Let's fill our Shared Universe with ice cream 🍦
And other musings on life and relationships. Plus, we try vegetarian pork belly.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we hang out with old friends and eat a lot of ice cream, as summer should be. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Vegan pineapple ice cream at Big Gay Ice Cream
Multiple locations.
This week, an old friend that I met way back when at Computer Camp was in town, so naturally we had to get Big Gay Ice Cream, a ritual of ours for over ten years. “Why is it,” they mused, “that some friendships fall apart, and others remain nice even if people change their values and lifestyles a lot over time?” It was true that our lifestyles were quite different now (although I’d argue that many of our core values remain the same, which is important). My friend, who still works in tech, was trying to convince rich people to give them money in the Hamptons that weekend; meanwhile, I had stopped working in that industry long ago and had become a nonprofit journalist. I thought about this question for a while, while eating the soft serve that tasted like Dole Whip and was rapidly melting down the cone. “Well,” I said, “I think that all the best relationships revolve around some kind of Shared Universe you come up with together. Having a nice Shared Universe actually matters more than your job or lifestyle.” “I guess our shared Universe is pretty nice,” they said. “It has a lot of ice cream in it.” And that was that.
Banana ice cream at Cones Artisanal Ice Cream
272 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10014
Determined to fill my own Universe with more ice cream, I tried Cones on Bleecker Street, an ice cream shop I’d never been to before, for the first time this week. Sometimes I feel that ice cream flavors are very unpredictable. There are some flavors everyone assumes will be good, like chocolate, but are often very bad (except Van Leeuwen’s plain chocolate ice cream, which is a subtle, fruity work of art). And then there are flavors that sound sort of bad, like corn or olive oil, which turn out to be very very good. Banana fell into the second category of ice cream flavor for me. For some reason, I thought it would be Very Bad – in my head I imagined something way too sweet and artificial, but in fact it was Very Good (subtle, creamy, almost like banana bread). 10/10 would recommend.
Steamed Taro & Pork Belly in Fooyu Sauce at The Original Buddha Bodai Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant
5 Mott St, New York, NY 10013
My favorite dimsum restaurant is both vegetarian and Kosher – only in New York, of course. I’ve written about my love for Buddha Bodai before, but until recently I’d never strayed past the dimsum portion of the menu. It turns out that I was really missing out. I do not know what magic occurs in the kitchen, but somehow, Buddha Bodai is able to churn out dish after dish of “pork,” “chicken,” “beef,” and “seafood” that is all vegetarian, and all uniquely delicious. I would have never guessed how delicious steamed taro and “pork belly” could be. The “pork belly,” which seemed to be some sort of seitan, reminded me exactly of pork belly – with two layers of texture – without ever stepping into the Uncanny Valley of Fake Meat products. That’s the magic of Buddha Bodai – the fake meat and seafood isn’t trying to trick your tongue, it’s trying to invite it to try something new, and perhaps even more flavorful.
Pan-Fried Noodles with mixed vegetables at The Original Buddha Bodai Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant
5 Mott St, New York, NY 10013
Please do not ask me what the difference is between chow mein or lo mein because I do not know (but now I’m going to stay up late, later than the 1:30AM it already is and research this). Which is why, when I asked for the “pan-fried noodles” I expected something like the soft flavorful stir-fried egg noodles you might get at a food court mall in New Jersey, but instead I was totally shocked to get a birds’ nest of crispy noodles topped with brown gravy and veggies. Somewhere deep inside of me was unlocked the realization that maybe this was a dish that was once popular in the 90s or so. The kind where you have to let the noodles sog up a bit to eat them. Anyways, I did not expect this blast from the past, but I did enjoy it.
Mala cured daikon (爽脆萝卜干) at Cafe China
59 W 37th St, New York, NY 10018
Sometimes I think about how my mom would react if I brought her to various trendy Chinese restaurants in NYC. (I definitely know what she would say about Bonnie’s: too salty.) I feel like she would mock me because we literally spent $9 on a large dish of salted pickled daikon aka a xiáncài/咸菜, which is kind of like if you went to a fancy French restaurant and they just handed you a full bowl of cornichons or something. It’s amazing how you can have a plentiful feast for $20 in Chinatown and then migrate 40 blocks or so north and spend half that on some pickles. I don’t know what I expected when I ordered what the menu clearly labeled as cured daikon but somehow it was not this so I guess that is my fault. 萝卜干 aka cured daikon is the kind of food item that is sort of a rice enhancer (I was just going to write rice chaser but I just Googled that and regret it) or congee topping, so don’t order this unless you really need to replenish your electrolytes or you’re sitting at a large group table and everyone has ordered white rice and/or plain congee.
Stay cool and keep hydrated,
Soph
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