I'm back! Happy TGivings!!!

Here's a video to start the month of December. I'm back from a huge trip and a great Thanksgiving.

Hot Pot in Beijing from Simon Tung on Vimeo.
A video of the awesome hot pot techmologist and I had in Beijing.

What I read.

I read a lot online. Majority of it is from nytimes.com and gothamist.com. Here are a few stories that caught my eye today.

Daily News Endorses Obama
Grape Expectations
Jets Nose tackle and his passion for food
Times Topic on Coffee

Weekend update!

I had a fun packed weekend. It started Thursday night. I went out to dinner with my good friend Winnie and met up with another old friend of mine after for a little clubbing. It was nice to catch up with old friends and it's been a long while since I went to a house club. Kiss and Fly had this euro feel to it. Half the people there spoke french. I had a rough Friday at work.

Friday evening I planned a birthday dinner for my sis. She's 16+15 and a little sad about it. I'm currently 27. What's the big deal? I guess I'll find out in 4 years. We ate at Stanton Social. The food there is consistantly good. I really like the variety. It's like Americanized dim sum. We had 5 people for dinner and ordered a total of 17 dishes. It was maybe 1 or 2 dishes over. Everything rocked.

My sister's a rock star! I found the biggest b-day cake for her.

Afterwards my sister and brother in-law left for home. Kenny and Winnie (my cousin not so cousin) went across the street to grab a few drinks at Essex. I have been partying there and brunching there for well over 7 years now. We had a few and I saw some old friends that work there. A new bartender started working there and she's absolutely beautiful. Sabrina from Queens. I can go on all day about her. We drink and 10pm rolls by and my good friend Mascha strolls in. It's her birthday party across the street at La Caverna! We grab some more drinks at Essex and we walk a total of 75 feet to catch her party.

That's not Russian Vodka! Happy Bday Mascha!

La Caverna is an interesting spot. I threw a new years party there about 5 years ago. It was a shit show. Nick, the owner, took care of it all. The place is still around and the place was packed out Saturday night. B&T crowd for sure though. We drink we have fun and we wonder down the block to Congee Villiage to find out they stop serving at 2am. I'm not too happy about that but we switch gears and catch a cab to Wo Hop. We chow down and go home.

I was pretty upset that Congee Village stopped serving food late.

I'm Monique and I don't know what I want from the awesome menu!

Saturday I try to recover fully for Greg and Cara's wedding. What a wedding! It's a close 2nd best wedding ever. I'm obligated to say my sister's wedding was beautiful and well done. Well, i'm not obligated but it was freakin awesome. Greg and Cara's wedding was at Water's Edge in Long Island City. There were beautiful views of the city throughout the entire evening. The band played Biggie Smalls and all types of awesome 90's hip hop. A lot of dancing and a lot of drinking. Table 5 was ON! We rocked the house down. The midnight cruise was provided by Doug Weiss, Greg's brother. We rocked out some more there and I mixed it up with champagne. We were expecting an after party at 2am but no one wanted to go out. Gaurav and I were the only two that made it out and chilled to about 3:30 at Forum.

The very happy couple who are currently in New Zealand.

The Hora!

Part of the posse.

Greg and I

Cara and I.

Sunday I was woken up by my buddy Gaurav requesting my awesome football skills. My awesome I mean I can catch every other ball thrown to me and hassle the other team by trash talking. I watched most of the Giants game on TV and missed the OT drive for the win while heading to the football game. We, team Super Crew, killed team 300. I had a few receptions and a jammed left pinky. Also by killed I mean we scored 5 td's and shut them out. I came home and George aka fooddotout wanted to go eat in chinatown via bicycle. I gladly joined and we cruised down to Christie Street to chow down on some braised beef noodles. We took the FDR service road back and "the falls" is quite a site in the evening.

Now I'm kicking back watching the last yankee game in the old stadium going back and forth with the Dallas Green Bay game. Kicking back and detoxing.

Hummus in Midtown

I want hummus and carrots. There's no large supermarket in Midtown that has hummus. I had a taste of Sabra's hummus over the weekend. That shit is good. Where can I find HUMMUS and baby carrots???

Babbo

Last night was a culinary delight! Went to Babbo with George and Jen. The food was freaking amazing except my braised beef. The beef was good, not amazing. Everything else was like whoa.

Awesome pics are taken by George. George's full review can be found here.

We were 15 minutes late. No big dealzzz.

