We never realised we were that tired last night, we woke up late! We were supposed to reach a bus pickup point at Bowery before 8.30am which took 15-20 minutes of walking. Hurriedly, we prepared ourselves and rushed to the pickup point. Thankfully, we reached on time but the bus was not here yet.
We rushed so much that we forgot about breakfast. Therefore, we had to grab a snack while waiting for the bus to come. I chose Doritos because I have always watched their advertisements since years ago especially during each Super Bowl championship. The advertisements are funny and interesting, you should take a look. I went to ask the shop owner from whom I bought my snack from regarding the arrival of the Woodbury bus, he said that the bus comes late once in a while due to traffic. That's a relieve to hear, at least I know I didn't miss the bus. By the way, Bowery is also part of Chinatown already, along the way, we see many Chinese shops and people, mostly speaking in Cantonese!
Our bus is here, we're heading to Woodbury!
The journey to Woodbury takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes, so we rest and do some sightseeing while on our way. Iris laughed so hard when she took a picture of Subaru showroom at the outskirts of the city as I asked her to snap pictures of something that isn't available in Malaysia. I bombarded her with facts about Subaru and she laughed all the way. I can therefore conclude that she is not into cars, haha.
All the trees are like this during our journey, autumn season is beautiful!
We reached at about 10.30am, finally!
The moment we reached, the first thing we went after was food!
Carnitas Burrito
Price : $7.25
Taste : 6/10
What a 'beautiful mess'. It doesn't look too appetizing but it actually tastes quite okay. Well, I wasn't too satisfied with the taste as I expected better. People have been saying that Chipotle is very good but I think that I have tasted better elsewhere. Iris didn't eat so much of this as she isn't a fan of beans. The staffs really put a lot of guacamole though, very fulling. What I love was the Chipotle sauce from Tabasco, the fiery smoky taste really triggered my taste buds. Speaking about service, I find it rather slow as they took their time to prepare the buritos for me, I hope it isn't like this at other branches.
She ordered Pumpkin Spiced Latte from Pret. I never tried this before and was never a fan of pumpkins. This was an exception though, it tasted nice. I like Latte and the pumpkin spice just went well together. Latte blend was silky smooth, good coffee!
The shopping began immediately after brunch!
We shopped for about 5 hours and time really flew! It wasn't enough at all, there were several brands we wanted to head to but time was running out. It's a nice place to shop, things here are affordable for middle end labels, we didn't want to leave, sob! Lesson learnt, go for the brands you want first, never browse one shop after another.
Before heading to the pick up point, we managed to buy a chocolate frozen yogurt from Pinkberry, it's as good as Llaollao. The texture of the froyo is so smooth. Tastewise, the chocolate wasn't too concentrated, thus the aftertaste didn't linger much. Back to Manhattan!
When we reached back to Bowery where the bus picked us up, it was about 7.30pm. Since we shopped and were handsful with bags, we had to get a ride back to our unit first. Dropped our stuffs and immediately head out to Chinatown!
The entrance of Manhattan Bridge, very scenic. It looks so neat and fine, love details of the architecture.
We reached Chinatown after passing Manhattan Bridge. We were starving and needed to find a place for dinner. Using the trusty Yelp app to look for good food, we walked to a restaurant to have Chinese cuisine.
When we entered the restaurant, it was packed! We had to sit all the way to the back which is close to the kitchen. Still, we felt fortunate to be able to get a table. By the time we reached here, it was about 9pm already and it was quite cold and windy outside, feels nice to be indoors.
Shredded Pork & Preserved Cabbage with Rice Cakes
Price : $4.95
Taste : 6/10
We find this rather plain, the rice cakes were quite smooth, but not as good as the ones we had in Malaysia. There's nothing much to describe, you might like it if you are a rice cake person. I do find the shredded pork tasty, but the preserved cabbage was rather blant.
Shanghai Lo Mein with Beef
Price : $5.95
Taste : 9/10
This one taste surprisingly good. Our first impression were that it was too oily and that it looked rather plain. Well, I was fooled by the looks of it, we got addicted to it when we slurped the noodles into our mouth. This is definitely worth trying, second to Xiao Long Bao since the dumplings are so famous here among the locals. But if I were to choose, this would be my first choice.
Pork Fried Dumplings
Price : $4.95
Taste : 4/10
This was a bad order, we should not have asked for this if we knew it was this bad. It was very oily, and it the dumpling skin was very thick, not to our liking at all. The fact that the skin was thick and that the texture was not so good, we got turn off by this dish. Iris was curious to try this out because she thought it would be as good as those Japanese Gyoza that she usually orders at Japanese restaurants.
Xiao Long Bao/ Pork Steamed Dumplings
Price : $4.95
Taste : 7/10
This is their signature dish, it's the top favorite among locals, the Xiao Long Bao. In my opinion, I prefer Canton-i/Dragon-i Xiao Long Bao more compared to the ones here. The dumpling skin is also thick, but not as thick as the one we had from the Pork Fried Dumpling, there's this puffiness sensation as you bite the dumpling. As you bite it, you get this exploding feel where the soup just gushes out into your mouth. Beware though, if you ate it while it was just served, you might 'burn' your tongue.
We were the last customer by around 10.30pm, everyone have left and the staffs were mopping the floor and cashier already closing sales. We had a chance to talk to the lady boss and captain as we needed to know where to get authentic American Ginseng. When you come to Chinatown, you must buy this because it's much cheaper here. They have a strong China accent as they spoke and Iris had some trouble trying to interpret to me what they spoke. I was already kinda lost, trying my best to understand what they were saying. When we got the details, we left the place with our take aways since we couldn't finish out food.
Shanghai Cafe
Address : 100 Mott St, New York
Phone : +1 212-966-3988
Hours : 11:30 AM - 11:00 PM
Website : http://www.shanghaicafenyc.com
Have you guys wondered about those Chinese takeout boxes? The ones that we always see in American movies and TV series. Well..
Next post : Manhattan Day 3
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