NY Food (Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery, Veselka, Totto Ramen, Sunnyside Pizza, Halal Truck, Shiro, and Dave's Bagels)

Continuing from my recent trip which took me around New England, New York was the next stop on the journey:

Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery (Manhattan):

This place has been on my radar for a while. They specialize in Knishes and have been around since 1910!

I had a Spinach Knish. Spinach was mixed into the potato in the knish. I very much enjoy knishes, and this was no exception!

Veselka (Manhattan):

I went here almost immediately after visiting Yonah Schimmel's. Pierogi are hard to resist and Veselka is one of my favorite restaurants in New York. Their Sunday Brunch was happening and I tried the bacon, egg, & cheese pierogi. The waiter told me I wanted them fried. I should have gotten them boiled. The amount of crispiness from being deep fried made them seem like empanadas more than pierogi. Filling wise, bacon egg and cheese in a pierogi was really good!

Totto Ramen (Manhattan):

Google listed this as a highly rated ramen shop in the city. They specialized in a type of broth which I had never had called Paitan. This is apparently a chicken based broth.

I had the Miso Paitan Ramen. It was noodles in chicken paitan broth, topped with miso, egg, scallions, bean sprouds, onions, and pork. Delicious!

Sunnyside Pizza (Queens):

This is a pizzeria in Queens that has good New York style pizza, available by the slice.

I had a slice of cheese and an eggplant/ricotta slice. I do enjoy that they put sesame seeds on the crust.

Halal Truck (Queens):

I had a Lamb/Chicken combo from a random Halal food truck in Sunnyside. They made the standard NY Halal cart fare a little more interesting by adding bell peppers and onions in with the meat. Served over rice and lettuce, topped with white and hot sauce.

Shiro (Grand Central):

I had an Eel Avocado Roll from a fast food sushi restaurant in Grand Central from Shiro.

Dave's Bagels and Grill (Queens):

I had an everything bagel with lox cream cheese.

NY Jewish Food (Regal Kosher Deli in Plainview and Russ & Daughters in NYC)

In my travels around the New York area, I ended up eating at two restaurants serving Jewish/Kosher style foods. One was Regal Kosher Deli on Long Island and the other was Russ & Daughters in Manhattan.

Regal Kosher Deli in Plainview, NY:

Regal Kosher Deli is located in Plainview, NY on Long Island. They are a kosher deli serving pretty standard jewish foods. I ended up eating here on two occasions.

Pickles are delivered to every table upon being seated. They serve half sour and full sour pickles. Being that the half sour pickles were devoured before I could take a picture, it's obvious what everyone's favorite type of pickle is.

Bowls of coleslaw were also served with the pickles.

I tried two different types of knish on my visits here. My first knish was a plain potato filled knish. This one was square with mashed potatoes filling the flaky crust. Pretty tasty.

The spinach knish was my favorite of the two. It was round (I'm assuming the different shapes are so they can tell different fillings apart easier?), filled with a potato/spinach mix. It had more going on in terms of flavor compared to the plain knish.

On one visit I tried a corned beef sandwich. This consisted of a whole lot of sliced meat between sliced rye bread. I have to admit that these jewish deli style sandwiches are a little boring for my liking. I know cheese can't be added because of the whole kosher thing, but they are too much of the same thing.

On another visit I tried what they called a stuffed sandwich. I ordered the Corned Beef, Tongue, and Hard Boiled Egg. When the sandwich was delivered, the waiter informed me that they were out of hard boiled egg. I'm also pretty sure the menu said there should have been coleslaw on here as well, but that was missing too. Without those components, this was basically a corned beef sandwich stacked on top of a tongue sandwich. I did enjoy the novelty of eating sliced tongue. That is not a cut of meat that I eat very often.

Regal Kosher Deli was enjoyable. They may have boring sandwiches, but that's expected in a jewish deli. That aside, I did like the rest of the dining experience in here...





Russ & Daughters in NYC:

I first heard about Russ & Daughters several years ago and they have been on my list of New York foods to try ever since. It took me several more visits to the city before I finally made it to Russ & Daughters. They've been around for 101 years, so the amount of time it took me to try the restaurant was probably nothing for them.

