Cemita's @ Brooklyn Flea - NYC

Brooklyn Flea stop #3: Cemita. There were some other food stalls in here, but after this, I was way too stuffed to try anything else.

Cemita's only has a location at the Brooklyn Flea at 1 Hanson Place. This is during the winter, so they may have more locations popping up during the warmer months.

Cemita's signature menu item: the Cemita

At $9 each, it's fairly pricey. But it's also quite large. Half of a cemita was about the size of the box from my Takumi's Taco order.

Half of a cemita

All I can really say about this is it's packed with ingredients, very filling, and tasty. This half of a cemita probably filled me up as much as my taco and hot dog combined. The ten layers of toppings combined worked well together. 

Rating: 

Great value here. I'd recommend it if you're at the Brooklyn Flea.

Takumi Taco @ Brooklyn Flea - NYC

Takumi Taco was my second eat during my Brooklyn Flea adventure.

Takumi Taco's menu

Takumi Taco has locations at various flea markets in the NYC area, as well as food trucks. Their tacos are at least $5, so when I ordered, I figured they'd give me two.

Japanese Curry Beef Taco

But nope! It's just one. One expensive taco, embellished with some kind of corn chips. Fritos maybe?

The corn chips were completely unnecessary. Are they trying to make this look like fries? Make it look like I'm getting more value for my $5? It didn't do much for me.

But the taco was good! It had a nice, crispy, hard shell with curry beef and some other toppings. The curry beef was very savoury and hot. It dripped over the corn chips and made the corn chips better to eat.

But still, at $5, this was kind of a rip off. It was a small (though delicious) portion, but that worked out fine for me since I wanted to try more.

Rating:  

It lost points for it's high price and trying to get away with it by adding corn chips. It could get away with the price if it were in a swanky location, but at a flea market? No.

AsiaDog @ Brooklyn Flea - NYC

The Brooklyn Flea market has several locations, but only the one at Skylight One Hanson is open during the winter.

The flea market is open on Saturdays and Sundays according to the website. We came here on a Sunday.

Upon entering, you'll see a bunch of makeshift stores selling a bunch of stuff you'd expect at a flea market. My friend and I walked around, expecting to find food somewhere (as mentioned by a coworker of mine), but we couldn't find anything.

We saw people walking around with food though, so we continued looking around. When we were about to exit the building, we saw a sign that pointed downstairs that mentioned food, so we went down.

The dining area had a few food stands set up, as well as a few artisan stands selling things like chocolates and individual oysters. There were a couple of food stalls there too, but we only tried three of them.

The first of the three (I'll get to the other ones in subsequent posts) is asiadog. They serve hot dogs with a twist on the toppings (almost all topping combinations are Asian-inspired). The hot dog menu options here were the Ginny (Kimchi + seaweed flakes), Vinh (Vietnamese banh-mi style: aioli + pate + cucumbers + pickled carrot and daikon + cilantro + jalapeno), Mel&Steve (Asian sesame slaw), Sidney (Thai style relish with mango + cucumber + red onion + cilantro + crushed peanuts + fish sauce), Wangding (Chinese BBQ pork

belly + onions), Ito (Japanese curry + homemade kimchi apples), and Mash (Spicy ketchup + jalapeno

mustard + crushed salt and pepper potato chips). 

My friend and I ordered the Wangding and the Ginny (I wanted to try Ito, but they were out of it when we got there). They didn't look spectacular or anything - in fact, you could probably recreate some of these easily at home. But even so, my friend said the Wangding was good, and though I'm not a kimchi person, I really enjoyed the taste of their homemade kimchi as a topping on the hotdog.

Their website suggests that this location inside the Brooklyn Flea is more of a pop-up store rather than a permanent location, but they do have an actual store in the NY area. I'd recommend trying them out.

Rating: 

At $8 for two standard sized hot dogs on some pretty standard looking buns, these aren't exactly cheap, but they're great if you're in the mood for a different twist on a classic street food.

Treehaus - NYC

My friend stumbled upon this place while looking for a place with iced coffee at 10pm. He got his iced coffee and brought some menus back to the hotel for me to look at. It seemed pretty good, so we came here for breakfast the morning after. 

This place is pretty big. It's also quite nice. Upon entering, there are two counter areas: one where you order coffee/drinks, and another where you order food. The drinks counter had some smoothie samples available for customers to try. The smoothies were delicious, but at $7/cup (looked like a 16oz size), it was pretty expensive. There were laminated and paper menus near the food counter. Seating is available upstairs.

Food counter

Delicious smoothie sample

They also had some buffet-styled pick-your-own-food trays. It's not an all-you-can-eat deal though, but more like the cooked food section in an upper-scale grocery store (like the Whole Foods Market in Yorkville). 

The food trays

They also had a shelf of artisan confectioneries and other stuff like chocolate bars, candies, sauces, etc. None of these had prices (I dislike that), so you probably won't find out the price of any of these until you bring it to the cash.

