Shiro of Japan in Carle Place, NY

Goodbye Shiro of Japan in Carle Place, NY. I have happy memories of going here as a kid. Too bad they closed after being in business for over 50 years.

 

Soup

Salad

Rice, ginger, and mustard sauce

Salmon and noodles

Long Island Asian Food (Chaba Thai Cuisine and Tony's Sushi)

Here's a couple more restaurants from my travels. Today we're going to be visiting a couple restaurants in Long Island, NY serving Asian food. We'll start in Long Beach for some Thai food...

Chaba Thai Cuisine in Long Beach, NY:

Chaba is located in downtown Long Beach. They were a small restaurant but they were very busy with both people dining in and take out.

I had the Chicken Curry Noodles. I was a little afraid that this might be a boring dish of chicken, noodles, and sauce from how the menu described it. Luckily, this turned out to be a beautiful bowl of deliciousness. There was plenty of variety with lots of vegetables mixed in, arranged in a very structural fashion. The sauce was very tasty. No complaints about this meal.

Tony's Sushi in East Moriches, NY:

I had dinner on another evening at a restaurant called Tony's Sushi. They had the menu split into three different sections. One each for Japanese, Chinese, and Thai food.

I had the Singapore Mei Fun. There was a nice presentation with an orchid served alongside the mound of noodles, but the portion was a bit small for the price. The noodles tasted fine, although there really wasn't anything that made them stand apart from other noodle dishes I've had either. The annoying part of this meal was the employee's apparently urgent need to clear the tables. From the beginning of the meal when we were served noodles with duck sauce, all they wanted to know if they could take that away for us. Someone else ordered soup and salad with their meal. They were delivered at the same time, and the servers wanted to take away the soup before it was touched while the person was finishing up the salad. They did eventually take away someones plate before they were finished with it. It was strange. It seemed like they wanted us out really quick, but there wasn't a wait or lack of empty tables. Some manager probably told the servers to make sure they clear the tables and they really took the advise to heart...

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. 

NY Italian Food: Famous Amadeus, Mama Theresa's, Grimaldi's, and JFK Terminal Pizza

New York and pizza go together. Here's some of the pizza and other Italian food that I sampled on my last two visits to the New York City/Long Island area...

Famous Amadeus:

I had a slice of sausage and pepper pizza from Famous Amadeus Pizza in Hell's Kitchen. For a NYC pizza chain, I did enjoy this slice. I liked how they used slices of entire sausage instead of crumbling the  meat over the pie. The bell peppers were thickly sliced. Not the best pizza ever, but far from the worst. It was a little expensive as far as slices go.

Mama Theresa's Italian Restaurant in Westbury, NY:

I should have ordered pizza. Mama Theresa's had some delicious looking interesting pies behind the counter at the entrance of the restaurant. Instead, I decided to get pasta and ordered the Fusilli Al Pesto. At nearly $15, this dish was really disappointing. It was pasta and sauce, and nothing else. I don't know why I was expecting more, but I was hoping for at least something that I couldn't make at home for a fraction of what they charged here. Worst part was that the pesto sauce didn't even have much flavor.

Grimaldi's in Garden City NY:

I honestly don't get the huge appeal that Grimaldi's has. We ordered a half eggplant, half meatball pizza. Everything on here was bland and flavorless. The sauce had very little flavor. The cheese didn't seem to have any saltiness. The meatballs tasted like ground beef and nothing else. The batter on the fried eggplant was the most flavorful component of the entire pizza, but was still lacking. This Grimaldi's had a half hour wait. The one in Brooklyn gets lines around the block. I know the coal fire pizza thing is a bit of a novelty, but it's not worth waiting for when the rest of the is pizza lacking.

JFK Terminal Pizza:

I had a flight out of the Delta Terminal of JFK that was very delayed. I ate to kill time. I ordered a slice of vegetable pizza in the terminal. It was topped with spinach, black olives, sun dried tomatoes, cheese, and sauce. Pretty good for airport pizza. It cost way more than a slice of pizza should, but it was expected being inside an airport.

Bagel Doctor West in Franklin Square, NY

While on Long Island, I had a bagel for breakfast from a restaurant called Bagel Doctor West. I suppose there is or was other Bagel Doctors in the area if they needed to add West to the end of the name. The restaurant was in a small strip mall and was typical of many of the other bagel places in the area.

I had an everything bagel with smoked salmon cream cheese. The bagel was large and tasty, although it was slightly lacking in the seed department. I always find it interesting how different places do smoked salmon cream cheese. Sometimes it's the normal color of cream cheese with bits of lox mixed in, while other times it's blended resulting in a pink cream cheese that looks like it should be some sort of dessert flavor. Bagel Doctor West did the pink cream cheese. I personally prefer the first way of doing salmon cream cheese, but I still enjoyed this bagel regardless.

Mama's in Copiague, NY

I headed out towards a Long Island beach town while in New York. This brought me to Copiague where I had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Mama's.

The meal started out with a basket of garlic knots. The doughy knots of tastyness were covered in plenty of garlic and parmesan cheese and were served with a bowl of tomato sauce for dipping.

 

For another appetizer, everyone shared one of the specials that Mama's had for the day. It was a large caesar salad topped with fried calamari. I've never seen that combination before, but I liked it.

 

We also had the Margherita Pizza. This pie was topped with lots of fresh mozzarella, sauce, and basil. It seemed like the pizza was cooked a little unevenly with one side of the pie being way more doughy than the other, but otherwise this was a very respectable pizza!

Umberto's of Long Island in Boca Raton, FL

I had lunch one afternoon at Umberto's of Long Island in Boca Raton. I am assuming that this restaurant is connected with the nearby Umberto's in Deerfield Beach, although I wonder how much connection there is to the actual Umberto's restaurants in Long Island. We had asked our waitress which Umberto's in Long Island the restaurant was connected to and she seemed very confused and didn't know. Uniformed waitress or a restaurant in Florida trying to get New York snowbirds to come to their restaurant because of the name? Not sure, but I would hope they really are connected if they have awards from Long Island Press hanging in their windows.

I had the lunch special of two slices and a drink. To keep it interesting, I had a slice of grandma pizza and a slice of plain cheese. Both were okay, definitely much better than the messy slices from the Deerfield Umberto's. The grandma slice was my favorite of the two. Although the slices were okay, they did have a somewhat burnt taste. I think Umberto's needed to desperately clean their ovens.

Overall, the pizza here wasn't bad. It would have been better without the sooty, dirty oven taste, but otherwise this Umberto's served some pretty decent pizza. Besides, anywhere that serves grandma pizza can't be bad!

 

Belmont Diner in Elmont, NY

Belmont Diner is located in Elmont on Long Island, right across the street from the Belmont Racetrack. I ate breakfast here about a week before the Belmont Stakes...

Inside, there were plenty of horse racing themed paraphernalia...

A huge plate of whole wheat toast was served first.

Soon followed by my Spinach & Feta Omelet with homefries. This was a good omelet with plenty of fillings. The potatoes were also really flavorful, with no need to add salt or ketchup. With most of the nearby diners being insanely overpriced for what the food is, this breakfast was really affordable and the food was above average!