Soup Dumplings

For all intents and purposes, my trip to NYC was a success. I arrived early Friday afternoon, ahead of the first major snowstorm of the year, and had little trouble getting to Lower Manhattan (by bus and then subway), very near the Brooklyn bridge, where my friend Winnie works as a law clerk. Since it was still too early for dinner and bitterly cold, we headed back to her place near Gramercy Park.

I first met W in 1998 on Love Boat – what a hoot: it's got its own Wiki entry! –; she was one of my roommates. Since that summer, we've managed to keep in touch through email and even visited on several occasions throughout the country: once in DC (above) and once in New Orleans. (Evidently, we're not very good about picture-taking because this is the only one I have.) Anyway we had a lovely afternoon reminiscing and catching up while waiting for her boyfriend Rick to arrive in from Philadelphia for the weekend.

We all, including one of W's coworkers, had dinner at Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown, which supposedly has some of the best soup dumplings in NYC. Though they were very good, esp having gone so long without, I've had better, probably the best (W would agree), at Din Tai Fung in Taipei, conveniently located near my grandparent's house. (If you ever get the chance, don't settle for their branch in Cali, which I've heard isn't very good. Do like the Japanese and travel to Taiwan, not speaking a word of Chinese, to the joint on Hsin Yi Road.) There was also a tasty dish of scallion pancakes, which is mercifully easy to make at home; some turnip thing I can't name; drunken chicken (as an appetizer); and a beef noodle dish. On the way home, I stopped into a bakery and got a couple dan ta and a taro mochi, although I would have loved a big bowl of dou hua. Interestingly, and Drew would be most envious, the taro was not the usual paste form, but a kind of chunky mash so that you could believe you were eating freshly-made.

After W and I talked some more, she and R went to bed, and I caught up on some cable, though I had to flip through nearly 250 channels to find something worth watching.