FoodMayhem

My friend Lily told me that she passed by a place with yogurt for 39 cents per ounce. I told Lon about it and he didn’t believe me. I realized that we were just a few steps away from it at Fish, so I went looking for the place after dinner, and there was Yogurtland Yogurtland. With several locations in California, this marks the first spot in New York and we welcome them.

The wall of self-serve yogurt machines is impressive, with way more flavors than Pinkberry, Red Mango, and Flurt. There’s mango, blueberry, strawberry, taro, green tea, cookies and cream, capuccino, and more. The capuccino, and cookies and cream flavors were just ok. I prefer these kinds of flavors in ice cream but the fruity flavors were quite good, blueberry being the clear winner.

The variety of toppings is also impressive with all the standards plus things like mochi, cheesecake, and red beans.

The best part is that you can have whatever you want in whatever quantity and just pay 39 cents per ounce. My yogurt came out to $2.17, an amount that would easily be $4 or more in the other yogurt places (which I consider rip offs). Keep in mind that the cup is really big. We are thinking the price will go up so try to hit them soon!

I realized after leaving that I didn’t try the plain, in order to do a comparison between Yogurtland and the other places, but I was overwhelmed with sampling all the flavors. BTW, they do let you sample before buying. I’ll have to go back to do a more thorough evaluation but for now, it’s worth trying for anyone since it’s so cheap, and definitely have the blueberry flavor.

Fish Fish is a no frills seafood bar that seems to know what they specialize in, at the detriment of almost everything else. The raw platter was filled with wonderfully fresh oysters, meaty Fanny Bay’s, delicate Kumamotos, sweet Blue Points, and some others, which I can’t remember the names of. One tasted like an oyster shot. Yum! The mignonette and cocktail sauce were just passable and the mayo (with some soy in it?) was just weird.

My mom ordered Steamers, prepared with beer and jalapenos, the best preparation I’ve ever had for steamers. I’m going to have to try this at home!

My simple grilled Wild Salmon was cooked perfectly.

Lon’s catfish was tender. So, it seems like a great place, right? Unfortunately, fish and shellfish is where it ends, all the side items are terrible. The hush puppies tasted like dry cornbread fried. The collard greens were rough and sour.

The gumbo didn’t come close to resembling a gumbo, just murky green liquid with random chunks of stuff, no defining flavors.

While I truly enjoyed the oysters and the steamers, I’m doubting my return. I tend to like balanced meals with protein, carbs, and veggies, and here I could only eat protein. Oddly, it seems they’ve got the hard stuff down and can’t figure out a few decent sides. Just outsource if you have to.

You may recall the other day I mentioned trying McDonald’s new breakfast sandwich, the chicken biscuit; well, even if you don’t my stomach did. While I wasn’t a fan, it seems you were, because we got a ton of reader interest about the review; so I sacrificed my bowels via a second trip to McD’s for the lunch-version.

See the image to the right? That is the product image. And for once, the real thing looked exactly like the published product image. Unfortunately, that was not a good thing since literally this is basically a huge chicken nugget on dry white bread with two pickle slices. No mayo, no ketchup, no lettuce, zilch. While I do enjoy a chicken nugget on some white bread, I have to say this was pretty sad. So skip it.

Similar to my last visit, the store was simply chaotic. But as usual, McDonald’s is trialing some new technology to improve through-put, and I was impressed. A woman was working her way up and down the lines of people with a handheld, wireless device to take orders. She used it to take my order, by the time I got to the register I simply had to pay. It looked like there were kinks to be hammered out, such as getting the food out more quickly, but I like the system in general.

We ordered from Al Forno Al Forno while we were at Kasi and Stephen’s this weekend and the pizza was good enough to satisfy my pizza craving but not good enough to cause a pizza craving. The main problem being the tasteless mozzarella they use. The sauce is pretty good and the crust is fantastic in spots, both chewy and crispy, but inconsistent, so there are also soggy areas. We ordered one with sausage (nice flavorful crumbles) and anchovies, one plain, and one white pie. The ricotta was actually quite good but couldn’t save the mozzarella, again bland, and rubbery once it cools a bit. The cheese is ultimately too important for me to go again. Oh well, there seems to be more pizza places than ever these days…on to the next.

As I mentioned in my last post on Sushi Yasuda, Copper River Salmon is now available! What’s better than Copper River Salmon? Two types of Copper River Salmon, both shockingly bright orange. On the left is the King Salmon, slightly softer than the Sockeye Salmon on the right. The flavor of both is wonderful yet subtle, so subtle that I think they would be better as sashimi. (note to self)

The very strong salmon flavor in this Sockeye Salmon Roll really shines here, exhibiting a pungency the other salmons don’t seem to have.

The Wild Salmon Roe (also from the Copper River) are smaller than the usual salmon roe, softer, smoother in flavor, like it was purified. I’m imagining that the water in the Copper River must be very clean.

I’m so glad I got to eat Copper River Salmon at least once this year cause we just called a few other restaurants and can’t seem to find anyone else serving it (possibly because it’s very expensive this year due to lower inventory). Thanks again Sushi Yasuda!