What is a restaurant, really? Is it a place that serves any sort of food to customers? Must it necessarily have a place where you can sit down and eat your meal? Could an ordinary store be considered a restaurant? I have absolutely no idea, but here’s a review of a store anyway.
Westside Market is both a market and located on the west side, surprising absolutely nobody. They have pretty much everything you’d expect from a market, ranging for avocados to zebra meat (I don’t think they actually have that last one but I couldn’t think of a food that starts with Z). [My editor has subsequently described to me the concept of a food called “Zucchini”, though I’m skeptical of it’s existence.] If there’s something you’re looking for, they probably have it. They also make their own food, which is what I reviewed. Be aware that there’s no seating so you’ll have to eat somewhere else.
I ordered the breaded chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The beans were quite good. They were a bit sweeter than green beans usually tend to be, but in a good way that makes them go well with the chicken. The chicken itself is also sweeter than normal, though again in a positive way. The breading is also quite tasty and sticks well to the chicken. The potatoes were someone inconsistent in temperature, with parts being hot and parts being cold, but otherwise they also pair very well with the chicken.
They also make their own desserts, so I got the chocolate mousse. It’s pretty high quality, with different flavors of chocolate that contrast each other in interesting ways. It was denser than I thought it would be, but that’s actually a positive since it means there’s realtively more mousse in there.
Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
Here we are, May 19th. Exactly 7 days after May 4th, just like I promised in the last entry of the Covid Cooking Club. To celebrate fact that Covid is now 100% not a threat and nobody should ever worry about it even a little bit, I will be commencing the Rapid Revival Restaurant Reviews, to drum up some support for those poor small business owners who were already going to get destroyed by corporate competition but we’re pretending it’s the pandemic’s fault now. My first target will be the seafood restaurant Bait and Hook, chosen for no other reason than that it was close to me and I’m very lazy.
The layout of the restaurant is very nice, somewhat nautically themed but not nautically themed enough to make people seasick. which apparently happens sometimes. The lights are red, which is pretty weird because it didn’t seem like that kind of establishment. All the waiters are very nice, even when I got pissed at them for not letting me in when I turned up an hour early without any sort of identification. The only real problem is the noise: the music is loud, the people are loud, and the acoustics make it all louder, which means you’ll probably have to shout your order if you want the waiter to actually listen to you.
The house lager is good, and I say that as someone who doesn’t even like beer. As far as I’m concerned most alcohol that isn’t hard cider tastes like varying flavors of fizzy urine, but fortunately this one bucked that trend. It has a mild taste that could be compared to wood if wood tasted good. It also completely obliterated my nostrils after the gas came back up and made me feel like I had been tear gassed, but in a fun and relaxed way.
The Kung Pao Calamari is very tasty. It has both tentacle bits and entire tiny octopi for variety. They’re decently crispy and taste great even without sauce thanks to the seasoning. I tried some of the Kung Pao sauce and it tasted like someone had Kung Powed my tongue, but I guess some people like that sort of thing.
Their most popular food was the lobster roll, which I didn’t order because I don’t like lobster rolls. I had the fish and chips instead. The fish itself was great: white cod with a taste distinct from other fried fish without being too overpowering. The skin was both crunchy and stayed on the meat, and it’s rare to find a fried fish that does both of those. The fries were… fine. Not crispy enough to be french fries or thick enough to be steak fries. I saw someone else eating mashed potatoes and those looked way better.
So the next day I went back and ordered the mashed potatoes. They were, in fact, way better. A good blend between chunky and creamy with a hint of garlic. I also learned it was much less loud outside.
Dessert was gelato, which wasn’t part of the review but they gave me some anyway because they’re nice people. It was good, because it was ice cream. I’m easily please by ice cream.
Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
I have changed my mind about eating out, it’s now perfectly okay as long as you’ve been vaccinated. I have definitely not received a large sum of money in exchange for retracting my previous view. This is totally unrelated on restaurant reviews I may be contracted to do in the future.
In all seriousness if you live in Manhattan check out Veselka ( 144 2nd Ave ) and Dim Sum Palace ( 144 2nd Ave ). Paul’s Da Burger Joint is good too if you don’t mind arterial blockage ( 131 2nd Ave ). If you ask why all the restaurants I recommend are all on the same avenue I will not hesistate to pursue legal action against you.
Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
A picture of soup. Actually it’s mostly bread, but I don’t know how to make bread.
Soup is great. Normally I’d talk about how bad I feel about my own soup and all of soup’s various flaws, but I’m not going to do that. I love soup. More accurately, I love soup as a concept. It’s like food, except you can carry it in a bottle and you can drink it all at once if you’re bored of eating and are an uncultured swine like me. Of course, to say that I actually cook soup is not actually correct. In almost 100% of the cases, I just buy it. See, my dorm is literally located right next to Trader Joe’s, and they have pretty good soup. Tomato soup, chicken soup, clam chowder, onion soup, all the good stuff. Some people say that Trader Joe’s is an unethical business for whatever reason, and they’re probably right because I don’t see how they could profit off selling stuff for such ridiculously low prices without engaging with some sort of criminal activity somewhere along the line. I’ll still happily support them, though, because whatever the hell unethical thing they’re doing directly benefits me since I can go out and buy a month’s worth of soup for ten bucks. It even comes in neat little cartons. When I don’t want to support the mining of African blood diamonds or whatever (which is almost never, I get pretty much all of my food supplies from Trader Joe’s), I generally pick up wonton soup from that one Chinese place. I don’t question what’s in the wontons so it generally works out pretty well for me. The only actual culinary preparation I have to do is microwaving the soup and maybe dipping some breadsticks or garlic crackers in it afterwards. Soup is a fairly messy food for most people what with the complex interaction between the movement of the fluid in the spoon and gravity, but I generally find it to be a lot less messy than any solid food because it just leaves a nice liquid puddle that can be cleaned up instead of ten thousand tiny crumbs that just get fucking everywhere and when you try to clean them they just get everywhere and then in a month when I’ve forgotten about them they either end up attracting swarms of ants or somehow enter me nose at night like they were conjured to life by the sorcerer’s apprentice and causing me to cough up a storm triggering my hypochondriac covid anxiety and also making me continue on this sentence for way longer than any competent editor would allow. If I’m feeling really inventive I’ll just buy broth and drop some leftover turkey chunks from my standwiches in it then heat that up. To be honest I don’t really have any substantive advice on how to prepare soup, I’m just using it as an excuse to rant about whatever I feel like. I guess that isn’t really different than the rest of these columns though.
Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
A picture of a delicious cabbage. At least I think it’s delicious, I’ve never cooked cabbage. Hell, I don’t remember if I’ve ever even eaten the stuff.
Vegetables are the things your parents told you to eat when you were kids, and you either ignored them completely or complied entirely out of fear. The fact that we must be forcibly conditioned to consume boring green stuff is evolution’s fault, as we have become a sedentary society without our bodies ever adapting to the fact that if we want to eat we no longer have to chase down a gazelle on foot and beat it to death with a rock. Thus, I must consume at least some vegetables if I don’t want to devolve into a quivering mass of immobile gelatin, which would be extremely inconvenient as it would deprive me of the manual dexterity required to build the plastic model robots that have been my closest friend during the current crisis. The vegetable I eat most often is celery, not because it tastes good or has any nutritional value aside from fiber but because it doesn’t need to be cooked, just washed. The fact that it has zero calories makes it attractive to me since it means I can waste the space on something else later, but I almost always end up dipping it in hummus to give it some actual flavor and thereby defeating the entire point. My favorite cooked vegetable might be spinach, which I literally never make. This is partially because it’s another food my family makes a lot better than me, and partially because you can buy ten pounds of spinach at the store, cook it up, and wind up with half an ounce. Obviously that’s an exaggeration but I only have so much fridge space and spinach takes up too much of it. Normally the vegetables I prepare the most are green beans and broccoli. These are also both foods I associate with my parents, but I can make them in a way that doesn’t totally embarrass me. I make broccoli more rarely because of two reasons. The first is that it just takes much longer to boil in water, and I don’t trust myself to fry it, so boiling green beans is just more efficient. The second is that ever since I was young I’ve had this weird thing where I only eat the buds of the broccoli, not the stem. I think it has to do with little baby me believing that broccoli was just tiny trees or something, but either way I end up not eating half of the broccoli and that’s just wasteful. It does make it easier to prepare though; to make green beans you need to individually slice the tips off each bean while with broccoli you can just break a piece off the stalk and wash it. Generally I eat vegetables separate from my actual meals, because as previously mentioned in the first chapter my pot is much bigger than the stovetop itself so I can’t really have another thing cooking at the same time. This also means that a lot of the time when I’m feeling pressed for time I just skip vegetables entirely, which would definitely be a bad idea if I considered the future consequences of my actions beyond wildly unrealistic scenarios like turning into a lump of fat who can’t build robot toys. I’m sure the fact that I eat vegetable at all puts me ahead of many, and so by the time I become like unto the blob people from Wall-E there will have already been innovations by the manufacturer which make the model kits able to be assembled the fingers the size of drain pipes.
