Earler this month my sister was visiting me for the holidays. One of her friends took us to a taqueria in SoHo. In the back of the taqueria there was a door with a guy standing next to it. She walked right up and said “Four to go down please.” The man touched his ear (which had a mic and headset, secret service style, attached to it). He waved us in.

We went down a set of stairs, through a busy kitchen, down a series of hallways and into the most beautiful tequilla bar. This whole experience was so much fun, that I decided to try and find as many of these places as I can in NYC. I wont reveal their names or locations, just to keep it fair (finding them is half the fun). I still need to get back to that first place in SoHo and take some pictures, but here is the second one that I have found.

Above is a hot dog from the second secret bar I have found in NYC. This was in East Village. You walk into a hot dog joint, walk over to a telephone in the corner, pick up the phone, press a button, and presto a secret door opens in the back wall of the phone both to reveal a classy bar behind. The bar (whose name I will keep secret at their request) has classic cocktails, and even a few drinks that use raw egg (which were rich and creamy!)

On menu they offered some of their hot dogs, prepared with special touches from other trendy new york restaurants. One that jumped off the page at me was a kimchi dog with homemade kimchi from Momofuku, the popular noodle joint in the lower east side. The dog I settled on (pictured above) had a treat from the famous molecular gastronomy restaurant WD-50! It was a deep fried dog side by side with a deep fried mayo breaded in hot dog bun. This was by far the best hot dog I have ever had. (Sorry Nathans cony island!)

December 9th, 2008 by John (Cho-Tabetai)
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Something about this street vendor attracted me to eat the only pad Thai I had on my whole trip to Thailand. I think it is the refinement that goes into setting up a workstation for a single dish. Minimized to it’s purest essentials, it was perfect. This vendor was set up on Sukhimvit soi 11-1 in Bangkok.

And a video of it being prepared:

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November 18th, 2008 by John (Cho-Tabetai)
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Since Thailand has so many Japanese tourists, I was curious to see how the Japanese food measured up. There was actually a lot of options, and they were all inexpensive. I picked a place that did not look too fancy at all. The really interesting feature of the space though, was that there was only seating at the sushi bar, and only about six seats. For the six seats, there was three waitstaff and the itamae.

The sushi was really excellent. Not among my best sushi experinces, but better than many places I have been in New York. I was not exceptionally hungry so I just ordered a few small items. The menu was overwhelmingly huge. There was a little of a communication barrier, but I was able to get by using English, Japanese and the little bit of Thai I could manage.

Items ordered include hiyashi tomato, shishamo, maguro sashimi, saba sashimi and amaebi nigiri. I was trying to get them to serve me the amaebi head fried but they gave it to me still atached to the shrimp. I was a little unprepared for that actually. The hiyashi tomato was so fresh and cold. It was sublime! My first instinct was to ask for kewpie, which is my favorite way to eat hiyashi tomoato. I just ate it with the sea salt provided, and it was perfect.

One thing I liked was that they used leafy greens in the presentation. They obviously did not want to use shiso, which is fine, it’s not cheap. It eats me up when sushi restaurants use plastic to divide items! I feel like it’s fast food, and I have seen that at nice places too!

October 24th, 2008 by John (Cho-Tabetai)
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I ran into this shop on the ground floor of MBK, arguably Thailand’s biggest shopping mall, and certainly Bangkok’s best.

I don’t know what Milk Plus brings to your mind, but the first thing I think of is Clockwork Orange.

“The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence.”

Milk Plus did not serve any of that, but they did have some uber cute offerings. Everything was written in Thai, so I am not sure what I was eating, but I was able to point my finger towards toast covered in some green sauce and a blueberry milk. They offered may different colored sauces over several variety of toast, and lots of flavors of milk. The green sauce was some tropical fruit, but I could not even hazard a guess. Due to a communication error I ended up with a milkshake instead of a milk, but it was tasty none the less.

October 7th, 2008 by John (Cho-Tabetai)
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I have finally had a moment to sort throught the first Thailand images from my recent trip. These are certainly among my favorites. This street vendor was selling many different variety of cooked bugs. I tried some of the large grasshoppers. They were really flavorful, seasoned with what tasted like soy sauce. They had a good crunchy texture too. The only drawback was the legs are really stringy and can get caught in your teeth.

October 5th, 2008 by John (Cho-Tabetai)
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