Another round!

The second beverage edition

Hello! Welcome (back) to Five Things I Ate! If you made it here from Ruthie’s excellent scam of a newsletter, tell her I said hi, and be sure to check out past posts here.

Oolong tea (whose name I have forgotten) at 29B Tea house

29 Avenue B, New York, NY 10009

Do you want to spend 14 dollars on a pot of delicately prepared oolong tea served to you by a slightly annoyed man in a man bun? Yes, yes you do. I’m not being sarcastic: Although the prices of the teas on the menu at 29B Teahouse (they run from 7 dollars for tisanes to 80 dollars for “private collection” aged leaves) initially gave me a small panic attack, it turns out to be well worth your money. You’re paying for a seat at the minimalist slate-gray bar (more Booker and Dax, RIP, vibes than Starbucks), a teapot that yields endless tiny cups of tea for two, and several hours of high quality people watching. This tea bar is also an actual bar, with sake, wine and beer on the menu, including an infamous matcha beer. The food looked delicious, especially the matcha affogato, served brilliantly green over fig gelato. A week later, my decision not to order it is still haunting me.

Usucha or thin matcha at Ippodo Tea

125 E 39th St, New York, NY 10016

I’ve blown a lot of my hard-earned journalism fellowship money on matcha, aka powdered dollar bills, and Ippodo Tea has the best quality matcha at the best price point you can find in New York (I invite you to challenge me — just write back to this email). There are no seats and no tables at the tiny subterranean cafe located a few blocks away from Grand Central Terminal, and not much talking either, just very good tea. They have the requisite soy or almond lattes, but steer right past that and order the usucha, or “thin matcha,” and definitely don’t put sugar in it, because this matcha is so grassy and green and savory that anything extra will just take away from it. I always get mine iced, in a to-go cup, which comes with the lovely bonus of being decorated with blobby ink paintings of cats and cranes drinking out of tea cups.

Raw cider at Brooklyn Cider House

1100 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237

“Tastes like kombucha” usually sounds like a bad thing, but the raw cider at Brooklyn Cider House tastes like kombucha in the best way possible. It’s dry, effervescent, and a bit tangy, and supposedly full of probiotics, too. I really detest sweet hard ciders, which to me taste like sweetened apple beer in the worst variations. The basque-style dry ciders at Brooklyn Cider House are truly dry, reminiscent of dry white wine. If you go for a prixe-fixe dinner, which is the perfect friendship outing, you get to “catch” the cider from giant barrels into your cup, while your friends cheer you on. It’s like a classy version of a college drinking game, which is just the kind of Friday night I aim for.

Banana cinnamon smoothie

My apartment, and yours, too

Recently I’ve taken to eating bananas again, after a year-long hiatus set off by a too-ripe banana that made me gag. I’m sorry that I ever let one bad banana ruin the whole batch for me, because they are a wonderful ingredient to have around, with the superpower of transforming into nature’s ice cream when frozen. My favorite thing to make when I’m craving ice cream but don’t have a pint in my freezer is to slice up a ripe banana very thinly, freeze it for 20-30 minutes on a parchment-lined baking tray, and then blend it up with half a cup of soymilk and a ton of cinnamon powder. I swear it tastes like a horchata-y milkshake. Don’t knock it till you try it.

Edensoy soy milk

Your local bodega, or the Internet

Soymilk is my ride-or-die plant milk. Yes, like everyone else, I too have been tempted by the hipster siren call of an oat milk cappuccino, but at the end of the day, soy’s the only carton waiting for me in the fridge. It’s the only widely available plant milk with protein, and don’t even get me started on the anti-soy propaganda (spoiler alert: it’s racist). Almond milk is salty water. Oatmilk is slimy. And I love soymilk, especially this shelf-stable one from Edensoy, which has a great umami flavor. It has a delightfully hippie vibe, and is sweetened with “naturally malted organic wheat and barley extract,” and contains kombu seaweed. The hell if I know what any of that means, but I’m into it.

Stay warm and keep on subscribin’,

Sophie