FoodMayhem

Sushi Yasuda Sushi Yasuda is the best sushi experience I have ever had for so many reasons. Every piece of sushi, every piece of sashimi, the wasabi, Chef Tom, the tea, the atmosphere, everything. After this first visit, I am now forever spoiled and may never be able to eat sushi anywhere else again.
I have spent more on sushi meals at 15 East, Inagiku, and Tomoe. None can compare. The reason I hadn’t come to Sushi Yasuda earlier is because I thought it would be a really expensive meal but I have found that it really doesn’t have to be.

Winnie and I each ordered the Sushi and Sashimi combo. You are given a choice of four pieces of sushi and a choice of 1 roll; an assortment of 3 types of sashimi is chosen for you. On top of that, we asked Tom to give us three pieces of his choice.

The meal starts with a warm towel to clean your hands and a little bit of radish salad. There’s no charge for a wonderful hot green tea, which is replaced throughout the meal to ensure that you’re drinking it hot. They don’t just refill your cup. They take the cooled tea away and give you a fresh hot cup. Winnie and I both chose salad over soup. The ginger dressing was nice and we both liked the tiny, barely visible fish that added crunch to the salad.

Tom placed sashimi down first. In order of my preference: Spanish Mackerel, Blue Fin Tuna, and Fluke. All were better than my previous experiences and I have a new found respect for Spanish Mackerel. Tom advised us not to mix the wasabi into the soy sauce. Instead, you put a bit of wasabi on the fish and then dip in the soy sauce and eat. This made complete sense to me after my first bite. The fresh wasabi was delicious itself, sweet and creamy, I could eat it alone. Stirring it into the soy sauce would clearly mask the freshness of the wasabi and hide some of it’s amazing flavor. Next sushi. I chose salmon, yellowtail, orange clam, and sea scallop. Every piece was amazing and my first taste of orange clam has me hooked. Tom explained how he wanted us to eat the sushi as well. He already put the wasabi in and brushed the top with soy sauce so you should not add anything as you eat it.

Tom chose the next three for us. I ate the oyster first and it was like no other oyster I have ever eaten. It was amazing and I have to have it again!

Then I ate the beautiful mini squid. The presentation enticed the gentlemen next to Winnie and he asked for one.

After a bite, I realized it was filled with a red barbecue-like sauce. The flavor was unique and playful.

The last was sea eel. The sweetness of the soft eel played so nicely with the sea salt. Just delicious.

We each got to choose a roll. I chose Steel Toe Salmon and Winnie chose King Salmon. Tom split them for us so that we each got 3 pieces of each type of salmon roll. There was a clear difference in the two but I’m not really a roll person. I prefer full pieces of fish.

You MUST go to Sushi Yasuda if you want really good sushi. If money is no object, go for the Omakase. I’ve already asked Lon for the Omakase for my birthday. But you can eat there at a reasonable price by ordering the Sushi and Sashimi Combo for about $20.50 and then adding a few things to try some specialties. I suggest letting your chef choose. Your choices for the combo are not off the same list as the a la carte but their “regular” fish is still nothing to sneeze at. I was impressed by every part of this meal and it cost us, in total (except they comped the sea eel), under $40 per person, easily what you could spend at any sushi place. BUT, this is not just any sushi place! Chef Tom, I’ll see you next week.

Update (Feb 29th): I called today to make reservations for the next two Thursdays and they told me that my chef was Mutsuru not Tom (which is what the lady next to me told me). I’ll have to straighten this out next week and make sure I know who my chef is!

Fay Da Bakery, a popular Chinese Bakery with locations in Flushing and Chinatown, has now opened it’s doors in Forest Hills Fay Da Bakery. This makes me extremely happy because I have been saying for years that these Chinese bakeries should branch out to different markets. As I suspected, this location was extremely packed with patrons.

As I browsed the bakery, I spotted two items I had never seen before. That was quite shocking to me as I had believed that I have sampled every item a Chinese bakery has. Of course I had to buy them, plus a Coffee-Milk-Tea, to sip on our way back to the city. My enthusiasm for this creamy blend of coffee and tea encouraged Caroline to get one too. Nothing else for $0.90 could make me happier.

In the evening, Lon and I sat down to have the treat I had brought home. I was proudly showing my finds to him. Isn’t this beautiful? They called it a Layer Bun so I assumed there was nothing inside, just layers of good dough.

Then we dug in. It was tragic. The inside tasted as it looks, like cat food. OK, I think it was really mushy tuna but yuck. Neither of us could take another bite. We tried examining the dough once more and that was not as we had expected either. It was not layer-y and actually seemed kind of stale.

We moved on to the other bun. Again, gorgeous! They called this a Chocolate Walnut Bun and it was almost good. The chocolate flavor was very faint, possibly a spread that was used in an ultra thin layer, only enough to create that marbled look. It looks sweet but it was only slightly sweeter than bread and while the texture was nice for a bread, somehow the taste was just a bit awkward.

