Results tagged “eatonthecheap”

Late October is a the perfect time of the year to eat local zucchini blossoms, those fleshy, pale orange flowers that are often found stuffed or battered on fancy restaurant menus. The first part of this sentence would be true if zucchini plants were flowering now, but they’re not. Instead, consider the pumpkin blossom: Generally overlooked in the culinary world (like zucchini flowers once were before they were trendy), pumpkin blossoms are in incredible abundance this year, especially because there hasn’t yet been a lot of frost round these parts. There are many huge orange flowers still blooming on pumpkin vines out there, so either if you’re doing the whole Charlie Brown waiting game thing or going pumpkin picking somewhere on the outskirts of the city this weekend, there’s a really good chance you’ll be able to score a huge bag of flowers for cheap. If your friendly pumpkin patch guardian isn’t selling flowers up front, ask him or her if you might be able to borrow a few blossoms. Chances are the answer will be yes, and they might even be free. Once you get them home, keep them refrigerated unwashed and under a damp paper towel, the whole thing loosely wrapped in plastic wrap until you’re ready to cook them.

Freegans have been around for a while now, most recently The Times caught them dumpster diving in the NYU area just as school let out. A freegan goldmine! Now a blogger for Newsweek is getting knee deep in rubbish for a month in order to fully understand these "waste reclaimers".

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes.

If you've lived in New York for any period of time, you know that the food here is incredible -- the variety, the quantity, and the quality. You'll also know that you don't have to pawn off your valuables to taste all that the city has to offer. This week's New York Magazine celebrates the city's cheap eats. Rob and Robin provide an extensive list of their picks, including some of our favorites: Bocca Lupo, Flatbush Farm, Go!Go! Curry, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, and Peri Ela (just tried it for the first time last weekend), among many others.

Burdock root, also known as gobo, tastes something like a nutty artichoke potato. The long, slender, flexible roots don't look like much, but they have a lot of flavor if you slice them thin and braise them to bring it out. Don't bother peeling off their thin skin, which is both tasty and good for you.

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes

To celebrate their first anniversary today, decadent 12th Street carb emporium S’mac is offering portions of its floor model macaroni and cheese for just $1. The “nosh” size of the All-American (nothing fancy, just domestic cheddar) at the special anniversary price will be available until 11 PM.

We haven’t been that impressed with much of the corn in the city so far. Much has been shrink-wrapped and as yellow as a Crayola sun, a sure sign of tough, dry ears. But not any longer. Fairway has a nice batch of bi-color corn that’s slightly sweet, juicy, and at a fairly remarkable price to back it up. At $1.99 for eight ears of corn, you’ll have enough corn for any large gathering and more leftovers than you’ll ever know what to do with.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

We arrived at the Japan Day festivities in Central Park last Sunday afternoon only to find that the food had run out. Nevertheless, we enjoyed an excellent jazz combo, but soon it started to rain. In order to salvage the day, and keep with the Japanese theme, Gothamist headed downtown to give Go!Go! Curry a try.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

While that whiff of fried food is as indelible to the aura of Coney Island as the roller coaster, sometimes you just don’t want hot dogs, fried clams, onions rings, or elephant ears. The only fresh fruit option we’d ever found were from the nice ladies that stroll around with the cut up mangoes on a stick. But there are only so many of those things you can suck back before the real hunger pangs start.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

We’re pissed. After setting the date on our schedule for an excursion out to the Red Hook Ball fields this Saturday to sample some of the famous Mexican stalls, word comes from Porkchop Express that the opening has been postponed until May 5th. Apparently from the official Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park: ...administrative issues beyond our control have forced us to push this date to May 5th. We are very excited to set-up shop (or rather... shacks!) and begin our season as soon as possible.

We’d heard about a recently opened Singas Pizza on Columbia Street, that along with a few tables and chairs, also happened to have a post office inside. They usual jests about mailing pies were made, but not much talk about how the actual pizza was, so we decided to head over and check things out. On the front door was a newspaper clipping proclaiming that their chain, which has over 18 locations around the city, is one of the quintessential pizza places of New York. Considering the shop is about two blocks away from the new comer to pizza stardom Lucali’s, we wondered why no one else had noticed.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

We were warned that we couldn't finish one. We scoffed and tucked into the meaty monstrosity with confidence and very nearly made it through. It was smoky and alluring, a heavy indulgence that could feed four and should rightly feed two.

