I ate so much my first meal here it made me sick. Then I went back twice for more. One of my few repeats during my month in Prague.
An acquaintance recommended Kantyna in Prague simply as a “meat cafeteria.” Kantya feels like an upscale art deco NYC deli. I guess it is a mother source via feedback loop of history since Central European Jewish immigrants brought the roots of that from this region of Europe.
The beef carpaccio, beef tartar, and cuts of brisket are standouts here. Pair wisely with potato pancakes and rotating sides.
I have to say, I feel a theme here of somewhat fetishizing the old cafeteria style dining and making it upscale, and I’m here for it. Even though I’m someone who typically loathes the notion that your food is suddenly better by “elevating it.” To me, it’s just modernizing a dining experience with nice flatware and decor, making something traditional super well that suits modern diners of every stripe, and cooking food faithful to the past and tradition. It’s really hard to do, and Kantya excels. Eat the meat.
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Kantya is part of Ambiente restaurant group behind other great dining destinations I enjoyed such as Lokal, Eska, and Cafe Savoy that all highly recommend.
Two Little Red Hens is still my all-time favorite NYC bakery for what I consider quintessentially NY treats: Cheesecake, Carrot Cake (ok not really NY but it’s the standout here), Coffee Cake, Brooklyn Blackout, Black and White Cookie but in fluffy moiste cake form.
What’s especially excellent are their mini-cupcakes in every flavor if you’re not committed to a big cake. I heard they recently got a shoutout on some “best of” list so they were extra crowded when I visited last. Totally worth it though and glad I got to share this place with my mom when she was visiting and kind of an nice welcome back to NYC treat for me.
They’re also on this lovely stretch of what was once “Little Germany” in this stretch of Yorkville.
Every few weeks or for a special event, I’ll take a trip to Yorkville to get some noms at Two Little Red Hens, a charming bakery on 86th and 2nd. For a place that has over 1,700 Yelp reviews, it doesn’t seem to have the name recognition it deserves compared to the Magnolia bakeries of the world. I’ll take Two Little Red Hens over the ‘famous’ bakeries any day.
First off, the winning item for me is Two Little Red Hens’ Carrot Cake. Moist, flavorful, and honest-tasting with each ingredient standing out– it’s the only way I can describe it. Even the frosting has a subtle tart flavor rather than the usual overwhelming sweet overload. Their cheesecake and chocolate cakes are also standouts.
Two Little Red Hens’ amazing cakes also come in cupcake form. Get the Brooklyn Blackout, Red Velvet, Chocolate, and Carrot Cake to get a comprehensive sampling, which conveniently comes in large or mini-size variants. I confess… I normally don’t really like cupcakes and never fully understood the craze, but I’ll lovingly carry a box of the ones from here back with me on the air-conditioned bus so the frosting doesn’t get ruined.
The scones, banana bread, and the pecan coffee cake are my personal favorites to take on the road, which sometimes get overlooked in favor of everything else here.
What I love about the food at Two Little Red Hens is that each flavor remains distinctive and complex rather than just a homogenizing sugary taste, as you often find in other local bakeries.
I’ve had the pleasure of eating a lot of delicious food around the world this year, but this place struck me as so special because of uniqueness of the food, celebration of heritage, and the fact that if this restaurant were somewhere like LA or NY, the chef could charge 3x as much and be the toast of the town for innovation.
A badass female chef took us through Peumayan Ancestral Food menu on lovely Sunday. The restaurant concept takes indigenous ingredients and cooking methods from groups like the Mapuche, Rapa Nui, and other indigenous groups in South America and builds a multi-course tasting meal with all those elements, with bonuses.
On the flip side of those politics, why can’t “ethnic food” be just as finely enjoyed as French Food and Italian food, with the same pomp and ritual? Especially when food with seasoning just tastes better? (Haha.)
I don’t think that latter stance was fully clarified for me until going to Peumayan.
An explanatory comma first, traveling to Santiago was my first time truly traveling in Latin America. My stereotypes about Chile mostly came whatever content I absorbed on the internet through time talking about how the southern cone of Latin America is so “European.” Luckily my friend Maria from Santiago complicated those notions and told me the history of her country. Still, I knew so little about complexity of the indigenous history in Chile, and how the Mapuche were the one indigenous group to successfully resist the Spanish conquest.
Peumayan takes the richness of that history and creates a high-end dining experience celebrating the ingredients and cooking of pre-Colombian food, and does so exceptionally well. I’m mad that the dining and food culture locally and globally doesn’t seem to have that on the radar at all.
Most of my travels through Chile and Latin America weeks later all have the same sad undercurrent as the indigenous culture as among the least celebrated heritages in these countries. Although there are exceptions, especially in Peru and I’m assuming Boliva and Paraguay, the present-day living culture, and food culture in particular case of Chile, it isn’t something that seems to pique curiosity, let alone as a part of the rich heritage of the country to cherish and value.
I hope Peumayan and what the chefs are trying to do here gets a lot more famous. A tasting menu for food this quality would easily be triple the price in LA or NY. I put this at the top of the list for a restaurant recommendation in Santiago.
Exceptional flavors from sweet to savory that I’ve never quite experienced. Everything tasted so earthy yet refined.
