The Girl Who Ate Everything

Corner Bistro

"This place was hard to find!"

"What? Naaah."

"Yes."

"Oops."

Diana probably wasn't very happy to navigate the unfamiliar area around Corner Bistro while being pelted with rain...but hey, she told me to make the recommendation. She asked for burgers? I GAVE HER BURGERS! Admittedly, the google map is a bit off; the restaurant is on the corner of West 4th and Jane, not randomly splodged on 8th Ave.

appetizer?

But first, an appetizer! Right across the street from Corner Bistro is Lilac Chocolates, which I had surprisingly never tried before, despite having passed it a few times. Diana wanted to check it out to kill some time while we were waiting for out other friend Ava to meet us...and to fulfill a craving for a dark chocolate almond bar. I wasn't particularly hungry, but the mousse roll sounded promising. A mousse roll is is exactly what it sounds like: mousse in roll form. Covered in chocolate. I was very happy with my mousse roll. Every time I say "mousse roll" though, I think of a moose rolling down a hill. Which is odd.

Yes, it's time for burgers.

The restaurant was larger than it appeared from the outside. The front room was full, except for a few seats at the bar, so we squeezed past the kitchen into another back room of scrawled-on wooden tables and sparse natural (and unnatural) lighting. We felt like the waiter probably hated us after we weren't ready to give our orders when he came by, but we failed to notice the menu hanging on the wall. Luckily, ordering is very simple as your choices are primarily burgers and alcohol. Ava and I went for bistro burgers, even though we weren't sure what the name entailed, and Diana got a grilled chicken sandwich. She just had to be different.

mm, burgers

"That's man's food," commented Diana upon seeing our burgers. Hehe. Yes. Well, now it's ROBYN'S FOOD! It's okay—I'm still full of female chromosomes.

Our burgers came with a thick meat slab, sliced onion (under the meat slab), American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a pile of crispy bacon that neither Ava or I was particularly fond of. (Bacon and ham are my least favorite forms of pig meat. Sorry if that preference horrifies you.) All those ingredients piled together in between toasted buns didn't make for a burger I could fully get my mouth around, although I found that taking out the thick slice of tomato helped decreased the massiveness of it. (Raw tomatoes only work for me when combined with mozzerella and basil for some reason. Without anything else, raw tomato makes me feel gaggy.)

still moo-ing

My rare burger was fortunately cooked to my order, unlike Big T's. There was no gray to speak of, just a mass of soft pink innards that made me feel more carnivorous than I normally do. I could feel guilty about it, but...nah, I was just thinking about the tastiness and how fast I should eat it to prevent getting burger pee all over my hands.

While I thought the burger was awesome and better than many others I've had, it was missing this meaty taste whose smell alone would make my mouth water. Know what I mean? Meat smell! I mean, good, cooked meat smell. It's not something you'd bottle up and market to young women, but it's pretty enticing.

I really liked the fries, none of which were limp, some of which were so fried that they had reached potato chip-crunchiness. They reminded me of less salty McDonald's fries (although most things are less salty than McDonald's fries, maybe even salt itself). The tastiness of McDonald's without the injected beef/wheat/dairy flavor...gimme.

creamy frozen things

Naturally, after eating a ball of ground beef and fat-soaked potato sticks one craves ice cream. We awkwardly walked down 4th Street while trying to maneuver our umbrellas around the humans that were just standing around of all things. Move it! OR YOU'LL BE BROLLY-POKED!

I tried hazelnut, pistachio, corn (which, if you're wondering, tastes like corn of all things...it's good, really), and something else before deciding to get dulce de leche. The guy behind the counter probably thought I was a little nuts after I had indecisively stared at the case for so long and then went with a flavor I didn't even sample. Well. I am weird.

dulce de leche

This not-so-great photo will give you some idea of the texture (along with the previous photos of the ice cream tubs). Uber smooth to the max 5000 deluxe laser rainbow power etc. The flavor would've had to have been stronger for it to really impress me (am I too picky?), but the whipped cream-smooth texture was a winner. It was better than the first time I went there, when my tiramisu ice cream tasted a little too airy to me. This time it didn't taste especially dense or airy. Just...good. It's a little pricy at almost $4 for a small, but definitely worth checking out if you're in the area.

Lassi

Lassi

During Tuesday's lunch break, I went to Lassi with my co-workers, Tony and Jason. Lassi is a nicer than most hole-in-the-wall that specializes in...oh my god, guess! I know you can do it. I'll give you a gold star.

small lassi

Lassi, good job! (I lied about the gold star. If you couldn't figure out the answer, I'd be scared.)

