NY Food: Veselka

I decided to have some Ukrainian food while in New York. This happened at a restaurant called Veselka in the East Village. I ate at Veselka a few times in the past and enjoyed my previous visits, hence the return. I saw that Veselka is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year. That's a really long time for a restaurant's lifespan. I guess that's because pierogi are good!

I ordered the Meat Ukrainian Combo Plate. This started with soup, salad, and bread. I picked the lentil soup. The soup was my favorite of the three items. It had plenty of lentils and good flavor. The salad consisted of leafy greens, carrots, and dressing. It was exactly what should be expected in a salad. The bread was a little disappointing. It was a slice of non-toasted white bread. Butter was not served with the slice.

The meat plate itself included two potato pierogi, two meat pierogi, stuffed cabbage, and beet and horseradish salad. It's hard to go wrong with potato pierogi, and these were my favorite. Dumplings filled with potatoes are very satisfying. The meat pierogi were also good. Veselka's menu didn't specify the type of meat in the filling, but I'm assuming it was either beef or pork. The stuffed cabbage did specify the filling. It was stuffed with beef, pork, and rice. The cabbage was topped with a mushroom gravy.

Much like my previous visits to Veselka, I enjoyed my dinner. Perhaps I'll end up back at Veselka again on a future visit to New York.

Taj in East Village, NY

Another night in New York and I found myself looking for dinner again. This took me to the Little India section of the East Village where I ate at a restaurant called Taj.

 

They had musicians providing entertainment with sitar and drums near the entrance of the restaurant.

Taj offered a six course dinner for under $10, so that's what I went with. Course number one was a bowl of red lentil soup. The bright orange color of red lentils make soup look more enticing compared to their brown counterparts.

Course number two was a samosa appetizer. The vegetarian samosa contained potatoes and vegetables, wrapped up in a pastry-like shell.

The third, fourth, and fifth courses were all served simultaneously. These included a basket of naan and a big plate of rice for the table to share. The main course also came out at this point. This was the chicken tikka masala in my case. Cubes of chicken were served in an orange, yogurt based sauce and was very tasty. The vegetables that were also supposed to be in the dish were unfortunately nowhere to be found.

Course number six was rice pudding for dessert. I honestly wasn't counting how many courses we were served for the entire meal, so it was an unexpected nice surprise when dessert was served. It was an even nicer surprise when a second serving of rice pudding was brought to the table after we finished the first!

I enjoyed my meal at Taj. I really like these multi-course meals that all of the Indian restaurants in this neighborhood seem to all serve. They end up being a really good deal for the price, and I would much rather eat Indian food like this as opposed to the much more common Indian buffets.

NYC Icy in New York

Late one night in Manhattan's East Village, I stopped for some Italian ice at a small shop called NYC Icy. Some of the flavors on the menu were really interesting.

I ended up getting lemon and mango basil. The ices had a different consistency compared to other places. They were almost gooey. I'm not sure how exactly this was done, but I liked it. The lemon was good and tart, as it should be.

The mango basil ice was hidden beneath the lemon. Mango basil isn't a dessert combination that I would normally think of, but this was really good.

If you Google NYC Icy, a picture comes up of their purple carrot ice. This sounds interesting, but unfortunately, it wasn't on the menu on the night I visited...

NYC Angelica Kitchen & TKettle

After eating a very meaty lunch, I had the complete opposite for dinner. I ate organic vegan food from Angelica Kitchen in Manhattan's East Village.

I ate a Dragon Bowl, which consisted of rice, tofu, lentils, kale, zucchini, carrots, and some wonderful seaweed. This was served with a tahini dressing. I know many meat eaters would look away in disgust at this meal, but it really was delicious. Everything was good, with the exception of the lentils which tasted very bland. I'm not sure what the shredded purple seaweed that was used in the Dragon Bowl was called, but that is some of the best seaweed I've ever tasted. It was by far my favorite flavor in the whole Dragon Bowl.




After finishing dinner at Angelica Kitchen, I had dessert at Tkettle. They served what they called bubble tea (although I think the correct name is boba tea), and other variations on the idea, along with some actual food. Boba tea is very cool stuff. It is a type of tea that originated in Taiwan that is filled with floating tapioca balls. I ruined my vegan dinner by ordering a avocado milkshake. They blended half of an avocado, milk, and ice, and then poured the milkshake over the tapioca balls. An avocado milkshake is definitely not a combination that I would have thought of, but it wasn't bad. Drinking it without sucking up the tapioca balls left it tasting like it needed some salt, but with the tapioca, the milkshake was very good...