Ba Xuyen

So yesterday I did something out of character. I traveled to Brooklyn. Ugh yes, Brooklyn. One of my friends suggested we go try this "really great" Viet place on 9th ave + 43rd street. So I went. It's ghetto, it's small, it's in the middle of no freaking where, but man, it was good- yeah, pretty much better than the truck. (see post here)



Mostly I went to see my two old high school friends, whom I haven't seen in literally 5 years. Danny Cai and Alejandro Chen-Li! But I was honestly really impressed with the sandwiches there. Ale had a Sardines sandwich! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THEY HAD SARDINE SANDWICHES??? (sounds gross, since I'm not a huge fan of fish but some of you may like to try it...). I had the grilled pork sandwich. It was freaking amazing. They had some kind of strange white sauce mixed in with the spicy hot sauce,.. made the sandwich a little easier to eat. It wasn't dry at all, the pork was really tender and full of flavor. It definitely was a good eat.



Ghetto, dirty, hole in the wall, but damn good. And for $4.00 for a sandwich this big? I definitely don't think you'll ever find that kind of price in Manhattan OR Queens...



*5 points to whoever can find my blackberry. LOL

Taste: 5/5
Atmosphere: 2/5 (I definitely would not come here after 8pm)
Cost: $4.00 (FOUR BUCKS FOR A HUGE ASS SANDWICH? I THINK YES!)

Venetian Sandwiches - Italy

This probably won't be a recommendation to any of you, since the next place I'm going to blog about was a little hole-in the wall-pub/sandwich area that my friend and I stumbled upon in Venice. So here's the back story. Basically I went to Italy for about 10 days back in early December. Most nights we stayed in Hostels, but on the day we went to Venice, we were going to sleep on a night train that night to journey over to Naples (which is about a 8 hours trip). So, that whole day in Venice, we had to carry around our Backpacking Backpacks.. and it was pretty horrific.

So here we were, two angry (and sick of each other friends), super hungry- haven't-slept enough-because of loud snoring hostel-room-sharing backpackers, super fresh post graduates, been traveling already for 7 days...and we had no freaking clue where to go to eat. Now, Venice is a beautiful city, and there are TONS of restaurants everywhere...but they all had the "Tourist Special" on the Menu- which is a huge picket sign that says - "DO NOT EAT THERE BECAUSE THE FOOD IS PROBABLY CRAPPY AND YOU WILL PROBABLY BE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR IT". And we've already had enough of that, so we REALLY wanted some GOOD FOOD.

We walked for a really long time before finally giving up, and we saw this little pub.. so we went in. We saw wooden benches and tables lined against the walls and this place was basically a bar and sandwich house. We plopped down, threw our bags on the side, and was like, "OK LETS EAT".


Basically what they offered were these little sandwiches that were cut in 4 pieces, kind of like how my mom used to cut my peanut butter & jelly sandwiches when I was in 5th grade. They had many different types, turkey, roast beef, avacado, salmon, whatever... and you can buy 1/4th of a sandwich or 4 pieces to create a whole sandwich. You could mix and match all the different flavors too.



I'm not much of a sandwich person, but I was hungry, and I didn't really speak italian,... so I pointed at something that looked like turkey. There was a lot of meat in the sandwich, and there was a tangy mustard sauce that they used inside the sandwich. I think i also tried a Roast beef piece, but that was pretty dry and didn't taste as good. The turkey and mustard/salsa mix was a good choice and tasted awesome. Pairing it with a cappuccino probably wasn't the best idea, but nonetheless, good experience. It was probably the best meal I had ... in all of Italy. No joke.

"Birreria Forst" is the name of the Restrant and its about a few streets from the famous St Marc's square in Castello 4540. It's on this narrow street that leads to Molo Riva degli Schiavoni and of course the Grand Canal. (Go to Venice.. and you will understand that there are no directions in venice). Ha!

For more information check out this link.