They specialize in smoked and cured fish. Their cases are filled with all sorts of lox, smoked salmon, mackerel, sable, and other seafoods. There's also a large selection of cream cheeses, bagels, desserts, and other jewish foods for sale. Russ & Daughters was a very busy place. I waited over a half hour to put in my order. People were buying quite a bit in here as well. Almost every order placed that I heard was at least $100. Russ & Daughters is a little gold mine...

I had an everything bagel with pastrami salmon with goat cream cheese. The salmon was thinly sliced with a peppery coating on the outside. The goat cream cheese was new to me. It still had the consistency of normal cream cheese, but with the distinctive earthy flavor that seems to be in all goat cheeses. The combination of it all was delicious...

I also tried a pickle. A customer in front of me was ordering gallons of these pickles, announcing that she takes the train from Vermont to replenish her pickles every time her supply gets low. With an endorsement like that, I decided I must try one. It was a very tasty pickle, although I don't know if I'd travel from out of state for a pickle. 

Brown's New York Deli in Maitland, FL

I had lunch at Brown's New York Deli in Maitland. Apparently this restaurant has been here for over a year, but somehow I never noticed them during my countless drives past.

As soon as we were seated, a plate of pickles and coleslaw were brought to the table.

I had the Turkey Ruben for my meal. It consisted of sliced turkey, cheese, sauerkraut, and thousand island dressing on toasted rye bread. Fries were served on the side. The sandwich was good, although it didn't contain the sickening stack of meat that I've seen at some of the more famous delis actually in New York. The amount of sandwich fillings here was much more biteable and more appropriate for one person to eat in a single serving.

After the sandwich, meringue cookies were served alongside the check. Meringues seem like they are either good or bad whenever I try them. There's never a meringue cookie that is just okay. These meringues fell in the good category. They were light and airy with just the right amount of crunch.

I enjoyed my meal at Brown's. I'd return here again!

Balagan Mediterranean Cafe in the UCF Arena

Today we're talking about Balagan Mediterranean Cafe in the UCF Arena. This Middle Eastern/Kosher restaurant is located on the first floor of the arena right inside of the main entrance. They have a menu that features falafel, shawarma, kababs, and standard arena snack bar fare like burgers and hot dogs. Their Middle Eastern foods are very tasty and the best part is the price. For the price of a bag of cinnamon nuts up a single flight of stairs at an official arena snack bar, you can get an entire sandwich at Balagan.

I ordered the Schwarma pita. This was filled with turkey and chicken, lettuce, cabbage, onions, hummus, tahini, hot sauce, and whatever other toppings were available. I basically had them load up my schwarma with everything! Although not the most photogenic sandwich, it was still very tasty. Way better than an overpriced hot dog or nachos from the snack bars right up stairs.

Kosher on Wheels in Orlando, FL

There is a food truck called Kosher on Wheels that is parked along International Drive near Fun Spot. I was looking for something for lunch one afternoon and decided to give this truck a try. As far as food trucks at non-food truck events go, Kosher on Wheels seemed to be doing very good business. They had seating on both sides of the truck, and I got the very last open seat while I was eating. I got the feeling that about half the customers at the time were like me, there for some Middle Eastern food regardless of religious affiliation, and the other half was there specifically because the food was Kosher.

I ordered a falafel pita. The pita was filled with a generous amount of falafel, hummus, tahina, red cabbage, onions, and Israeli salad (cucumbers & tomatoes). The falafel was very good with plenty of flavor and was nice and moist. There was also plenty of tahina, so much so that it started being absorbed by the bread. That is always a win in my book.

At some point I want to return to this truck to try their shawarma. I enjoyed my falafel, so hopefully the rest of their food is just as good. I did think they were a bit expensive for the size of the pitas served, but they were pretty equivalent to many of the other 'gourmet' food trucks in Orlando.

BagelWorks in Boca Raton, FL

I decided to get breakfast at one of Boca Raton's bagel places and ended up at BagelWorks.

