Well, hello there
welcome to my food blog. my name is mia. i'm a 28 year old food obsessed indonesian (jakarta born and raised, woot woot) who's been living (happily) in brooklyn, new york, for the past (almost) ten years. i am not a chef, nor a culinary writer. but i know what i love (read:food) and i'm here to share the love.
to reach me:
miahungrylongtime@gmail.com
Old, but not stale.
complete listicle:
restaurants:
joe's shanghai (manhattan)
apt 138 (bk)
la isla (hoboken)
vanessa's dumplings (manhattan)
crif dogs (manhattan)
picollo roma (hoboken)
am-thai kitchen (bk)
bar food:
the green rock (hoboken)
food events:
indo food fest (queens)
mia attempts cooking:
pasta puttanesca
Other hungry blogs
Saturday, April 25, 2009, 7:49 PM
beers and (more) dumplings
I should just really call this whole site the dumpling blog. The Blumpling. I think that has a nice ring to it, right?So yes, you are now reading a post about dumplings. Again. Yes.
I love dumplings. Who doesn't?
Especially when they are 8 for $3.75. If that's not recession proof I don't know what is.
By the way, I am experimenting with the size of my pictures. Some of you have told me that the blog takes FOR-EVAH to load, and that's not cool. The slow-loading, not you. Actually, maybe you, but that's only because you're really annoying.
I'm thinking of moving the whole shebang to wordpress, which is way more organized, and with smaller pictures the page wouldn't take eight billion light years to load. However, the only thing I don't really like is that smaller pictures are less, you know, porny. Food pictures should be very big and very sexy, very enticing, very slutty, you know, porny. If I can have it my way, I will have the pictures the size of the entire screen.
Anyways, please let me know if you like small vs big pics, and I'll reconsider.
OKAY OKAY technical blog talk blah blah I get it.
It was one rainy afternoon. New York City was blanketed with moody gray clouds and a thick air of lazy gloom. Struggling to keep my umbrella upright, I left theBoken and made haste towards the lower half of this god forsaken island.
OKAY. I'll stop writing like that. Jeez.
My friends, today I will take you to a beautiful little Chinatown joint called THE DUMPLING HOUSE. A very obscure and vague name, I might say. But after serious detective research work, I found out that they actually do sell dumplings. Imagine my surprise.
My friend Yuli took me there. She deserves major props because them dumplings are amazing. Also props to Debon, who has also encouraged me to go there.
But before I take you there (I know, I started a sentence with "but", BIG-BIG-NO-NO, but hey, I'm not in J-school anymore!), I will take you drinking with me.
This is the place:
As for the name, I have no idea. I seriously looked, but there was no sign. Aside from the sign saying "watch out, Mia is about to get hammered from one beer" that is.
This is where the bar was, I figured some of you might know:
It's right on the corner. By the way I never knew that Allen street is also "Avenue of the Immigrants." REPRESENT.
The place is really cute and low-key.
Really cute, check out the shot-at window/wall:
It's pretty much art, really.
Pretty flowers, oooooooh.
My lovely friend Yuli (Who since then has also became my yoga friend. that's right I do yoga now. it's because I'm getting fat from all the eating.) pretty much forced me to go there. I am a big hater of bars in the ci-tay, because the drinks are so damn expensive. But Yuli said this place sells beer in giant mugs and they're only five bucks each.
I thought she was exaggerating but then she appeared with these:
It was such a beautiful cry I shed a tear.
I took a picture of that beaut with my smokes pack just so I can proof how big it was.
It was big. SO big.
We got the Czech beers.
Here's their beer menu:
They also have cocktails, but eff that.
This is how I see the world:
Yes, that was a shot using the beer as a filter. Gorgeous and artsy and gallery-worthy, oh I know.
Here's another one, because I'm feeling generous.
Man, I should just take all my pictures using beer filter. I'll be like Ansel Adams, but drunk.
Anyways, good beer. Good companion.
Yuli is so damn cute. My mom came to visit me last year and she hung out with me and Yuli one time and she still not shut up about how pretty Yuli is. "Mia, how's Yuli, she's sooo pretty" bla bla, I resent it, really.
Also, she looks great in pictures. God I hate her. I am the opposite of her.
Look at this one, I look so creepy!
So anyways it took me an hour to finish the beer. Afterward, I was pretty drunk. From. One. Beer. Man that's embarrassing.
We then made a quick stop to the bathroom, because you know, we're girls. We just HAD to.
They had one of these in there:
I've never seen it! Pretty amazing. Save paper. Go green!
We made our way towards Chinatown.
Yes, the dumpling place is in Chinatown. Where else would they be? Chinatown is probably my favorite neighborhood in NYC, food wise.
