Upper West in NYC

We tended to come to upper west side more often, but not so much these days. Today we went to our favorite restaurant in this area - Saigon Grill for lunch. This place was introduced to me by my class mate at that time years ago when it was a tiny (not so clean) ma/pa type restaurant, but they did major renovations and massive extension, and now it is one of the most famous Vietnamese restaurants in the city. As usual hot/sweet/sour soup, sweet plum spare ribs, noodle dish (I don't know what it is called but I do know it is #78) along with Okra curry.

I came here with my friends (from outside of the city and Japan) and family, and everyone liked this place. They were all so good and we really should come back here more often.

Next stop was Zabar's to buy smoked salmon. We usually go to Fairway, which is supposed to have the best smoked salmon in the city, but we wanted to test OUR tastes on the smoked salmon. There was a long waiting line for the counter where the salmon was freshly sliced. Their one piece was much bigger than the one at Fairway. (Look for another entry - maybe tomorrow about the tasting result.) We could have gone to H&H, located right next to Zabar's for bagels but we don't like their texture and they do use sugar (which should not be used for bagel) so we passed.

We stopped by at Stew Leonard's for some grocery. This place is famous for dairy products such as milk and yogurt. We buy some prepared food here for a quick dinner usually but not today. Main purpose for this stop was their ice cream. We bought Dutch Chocolate and Strawberry Cream. Oh boy, their ice cream was rich but very refreshing... You can't go back to store bought ice cream once you taste this one. One of my new year resolutions has to be loose 5 lb. but I can't give up this so I need to find some other ways to accomplish that.