This was extremely depressing for me as I had once thought, a Chinese bakery could do no wrong. So, I do warn you, not to eat these two items, but don’t let this stop you from going to a Chinese bakery. The standards like roast pork buns, raisin twists and almond twists, sweet topped buns, white bread, and the list goes on, are amazing.

Oh, and I have to tell you this joke that was brought to my attention by Lily and Eugene about Fay Da Bakery. (I’m hoping I can explain this joke well enough so you can get it, even if you don’t speak Chinese.) In Chinese, Fay means fly and Da means prosperity. The bakery’s name means something of the effect of Soaring Prosperity Bakery. However, in Chinese, the slightest change of inflection, changes the meaning of the word so if you say fay and da a bit differently, fay can mean fat and da can mean big, making it the Fat Big Bakery. Haha

Moon House Moon House is next door to New Yeah Shanghai so I’ve thought of going so many times. They’re both Shanghainese restaurants and both seem to draw crowds. I was excited that I would finally try Moon House today, expecting that it would be close competition for New Yeah and I would be forever torn from now on. Well, that certainly did not happen.

We started with Scallion Pancakes which were pretty good. It seems impossible these days to find one with as many layers are they should have. I guess it’s too work intensive cause my mom won’t make them for me anymore either.

Generally, the Chicken and Cashews were pretty standard. The unique part was that they included some broccoli stems, which I normally like, but these were bitter.

This dish of Bean Curd Skins, Pork, Preserved Cabbage, and Soy Beans was standard. No better or worse than others I’ve eaten.

The Crab and Pork Soup dumplings were just ok.

Snow Pea Shoots are one of my favorite vegetables. These were over-cooked making them soggy.

They had a section called Braised Noodles. We didn’t know what that meant and I doubted the noodles were really braised since no one braises noodles, right? Chinese restaurants misuse English all the time so we just gave it a try. The dish came out looking so bland and unappetizing but we were surprised, it was actually quite tasty. The noodles were very soft though.

The major draw to Moon House is that it’s cheap! We ordered way too much food for three people, as you can see, and with tax and 20% tip, it was $16 person. Nothing was bad, but nothing was great either, so I’d rather just go to New Yeah Shanghai next door. Plus, the bathroom at Moon House is scary. You have to go out the restaurant into a dirty corridor, just to enter an even more scary bathroom, the size of a broom closet. It’s disgusting because it’s hard not to brush up against every part of the bathroom. Eww!

I was in the neighborhood I grew up in and it was time for lunch. We decided on Cabana Nuevo Latina Cabana Nuevo Latina, a place I had fond memories of from over 10 years ago. I remember this being the first place my father liked, outside of Chinese food. He liked that the Paella came in a cast iron pot that stayed covered so that the food would not cool too fast. I also have fond memories of their Churrasco (Latin American style skirt steak) and Tostones Rellenos. Since then, they have opened four more locations, two in Manhattan and two in Florida. As with most expansions, the quality of food slides a bit but it’s nice to see that the menu hasn’t changed much.

I didn’t think any of the food today was as amazing as it was back when I was a teen (although I did not order the same things). The lunch was still good though and certainly satisfactory at it’s price. I ordered the La Playa Salad, which was so massive that I could not finish about 1/3 of it. I ate all the grilled shrimp and sea scallops, but left a lot of lettuce and chopped tomatoes/onions. The salads come with a soup of the day; today it was Lentil Vegetable, which was very good. I kind of wish the cup of soup was larger and the salad smaller.

Caroline ordered the Empanadas. It came with a choice of two (she liked the shrimp more than the chicken), yellow rice and black beans, and a generous salad. Again, good for it’s price.

It’s no longer a place I would rave about, the way I did back then, but for their lunch prices (at least in Queens), it’s what I would expect of the quality, and actually more than expected in quantity.

I stumbled across Rohm Rohm while surfing the net for new places we could order from. The reviews on Menu Pages sounded highly positive but my verdict is that Rohm has potential but does have a lot to work on before getting 5 stars from me. Like the rest of NYC Thai places, I don’t consider this food Thai food. The only exception being Sripraphai.

Good news first? The best order tonight was the Drunken Noodles with Shrimp. Again, not authentic, but very tasty. They should not have left the shrimp tails on in a noodle dish but they were cooked correctly and so were the great chewy noodles. There were only six shrimp but a huge amount of noodles, which was weird since the Pad See Euw was on the skimpy side. I would order this again.
I thought the flavor of the Pad See Euw was very shallow. Lon agreed but still enjoyed it, except for the very dry over-cooked chicken. He said he would try it again but with beef or shrimp.

Both of us were really disappointed by the Duck Salad. The duck was so chewy that it was a jaw work out to eat it. Lon eventually gave up and spit out some pieces.
Because they have reasonable prices and the drunken noodles were good, I would give them one more shot. But sadly, I still have not found authentic Thai in Manhattan.