BagelWorks was very popular with Boca's senior citizens. They had a line for tables that queued up along BagelWorks' deli cases. It was kind of like waiting for a ride at Disney while watching a preshow of cream cheese and Kosher smoked fishes and listening to people complain about the wait.

It was eventually our turn to be first in line and were seated. I decided to get a spinach & feta omelet, served with homefries and an everything bagel. The omelet was okay, although the cheese could have been distributed throughout the omelet better. There was lots in the center, but none at the two ends of the omelet. Homefries were good, but the bagel was horrible. At a restaurant called BagelWorks, I was expecting good bagels. Unfortunately, every bagel served to our table had an extremely hard outer crust. So hard that I couldn't bite into the bagel. I couldn't break through the crust with the utensils at the table either. Whatever caused the bagels to have this outer crust was definitely not good. I don't think I'd go back to BagelWorks because of their rock hard bagels. With the majority of the customers in BagelWorks above the age of 65, I wonder how well these bagels fare with dentures?

Menchie's Frozen Yogurt in Orlando, FL

Menchie's Frozen Yogurt is a self-serve yogurt shop on Sand Lake Road in Orlando. You get a cup, fill it up with yogurt and toppings, and then pay $0.44/oz for your creation.

I had a swirl of Very Bosenberry and Mango Tango Sorbet, topped with blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and kiwi. It was really good, and after this visit I've decided I really do enjoy the self-serve aspect of these new yogurt shops that are opening all over Orlando. The problem is that there seems to be too many yogurt shops opening too quick. It's only a matter of time before the market gets saturated...

As far as I could tell, all of the flavors at Menchie's were kosher. It's not surprising from a yogurt shop with a name based on a Yiddish word (meaning 'good person'), but somehow frozen yogurt isn't the first food that comes to mind when thinking of Kosher food...

Ben's Kosher Deli in Boca Raton, FL

Sometime last year I ate dinner at Ben's Kosher Deli in Boca Raton. Something that I wrote about that visit to Ben's got quite a few people upset, based on the emails and comments that I received. Perhaps it was because of my initial description of the demographics of Ben's customers, or maybe it had something to do with my explanation of how I don't follow religious dietary restrictions. I suppose another possibility is that these are avid Ben's Deli fans that couldn't fathom that I wasn't too impressed with the food here. Whatever upset people so much, I really wasn't expecting the response I got, so I'm wondering if I'll offend anyone in this post.

On my first visit to Ben's, the line was out the door to get in. On my second and most recent visit, we were one of the few occupied tables in the large restaurant. Pickles and coleslaw came first. Half sour pickles are awesome!

Last time, I found Ben's sandwiches to be very dry and kind of flavorless. On this visit, I decided to get something totally different and ordered the potato pancake dinner. I was actually surprised when the plate came. The large plate was filled with three of the biggest latkes I've ever seen with a bowl of apple sauce on the side. Taste-wise, these were really good, but imagine eating a huge plate of really dense hash browns. There's only a certain amount of deep fried potato that I could take in one sitting. Really, just one of these potato pancakes would have been plenty for a meal!

Overall, I was pleased with these potato pancakes. It was more fried potato than I could possibly eat, but they were otherwise good. Much better than the sandwiches from Ben's Kosher Deli...

Bagel Tree in Boca Raton

Bagel Tree in Boca Raton, FL seems to be the restaurant of choice for the retirees living in Century Village to have breakfast. I've eaten here in the past when visiting a Century Village resident, so this particular visit was no different.

I ordered a sesame bagel with Nova cream cheese and homefries. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining about food like the average senior citizen, but my homefries were served on the plate with someone's omelet. Their omelet was supposed to come with grits, and they weren't served at all until the waiter finally returned and was reminded. Once the homefries were transferred over to my plate, I found them to be really tasty. Moving on to the bagel, I asked for it to be toasted, and it was kind of burned around the edges. The Nova cream cheese seemed really stingy with the actual nova. There wasn't enough smoked salmon in there to justify the extra charge in my opinion. So in the end, I liked the homefries. Will I return? On the next visit to a Century Village resident, most definitely!