Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival and eat lots of pie. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Lotus root mooncake at Double Crispy Bakery
230 Grand St, New York, NY 10013
The thing about being an ABC person is that you’re always playing a game of cultural telephone, so I don’t actually know the legend behind the Mid Autumn Festival, but I celebrate in my own way, which is that I stand outside and stare in awe at the moon (if it’s not cloudy like it was this year) and also I go on a mission to find mooncakes. If you’re prone to procrastination like me, this means that you end up running up and down the streets of Chinatown the evening before the full moon, until you finally find a bakery that opens past 7pm. It’s best if you can find a bakery that makes its own mooncakes instead of selling those hermetically sealed, overpriced and over packaged glitzy boxes from overseas. My favorite mooncake is the most simple and traditional one, filled with lotus root paste and covered in a golden pastry, with no egg yolks inside. I buy a mooncake for myself and slice it into quarters and then for the rest of the week I savor each tiny rich slice with a cup of hot tea before bed, a little homecoming of the heart.
Half Peking duck at Wu’s Wonton King
165 E Broadway, New York, NY 10002
After last time’s subway mishap, I knew I had to go back to Wu’s Wonton King to try the food again. I’m happy to say that when you eat the food hot from the kitchen, it’s just as delicious as I had imagined. On the Monday that my friend and I ate there, there were no less than two Chinese families celebrating birthday parties there, which is how you know it’s a good place, even if it is suspiciously bright inside. It’s definitely luxurious to order half a Peking duck for two people, but the roast duck is so delicious that I couldn’t resist. Plus, it was a holiday, which is worth celebrating, even if I don’t know everything about it. It comes beautifully plated, with thick slices of juicy duck on fluffy white buns. At $16, it’s a feast that barely sets you back, and we ate the whole thing in one sitting.
Tuna sandwich on white bread toasted with butter and a lot of red onions
Make this for your next lunch (box).
I had forgotten how good tuna sandwiches are until I stood in front of my empty fridge with nothing to eat for dinner except for a lone can of tuna, thanks to a Seamless order gone awry. The ingredients are humble (just tuna, Kewpie mayo, and lots and lots of red onion for me), and let’s be honest -- pungent. But on freshly toasted, heavily buttered white bread, it’s a comforting treat. For a fun Lunchables-meets-hors-d'oeuvres vibe, I like to slice a large cucumber into fat slices and pile a heaping spoonful of the tuna salad onto each. Also because I still haven’t solved the eternal question of how-not-to-make-a-soggy-sandwich.
Strawberry rhubarb pie at Wilkins Fruit & Fir Farm
1335 White Hill Rd, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
A really good fruit pie -- I mean with a thick, wavy double crust, filled to the brim with not-too-sweet in-season fruit -- is the most glorious creature in all of Bakingdom. When it’s done right, I don’t even consider it to be dessert. Fruit pie is in a category of all its own, and a meal unto itself. And nothing is better than a farm stand fruit pie. The strawberry rhubarb pie at Wilkins Fruit Farm puts every pie I have ever made or will ever dream of making to shame. It’s half the price of a City Pie, but twice as homey and delicious. Rhubarb is a vegetable I’ve only ever met in my cottagecore dreams but it turns out to be just as delicious in pie as I’ve imagined, providing some tangy texture in contrast to the softer berries. It’s honestly worth the drive out from the city to pick up a few pies if you have the freezer space (I sadly don’t).  Â
Rose and berry ice cream at Patisserie Tomoko
568 Union Ave, Brooklyn, NY 1121
I love Patisserie Tomoko so much that I’m willing to walk to that strange dead zone in Williamsburg where there’s no phone service for it. It’s an unassuming little shop, with barely any room to sit, and a horseshoe-shaped bar inside. This is a patisserie that is so confident in its craft, it doesn’t need tchotchkes or ivy-covered brick walls to lure you inside. There is a small pastry case, and an even smaller ice cream menu -- you might forgo it if you’re not careful, but then you’d really be missing out. That’s because the ice cream at Patisserie Tomoko (like everything else there) is superb. Everything is presented to you with care and finesse (I ordered a macaron, and the packaging was perfect, complete with washi tape ) but no pretense. The single scoop of ice cream I ordered was so intensely flavorful that I had no need for a second scoop. The waffle cone was buttery as shortbread, a real treat instead of just a vehicle for the ice cream inside.
XOXO,
Soph
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