We Made a Blog

At my day job, we like to go out for lunch a lot. But the Chinese food in my area is barely edible. One day it dawned on my co-workers and I that we work right near Flushing, or China West as it could be referred to.

Getting all the way into China town in an hour, despite our proximity, is a daunting task. Instead we’ve taken to stopping short of China town and getting food in Korea town. The food here is excellent. Traditional noodles and Korean BBQ is a fantastic combination.

Mad for Chicken considers itself a BBQ restaurant but its a little more than that. They serve a few standard items and few odd items as well. One of the odder items is the Ramen Noodle with Cheese. This has become a staple of our ordering regime, along with the Small Tonkas. They are perfectly fried, panko crusted pork cutlets.

The first time we went there we ordered the afore mentioned items as well as the chicken and an octopus dish. The chicken was perfectly crisp but still juicy inside, unlike many a fried chicken served to me in my life. The skin is probably inflated first like duck giving the diner a crisp, crunchy sensation with every bite. The octopus on the other hand, was terrible.

Chewy and lacking any flavor this was a disappointing dish. It also cost around $20. On our second visit we tried to learn from our mistakes and only ordered the dishes that were around $10 or less. This, my friends, is the magic formula at Mad for Chicken. The less expensive dishes are thoughtful and delicious. Its like the chef feels compelled to make entree style dishes, but leaves his heart out of the equation.

We ordered the french fry and shrimp combo (around $13) and received perfectly fried shrimp and fries seasoned with Parmesan. You have to commend this place for its use of exotic ingredients. Or its bravery in combining ingredients most places would never put on the same plate.

This place is a perfect lunch spot. Who can complain about a place where the cheaper the food is the better it tastes? They are also delightfully friendly, offering complimentary frozen yogurt after every meal. A welcome site to calm the burning from the Ramen Noodle.

Mad For Chicken

157-18 Northern Blvd.
Flushing, NY 11354
Tel: 718-321-3818

Hahaha, does it matter what they are advertising? Exactly. It is for doggy day care, they must be some good sweet-talkers because this is an excellent ad for what I can’t imagine to be a large company

(Spotted on Ads of The World)

Advertising Agency: Jung von Matt, Stockholm, Sweden
Creative Director: Johan Jäger
Art Director: Mikael Kriisa
Copywriter: Petter Dixelius
Photographer: Sven Prim
Dog: Paco
Published: October 2009

When an artist reinvents a classic in a modern way, it can be tricky. This sketch in particular is so iconic, that one would be hard pressed to convince me that there is a good reason for messing  with it. But this updated version undoubtedly will resonate with today generation the way the original, black and white footage, might not.

Artist: James Zito

Jade Asian Restaurant & Caterers

Let me start by clearing the air on the topic of dim sum. If you, like I did, think dim sum is a type of dumpling, you’re wrong. If you think you’re going to at least find what commonly passes for a dumpling at dim sum, you‘re still wrong. Because if you should go looking for dim sum and find the real thing, you’ll be in for a shock.

Entering Jade is like entering the set of a game show. Master of ceremonies at the top of a marble stairway, mic hand, surrounded by adoring fans. Except it’s not a suave 67-year-old-man with salt-and-pepper hair and an unnatural tan. It’s an angry woman screaming out what I presume are numbers, or perhaps names, at her fans, the throngs of hungry Asian folk lining the stairways before the stage that is dim sum.

Dim sum is the act of getting together and eating an enormous breakfast in an equally enormous hall at a rather large table. This table will be comprised of your party and however many other parties it takes to fill up your round table. In my case, I was running late and my party had already been seated.

I got lucky and circumvented what was later described to me as a thank-the-good-lord-we-had-a-native-speaker-with-us kind of experience while waiting for the game show host to call you. Alone, I traversed the sea of tables and found my friends already eating. I was quickly poured a cup of chrysanthemum tea by my new company and they started telling me what was good or bad.

Now, I don’t really know how to rate a piece of tripe. Essentially as long as I found it edible, I figured this was some damn good tripe. And, well, it was edible. But there is a very particular flavor profile involved, something I’ve only tasted in China. Ever hear of star anise? It’s a very un-American flavor that is in everything there. That’s what told me this place was for real.

Sitting down, carts were zipping around me motivated by wrinkly women. The carts were all filled with food sitting in the same bamboo steamers that you usually see moo shoo in. Except these were filled with things that you’ve never seen in a Chinese restaurant before. There’s nothing Americanized here; this stuff is authentic.

