Our quest for a good bowl of ramen continues. The last time I posted, we had just visited Ramen Setagaya, where we actually go to quite often. We’ve found another place, Ippudo, (which is absolutely amazing), but that post will be saved for later in the week. To get to the Minca story, I have to write about my new obsession with riding the bus. I started riding the bus because of the L outages during the weekends. Slowly, the M14 has become my best friend - it goes with me to the grocery store, to Chris’ house, to the gym, and surprisingly, to a lot of cool restaurants in the east village. On Saturday, we hopped on the M14 bus by Chris’ house and headed to Minca. The bus dropped us off practically in front of the restaurant (it was a 45 minute ride - sheeks!), and we headed in to order some gyoza and ramen. We started off with the pork gyoza:

The pork gyoza at Minca was actually better than the gyoza I’ve had at Ramen Setagaya, but I still don’t like the thin skin from gyoza’s and prefer Chinese dumplings.

There are a lot of options for ramen, but I decided on the Minca Ramen:

The ramen comes with a tea egg, which is a hard-boiled egg that’s cooked with soy sauce and other spices (quite easy to make and they’re very good since they already have a lot of flavor). The broth was very hearty and much thicker than other broth’s I’ve tasted in the city. Also, the pork Minca served had the most meat and least amount of fat; the pork was very flavorful and not overly salty. I really enjoyed the noodles as well:

The noodles are handmade and are flash cooked and perfectly chewy.

Chris ordered a different type of ramen with chicken instead of pork:

His broth wasn’t as hearty or tasty, but his chicken was very flavorful. Chris didn’t like the broth, but enjoyed the chicken and noodles.

So, it seems like we had a good experience at Minca, but about halfway through the meal, Chris mentioned that the broths were both very salty. At first I told him that he was trying to ruin my perfect ramen experience, but then I realized that I was drinking a lot more water than usual. By the end of the meal, I was completely dehydrated and needed several refills of my water before I was able to walk out of the restaurant. The broth I had was really good (better than Ramen Setagaya’s, I think), but it was just too salty and I probably shouldn’t have had all of it.

Tip: If you’re ever in the mood to eat by yourself, head to Minca - they have a bar area that’s perfect for one!

How to get to Minca:

Minca
536 E. 5th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B
New York, NY 10009
212-505-8001

Over the weekend, I was headed to Union Square from the west village on the bus and saw that Le Petit Belge had finally opened. Chris and I immediately got off the bus (it wasn’t moving that fast anyway) and we hopped over to Le Petit Belge to try their waffles. The store had just opened on Friday and seemed really busy (they had brownie samples! But my brownie sample had a gray hair in it!). Le Petit Belge:

Le Petit Belge serves a couple of items - BerryWild frozen yogurt, handmade chocolates and marizpan, and freshly made waffles:

You can get the waffles with any of the toppings that you can put on your frozen yogurt, so Chris and I decided to go with whipped cream, raspberries, and strawberries (it adds up pretty quickly because each topping is 75 cents). I asked if the strawberries were fresh or if they were in syrup and the guy told me that everything is fresh (even their dough) because they’re European and that’s how they do things in Europe. The guys in the back were preparing waffles before people were ordering, so I was worried that the waffle was going to be cold when we got it:

The dough looked very sticky and gooey, but not like a waffle mix that you spoon into the waffle press - the guy working the waffle press was holding the dough in his hands and putting it into the press. They assembled our raspberry, strawberry, whipped cream waffle after it cooled down for a bit:

We were walking as quickly as possible so we could find a seat or a table (we eventually settled on the Bank of America ATM on 14th) but we immediately dove into our delicious waffle. The dough has a great texture and it slightly chewy (not because it’s undercooked). Chris agreed that it was a lot better than Wafels and Dinges.

Tip: They’re definitely still working out kinks (it took forever for the cashier to take orders because of distractions) so be patient - the waffles are worth the wait!

How to get to Le Petit Belge:

Le Petit Belge
22 E 14th Street
New York, NY 10003
212-807-7027

I’m always on the lookout for great noodles. We LOVE ramen, udon, and soba, so we decided to check out Sobaya for some noodley goodness. The interior is small but neat and we decided to sit at the counter for dinner. The menu doesn’t have that many options, but you can choose the type of protein you want (duck, shrimp, tofu skin, etc) and the noodle (either soba or udon). Their soba and udon are both handmade and fresh, so we decided to do one of each - I ordered the duck with udon and Chris went with the tempura with soba.