On the way to the food place, I saw the cutest little seafood market/joint:
I looked closer, and they had this on sale:
[GROSS ALERT!]
Now, aren't you glad I made the pictures smaller?
PS: Those things are amazing for soups, and broths! YUMM.
PPS: Speaking of gross alerts, the Hills is on right now and man, that show is the suck. There's probably only 40 seconds of dialogue in each show. Also, Spencer's fleshbeard? GROSS.
Umm..
Right.
Dumplings.
Oh my god look at that we're here.
THE DUMPLING HOUSE!
Okay technically, this is the name:
But no one calls it that.
Here's some inside shots:
Not too many seats, simple, but who cares? I'd eat this stuff standing up.
There's an open kitchen:
I looooove open kitchens.
For example, check out miss ladychef (actual person cropped from photo) who was making beef sesame pancakes:
I had the camera all up in her grillz, like seriously leaning over the counter, and she didn't say anything! She gave me the look of death, but bizzzz plizz I'm used to that.
They have different kinds of dumplings and according to every one I know who've been there, apparently they are all good.
Here's the address and info by the way:
Yuli and I decided to share everything, which is always the right thing to do in Asian establishments. We are very share-ee people.
So we ordered:
- Steamed chicken and basil dumplings ($3.75 for 8, seriously, this is not a drill)
- Pan fried chive and pork dumplings ($1 for 4 *faints from foodgasm*)
- Sweet and sour soup ($ 1.25 for a big cup)
- Beef sesame pancake ($ 2, it's the size of a slice of pizza but three times the thickness, BOOYA!)
- 2 waters (because dude I needed to sober up from that damn beer. one beer. jeez)
Guess how much that whole thing was:
TEN DOLLARS.
FIVE FRIEKIN DOLLARS EACH.
Don't tell me I don't love you guys.
Five dollars. Whoah.
Okay now it was time to prep:
That sauce looks dangerous, I know. It's not. It's really not.
I didn't even end up using it.
This combo is all you need:
Good ol' Sriracha and soy sauce.
Hello, beautiful:
God dang it that's beautiful. I wish I can use that picture for my ID card.
Now, the soup.
Yes, I know it's blurry. Do I have to tell you one more time that I was all boozy?
Honestly, I wasn't in a soup-y mode so I only took one spoonful. It was good though.
Now, ladies and gentlemen.. fasten your seatbelts, hold on to your children..
the dumpling show!
First up, steamed chicken and basil dumplings.
I'm blaming the blurriness on the steam. Hot and steamy, oh yeah!
They were pretty good. The chicken and basil combo was pretty tasty. Soft succulent chicken with basil ribbons, not bad. I didn't particularly love the dumpling skin itself though. It was the same type of dumpling skin used for the pan-fried dumplings, but as it's a little thick, it was kind of a chewy experience. Maybe it wasn't steamed long enough?
Next, came the pan-fried pork and chive dumplings.
Hello, boys.
You guys are lookin' mighty fine tonight.
And it's not just my beer goggles talking. I mean, look at you.
Baby, oh baby. These were SO delicious.
The pork was juicy and tender. Combined with the onion-y chives? OH MAN.
They belong together. Like Abbot and Costello. Like Anthony and Cleopatra. Like Romeo and Juliet. Like me and my inability to sustain relationships.
One doesn't exist without the other.
And oh, the skin. While the thick-ish skin was chewy on the steamed dumplings, it was crunchy, charred, and all in all delicious on these pan-fried bad boys. YUMM.
Naturally, I took about seven billion pictures of these pork and chive magical concoctions.
How about one without the skin? Sitting proud in its glorious nakedness?
Check.
It was love at first bite.
And second bite..
And third bite. And fourth bite. etc etc.
I was one happy girl.
There was also a beef sesame pancake to be devoured.
Toasted sesame seeds on soft crackly bread:
With this delicious goodness inside:
Doods, I don't know even what kind of beef that was. It don't matter!
They also threw in sweet carrot shreds and cilantro up in therrre, kind of like a banh-mi.
Good stuff.
My friend Yuli loooves this stuff.
I do to.
Next time, we will have to get our own sesame pancakes, to avoid world war 3 (Indonesia vs. Indonesia).
My friends, it was super yummy.
The soup, the dumplings, the sesame pancake. All good.
I couldn't leave without buying some frozen ones to make at home!
There were fifty pork and chive dumplings in that bag.
For nine dollars.
Fifty dumplings.
Nine dollars.
FIFTY DUMPLINGS.
NINE DOLLARS.
Okay, I'll stop.
Please visit Vanessa's Dumpling House asap.
Rating:
4 hungry mias. They're not the best dumplings I've ever tasted, but they are damn good. AND CHEAP. It doesn't get any cheaper than this peeps.|