FoodDotOut doesn't stop! Awesome dinner again

Last night fooddotout made dinner for a few of his friends and it was good. So good I'm writing a post about it. We were blessed with the presence of eatmeouttahere who brought a Japanese spongecake of sorts. 4 words - figs, pancetta, goat cheese and salad = Crazy delicious!

Unfortunately there weren't any pictures taken. We'll just have to do it again.

LVHRD - BR CRWL-69

Last night = fun. Met a lot of cool people. We had a solid crew with us and started at the Brooklyn Brewery, hit up Royal Oak, Larry Lawrence and ended at Bushwick. Petron shots with the LVHRD crew never hurt. I only have one picture from the evening. My friends and I ended up at 69 and I had their famous oxtail stew over rice.

Site of beauty

Magloire Lovensky! We love you!
Cab to Brooklyn

It's customary to tag up a bill and post it on the wall.

First dibs - Red Mango

Guess who was first in line today at the grand opening of Red Mango on 32nd street. President Bush? Ghandi's cousin? Michael Phelps??? No way! It was ShittyChef and CakeWardrobe Suckersss!

We arrived at 12:45 thinking it was opened. There was no line and the door was locked. A sign on the door said free froYo! We hung out for about 20 minutes. Looked like they were having trouble with the registers. I wanted a medium but had to settle for a small with one topping. So rich and creamy. Thumbs up!

Busted registers - Only got a small froYo with CapCrunch

Some dude opened the door as I snapped this pic. The line was getting pretty deep.

"Fuck you Jobu. I do it myself" - Cerrano

What a weekend! Friday - Korean food with Cakewardrobe and her buddy Tina. It was oober good. Cakewardrobe was kind enough to hook it up. We actually walked out of the Shilla first before we went into a cafeteria style Korean joint. At Shilla I asked for a seat upstairs which they ignored. Then the host stuck us in the way back of the restaurant. There was no service attention at all. NONE even after all three of us tried to wave down a server. We decided to leave and head to the other spot. We had fun and chatted politics.

Good Ole Korean food.

I broke my chopsticks.

Friday evening was fun. Things were looking bleak at first and it looked like a night that no one was going out. Then things came together and a bunch of us headed out to Amber, Azza and then to Cafeteria. Amber always seems to be a nice place to start the evening off. The vibe is nice and there were nice big screens for me to watch Michael Phelps win another gold medal. My friends finally came. They were all running on CP time. When you say 10pm. It usually means something closer to 11-11:30.

Eating at Cafeteria - I seriously look like an idiot in this pic. Check out the bling and Raquel!

Went to the Jets game on Saturday and watched Brett Favre throw his first touchdown as a NY Jet. Finally there's a reason to watch Jets football this year.

Lets go JETS!

Saturday night was fun. We were suppose to go to a bday party at HOME but ended up at TOUCH. A bunch of my old friends were there and it was fun. Met new people including an Israeli that was leaving the next day at 2:30. She was adorable. We ended up in the DJ booth and the lovely DJ asked for a request. I asked her to play Bon Jovi and we totally rocked out. Afterwards we headed to WoHop where a quote from Major League came out from left field. We were in the cab when Frank and Gaurav started yelling "Fuck you Jobu. I'll do it myself."

Sunday I made my way down to Chinatown with fooddotout. We had some Vietnamese food. Beef cubes on rice is oh so good. On my way down I snapped this shot on the 6 train. Reebok pumps rule.

The guy has Reebok PUMPS on!!! He stared me down the entire time. Prob though I was gonna jack his kicks.

Noodles - Ippusode one (get it! get it!!!)

Ippudo! Salty but good. I'm a fan and plan on going back. The service was great and the chefs were fun. I've heard a lot of hype about this place. I've definitely had better but it was all round goodness.

Free fans for everyone!

Bowl decoration behind the bar.

Front of the Ippudo

Cakewardrobe and Edris

The two fun loving chefs. Yes the dude on the left is making a face.

A shot of my Akamaru Shin-aji.

Basement broth makers I assume.

The noodle maker wasn't in motion when we peeped at it.

The bathrooms are so fancy!

Declaring my Love for Noodles

According to Wikipedia a noodle is food made from unleavened dough that is cooked in a boiling liquid. I've always been a big fan of noodles of all types. Varieties in culture such Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Italian so on and so forth extend far and beyond from what I've tried. This particular post is just a declaration of my love for noodles.

Siriusly I Heart Noodles.

Excellent noodle shots can be found here on fooddotout's flickr page.
Here and here on fooddotout's page.
Here, here, here, and here on cakewardrobes page.

