Of Rainy Days With Tons Of Food

Thursday found me working in the Chinatown area of Flushing in Queens, NY. Although I had packed my Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich, it felt like a crime to be there and not have some Chinese food, so during lunch hour Carolina and I walked a couple of blocks til we found Sunway.

The place was very clear and spacious, with Ikea like furniture. The menu was HUGE. The only hard part about it is that even though all items were in English  (and I have no idea if it was Mandarin, Cantonese, what) there were no descriptions of the dishes. I latched unto the idea of Soupy Noodles (they have a whole section) and basically just asked the waitress if there was anything with thin noodles in soup with tofu and vegetables. She hooked me up with some fried tofu dumped in soupy noodles and veggies and this is what I got:

Ah yes, I forgot to mention, you also got complimentary tea with every meal, which was perfect on a rainy day. The soup was huge and delicious and it was hard not to inhale the entire thing. My co-worker had some un-soupy noodles that were to die for as well.

We finished the meal by having pan-fried vegetarian dumplings for dessert

They were perfect. And Hot. And I kinda liked that they brought things as they were ready - the soup and the noodles were done first, and the dumplings last.

Later, after the workday was done and I braved the madness that was the 7 and the E trains during the evening rush hour, I found my way to another part of Queens: Forest Hills. There I visited sweet Cesar, who in true Gay Fashion was holding a dinner party.

Since we were all busy having fun eating and joking with each other, I forgot to take pictures of the food. We had, however, short grain rice with gandules, and pernil with a green salad. It was a very simple yet delicious meal. Afterwards we helped our hosts flip their mattress (I'm not kidding) since the thing was a gazillion pounds and it took about 5 of us to carry it. Having worked off our meal we retired to the living room to enjoy the fire and the company of Idina Menzel, Cesar's puppy.

Eventually it was time to head home and Cesar was kind enough to give three of us a ride. However we took a detour on our way to Bed-Stuy, and stopped by Japanese Restaurant Miyako in Williamsburg for some dessert. My flash wasn't working so I'm sorry for the picture darkness. We had red bean and green bean fried ice cream with tea

and deep fried banana with whipped cream

I was very proud of me in that I only had a taste of each. They were tasty, though!

Rain and all, the day was pretty great. It makes me wish I had a car - despite the traffic in the city, it's kinda great to go home and not have to wait for trains and get to enjoy some loud music as we drive.

Homecoming

After arriving at La Guardia and turning my phone on I found a text from my girls, inviting me to dinner. After dropping off the luggage and a quick shower I headed to my old neighborhood, midtown. We chose to have Korean food and so walked to K-town, but once there ran into a new Japanese restaurant and figured, why not? enter HaruHana.

The place was very nice, the decor is simple and uncluttered, with huge wooden benches for chairs that you share with the table behind you. We had vegetarian Gyozo as appetizers:

They were crispy and tasty. Very hot. Good way to start quieting the hunger. We also had edamame but I did not take a picture of that.

One thing that HaruHana had against it: maybe because they were very new, they didn't have a lot of the items in their menu, including the Vegetarian Ramen which is what I really wanted. I settled for Tofu Teriyaki.

Food came all in individual trays which was very cute but also took a lot of space on the table, which was cumbersome. The food was so good it was REALLY hard to stop eating. What a good deal.

Afterwards, we walked around, had some coffee. Not a bad way to come back home at all.