Roger spent the middle of January 2013 in New York, and his posts cover a lot of ground in a few days.
It started sweet. At Doughnut Plant, three doughnuts were photographed with the bag: crème brûlée, rose and pistachio. The next day brought a chocolate crêpe at Max Brenner. Around the same time, at Amélie in Greenwich Village, the order was escargot, pork medallions and bourbon with a table of friends.
Midtown got the classic treatment. At Carmine’s in Times Square, a platter of rigatoni with ragù ended in a food coma. At the Broadway Lounge above Times Square, Roger ordered an Uptown Manhattan and hoisin roast pork sliders — which he immediately translated back into what they really were: char siu bao.
Not everything landed. A brunch at Central Park came with a blunt note that the service was terrible.
The most revealing posts come from Chinatown. Roger ate xiaolongbao there early in the trip, then returned on January 16 for fishball noodle soup with extra roast duck, green tea egg tarts and a full dim sum session. Around the same time came a Cuban dinner on the Upper West Side — empanadas, soup, fish, steak and braised pork shank.
These are dated 2013 records. What they show is a traveler who could do the tourist hits and still find his way back to a bowl of noodles that tasted like home.
