Category Archives: Food Halls

Food Halls, Latin/Mexican & Caribbean, Midtown West, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews

Bolivian Llama Party

July 14, 2016 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

I’ve been a little bit bummed out about the kiosks available at TurnStyle, the semi-new food hall located underground at the Columbus Circle subway station. It seems to be mostly coffee, candy and merchandise; but Bolivian Llama Party is a different story. This place is serving real food; not some pre-packaged bullshit.

Saltenas, in particular, are their specialty. They’re similar in form to empanadas but they differ in style. They typically consist of a soupy filling and a slice of hard boiled egg inside of a baked outer crust.

Bolivian Llama Party also offers slider sandwiches and interesting drinks. We tried three different saltenas; Beni (beef), Toco (pork) and Chimba (chicken). We also tried two different sliders (triple pork and beef brisket).

Two of the saltenas were a bit too sweet for my liking. One was beef, and I’m not sure if the other sweet one was pork or chicken. We got them mixed up in the bag, and when you bite into these things the filling in one is largely indistinguishable from another. The third, which was either Toco or Chimba (I’m leaning toward Toco), was delicious and packed with great savory goodness. Both sliders were excellent as well, but I preferred the pork slightly over the beef. You can’t go wrong with either of those sliders, though.

Triple Pork full sandwich is amazing!

Roast pork, bacon and pork belly cracklings.

BOLIVIAN LLAMA PARTY
TurnStyle Food Hall
1000S 8th Ave,
New York, NY 10019

Commentary, Food Halls, West Village

Gansevoort Market

April 19, 2015 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

Below is a quick and dirty photo dump of some of the cool joints in Gansevoort Market. My wife and I strolled through after eating lunch so we didn’t really partake in anything here. When I get back down here I will update this post accordingly.

Bruffin:

Luzzo’s Pizza:

Some other interesting shops, like gelato, tacos, sushi, etc.

MEAT! Cappone’s and Macelleria:

Some signage:

This little crepe joint was cool too – I nabbed some video:

Greek yogurt being made, teste bag format:

Bangkok Bar looked delicious:

Donostia has some interesting looking sandwiches:

This was probably the coolest thing to behold. Bacon on a stick for $5, and it was HUGE:

Would love to try a chorizo dog too.

Essentially I need to go here with the intention of eating, vomiting to make room, and repeating. Fuck yeah, Bulimia!

Commentary, Downtown, Food Halls, French

Le District

April 12, 2015 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

Le District is a pretty cool French food hall type of joint down in Battery Park City, beneath Hudson Eats. The place is broken down by what they sell in each area, such as cheeses, meats, crepes, etc. Check it out:

Commentary, Downtown, Food Halls

Hudson Eats

April 12, 2015 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

Hudson Eats is a food hall down in Battery Park City. There’s a bunch of good shit here to try. I’m glad to see more stuff like this popping up around the city.

Blue Ribbon Sushi:

Blue Bottle Coffee:

Little Muenster – a grilled cheese shop:

Northern Tiger Chinese food:

Mighty Quinn’s BBQ joint. I reviewed their main location HERE.

Num Pang – great asian sandwich shop. Check out my review HERE.

Oh and by the way – really nice view from the seating area:

Salad joint for pussies:

Dos Toros:

Dig Inn:

Skinny Pizza – likely for pussies:

(Titty) Sprinkles bakery:

Olive’s:

There’s Black Seed Bagels, which is all the rage right now (see my separate review):

And there’s also an Umami Burger outpost (see my separate review):

Another note about this place: they just opened up a fancy French food hall on the lower level, called Le District. See my write up of that place HERE.

Deli, Downtown, Food Halls, Restaurant Reviews

Black Seed Bagels

April 12, 2015 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

I don’t understand the infatuation with Black Seed Bagels. They’re small, incredibly overpriced, and taste no better than any other good bagel shop in Manhattan. This satellite location at Hudson Eats was understaffed. It took way too long for my bagel to come out, because there was only one person making orders (and there were only two people ahead of me on line when I walked up).

Complaints aside, I did like my bagel. I ordered an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese, salmon, tomato, red onion and capers. The bagel wasn’t very toasted and came to me kind of cold. Not the worst sin (I like my salmon and cream cheese to be cold), but a toasty bagel would have been titties.

BLACK SEED BAGELS
Brookfield Place
200 Vesey St.
New York, NY 10080

Brooklyn, Burgers, Downtown, Food Halls, Press Reviews

Umami Burger

April 12, 2015 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

My wife and I took a stroll through Hudson Eats and took down one of these burgers. I gotta say; it WAS pretty good. We had the manly burger and an order of truffled up fries. Very nice, though with a Six Point Sweet Action the total came to about $28. I can totally get behind the big hype on this joint though. Truffle burger might have to be next!

On a second visit to this location, I lost a little of the oomph for this place. My wife and I ordered a sunny side burger (with the egg on top), a truffle burger (sorely in need of a crunch element), and the Korean fries (big let down).

The sunny side burger was pretty great, mostly because the softness of the bun and burger were broken up by a parmesan chip and some arugula. However, the meat was well done – very overcooked.

The truffle burger was delicious, with truffle cheese and all that oniony goodness. It was cooked to about medium well, which is okay for me but not ideal. The meat tasted overworked (very uniform and springy), a little greasy, and like it was not fresh/formerly frozen. I’ve had better burgers at diners. Worst thing about this was that it was in dire need of a crunch element. No lettuce? Come on, people…

The Korean fries sucked. They were sweet potato fries with some kimchi on them. Soggy too – no crispy crunch whatsoever.