Anyhoo, Lassi's lassis come in small and large. If you want a medium, you'll get a funny look. In this case, small really does meal small, especially for $3.50; that wouldn't even satisfy me as a pudding cup. My coconut lassi was pretty good, although admittedly I have almost nothing to compare it to since I think I've only had a mango lassi once in my life. The somewhat viscous drink tasted of yogurty tang with a slight coconut flavor. The sticker on the cup gave it a little more personality. IT'S BEEN BRANDED.

parathamathuhmuh

Since I rarely eat things with daikon in them, I was compelled to get the mooli, or daikon paratha. I loved the extra Japanese paper folding-style touch of folding the flap down to make a decorative band around the whole package. Because I'm unobservant, I didn't even notice at first that it wasn't any kind of special design, rather just the default silver, insulating paper wrapper honeycomb design. Little touches like that make the eating experience a wee bit better. "That food sucked, but hey, that wrapper was really somethin'."

griddled, mm

Paratha is an Indian flat bread stuffed with...stuff. It looks pretty flat, yet surprisingly they stuff a lot in there.

innards?

I dunno what a wazoo is, but the daikon is coming out of it. Every bit of the accompanying boondi raita (yoghurt sauce with chick pea dumplings) went towards flavoring my paratha since I found the spices in the daikon overpowering without the sauce. As for what the spices were, I have no freakin' clue; unfortunately, I'm very unfamiliar with Indian food. The spices weren't hot-spicy, but they felt like they may cause above-average gastric juice frothiness in your belly.

...That didn't make sense. Anyhoo, if you have any idea what I may have been tasting, let me know.

After consuming the entire paratha, I was stuffed. The flatness of the paratha may deceive you into think it's not a lot of food, but the density makes up for it. I think an entire shredded daikon family was shoved into the bread, ff such a thing exists.

Overall, it's a cute, clean, nicely designed little place (five seats, methinks, although due to space constrictions they had the foresight to put little bag hooks under the counter) where you can get a quick lunch for under $10. I'm not sure if I would return since I don't have much taste for paratha (I wouldn't get daikon again), nor am I much of a lassi drinker, but if you have a hankering for either (and you know you do!), stop by Lassi.

me fail bread? yes.

As much as I love bread (more than cookies, for god's sake), I've never made it from scratch all by my non-chef-like self. My family has a bread machine that we'd sometimes use when I was little, but I was never a fan of the uniformly block-shaped bread loaves that the machine would pop out. It didn't taste bad, it's just...something was lost. A soul?

I de-virginized my bread baking status last weekend by attempting to make focaccia. Only my disappointing lack of human strength would mix the ingredients together and smush them into a gluten-filled blob of processed wheat bound by water. I smooshed the dough over and over again while thinking, "Holy shit, I'm gonna eat this pasty blob? You could glue kittens together with this." And then I'd continue to knead in disgust, getting sticky dough film all over my hands. After thwaking the dough on the counter a gajillion more times, I figured it wasn't kneaded very well, but that I would continue with the "rise" step of breadmaking because I didn't really know what I was doing anyway.

Left in an oiled bowl for more than an hour, the dough merely spread out flat instead of rising into a cute, Kirby-esque blob. I knew that screaming, "RISE, YOU BASTARD!" wouldn't do anything, so I refrained from vocalizing my frustration at the inanimate dough wad.

I guess my yeast didn't activate. Um. Crap. My mum took half of the dough and offered to make scallion-esque pancakes. She portioned the dough, rolled up some wad-things and I helped fry them in olive oil. They tasted pretty good, although kind of sweet due to the added sugar...ye know, the sugar meant to feed the yeast that didn't want to live.

"bread

I baked the other half of the dough into a semi-retangular blob that surprisingly did rise in the slighest, teeniest bit, although not enough to resemble the texture of a nice, floofy focaccia. Straight out of the oven, the crust was painfully hard (possibly like hard tack, not that I've ever eaten it), but it softened after cooling down. The resulting product resembled focaccia, except with a density factor rivaling that of a black hole.

I googled just for you

Corner Bistro
331 W 4th St
New York, NY 10014

Lilac Chocolates
40 8th Ave
New York, NY 10014

Cones
272 Bleecker St
New York, NY 10014

Lassi
28 Greenwich Ave
New York, NY 10011

food related, kinda

Going to Kitchen Secrets: Bill Buford with Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain on June 21st at the NYPL in Bryant Park? I am! Weeee.

Pete's pancakey words of wisdom:

i believe the only people that don't like pancakes are the toothless. and it's probably not that they don't want to eat them, they just can't. pancakes depress the people without teeth.

Right on.

that shine in my eyes is my insanity

The Poofy pancake shirts are here! I emailed everyone with the shipping/payment details already (before I actually received the shirts). If you ordered one and didn't get my email, then...that's toooo bad.

I mean. You should email me. If you don't get back to me before Wednesday, I won't be able to ship your shirt until after I get back from Norway on the 16th.