Sunday Fun Part 1 - Brooklyn Bridge, and LIONS at Jing Fong (yay!)

Busy week at work (and that's even assuming that tomorrow isn't a snow day 'cause of the snowstorm), but I did squeeze a lot of fun into last Sunday! Part 1 was the morning up to the first hour of the afternoon, when I joined my old Sebago friend Laurie for another walk across the Brooklyn Bridge followed by dim sum at NY's biggest Chinese restaurant, Jing Fong (the food's good too)! She likes to get friends together to do this on a pretty regular basis, and I'm so glad she's gotten me into the loop! It wasn't quite as shiny a day as last month's hike/brunch/hike morning, so I didn't take as many outside pix as I did last month, but I did like the picture above.

It did occur to me that I hadn't taken any pictures of the restaurant, which is impressive, or the food, which is delicious, last time, so here's the restaurant, viewed from the stage at one end of the enormous room and looking down to the far end. 

Here are a couple of the ladies with the carts full of more deliciousness than you can possible try in one sitting. I've stuffed myself both times, the walking back to Brooklyn across the Manhattan bridge works out really well. Both time there's been that last cart that goes by with something that looks really onolicious, but we're all too full - nice to have something to look forward to, I guess!

First round here, just getting started. We've got sticky rice, and tofu with ginger sauce (Laurie's favorite; I'm actually not a big fan of tofu but the ginger sauce is so good that I actually  kind of liked it), and chocolate bao, and, uh, some other bao (I think it was vegetable), and of course tea all around. I think one of the chocolate bao was the first thing I tried here - both times Laurie and I were the only ones up for the bridge walk (she said more people would start doing that as it warmed up, last month especially was SO cold!) and with the early start got to the restaurant first. We were mostly letting the ladies with the carts go by, because we didn't want to start filling up before everybody else got there, but when the bao cart lady stopped and told us about the chocolate bao, this was new to both of us and we had to try. VERY yummy! 

This was another thing I'd never had before Jing Fong - this time we named them "notcarrots" after one of the gang bit into one expecting a carrot and exclaimed, "That's not a carrot!" They're actually more like the sweet sesame balls, only with cilantro stems (actually kind of a good taste with the sweet, if you like cilantro, and if you don't it's really easy to pull them out and leave 'em on your plate)

And after that my intention of doing a good dim sum post fell apart because it was the end of Lunar New Year and the lions showed up and I got distracted, because lions are distracting. They just are, you know? :D And SO much fun. 

Last food picture - I don't know what they call this at Jing Fong but the snack truck (not sure whether it was a full-fledged manapua van or not but they definitely had a lot of yummy things!) that used to park outside the gate at 'Iolani, my high school in Hawai'i, called them "honey twists" and this was my favorite after-school snack! This was the cart that went by after I was too stuffed for one more last time, so this time I made sure to get one! Far from Hawaii, but took me back. In the background - tofu again, plus a really yummy beef and rice noodle dish with (I think) black bean sauce, plus the last of a plate of seafood balls wrapped in bacon. I wasn't even sure what the bacon was wrapped around when I asked for one, "wrapped in bacon" was enough for me, and it worked out fine!

Want to read more about Jing Fong? Click here! 

And that's pretty much it for Part 1. Part 2 as soon as I can - and this is where I announced over on Facebook that I'd earned my boat nerd card (in case there was any doubt that I deserved one)!