My Favorite Foods

Being home this weekend was fantastic. Saturday during the day, Mike and I did a little local shopping and then for nostalgia we visited our old stomping grounds in Kew Gardens, Queens. We got pizza at a place called Paul Michael's that Mike and I used to order from all the time. This was back when Mike lived in a basment apartment called the dungeon, and I still lived at home with my parents.

Paul Michael's is a great example of a local Queens eatery that is friendly, and happens to serve really good food. The people working there are so nice and the patrons are locals from the neighborhood. Their pizza is awesome and they also have delicious Italian dishes like spaghetti with meatballs and homemade lasagna. It was so fun to go back to a place we used to frequent when we first started dating back in 2002! It brought back all sorts of funny memories, and reinforced the fact that we can't wait to get back to NYC.

On Sunday, my parents took us into Flushing which might as well be renamed mini-China, and we had an amazing lunch at Joe's Shanghai. The Xiao Long Bao, known to Western Devils as "soup dumplings," are delicious. We had pork and crab xiao long bao, regular pork dumplings, shredded pork and pickled cabbage noodle soup (my absolute favorite thing - EVER), cold spicy pickled cabbage, scallion pancakes, spring rolls, and shredded chicken with wide see-thru noodles. Everything was super good, and we were all in a food coma by the time we were finished, but it was worth EVERY BITE!

Being in NYC is great, and being home in Queens is especially great because I really miss the diversity and the great ethnic foods that are so easily accessible there. I know that we only have one more year to go before we're back in NYC and I can't wait.

Here are a few pics of the xiao long bao and me eating...yum.