NYC: Ice Cream and Sushi

I got back to Florida yesterday from visiting my friend who just moved to Hoboken, NJ. It's only a 10 minute train ride into New York City. We did a lot of exploring and ate some really good food. Today and Wednesday I'll post the highlights of my food adventures. It was a yummy trip.

The first journey was through Chinatown. I've been to NYC several times but have never ventured there. It was a mob scene! It was the most crowded of anywhere I went to the whole trip. Tourists and vendors were crowding the streets. I was thinking of buying a purse, but the huge crowds in every store deterred me. I really didn't need a purse anyway. I wanted to get some solace from the hordes of people, and it was a hot day, so ice cream sounded great. I remember hearing about Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, so we asked around and finally found it. We walked up to the store and there was a line out the door, so it had to be good! They had a list of flavors, "exotic" and "regular". The exotic flavors were flavors Americans are born and raised on like chocolate chip, pistachio and cherry vanilla. The regular flavors were asian favorites like red bean, green tea and lychee. I wanted to try one of each so I settled on almond cookie (regular) and coconut fudge (exotic). They were both excellent! The flavors were both very creamy. The almond cookie had very small bits of cookie with a great almond flavored base. The coconut fudge had the perfect amount of coconut flavor (I hate that "suntan lotion" taste I usually find in coconut products, which is overpowering) and a rich fudge swirl. You could taste each of the flavors in each bite.



Now onto the sushi...We ventured back into Hoboken and were ready to relax. We were starting to get hungry and I hadn't had sushi in a while. My friend said, "Nothing will be as cool as Dragonfly" (Dragonfly is the BEST sushi place in Florida, it's in Gainesville). I agreed with her, but thought we should try it out anyway. So we headed into the Sushi Lounge. It's very unassuming from the outside, but then we walked in and it was a very modern, dark atmosphere with a DJ playing house music. I turned to my friend and said, "It's exactly like Dragonfly". It was pretty crowded, the bar was full as were most of the tables. They had a good selection of martinis, and I had one which was a combo of sake and plum wine. The menu was great! They had a big selection of innovative rolls. I had one with tuna, salmon, avocado, mango and a sweet miso sauce (that's the large roll in the picture). My friend had one with lobster, mango and jalapeno. The service wasn't the best, but I wasn't in a rush so that was okay. I'd highly recommend it and I'm sure I'll be going back next time.