Artichoke Basille

I dropped by Artichoke Basille's today, for the first time.  Since it opened half a year ago, it's been compared repeatedly with DiFara's.   I tried a Margherita slice, and a Sicilian slice.   This corresponds with what I order at DiFara's, where I usually try and get an ordinary slice and a square slice.   I avoided the eponymous Artichoke slice, which seemed really thick and although I like artichokes, it seemed topped with something more like artichoke dip.  Yuck.

At any rate, the margherita slice is pretty well done, in both senses.  It had a nice thin crust, and had a rich taste as a result of the generous parmesan sprinkled on the pie.  The crust was a bit too blackened.  The Sicilian was pretty much the same.  Rich and a bit overly blackened.  On both, the sauce was tangy and complemented the richness of the cheese very nicely.  All in all, everything was great, and I'll definitely be back here again when I'm in the neighborhood.  This is the best slice I've had in Manhattan.

My friend Ben and I ate at the XiAn stall today, at the basement of the Golden Mall in Flushing.  We had the LianPi, cold noodles with chunks of soaked bread in it.  Very odd, but that's xi'an food for you.  The noodles were slick, slightly spicy, a bit sour, and in general very flavorful.  We also had the cumin & lamb sandwich, which was small but dense.  Like all good street food, it's very simple.  Lamb, cumin, stirfried, sandwhiched between two dense pieces of bread.  Both these things were great.   The menu had many other options, included a few variations on what we ate, such as noodles with the lamb & cumin, just plain stir-fried lamb & cumin, and another meat sandwich.

The stall itself was tiny and cramped, and was too crowded.  We had to eat half the meal standing up before we got seats.

After this, we ate some "sumo dumplings" at a little window on the street, and a curious yellow sticky rice with thick pork and dates.

I love Flushing.  Sometimes I wish I lived there, so I can have food like this as a snack regularly.   But perhaps I'd just endlessly gorge on this stuff, and make myself sick.

Today I stopped by the large, modern looking public library there too, for the first time.  It was three levels, and was almost as good as the mid-Manhattan library.  Better looking, but not quite as much material.