Despite being a hick from the heartland, I’ve never cared a lick for fried chicken. We didn’t eat it when I was growing up on the farm, because we were too busy enjoying the beef and pork we raised, and then I became a princess who liked all of her meat already off the bone. But after visiting California a few years ago and forcing myself to order the eponymous dish at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, I realized that maybe it was worth a little bone to have a juicier, more flavorful chicken. And then I became blogfriends with Han of Handi-Eats, whose every other blog post is…
