Still catching up

Hey hey hey,

One more good eat to catch up on- READING MARKET. I honestly think Philly has better quality food over New York- even though we have more options here, Philly offers more authenticity. Like Reading Market, for example...just a hub of foodies making all types of cuisines- walking around can be overwhelming, especially if you're like us (meaning you would eat everything at every stand.)

Lately, my go-to has been the pork sandwich from DiNics- it's just as good as Jim's Cheesesteaks if you're looking for a real Philly treat! I zoomed in on this pic since I think it really says it all:

pork juice, broccoli rabe, shart provolone. and pork

DiNic's in Reading Market. Note the crowds.

My brother has been really into the Reubens at Reading. Although it's my fave sandwich normally, it's just  impossible for me to pass up on my pork sandie when I'm here. Still, this reuben looks pretty good:

Woops, forgot to post for 2 months

Hi everyone- looks like we forgot to post for a few months there. It got a little busy there with the holidays and me changing jobs and everything! But here is a brief look at some of the delicious food we've gotten to try!

Tiny Giant's Sandwich Shop: this was a dreary Saturday in January. We just saw Blue Valentine and tried to get into the Meatball Shop...only to find out that there was a 2 hour wait. At 2:30 pm! Hot place. So, slightly miserable and incredibly hungry, we walked around the Lower East Side and tried to rack our brains about somewhere that we had read about. Finally we remember this sandwich joint across from a pork bun spot we'd tried last year- it was a great choice! check out the pics:

Spicy turkey- onions, cheese, chipotle mayo, bacon

Meatball hoagie mmmm

Another great eat- chocolate chip walnut cookie from Levain Bakery on the Upper West Side. Best. cookie. ever. We'd read about this online where it was rated the best cookie in the city, and we have to agree. We had just left the Museum of Natural History and were craving something warm and chocolatey...then we smelled that bakery-bread-perfect smell and basically followed it down the street until we saw this tiny basement store surrounded by people! Luckily the line moved fast and we each got our goodie...then, as usual, we were too hungry to wait for the cross-town bus home and instead opted for a 5 minute taxi back to our place..where the only sound for 15 minutes was the sound of us chewing and oohing and licking the melted chocolate off our fingers.

Dinosaur!!

A few weeks ago, the three of us splurged and went big at Stanton Social, a tapas-style restaurant down in the Lower East Side. It was a fun night- everything was about 3 bites and about $15, but for one night we pretended to be trendy New Yorkers and just ordered what we wanted. Originally we'd heard that they did amazing kobe beef sliders (which we did try and they were amazing) but what ended up going on our "best thing we ever ate" list were these below: french onion soup dumplings. DUMPLINGS! Are you hearing this? A perfect bite of soup- beefy broth, onions, cheese, all encased in a ball. It was so cool.

Dumplings

We also ordered a desert because our waiter was going to be mad if we didn't spend a ton of money (or at least that's how we interpreted his moodiness.) Still, we don't regret it...fresh doughnuts served with rasberry, caramel, and chocolate sauces. Is it improper to stick your finger in the sauces and lick if off after the doughnuts run out?

Weekend Recap

Here's a quick wrap-up of the places we ate around Manhattan this weekend that we think you should try!

At Baohaus, a place famous for it's pork buns, we each got the Straight Frush combo - 3 baos of your choice + a drink for $13. (a good deal, in comparison to the popular Momofuko where you only get 2 small buns for $9. rip off! but still good :)

The Chairman Bao were by far the best - braised pork belly on a steamed bun, topped with crushed peanuts, cilantro, Haus relish, and taiwanese red sugar. We love the belly of pork! They were more filling than expected and the pork was nice and fatty :). Lately we've been obsessing over pork- we're savory junkheads!

We also took a chance ordering some odd drink- "mr. brown iced coffee"- served in a can. It tasted like chocolate milk. are we complaining? Nope.

Then obviously we needed sweet to balance out the savory, so we walked (burned off some of that pork belly) up to Momofuko Milk Bar since we always hear good things about their 'cereal milk'. You could order it as actual milk, in a shake, or as custard. We just sampled it before going with the pumpkin cheesecake custard. The cereal milk tasted like...cereal milk. I'm not sure if that's a good thing...we agree we'll stick to drinking my cereal milk in the morning but nice try David Chang.

The pumpkin cheesecake custard was too rich and we ended up tossing it (and we are ones to never let a bite of food go to waste)...woops! But no worries we still downed the compost cookie.

Momofuku Milk Bar 207 2nd Avenue (East Village)

BaoHaus 137 Rivington Street (Lower East Side)

A Hungover Halloween

Hey (future) loyal fans! This is our first official post. Welcome to Reubens and Cubans.

Backstory: we have never been the types of girls to successfully pull off a "sexy" Halloween costume (sexy firefighter, Babe Lincoln, sexy nurse, etc). This year, we decided to go for the 80s male rocker look (a la Poison). Let's just say we aimed for gasps, and it's gasps we got.

Meet your authors: 2 single ladies fresh off the boat from Penn State, eating their way through the Big Apple.

Cubans [Mary] 

Reubens [Jamie]

We rocked out all night, until Jamie overheard a guy at the bar ask his friend "Are those men or women?" at which point she tore off her wig and promised "I'm a woman!". Things got wild, ended at an awful diner where we ate awful buffalo-less wings (which you'll soon learn is one of our favorite foods) at 3am. When we woke up this morning, eyeliner still intact, we decided we needed to set out to remedy our hangover and to make up for our awful late night diner experience. 

Turkey Club from Ess A Bagel

After the slow morning we finally got our asses moving and went to get our coats back from a friend's house downtown. Until of course, our stomachs started growling and we got distracted. Ess A Bagel is this pretty famous joint that has amazing bagels/cream cheese/other things we never get since we always get bagels. (Does anyone else ever think all the toppings on display in the counter look like it's been sitting there for +4 days? The hummus and smoked salmon spread both had a crust on it.) Anyways, after waiting 45 minutes for a sandwich, we finallly walked out happy (albeit still hungover and even hungrier) and headed to Bryant Park to eat.

hungover heaven

As you can see in the pics we both ordered the turkey club on everything bagels- a great choice. Usually I stick to cream cheese or the BEC (bacon-egg-cheese) for breakfast, but we figured we needed something more substantial to soak up the alcohol sitting in our guts. This ended up being one of the best sandwiches I've ever had on a bagel- all of the elements came together perfectly. The juicy (and piled-high) turkey, the crispy succulent bacon, the crunch lettuce and tomato, and of course the freshly baked bagel just melted in my mouth with each bite. It looked overwhelmingly big but we both ended up housing them (FYI- this happens a lot) and then basked in the sun talking about how good the food we just ate was. Small bummer- the guy who made it forgot to put our cheddar cheese on it (we asked for it for an extra $1)- this didn't end up being a big deal since you really didn't need the cheese anyway, but just FYI if you go make sure you remind them! The turkey club + a medium coffee was about $13.

So, a successful first post! More to come in the future. And we promise we won't always be hungover messes.

Peace,

Reubens [Jamie] + Cubans [Mary]

Test

Just a test. SHACK

Mmm.