So authentic that, as I sat there, a cart passed by with duck tongues. I recognized these from my trip. When I stopped the woman, she was so happy that a little gwai lo knew they were duck tongues. She was even more pleased when I ordered them. Duck tongues are like a chicken wing with only one bone and no joints. It’s just a little piece of tender, yet somewhat gummy, meat. And it happens to be delicious. I had tried these before, so it wasn’t totally new territory but I’d had them only once and never expected to see them again. But then came something I’ve never had before.

Duck feet. This was new. The last foot I ate, I didn’t enjoy. It was a pig foot. When I thought I had finished all that was edible about the foot I put it down, not full but satisfied that I really gave it a go. Then I looked at the plate of the friend who’d introduced me to pig feet in the first place. She had but a few bones left. I basically had what was served to me. But the duck foot was different. It was rather good. Again, not unlike a chicken wing. It had small bits of meat around bones and joints that fell apart. It was all tender, tasty and only the juiciest bits of meat. But it definitely was a foot; there was no disguising it, you bit through the webbing. This is not for everyone, but if you like, or don’t mind, the jelly kinds of meats, the cartilages and such, then duck feet are for you.

Now that I have sufficiently scared you from ever eating dim sum, let me give you some advice. There are way more average things than what I described. There are the commonly eaten parts of the pig and the chicken. There is a plain rice and good tea. But the truth is, don’t expect good service if you don’t go with someone that speaks the language. Even with someone who did, they tried to give my friend lo mein. But, hey, that’s ok. I could picture working in a kosher deli and keeping the tongue and chopped liver for myself and those in the know.

If you get the chance to go with someone who speaks Chinese, take it. It’s important. It’s fun. It’s like stepping into China for a morning. The only real negative is that it’s in Queens. Nothing’s perfect.

Special thanks to Hana and Rei
Jade Asian Restaurant & Caterers
136-28 39th Ave
Flushing, NY 11354
(718) 762-8821 

I would really like to hear how other people interpret Eolo Perfido’s work. This series is particularly interesting. Deep and brooding, you wonder what you’re missing.

On Behance.net

We Made a Blog has acquired something life-changing. Specifically, the Keurig Café One-Touch milk frother. Believe us when we say it was never our intention to purchase such an item. Our lives had seemed relatively complete without it. Then one day last week we went to Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up some K-cups for the office Keurig coffeemaker at our day jobs.

Past an island of Keurigs and Keurig-related accessories lay a great sea of K-cups. We paced it stealthily, happily. Until we breached the edge and saw another island, another world. The land of Tassimo. We were gripped by envy. Sleeker, more Euro, available in three colors and boasting Starbucks pods, the Tassimo taunted us. Even its name suggested it was a zippy Ferrari to our gear-grinding Volkswagen.

We had chosen the Keurig ourselves out of an office supply catalog. We’d grown a bit disenchanted; the cup of coffee it dripped out was average, made even more so by the limited number of brands of K-cups that were office-authorized to order. So we’d taken to parting with our own cash to acquire a higher class of K-cup. But we’d just learned that none could achieve near-telepathic communion with the Keurig via bar code like the pods did with the Tassimo to calculate the perfect amount of water, brewing time and temperature for each beverage.

Four boxes of K-cups in hand but now sullen, we returned to the Keurig display for some sign that maybe we hadn’t made a second-rate choice in our daily coffee-brewing experience. That’s when we saw it. Barely bigger than a coffee mug, in the de rigueur brushed stainless of so many coffee-related products, was the true Keurig-branded product of our dreams. It promised two servings of hot or hot and frothed milk in 90 seconds with the touch of a button. Purchasing it was not even a question. Making peace with its necessity was. We engaged in mutually enabled rationalization. With darker roasts we could make near-lattes, macchiatos, cappuccinos. We’d save money by cutting down on our Starbucks visits. Our productivity would be higher. We’d be more creative. Possibly, we’d grow taller. Reader, we bought it.

For the record, yes, it’s pricey. So much so that the cashier initially thought there was an error when she rang it up. She asked us repeatedly if we knew that it was, in fact, only a milk frother. Her cautiousness just made us more resolute. We vowed to buy the best possible organic milk the neighboring Whole Foods had to test it out.

Back at the office we eagerly plugged it in below the coffee infographic we have posted up on the wall (are you sensing an obsession here?). Filled with milk and all lit up, it got to work. We peeked through the glass top to watch the milk softly whir to perfection. A bold K-cup that would have been merely an afternoon jolt was transformed into an experience by the creamy froth. Mornings are different. Afternoons are different. Life is better.

If you ask either of us for the dollar amount of the Café One-Touch, we’ll tell you that the cost was $40 and that we paid for only half of it. Neither statement, on its own, is a lie. But neither is the fact that, to us, it’s priceless.