cheap eats
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Cupcake Crew Has What Might Be the Best Cupcake in NYC
While out trying to find a decent banh mi the other day, I happened to spot a food truck I’d never seen downtown: Cupcake Crew. Black with a giant pink cupcake on one side, I knew it was going to be my kind of truck. The menu was small–six cupcake flavors–but that’s great for someone like me who can’t make decisions. I’m usually a vanilla cake/vanilla icing kind of girl, but the cream cheese icing on the red velvet was calling to me with its perfect dollopness and its tiny sugar sprinkles. It was a really good cupcake. The cake was the right amount of moist, and although my first…
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goodburger – Burgers – Midtown East
The only time I’d tried goodburger, my boyfriend and I had ordered it for delivery, and while we didn’t exactly have any complaints other than a half-melted shake, it wasn’t the sort of burger we’d seek out repeatedly. So I was admittedly pleased when I received an e-mail from goodburger’s PR firm asking me to try out their revamped menu and offering up a list of reasons why the new goodburger is a better goodburger: a tastier bun, the freshest toppings, and a burger made with Pat LaFreida beef and cooked on a open flame in a green-certified restaurant. One of their six locations is just down the street from…
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Crêpes du Nord – French/Scandinavian – Financial District
It only makes sense that the ladies behind Goodies First and donuts4dinner would team up for a crepes luncheon, right? And we even had the good sense not to skip straight to dessert. Crêpes du Nord opened about a year ago just a few minutes from my office in the Financial District, but that whole Stone Street restaurant conglomerate sort of scares me with its frat house feel. The street is closed to traffic and filled with umbrella-shaded picnic tables, which would be lovely if they weren’t constantly crowded with light blue dress shirts and uncomfortable heels. But that’s New York, I guess. I had a gift certificate, which made…
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Soba Totto – Japanese – Midtown East
Soba Totto is one of the true gems of Midtown East: it’s delicious, simply but beautifully appointed, and surprisingly not overpriced. My boyfriend and I were pleased to both find ourselves with a day off last week so we could finally enjoy Totto at lunch. We were totally in the mood for chicken meatballs and were sad to find that they don’t serve yakitori at lunch, but it forced us to try something we may have liked even better. Chicken Soboro Don: sautéed minced chicken, poached egg, scallions, seaweed, rice I was worried I might actually be playing it too safe by ordering this. I’m trying to push myself to…
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Fatty Crab – Malaysian – West Village
Click on the URL for Fatty Crab, and you’re met with a tiny yellow crab that turns into a giant yellow crab and fills the entire screen with its creepy crabbiness. Pretty foreboding for someone who’s only now getting used to eating sea meats at all, right? Yet I still agreed to go with my friend Ash, and we still had a flavorful–and of course fatty–lunch. watermelon juice So sweet and refreshing, we had to have two. steamed pork buns I’m of the mind that pork buns may be the best thing ever introduced to the American palate. The super-soft white bread is so sweet, and the pork belly is…
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The Shackenstein and Doughnut-Custard at Shake Shack – Theater District – American
I went to Shake Shack twice on Sunday. And not, like, for lunch and dinner, which would be totally acceptable. No, I went for dinner and then for a midnight snack. Except that it wasn’t actually midnight yet; it was more like 10:30. Anyway. The first time around, I had a cheeseburger with mayo and a vanilla custard with a Doughnut Plant doughnut mixed in. (My friend Sylvan added her fries to the photo to make me look at it later and think about how dumb I was not to have ordered some myself.) For me, the burger was decidedly less-good than the ones from the Shake Shack in Madison…
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Saltie – Sandwiches – Williamsburg
My friend Meredith and I live mere blocks from each other in Brooklyn, but since my dining is done almost exclusively in Manhattan, I rely on her to tell me what’s good in the neighborhood. She recently recommended the sandwich shop Saltie, saying, “I had their Scuttlebutt sandwich 2 weeks ago and CAN’T stop thinking about it.” I don’t do olives, so instead I tried the Clean Slate, and OMG, you guys, I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. It’s hummus, quinoa, pickles, and yogurt on naan, and the memories of its craveable sourness just keeps invading my brain. $8 seemed a little steep to me until I got the thing…
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Wechsler’s Currywurst – German – East Village
I would go to Wechsler’s every day. It’s one of those quintessential East Village finds that’s tiny, cozy, and cheap, yet unlike most of the East Village, it’s somewhere you can actually take a date. Not, like, a snobby date. A date like me. Basically, I just want to go back to Wechsler’s, and I want you to go with me. Anyway, here’s a picture of some meat covered in some sauce: That’s what currywurst is: sausage, sliced and covered in a saucy blend of tomato and curry powder. It’s traditionally a German street food, but when I recommended Wechsler’s to my friend Steve, he reported back the next day…
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The Lemongrass Grill Curry Puff – Financial District – Thai
The curry puff is common to Thai, Malaysian, and Singaporean cuisine, but none of those cuisines is common to me, so the first time I tried one, I was in heaven. Sort of like an empanada, sort of like a samosa, it’s pastry stuffed with a thick curry, chicken, potatoes, and onion and deep-fried. Since that original curry puff, I’ve tried as many as I can find in NYC, but I always go back to the one at Lemongrass Grill. It’s the flakiest, the curry-est, and the most way-too-delicious-to-last-more-than-two-bites. The puff isn’t hard like a samosa’s, so the filling gets to mingle with it. But really, it wouldn’t be anything…
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Pumpkin Cake at Dim Sum Go Go – Dim Sum – Chinatown
This is the entire point of eating at Dim Sum Go Go, a sleek little dim sum joint on the edge of Chinatown that won’t make your head spin with gaudy gold decorations like the famed Jing Fong: It’s listed on the menu as “pumpkin cake“, and I didn’t even bother trying to get more information about it from the waiter before I ordered. If it’s pumpkin-flavored, I’m there. It’s pretty clearly not cake, though. It’s more like a firm custard with a little bit of gelatin thrown in, thick enough that you can slice it but wiggly enough that it’ll fall onto your neighbor’s lap if you get distracted…