The above is the bread platter and amuse bouche for the first round.
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Main courses.
Desert, with a lot of flavors of local Chilean wine.
Practically designed for Instagram, Hidden Gem Coffee feels like a whimsical and anime-esque technicolor experience.
The owner wants to raise awareness on reusing, recycling, and reducing waste in a country very much still in the beginning stages of environmental policy and awareness. He gave a talk when I visited that he especially cares since people in his hometown developed higher rates than average of cancer due to industrial waste pollution from nearby factories. In general, he’s concerned about environmental degradation in Vietnam and really there are stories like this all over Asia as a cost of economic development, so it really resonated with me.
The walls are lined with murals of a previous era of Vietnamese life toned with the nostalgic quality that characterize so many of Hanoi’s cafes. He mentioned the paintings of traditional life were inspired by his mother. The cafe was one of the newest and most unique I visited in Hanoi since he decorated the entire place with unwanted items he’d gathered, hence the name Hidden Gem. It also features three levels of seating with good internet so it’s an ideal study and workplace as well.
I enjoyed my egg coffee, though not the best I’ve had, which is an honor I reserve for Cafe Giang. The egg coffee I had was certainly made with love and skill – eggs whipped with their unique use of Bailey’s instead of other liquors, usually a rice wine, typically used in egg coffee. This place is worth a stop to decompress from hectic Hanoi and worth your support. It’s also close to this awesome sticky rice place.
The place I must give a shoutout to for the upcoming cold months and need for comfort food is Curry-Ya, which is the best Japanese-style Curry I’ve had outside of Japan. It’s such good comfort food but made at such a high quality here, especially since a lot of places will make it with the pre-made curry packs, which you might as well make at home, but no, this place is legit with the great katsu.
My favorite dishes at Curry-Ya are the Chicken Katsu Curry, a deep-fried chicken cutlet, and the Berkshire Pork Katsu Curry, a deep-fried pork cutlet, baked with egg and cheese over the bed of curry and rice. It’s heavenly. The Hamburger Steak Curry is also wonderful, a burger-style patty made with high-quality beef packed with pure flavor over curry and rice that coaxes my yuppy heart to feel like a kid again… read more
One of my favorite places to get Taiwanese Breakfast when I’m back in my hometown (San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles specifically, for you New Yorkers it’s like the Elmhurst, Queens of Los Angeles) is Yimei in Monrovia. Specifically, Yimei has my favorite sweet Rice Roll and Peanut Rice Milk (dipping with the Chinese donut). The Sesame Bread Sandwich with Beef （牛肉燒餅）is also good, but not as good as the one at Huge Tree Pastry.
I usually actually order the above, mixing the Peanut Rice milk (米漿）with Soy Milk （豆漿）in that combo (混漿）warm in a bowl. Dip the Chinese donut in it, I like how they make it extra crispy here, although it’s not quite as dense is it might be.
The Sweet Rice Roll （甜飯糰）here is something distinguishing and made uniquely from other places, as per the usual, it’s rice wrapped around Chinese donut, but it has a sprinkling of sweet peanut shavings along with the sugar.
The fresh soy milk is also nice cold with the more savory items.
This place is actually a good twenty-five minute drive from where I usually stay, but I’ll go out of my way if I have slow day when I’m visiting back home.
Had to borrow a pic from Yelp since I probably didn’t take a pic latest visit bc I had chicken all over my hands.
I recently ate at the Commodore again, which is known for their fried chicken, which is the best I’ve ever had. And I have eaten a lot of fried chicken. More than people should. They recently re-did their interior a bit that amps up kind of a 70s cruise line feel featuring fruity throughback drinks like pina coladas. Honestly, this place really doesn’t seem like it’d have good food, but it’s so awesome. This time I had the fried fish and grits, which makes me think twice next time about whether I should order the fried chicken or that, but I’ll probably be a glutton and get both.
First, the fried chicken at The Commodore is the best I’ve had in NYC. I keep coming back here and swear I’ll order another main dish, but I just can’t. The order comes with four generous pieces of fried chicken goodness and three mini-biscuits. It also comes with a helping of vinegar-based hot sauces that taste homemade, which complements rather than smothers the taste of the very crispy chicken. The chicken skin somehow has this twice-fried quality and volume that I can’t quite explain, yet devour against my better judgment knowing about the adverse health effects. An extra piece of crispy peppery chicken skin literally hangs off each piece like a bonus addition to the perfectly tender meat. The biscuits also come with a honey butter that tastes like it was made from scratch. Perfect.
Necessary shoutout to Faz Bakery in Danville, CA for their Persian style cookies, so good with rich flavors of saffron. A friend and I just happened on this place after leaving a baby shower in a city neither of us leave near or really go to, thankfully Faz Bakery and Coffee Bar are an awesome Bay Area chain!
The Shirini Diamond, Shirini Saffron Rose, and Shirini Chickpea. Get them all.
If anyone is going to Montreal, visiting Jean-Talon Market is a must. Just wonderful to wander around in. All the vegetables and fruits on sale are so beautiful and fresh it borderlines on produce porn. Shoutouts to the grilled cheese sandwiches at Qui Lait Cru and Liege Waffles dude too.
Bessie Eats 