Momo crawl, Black Friday in Chinatown and dinner at Baar Baar

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discuss recent eating adventures.

Pat took the subway to Jackson Heights, a multicultural neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It’s home to a large population of Nepalese and Tibetan families, and momos are one of their specialties. 

Momos are round or crescent-shaped steamed or fried dumplings with fillings of spiced beef, chicken, goat, chives or potato. Led by a friend who has sampled many a momo in the Himalayas, the group visited four restaurants and one food truck, tasting a good cross-section of dumplings. It was a new culinary experience for Pat and one she would like to repeat soon.

Both Menu Talk hosts described their opulent Thanksgiving feasts, and Bret continued his feasting on Black Friday. He and a group of longtime friends have a tradition of visiting Chinatown after turkey day, and this year they started with soup dumplings at Joe’s Shanghai, a spot famous for the item. They followed that with drinks at Whiskey Tavern, then soup at Great NY Noodletown. Bret admitted the day-after “feasting” has gotten a bit lighter through the years.

Pat visited Baar Baar, a modern Indian restaurant in NYC’s East Village, where she enjoyed a dinner of small plates and inventive cocktails. Among the standouts was Dahi Puri, tiny crisp rice shells filled with potato, cilantro and spices and topped with yogurt mousse and house-made chutney. Her Anarkali cocktail was an Indian-flavored riff on an Aperol Spritz; a combination of gin, Aperol, rose cordial, cardamom and prosecco.

We moved on to chat about smoothies and bowls after playing clips from an interview with Deborah Von Kutzleben, CMO of Tropical Smoothie Cafe. She discussed how the chain differentiates itself from its competitors with an all-day menu, how it is positioning itself for Gen Z’s snacking style, and how items like a pork slider are the perfect add-ons for a signature smoothie.