My duck with udon:

The udon was very chewy, but the broth and the duck didn’t taste right (there’s orange zest in the broth, which totally threw me off). The duck also had a lot of fat, and was tough and hard to chew.

Chris’ tempura with soba:

Chris’ tempura shrimp was tasty, but his soba noodles weren’t that good. They were a little overcooked (at least I thought they were).

If we could do it again, I would’ve paired the tempura with udon and the duck with soba, although I think I’d pick a different protein since I didn’t like the duck broth with orange zest. Sobaya has a good deal for lunch (a huge lunchbox for $15 filled with lots of goodies), but they don’t serve it for dinner, so we were out of luck.

Tip: get there early because it gets crazy around dinner time. You might end up waiting up to an hour for a bowl of homemade noodles on any given night!

How to get to Sobaya:

Sobaya
229 E 9th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue
New York, NY 10003
212-533-6966

On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered in Union Square to participate in a huge pillow fight on INTERNATIONAL PILLOW FIGHT DAY! Chris and I were on our way to lunch, but stopped by to watch the shenanigans:

After being in the Soho/Greenwich village area for the majority of the afternoon, we took the subway to Astor place to visit Very Berry. I’d never even heard of Very Berry before (and neither had anyone on the tour), but we were excited to try their frozen yogurt (even though I’d read less than stellar reviews about the place). Very Berry is relatively new (it opened on Saint Mark’s place on Halloween 2007):

I’m still amazed that everyone was such a trooper on the tour - we spent an ENTIRE day eating frozen yogurt for this tour (No bathroom breaks! No stops for solid food!)

1. Size of the hole:

VERY BIG HOLE!!! We were SHOCKED! I mean, DO YOU SEE HOW BIG IT IS?! You could hide things in that freaking hole!

2. Tanginess vs. creaminess: On a scale from 1 to 5 (one being tangy and five being creamy), Very Berry scored a 2, leaning more towards creamy.

3. Topping Variety:

All of the toppings were stored in air-tight containers, similar to Oko. They had berries, cereals, and basic toppings the other frozen yogurt stores carried, but they also carry interesting toppings like jelly beans.

4. Fruit quality:

On a scale of one to five (one being over/under ripe and five being perfectly ripe), Very Berry scored a very respectable 4!

5. Calories per ounce: Very Berry did not have their nutritional information available yet, but we ordered a 12 ounce container. The frozen yogurt server told me that the information would be out soon, but I haven’t been back since.

6. Price per ounce: Very Berry clocked in at 72 cents/ounce.

7. Atmosphere/quality of service: There were cute paintings of cherries and other fruits on Very Berry’s walls. Top 40 hits were playing in the background and the place was pretty empty. There were two people working the night we went both neither were very helpful (especially when I asked about nutritional information).

8. Iciness vs. Smoothness: On a scale of one to five (one being icy and five being smooth), we rated Very Berry a 1.5; VERRRRY icy!

9. Number of flavors: there are 3 flavors at Verry Berry - original, blueberry, and green tea. We sampled the blueberry and it had a medicinal flavor - it wasn’t natural at all.

10. Resilience to heat:

The yogurt was surprisingly resilient to heat and we didn’t see much meltage.

11. Presentation:

We all liked the presentation at Very Berry; they distributed the toppings evenly throughout the frozen yogurt and each bite was a tasty combination of mango, mochi, and raspberry.

We were pretty happy with the yogurt, as you can see from the results. We weren’t happy that there was no nutritional information available and we kind of thought the mango tasted like it came out of a can (it was either out of a can or a day old because it tasted gummy). We gave Very Berry a final score of 3.19/5.0. Tomorrow, on our 7th day of the fro-yolympics, we’ll head to Murray Hill, where we’ll sample Flurt’s frozen yogurt!

Here are all of the entries in order (in case you wanted to jump around):

Day 1: Oko
Day 2: Pinkberry
Day 3:Red Mango
Day 4: Yolato
Day 5: 40 Carrots
Day 6: Very Berry
Day 7: Flurt
Day 8: Berry Wild Smooth and Kindy Icy
Day 9: Crazy Bananas