Outer Borough Tour

Last week I was watching the latest No Reservations from Anthony Bourdain, when he was traveling with his crew to Melbourne, the city that I consider "forgotten" in Australia. I really don't know anything about the place, which is why I found this particular episode intriguing. What I didn't realize is that Melbourne is a huge melting pot that he described as the San Francisco of Australia. So he waltzed around sampling the local fare (and tasty beverages) like he typically does on his show and then he hit up a simple, back-street Szechuan restaurant. The food that he had there looked absolutely amazing and loaded with hot chili peppers. He commented that it is hard to find amazing Szechuan Chinese food even in a place like New York, which I mildly scoffed at - until I remembered that I can no longer consider myself a Manhattan snob anymore, considering I am the Jack of Queens (get it?). I have heard about some diverse food out in Flushing, Queens, which sounds like a disgusting place to me. Flushing, as in a toilet. Flushing, as in a part of the sound where all the pollution ends up. Flushing, as in a melting pot to where you can take a $2 shuttle from Manhattan Chinatown to. Wait, what was that?

So, Friday night after work, it was on; destination neighborhood: Flushing; destination cuisine: legit Szechuan Chinese; restaurant name: "Spicy and Tasty"; ethnicities represented in the discovering party: Latina, Gringo, and Indo-Caribbean; number of ethnicites other than Chinese in "Spicy and Tasty": 0. That's right, Erika, Priya, and I landed in a hotbed (pun intended) of spicy and tasty Szechuan cuisine. In Queens. That amazing part about this neighborhood is that I got off on the last stop on the 7 train and was immediately transported to Chinatown's Canal St, only with a few more buses (commuter, not tourist). It was jam packed with a wide variety of ethnicities and there were a ton of places to go eating. This is actually a legitimately sweet neighborhood, I could say.

Spicy and Tasty did not tell a lie about their food. The appetizers were being made at the counter next to the entrance and they were already prepared, so we knew that we were getting the spicy goods that couldn't be watered down like our entrees would be. They produced an inferno for my taste buds, but I couldn't get enough of the bamboo shoots and the bean curd? Amazing. Bean curd, who the hell eats bean curd. I didn't even know what bean curd was, but I couldn't understand what the waitress was saying so I said "yea, we'll take that one". Bean curd is like tofu, except it's more firm and tastes like CHEESE! Awesom stuff, I ate every last sliver of it.

After a dinner of double-cooked pork bellies (like a plate of thick bacon and veggies), spicy shrimp (juicy), and lamb home-style (blazing and succulent), we were all fat and happy and had enough left over to feed us for the next two days. But, being in this neck of the woods, we couldn't just go home without getting some legit boba tea. Question: why is boba tea so expensive? Those tapioca balls can't be that expensive to make, and surely the tea is cheap. Whatever, it's still great to drink and to introduce to the eager-to-try, easy-to-please wife :o).

Next stop: Priya's new apartment in Jackson Heights. Well, technically it's a year old and we visited it last year after she bought it and it was completely empty. And MASSIVE. It's now nicely furnished and is still the biggest one bedroom apartment I've seen in my life and is located in a very charming, historically protected neighborhood where something like 180 languages are spoken. Slightly diverse. Priya is awesome to hang out with and like a true Trini (from Trinidad), she busted out a bottle of quality rum (which was actually from Guayana) to treat us to some stiff rum and cokes. Just the smell of rum brough me back to the days of Bacardi-induced hangovers. But quality liquor never does that to you, so I got to enjoy some risk-free Cuba Libres for the evening. Before we knew it, it was 2:00am and we had to get home since we were planning on exploring Brooklyn the next day (in a blog to be named later). But we have lots of plans for hanging out with Priya this summer, like hitting up some clubs, eating some home-cooked caribbean food, getting her to come to our salsa classes, and drinking some more of that goooood rum!

J. Riley, a $10 taxi ride and we are home!