Detox ... Attempted Again

So you've probably read about my detox attempt before where I tried to eat "healthy" after eating a whole bunch of non healthy food for a little while and how well that all worked out.  Today was my second attempt at this and hopefully it was going to work.

You can see from all the past entries being about food and what I've been eating, it's definitely time to detox!  I really tried, really I did ... for lunch I went to the gourmet deli and was at the salad bar, but then gravity drew me into the regular food bar and I loaded up.  Not on the super bad food, but not the "healthy" ones either. 

Look at the evidence of the healthy food attempt with the salad!  Then I ended up getting some shrimp, then rice, and finally the two meatballs.  Not so bad right? 

Tomorrow's another day, we'll see how that all turns out.  I have to eat "good" tomorrow since we have our volleyball game, that's motivation for me!

+ mon

Hidden Little Noodle House in Midtown

Advice taken from www.cheapassfood.com I went to this noodle house and was a little iffy because their menu had a lot of things that I wanted to eat but there was meat in it.  I had to try something that was meatless on their menu or ask them to modify the ingredients.  

Men Kui Tei 
60 W 56th St (between 5th & 6th ave)
212-757-1642

In all the "gourmet" deli's, the upscale restaurants, the dinners and everything else you see in NYC a place like this gets missed.  Well I'm glad for the CAF website.  I consider this place one of those "hole in the wall" places where the food is just good.

It was 2pm when I got there and I expected to miss the lunch crowd, but apparentely there's such a thing as a lunch crowd here, it seems to be crowded all the time.  I got in and was a little intimidated with all the craziness going on, but a hostess/waitress greeted me and I ordered.  They thought it was for take out but I corrected them and they seated me at the counter right in front of the kitchen where you can see the cooks cooking your food.  The only thing I ate was the fried rice, but had them make it shrimp only with no other meat.  I got my food in less than two minutes.  Added some soy sauce and I was off to the races, the fried rice was really good!  I sat there and tried to take my time eating it as I was watching the cooks cook the orders in record time.  

The fried rice had this homely taste to it, not like the regular Chinese food restaurants that I usually go to.  I'm going back to this place when I can eat meat and try some of their other dishes which sounded really good.  

Total damage here was $10 for the fried rice which filled me up ($8) and $2 for the tip.

Taste : 8.5 
Price : $ out of $$$ 
Restaurant : 8 (the crowdedness of the place and the kitchen added to the meal) 

+ mon

Tebaya - Chicken Wings!

I've decided to add a "food review" category on my blog since I do eat a lot!  So the first review will go to:

Tebaya - Japanese Style Chicken
144 West 19th Street (between 6th and 7th ave)
212-924-3335 www.goojapan.com

After finding this place from www.cheapassfood.com and reading reviews on www.yelp.com about this place I decided to take a little trip down to 19th street and give it a shot.  Yeah I know, for those of you who have read my entries from today ... so much for healthier eating huh!?  So hard to detox from the delicious calories and cholesterol when you're surrounded by it and it's just soooooooooo good!  Give me some credit, I didn't go off an eat a burger from good ol' McDee's did I?!

Tebaya says they have a special sauce that they use for their wings, and when they said "wings" I thought it would be wings and drumsticks ... but they are just the wings.  So for you drumstick lovers out there (like me!  You might want to go elsewhere or adjust your habits).  

The place is a small little hole in the wall place but as soon as you walk in you can smell the wings.  I've read the reviews and people were raving and ranting about the wings and the rest of the things on their menu was just "regular" so I skipped everything else and went for the wings. 

I got the 8 piece wings with rice, salad and soda combo for $6.95 lunch special.  The wings are small, but for me it did a good job of "filling me up."  They make their own dressing for the salad, it's not the regular orange dressing that you might be used to seeing, it's good and when some flavors combine it's even better - I'll get into that later.

The taste of the wings have a garlic, salt, pepper and a sweet taste to them.  So it's pretty much a party in your mouth and all the flavors are invited.  They are covered in sesame seeds and deep dried twice to make them nice and crispy on the outside and on the inside soft and juicy.  

In a matter of minutes the combo meal was finished and I was left sucking on my fingers for the remainder of the sauce that was left over.  The salad was the first thing to go and it left a little puddle of dressing.  For those who know me, I'm not an expert with chop sticks so here I was trying to eat the rice with the chop sticks ... needless to say this was quite a task.  The rice kept on falling into the left over dressing which was a good touch to the flavor.  One of the wings accidently fell into the puddle as well while I was scooping out rice from under it, this was a good thing!  I like the taste of the wings moreso with the dressing on it, it adds a little something to it, or maybe I just can't taste things like I used to since my tongue has been soaked in soy sauce for about 29 years!

Everything went down quick and I sat there wondering if these were as good as everyone had been saying.  The only thing that came to mind was the salt & pepper chicken wings from Royal Mandarin ... for as long as I can remember all the chicken wings post snpcw have been compared and have never won.  This was no different, I compared the taste to that of what I remember the snpcw taste and again Royal Mandarin wins.  But if I were to judge it without comparison, this is definitely a good chicken wing!  There's this flavor with the wings that I like, and after downing the entire meal, I wanted more.  So here I sat with the box that was only left with chicken bones trying to calculate which selection would be most economical.  I think it calculated out to being $0.68 a wing to the cheapest benig $0.65 ... the more you bought the cheaper it was per wing.  

I sat for a good 5 minutes trying to figure out if I should buy some more wings, I tried everything to resist but the smell and taste overcame me and I ended up ordering another 23 pieces ($16.50) with two extra salad dressings on the side.  Hey when you find a good combination, you gotta stick with it right??

I'll definitely go back here to get my chicken wing fix, but this isn't the crack chicken that's being served at Royal Mandarin.  Sorry, I can't stop comparing and I guess I'm just looking forward to having some in about two weeks!  

Taste : 8.5
Price : $ out of $$$
Restaurant : 6 (since it was quite small, good for max 10 people) 

 

+ mon

Longsil without the og

I was runing a little bit late this morning and didn't have time to eat breakfast at home.  So I decided to bring it into work instead of buying the $8 sandwich from the "gourmet" deli.  I packed longanisa and fried rice, but not just any old fried rice.  It's the fried rice my dad likes to make every morning that has garlic and patis (fish sauce) in it ... so you know it tastes good!  But the smell ... well people who aren't used to it will have that look on their face like "who just farted."

So I get into work and wanted to eat it right away as that was all I could think about on the train ride in, good thing I didn't eat it on the train.  As I opened the tuperware the wonderful smell of garlic, patis and longanisa fill my nasal passages and what a great smell it was to me.  But I'm not sure how it smelled to the other people in the office and was hoping that they can't smell it!  Sooo to "cover up" the smell, I start to clean my desk with the antibacterial for the hands which smells like watermelon.  I put a good amount where there was a small puddle on my desk and let it sit there so it could fill the office for a little bit with it's familiar smell.

After cleaning up, I went on to eat my breakfast ... damn this is good stuff!  Of course, for those that know me, I had to put some toyo on it.

+ mon