After our disappointing foray into the world of Park Slope picnic fare, we scoffed at the neighborhood's promise of a gourmet hotdog. But Willie's Dawgs, the Technicolor lovechild of husband and wife team Ellen Lutter and Tom Anderson, may well have turned the tides.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

David’s Brisket House is an unlikely relic on a stretch of Nostrand Avenue mostly populated by 99 cent stores and West Indian delis. The space is narrow and dated, outfitted with mirrored walls (the sort mostly reserved for adult film sets) and ceiling tiles brown with the remnants of some ancient leak. It doesn’t have the fame of Carnegie Deli or the sprawling space and hypnotic neon glow of Katz’s. The clueless tourists and first-timers, the ones who order their pastrami with mayo (tsk) and request half sour pickles (tsk tsk), don’t come here. David’s is a place for locals and sandwich hedonists—the type who don’t mind the occasional visit from a neighborhood crazy if it means dining with the kind of mindless abandon the place requires.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The shopping mall represents, for most New Yorkers, everything that is bad about suburbia. But the Flushing Mall, which caters to a predominantly Chinese clientele, is not your usual mall. It’s a sprawling place, pieced together ad-hoc from several different buildings, and the various stores have a quirky, entrepreneurial feel. Some have no ceilings and resemble stalls in a convention hall; others are cloistered along narrow corridors like doctors’ offices. There’s one place that sells ornately crafted combs, another where kids can paint their own ceramic cartoon characters, and another where you can slip into a “capsule sauna” (30 minutes for $5).

Pizzerias in this city are so common that sometimes you wonder if they’re all legit. Is that place on the corner really just another Ray’s Famous, or is it a front for some illicit trade? On the surface, Tony & Tina’s Pizzeria in the Bronx seems ordinary enough. But if you look a little closer, you’ll discover there’s more than one kind of dough getting baked here. It’s nothing illegal; this just happens to be one of the few hotspots for bureks, the savory Eastern European pies made from phyllo-like pastry.

Chinatown wakes up in the morning much the same as any other New York neighborhood—with a jolt of caffeine. Every block seems to have its own bakery where throngs perch at tiny tables to slurp hot tea or coffee before starting the day. But these are no Dunkin Donuts. The pastries everyone nibbles alongside their steaming cups are anything but ordinary—though some look familiar on the surface. What appears to be a custard doughnut is actually filled with sticky red bean paste. Don’t mistake that one for a cheese danish; what’s inside is chicken minced with scallions and spiked with hot Sichuan pepper. And is that a hot dog sticking out of that sweet bun? Why, yes, it is. (This may in fact represent your only chance to eat a wiener for breakfast respectably.)

As any serious drinker knows, a long night of boozing is best ended with a heaping helping of carbohydrates. One good place to get your fill is the East Village deli called Punjab, which stays open into the wee hours to serve its clientele of Pakistani cabbies. But late-night Lower East Side revelers have also discovered the cheap vegetarian chow. There are potatoes over rice, potatoes wrapped in bread (roti, $2.50), potato patties (aloo tikki, $.75), or potatoes encased in fried dough (samosa, $.75). The samosas make for an ideal snack (chaat) anytime. A crisp, delectably greasy, well-browned crust wraps chunks of potatoes and green peas. Like everything at Punjab, it’s suffused with just the right amount of heat. Right after you’ve wolfed down the last bite, a slow burn creeps up, just this side of painful.

Pizza may be one of humankind’s oldest recipes. The idea of taking a flat disk of dough and baking it quickly with a little topping is an ancient one. Versions appear in cuisines around the world. There’s focaccia from Italy, socca from France, naan from India. But one often overlooked cousin is zaatar bread, a snack usually associated with Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon.

If you want fresh, it makes sense to go straight to the source. So if you crave fish and chips, why not go to a fish shop? Wild Edibles, the premiere purveyor of fresh seafood in the city, also offers a full menu of ready-to-eat dishes at its Murray Hill location. There are plenty of fancy options from shrimp gazpacho to macadamia-crusted soft-shell crabs, but what really hits the spot is plain fried fish.

In suburbia’s conquest of New York, Subway and Quizno’s lead the culinary front, spreading almost as rapidly as Starbucks. But a quiet band of outsiders is fighting the good food fight, on the fringes. These are the shops that specialize in bánh mì, the French-accented Vietnamese sandwich that inspires cultish devotion among its fans (see The Porkchop Express). The latest reinforcements have risen up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Boerum Hill. First there was Hanco’s last spring, and now, just around the corner, there’s Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches.