Moar Food! Nom, Nom, Nom...

Greetings! I've returned from yet another mouth-watering weekend in and around NYC. My buddies and I got together to celebrate my birthday so they treated me to an abundance of delicious food and drink. What else can be better than this? Tasty food, smooth drinks, and the company of great friends certainly made my seemingly accelerating creep towards the big 3-0 much more enjoyable!

We begin today's post with photos from our dinner at Sakura, a Japanese restaurant in Astoria. We had originally intended to go to a churrascaria place in Corona, which didn't seem to be open for whatever reason. The alternative was driving to Brooklyn for Peter Luger but the timing didn't work out since we had to go pick up my college roommate, who was visiting from Singapore, from the airport. After consulting Yelp, we soon arrived in front of Sakura. I guess the third time's a charm!

Upon entering the restaurant, we were told that there'd be a slight wait and we were seated in the waiting area. Soon after, the hostess offered us some sake, which we happily accepted. The wait wasn't so bad as we drank and talked and before we knew it, we were re-seated in the dining area.

Green salad

We started dinner with a simple green salad, which was pretty good. I usually don't like these types of salads because the dressing can be quite Thousand Island-y but I was pleasantly surprised here since the dressing was light. Shortly after the salad, we were presented with our appetizers.

Gyoza

The photo above is of a plate of pork gyoza or pan-fried dumplings. I know these as guo-tie but since we were in a Japanese restaurant, they were called gyoza. We also had an order of fried oysters, shown in the photo below. I enjoyed these much more than the gyoza and it might be because I hadn't had fried oysters before. Now that I've had smoked and fried oyster, I think a future experience will be raw oyster, which I've already researched online. Just in case you're curious, I will be chewing rather than simply swallowing to get the full experience!

Kaki fried

Now that we've gone over the cooked appetizers, let's move on to the not-so-cooked stuff! The slightly blurry photo below is of the tuna tartare, which was topped with roe. When I get my new phone, the new Google Nexus model, I hope to take better low-light camera-phone photos since my outdated Blackberry's camera isn't cutting it anymore.

Tuna tartare

Oops, back to food. The tuna tartare was good but I enjoyed the tuna tataki even more. The slightly-seared thin tuna slices were served over a bed of julienned dicon and had a very good, lightly-smokey flavor. This is one dish that I will be having again the next time I'm at Sakura.

Tuna tataki

Eel avacado, California, eel cucumber rolls

Finally, we come to the highlight of our Japanese dinner - sushi and sashimi! We had two orders of assorted sushi and sashimi, which were brought to our table on a large plate (the makizushi) and a large wooden boat (the nigirizushi and sashimi). I've never seen food presented in a creative manner like this so props to Sakura! While the rolls with eel were good, the California rolls were blah, which is par for the course since rolls with real seafood taste infinitely better than rolls with imitation crab meat. The raw sushi and sashimi tasted fresh and were soon gobbled up. As my friends know, I'm a big fan of spicy food so I chopstick'ed a large mound of wasabi and was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually strong. Yummy sushi and sashimi + good wasabi = nom, nom, nom!

Boat full of sushi and sashimi

The next night, we were joined by my Singaporean buddy and we all went out to Mapo BBQ in downtown Flushing. It had been over five years since we and my other buddy, also a college roommate, all had a meal together. Since we were at a Korean barbeque restaurant, it was only natural that we ordered meat to be grilled. Before the meats came, the many side dishes in the photo below only served to whet our appetite even more as we were all pretty hungry.

Pre-bbq

So what did we order? Beef and pork - lots of it! We ended up having five orders of incredibly delicious marinated beef and pork. I usually like to balance my meat consumption with some vegetables or greens but this was so good that the thought never crossed my mind.

Beef and pork

The next day, my Singaporean buddy wanted to go to DB Bistro Moderne for lunch so off we went. We took the subway from Queens into Manhattan and walked a bit before arriving at DB BM. This was the most bourgeois destination that we went to this weekend and to be honest, I felt somewhat out of place. I actually enjoy small, hole-in-the-wall type places more than fancy eateries. Nonetheless, we made ourselves comfortable after being seated.

Creme of mushroom soup

For starters, I ordered a soup. As mentioned in previous posts, I love soup and try to order a soup whenever possible. This time, I ordered a creme of mushroom soup, which was quite good and had a rich mushroom flavor. Afterwards, our original db burgers and fries arrived to the table. This burger is quite possibly the fanciest burger I've had. Sure I've eaten burgers with a moutain of toppings and dressings, burgers embedded with jalapeños, or non-beef burgers. But of all of them, how many had a center infused with foie gras and black truffles? While impressive, the physical design of the burger made eating it somewhat mechanically-challenging since we humans can't unhinge our jaws like snakes. Nearly twice as tall as it is wide, it made me wonder if whoever designed it had watched the food competition shows on Food Network when they talk about eatibility! Regardless, I was quite satisfied with the burger.

Original db burger and fries

After our burgers and fries, we ordered some dessert. Don't be deceived by the photo below! It's not that the white plate was really big, it was that the red velvet cake was surprisingly small. I suppose this is in agreement with the inverse relationship between a restaurant's fame/class and portion sizes. Good thing we had two orders of it. Along with the cake, we had madeleines with ice cream and fudge. Personally, I liked the madeleines much more than the red velvet cake since the latter was a bit on the hard and dry side.

Red velvet cake

Madeleines

Well, another weekend of delicious food completed! I feel like a bear preparing for hibernation with all this intake of scrumptious food recently. Even though it's barely mid-week, I already have plans to try out Alta by Union Square this coming weekend! I haven't had tapas recently so it should be another enjoyable experience especially since I've heard good things. Stay tuned for photos of that venture.