A shelf ful of stuff

Their breakfast selection was pretty good. There are a lot of choices to choose from. I ordered the black forest ham with egg and cheese on a croissant, and it came out to $5.99 after tax. Compared to the Metro Cafe, this was cheaper and tastier (and greasier, thanks to the croissant). My friend got some egg/mushroom mix on a bun, and he enjoyed that as well.

Black Forest Ham Sandwich

Egg & Mushroom Breakfast Sandwich

The bill. Pretty cheap considering every meal I've had here has been greater than $8.

Treehaus is connected to a Korean Bibimbap restaurant (called Koso Fresh or something)  that never seemed to be open when we went by, but we were here on a Sunday before noon. My friend didn't see the restaurant open during his late night iced coffee run either, but it seems to be open (and busy) on weekdays. It's owned and operated by Treehaus, offering a build-your-own bibimbap menu for you to create your own mixed rice bowl (lettuce/cabbage option available for people trying to avoid carbs). That would have been nice to try out.

Rating: 

I'd definitely come back the next time I'm in the area. I was a bit disappointed that the bibimbap restaurant was closed though and that the hours were not visible, and I didn't like that some of their items on display had no prices on them. But the food was good, the environment was nice, and we had no problems with the service, so I would recommend this place.

Takahachi Bakery - NYC

Storefront

This place is close to one of the other DoubleTree hotels in Manhatten - the one in the financial district. I looked up a bakery in the area while planning my trip, found this, and decided I wanted to try it.

I bought three things: Green Tea Macaron, Black Sesame Macaron, and Green Tea Crepe. 

Green Tea (Matcha) and Black Sesame Macarons. The green one is green tea. The black one is black sesame. 

*Captain Obvious, Fly Away!*

These tasted exactly the way they sounded. No surprises. If you like green tea or black sesame flavours, you'll like these.

Matcha (Green Tea) Crepe

This tasted the way you'd think it'd taste. I think there was a red bean cream in between, but I'm not sure since I don't eat crepes or red bean often (so this was a pretty useless description, huh?).

They have some pretty typical looking Asian buns here too, topped with matcha powder. My friend got some of those and said it was good.

Not too bad of a place to pick up some desserts or breakfast items. It's across the street from a Dunkin Donuts and a Starbucks, so you're within proximity of free wifi.

Rating: 

Lombardi's Pizza - NYC

This place is known as the first pizzeria in the United States. So it should be good after all those years of pizza-making experience, right? I'm not that big of a pizza person, but I enjoy a slice every now and then. There seems to be a lot of rave reviews about this place too, and since my friend wanted to do this for dinner, I was hoping that it'd be good enough to make me rethink pizza being more than a last-minute party food.

And wow, this place was amazing!!!

... is what I'd like to say, but no. I wasn't impressed with this place. 

When we came in here, there was a couple sitting next to us. After looking at the menu for two minutes or so, the guy made small talk with us and voiced his displeasure with the place. To be honest, I thought it was a good thing since it set my expectations lower.

They don't sell individual slices here. You have to order whole pizzas. 

The pizza here is pretty expensive. They use quite a bit of sauce and cheese, so the cheese is stretchy as you take a bite out of a slice (not my thing, though I guess some people like their pizza extra cheesy and stretchy). Their smallest size is a 14", 6-slice pizza, and it comes in at $16.50 for just the cheese and sauce. Each additional topping is $3 on top of the base pizza price, so if you're used to ordering from a cheaper pizza chain with more toppings, you'll probably pay $30 for an equivalently topped medium pizza.

Medium Pizza with Meatballs. $16.50 for the base and $3 for the 6½ meatballs they used as toppings.

My friend liked this, but he's a pizza person and generally likes all pizzas. I didn't like this. For me, this was not worth the money or time.

Rating: 

I don't get the hype. I wouldn't come back here.

Joe's Shanghai - NYC

This place is pretty famous in NYC. When we arrived, we were seated at a communal table with three other small groups. A pair of them seemed French and had a tour guide book with them, so I guess this was one of their spots.

Joe's Shanghai has a lot of your typical Chinese Food items, but they're known for their dumplings. 8 pieces for $5, and each piece has soup in them. They come out hot.

Pork Dumplings

After trying a few... I really wonder why they're so popular. It's honestly nothing great. Just another Chinese restaurant as far as I'm concerned, preparing typical Chinese food. 

Service is terrible too. As soon as we sat down, one of the waiters expected that we knew what we were getting before we even opened the menu. We just opted for the dumplings only since we weren't that hungry and he was rushing us, and he looked kinda pissed. We were seated in an area that was kind of a tight space. There was another girl seated directly behind me, and it happened to be an aisle where the waiters kept walking through, so my chair was constantly being hit.

I guess if you've never had regular Chinese dumplings before, you can try this place out. But if you have had real Chinese food before, this place isn't anything special. 

Rating: 

Maybe their regular menu items are good, but I'll never know. I don't have any intention to return.