ACZoom  ·  Archive-2016

Xian Foods - Pictures and details on the Albums - Flushing's Chinatown.

Xi'an Famous Foods is worth the long trek down to Flushing, Queens. And their best items travel well too - the cumin lamb burgers - though be aware that the appetizing, hot, spicy smell of the food pervades the subway, the bus, and car, so make sure it is wrapped well!

Their original location is in Flushing, Queens, New York.
And now they have multiple locations in the city too - mostly downtown, in and around Chinatown: 67 Bayard St is one location. All the locations are quite small, with very little seating. And it can go from empty to crowded in seconds. Think standard NYC hole-in-the wall type of place, with great food.

[2012 Update] So the Bayard St location is good to go to if pressed for time, since going to Flushing takes the whole afternoon out. But - it seems to me that Spicy Cumin Lamb Hand-Ripped Noodles has far less lamb in the NYC location than at the Flushing location! Next time around, I plan to get the Spicy Cumin Lamb (Plate) which is all lamb, and a side dish of noodles (they don't have rice on the menu).
The Lamb Cumin Burgers are outstanding in both locations. If you take them home, sprinkle some lime juice on them, to kick up an already excellent dish another notch!

After another trip to Flushing, can confirm that food is better there. In addition to the small underground Golden Mall stall, they have full restaurant two blocks away at 41-10 Main St. They label it as a chic version of their original restaurants and have renamed it to biang!. It does look really nice. If walking from the Train 7 Flushing station on Main St, 41-10 is around 3-5 blocks down, and 41-28 Golden Mall location is another 2-3 blocks down.

Grocery shopping for this creature of habit.

My weekly grocery bag, here are all the things that I usually get:

Good Stuff

• Brown Cow non-fat plain yogurt.
  This brand is the best - perfect amount of sourness, right consistency, great taste. And for once-in-while binging, nothing beats the Cream-On-Top variety. I stick to the plain varieties, no need to indulge in the sweetened or fruit flavored versions.
  The non-fat plain yogurt is on my daily menu. Here's a link to Brown Cow website. This brand is available in the local Whole Foods Market.
• Zeppy's Bagels.
  They come from a bakery called Zeppy's Baigel Bakery, and the bagels are sold in a few local stores, for example, in the local Whole Foods Market. The nice thing about these bagels is the right amount of chewiness - not too hard, and a great taste - unlike the totally bland, tasteless bagels served at many local stores. This is very popular in the local store, so many times there are no Zeppy's Bagels left late in the evening.

Guilty Pleasures

• Butter-Rum muffins from the local FoodMaster.
  Don't even ask how many calories for each muffin, half-a-muffin is probably the right serving for once every two days! Having tried so many muffins from so many local bakeries, this was a incredible, serendipitous find - local grocery chain with heavenly muffins! These are made fresh daily, and invariably, by late evenings sometimes even by afternoon, the butter-rum muffins are all gone, so have to get them early. The FoodMaster also increased the cost of these muffins 40%, and made them slightly smaller in 2006! Other types of muffins are still the old price, so I suspect they have caught on to having made a hit with these butter-rum muffins.
• Banana-Nut Bread, from the local Stop&Shop
  Another find that is unexpected - local grocery chain, with pretty good banana-nut bread.

The food category contains recipes, and restaurant information in various cities.

Recipes

Recipes listed here are mainly comfort food - things you want to eat to remind you of your childhood, that involved growing up in Bombay and Ahmedabad.

Many people complain of recipes not being reproducible - well, all the recipes here are also not capable of being reproducible - it all depends on the cook! So, these are mainly approximations, to be taken as guidelines.

What makes something comfort food? If eaten every day, would it loose that classification?

Instead of storing these on my computer, easier to store on the web, so I can search for it when I need it.

Nowadays, I can enjoy a turkey-sub with mayo, go nuts over smoked-meat in Montreal, crave good quality steak cooked medium-rare with a side of creamed spinach, and try to keep the argument between thin-crust NY pizza vs thick-crust Chicago pizza going on and on - but one does need variety, so that is when the comfort food need kicks in, and that usually involves one of the recipes listed here.