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Popioca – The Tapioca of the Future

Posted on May 29, 2009 | 15 Comments

Look – inexpertly doctored photos from a visit to ToyQube, a “designer toy store, art gallery, cafe, and lounge” in Flushing, Queens.

Dennis, Heather, and Sarah A at ToyQube

Flushing is the site of New York’s largest and most prosperous Chinatown. It’s also a very long subway ride from most other parts of the city, so I don’t get out there more than a few times a year. Our main destination this time was Fu Ran, which took over the the site of a famous restaurant specializing in cuisine of Northeastern China, the now defunct Waterfront International.

As far as Fu Ran goes, the jury is still out for me and my pals. Heather and I had one exceptionally good meal there a few months ago – steamed pork & sour cabbage dumplings that tasted like they’d been made to order and whole fish with a hot, spicy sauce. But the meal we had on this occasion was not that great. We did have this, but didn’t love it. Not sure if it was our taste that failed or the preparation.

Vampire Toast

However, we did make our third or fourth visit to ToyQube, a designer toy shop right up Prince Street from the restaurant. I’m tempted to call it an adult toy shop, but it’s not sex toys. It’s just toys designed for adults (see detail – vampire toast). In the photo above, Heather is holding Gloomy, the Naughty Adult Bear, who is pink and has a propensity for violence.

Although small, ToyQube does make room for a bubble tea counter and two tiny tables. This time, they were excited to announce the debut of a new type of boba (bubble tea bubbles): “Popioca, the bubble tea of the future.” Popioca bubbles have a refreshing liquid filling! I was a little worried about a cum-gum effect, but it was good. In the picture, you can see some passion-fruit flavored ones glittering futuristically in the February sun. The boba also come in chocolate and yogurt flavors. Tea available in about 30 flavors. Sarah A had a rose tea with chocolate popioca.

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Posted in New York, Restaurants, There's a beverage here!

Tagged boba, bread dolls with blank soulless eyes, bubble tea, chinese food, flushing, fu ran, queens, toyqube

TOS gently

Posted on May 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

After assiduously combing the extensive Terms of Service at Serious Eats for a minute, I have reached the legal determination that it’s OK to re-post my comment here.

This was in one of their frequent “post a comment, win a cookbook” threads (Cook the Book). The prompt was to write about a favorite childhood food memory. The theme was inspired by, and inspired, sentimental collections of whatever the hell it was that you ate as a child that was so awesome, and you never have it any more, e.g. Wonder Bread French toast with cream in the batter and grape jelly on top.

I wrote this:

I was seven the first time I had the chance to travel outside North America. My dad was Israeli, and my mom’s family was English, so we took a family trip to Israel and England. This was in 1970, just 3 years after the 6-day war had given Israel control of the eastern half of Jerusalem, including the Old City.

I liked what I knew as “Israeli” food OK. I liked English food better. (Hey, I was seven! Double cream!) I liked pastrami sandwiches and bagels and lox. But the revelation of my first trip abroad came when we went to a sit-down restaurant in the Arab quarter.

I was not a “kid’s food” kid. Whenever we traveled, I always ordered the most exciting, novel-sounding thing on the menu, and my parents always let me. (This included the time when I got food poisoning at age 10 after being permitted to order steak tartare in a restaurant in France.) So I asked for the pigeon.

I didn’t expect anything more out of it than novelty and bragging rights. But I thought that roasted pigeon was one of the most delicious, savory, tender things I’d ever tasted.

I still love pigeon, but fresh pigeon is hard to get in the US. I live in New York, where you almost might as well ask for rat. It’s sometimes sold frozen, e.g. at Dean and Deluca, as “squab.” It’s easiest to find in Chinatown, but in my experience is not always cleaned in Chinese groceries. But in some Mediterranean countries you see dovecotes everywhere.

I’m sure that pigeon (that pigeon) was one of the freshest, least intensively farmed servings of poultry I’ve ever eaten. I don’t want to get all wistful about a bygone Palestinian food culture that I know nothing about–for instance, whether it’s actually bygone. All I know is, I really liked that pigeon.