NYtimes noodle search.

Fun weekend! Happy BDay Albert & Samantha - Sunday with the Sis

Did you catch the Olympic opening ceremony?!!? Whoaaa that was awesome. Catch some of the pictures here and here.

My weekend started off with a lot of Chinese pride. We had a great birthday dinner party for Albert at Amber. Jenny took care of setting it all up and Henry, the manager, made sure everything in the back took off smoothly. We were all very happy with the results and everyone ate well.

Happy Birthday Albert!

The great part of the dinner was Cakewardrobe, fooddotout, Wongster, JDub and myself helping out with the cookies and cupcakes. A LOT of prep work was involved in making Albert's cupcake baseball field cake. Cakewardrobe did a great job with setting up the numbers, organizing and getting people together to put the cookies together. You can see the process here and the results here.

The cookie factory.

Tried my best to create my facial gestures. How did I do?

The result!

After dinner I had another party at Providence. Samantha had a huge party for her birthday the same evening. I was glad to invite a few friends out for that one and we all had a blast. Nina Sky was Dj'ing that evening. It was a fun positive vibe.

Oh look, my two ex girlfriends are DJ'ing (Nicole & Natalie aka Nina Sky)

The party posse. Frank, Michelle, Raquel and I

Happy Birthday Samantha!

Rollin in the Kia, JJ, Pink's and Sharkeez in Hermosa - LA Day 2

I woke up at 7am Pacific time. Couldn't adjust to west coast time yet. It was a little hazy out. Smog? Sea mist of some sort? I wasn't so sure. The plan was to drive Alex to work and roam around LA. My trusty iPhone guided me through town. LA is a very easy town to stroll around in. You MUST have a car though. It's nothing like Manhattan. I didn't try out their mass transit system there. There were plenty of buses but I never caught sight of a subway system.

After dropping Alex off I was craving for some Jamba Juice. Acai with an energy boost was what I needed to start the day. I plugged it into my phone and off we went. I parked the Kia and noticed something I've never seen before. Meters that accepted all change! Not just quarters. I happily plugged in some change and picked up an original Acai. It's almost $2 cheaper in LA vs the one I regularly go to on 5th ave between 33rd and 32nd.

So the night before I noticed a Supreme store in LA. I'm not a sneaker head or anything but I do like my nike SB's. I recently purchased a pair of Nike New Castles. Like the beer! Anyways I get there at 10:45 and they're not opened until 11. Boo, I waited for 5 minutes and decided to go to PINK's down the road. You know when something isn't all that but you still want to go just to say you experienced it. That's what Pink's is all about. I'm going to make a list of places that equivalent to that experience. I got, I wait 20 minutes, I order, I pay, I take pictures and admire the cuties on the line. It wasn't all that. The chili dog was awesome but nothing special.

I drive around, check out the touristy scene equivalent to Time Square and meet up with Alex for Lunch at Le Petit Four. Had an excellent niçoise salad. What made it even better was the nice cool breeze, sitting out doors and a chill atmosphere. All was well in the world.

I drop Alex back at work, I hit the pool at the Shapiro residence and off to Hermosa Beach to meet up with some old Vegas buddies of mine. I meet my friends at the beach and we headed to Sharkeez. Aparently Sharkeez had a fire earlier in the year but they reopened a couple weeks before I arrived. My friends were telling me how it use to smell like a mix of piss and stanky beer. Now the place smells like new paint! Thank goodness.

We caught up, drank, caught up some more, drank and rocked out to some music. It was a good time. All pics below! Enjoy.

Rollin in the Kia. Don't mess around. Alex's summer rental. Thing actually had a rockin sound system.

Jamba Juice with a fat tree in the background.

They've actually been serving for 69 years. Just getting rid of old menu's I suppose.

I wanted this hot dog but thought it was too cheezy to get.
Peak inside Pink's. you can see all the hype on the walls. It's like a Wo Hop for LA.

The bacon chillie cheese dog. Breakfast of champions.

Right on Sunset.

Don't mess with the niçoise.

Hermosa Beach Sharkeez

The "Shark Attack". You can see the "blood".

Myself, Sheena and Heather

Myself, Sheena and Sheena's sister sippin on a shark attack.

On my way to the bathrooom and saw this. Hilarious!

Heather rockin out the robot.

So many choices. Tried Honey Moon for the first time as oppose my regular Blue Moon. Ehh

Sheena had a torn hammy. She insisted she was fine and it was healing. I'm no doctor but...