Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

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January 31, 2010 By cheryl

The Loading Dock: "Worthy" Fish Tacos


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This might be what they call a classic New York food fairytale.

Boy moves to New York. Boy starts selling fish tacos at out of a little stand at the Brooklyn Flea in Dumbo. Boy’s tacos develop a hungry following. Boy opens restaurant.

And to add to the cool factor, he opens it in the loading dock of a former garment factory in downtown Brooklyn — talk about economical use of space in this land-starved city.

The Boy in this case would be Forrest Cole, who explains on his Web site that he first started selling fish tacos at the flea after fruitlessly trying to find a “worthy example” of a Baja-style fish taco in the city.

Now, that’s talking quite a bit of smack about New York’s many pre-existing taco joints.

We had to see just how “worthy” these fish tacos were …

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Brooklyn, Mexican, Restaurants Tagged With: Adobo, Avocado, Baja, Beans, Beer-battered, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Flea, Burrito, Carne Asada, Carnitas, Chicken, Chipotle, Choncho's Tacos, Downtown, Erik Hougen, Fish, Forrest Cole, Mahi-Mahi, Marinade, McDonald's, New York, Parsley, Police station, Pollo, Rice, Slow-cooked pork, Soda, Taco, Tomatillo

August 7, 2009 By cheryl

Burgers: A Marriage of Shrimp & Tofu


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I now appear to have a regular lunch date with a gregarious bunch of new friends.

We love to cook and we love talking about cooking — so this little thing about never having met hasn’t exactly stood in the way of our growing friendships.

It all began with a lazy Sunday morning conversation on Twitter when three women, one in Paris, one in San Diego, and one in New York, started craving BLT sandwiches. That blossomed into our first intercontinental BLT lunchdate, which nudged us to new levels of creativity.

Ellise in Paris made a beautiful BLT with chipotle mayonnaise and Poilane bread and Karen in Atlanta created a mouthwatering grilled fontina cheese BLT. Nicole in San Diego actually baked a truly unusual Basque sheepherder’s bread for her BLT. (You’ve got to check out Nicole’s sheepherder’s bread pictures — it was a yeasty architectural wonder if I ever saw one.)

Our virtual lunch left us (temporarily) sated — but hungry for more.

So, for our next lunch, we decided to tackle another standard: Burgers.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Let's Lunch, Recipes Tagged With: Asian sesame oil, Bacon, BLT, Burger, Chili, Cilantro, David Chang, English muffins, Ginger, Grass-fed beef, Hoisin, Jicama, Korean, Lettuce, Lunch, Mango, McDonald's, Minced Chicken, Momofuku, New York, Paris, Salad, San Diego, Scallions, Shrimp, Singapore, Soy sauce, Tofu, Tomato, Twitter

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