The onion rings, however, were pretty good. They were very fluffy with an almost dough batter fried around them. Pretty fun and quite filling in the tummy.

I went back to the location in Williamsburg recently for an 8-burger tasting, and I have to say this place is back on the up. While our meal was free due to it being a press event, the quality of all the burgers we tried was top notch. They still need to work lettuce or crunch elements into their burgers, but overall it was a big success.

UMAMI BURGER – HUDSON EATS
Brookfield Place
225 Liberty St
New York, NY 10281

UMAMI BURGER – WILLIAMSBURG
158 N 4th St
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Burgers, Commentary, Food Halls, Midtown West, Other, Ramen, Restaurant Reviews

City Kitchen

March 8, 2015 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

City Kitchen is a small second floor food hall that has some pretty decent proprietors in it. All of the food sold within is pretty much meant for take-out as opposed to dine-in, though there are a few tables available and bar seating along with windows.

I’ve decided to lump all of my reviews for each place within into this one post for easy access.

First is Kuro Obi, the ramen joint at the far end.

This is an offshoot of Ippudo. They offer the karaka-men spicy pork and chicken broth ramen. It was good. The noodles were the wavy egg style, and all the ingredients within were great. I just wish for $13 I got more than two thin slices of the pork belly.

Next up was Whitman’s for a burger and fries.

The burger was great – cooked nicely to medium, good pickles, mayo coverage, lettuce and tomato. Excellent bun (potato) as well.

The fries were lackluster. Maybe I should have upgraded to blue cheese fries. They were just a little greasy and not crispy enough.

For dessert get some “shaved snow,” An ice-cream textural spin on shave ice.

We had the banana cream, finished with some coconut shavings and condensed milk (and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal).

Nab some donuts from Dough on your way out. But if you see the famous hibiscus flavored ones, get as many as you can. They sell out quick.

We tried lemon poppy and chocolate this time. Both were amazing, doughy, big, soft, and flavorful even if not fresh out of the oven/fryer. But I was bummed that the hibiscus was all gone by time we finished our ramen and burger. Ahh what the hell… I’ll throw in some shots of the hibiscus donut from way back when I first tried them at another location:

CITY KITCHEN
Row NYC
700 8th Ave.
New York, NY 10036

Commentary, Food Halls, Union Square/Flatiron

Eataly

January 2, 2015 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

Here’s a shameless photo-dump of some mouth watering scenery at Eataly, Flatiron’s legendary Italian food market. I suggest coming here for a long day. Get lunch, walk around, taste shit, walk around some more, taste more shit, and then sit for dinner. Enjoy the food porn, you bastards.

Front signage:

Hallway: like a department store for food.

Desserts:

Signage for what looks like a great roasted meats sandwich joint:

CHEESE!

Nice looking seafood:

“Meat: restaurant:

Shellfish:

Eaters:

Of course I managed to find the meat counter:

Pasta shelves. There are rows and rows of aisles like this.

Expensive fois gras:

Bread bakery:

Pizza:

Chelsea, Commentary, Food Halls

Chelsea Market

December 23, 2014 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

Below are a couple of photos from Chelsea Market. Eventually I will give some more info about what’s to be eaten here. For now, other than these two photos, I can really only provide you with a link to my review of the famous Mokbar ramen joint that is located here.

Burgers, Food Halls, Midtown West, Restaurant Reviews

Genuine Roadside

October 1, 2014 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

NOTE: THIS PLACE IS FUCKING CLOSED! Such bullshit…

After hearing good things about this place, and the fact that it was listed in a top 10 or 15 places to get a burger under $10 list, I had to try it. And why not? I love Gotham West Market. If by some wacky turn of shame this place was bad, I could always hit The Cannibal or El Colmado.

Check out the retro condiment area:

Here’s the full menu:

I grabbed myself a smokehouse burger, which has jalapeño mayo, smoked gouda, bacon, and BBQ sauce on it. This was excellent, especially washed down with a nice shake. I ordered vanilla cardamom, but I was not really able to taste the cardamom.

Shit was good, and the fries were nice and crisp. I’d put this above Burger Joint easily, and I paid the exact same price for both meals:

But I wasn’t done there. For dessert I had a fucking classic burger: lettuce, tomato, special sauce, and cheddar. This was great too.

It was even better with American, as was my photo, on another visit.

Now all that’s left to try is the double cheeseburger, and the buttermilk batter fried chicken sandwich. Fuck yeah.

UPDATE – So I went back and put down a double cheeseburger, the buttermilk fried chicken sandwich, an order of fried pickles and a spicy Mexican chocolate shake. Fucking delicious, everything. This time I was definitely able to taste the spice in the shake. The apple slaw on the juicy, crunchy chicken sandwich was the perfect topping to go with it. Add some Texas Pete hot sauce on that bitch and it is heaven. The double cheeseburger was incredible. Nice flame broiled flavor, nicely cooked, juicy, cheesy and delicious without being sloppy. I even enjoyed the fried pickles. Nice and crisp.

And here’s the William:

Breakfast here is pretty fucking fantastic too. I had a fried green tomato BLT with an egg on top. It was hands-down the best breakfast sandwich I’ve ever eaten:

My wife had the chicken & waffles, which were perfectly executed, and came with a really kick-ass maple butter to slather on top.

UPDATE 9/3/17

Went back in to try the fried green tomato, chicken sandwich and double burger again. Still excellent as usual. And I grabbed a nice show of the burger again.