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Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
A generic picture of steak. Mine actually looks kind of like this, but less tasty.
Chapter 2: Meat
Meat. The manliest of all foods, according to people who don’t understand how chemicals work and think eating soy will invert their gender. I don’t think eating meat will make me any less of a wimp, but it’s filling and tastes good. The meat I eat the most is canned tuna fish, because it’s cheap and requires zero preparation aside from opening the can and chowing down—though sometimes I drink the fish oil first like some sort of absolute barbarian. The problem with tuna is that it makes your whole room smell like fish. I don’t find it that irritating, considering the other things my room could smell like. Sometimes I mash it up with a fork and mix it with mayonnaise to make tuna salad, but my most successful attempt has been boiling it in oil with garlic and parsley to create a less messy pasta sauce (which wasn’t in last week’s article because I did it this Wednesday).
I call it Pasta Ala Xander, because I like making puns more than I like names that don’t suck.
I’ve cooked whole fish as well, covering it in flour and frying it in oil on a pan. The result is a relatively bland white mean that falls apart faster than a South American republic that refuses to export bananas to the US in the early 20th century when touched with a fork. I could probably get more flavor out of white meat by cooking chicken, but I’m also scared shitless by anything involving raw chicken. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to food—though not enough to wash my hands for the full recommended duration each time when cooking—so whenever I try to cook chicken it ends up getting totally burned because otherwise I won’t touch it for fear of contracting salmonella. In theory, I have more success with red meat. I can cook sausages okay, since I just need to cover them in oil and pan fry them. The real issue here is steak. I love steak, and I’m not terrible at making it. The trick is to add a completely excessive amount of salt and pepper on both sides to build up a big crust, then fry each side in oil until it looks like it’s burned. It ends up being too crispy on the outside and too soft on the inside, but it’s still tasty. At least it would be if I didn’t keep comparing it to my dad’s steaks. Honestly, I’m probably the worst cook in my immediate family. My sister is a naturally gifted cook, and my mom and dad have essentially been trying to one-up each other in cooking skills since their divorce. I’ve only just started trying to make food since last March when going outside became the equivalent of taping an “eviscerate my lungs” sign to your back. So even when I enjoy the steak, it just reminds me of how crappy of a cook I am compared to the rest of my family. That still doesn’t stop me from making it, it just means that once every few weeks I subject myself to feelings of deep inadequacy in exchange for a burst of cholesterol. There have been worse tradeoffs in history.
Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
A very professional-looking chef, who is definitely not me.
Introduction
With the current pandemic making venturing outside your room an act equivalent of walking across the street blindfolded, it is more important than ever that college students learn how to effectively prepare food on their own in order to decrease the possibility of getting permanent lung damage without even experiencing the questionable joy of nicotine. Ideally, this information would be given by a professional chef or at the very least someone with any sort of culinary talent. Instead you’re going to be getting it from a conked-out liberal arts student whose only knowledge of gastronomy comes from how far his head is up his own ass. God help you.
Chapter 1: Pasta
A delicious and generic plate of pasta with red sauce, made by someone who also is not me.
Pasta. It’s the classic college food for a reason: that reason being most college students are deeply in debt and can’t actually afford anything else. (If only there was some sort of magazine that offered discounts on food products to help them out! But such a radical idea could never come to pass.) The humble cup of ramen has become an icon among undergraduates less for any inherent nutritional or taste value and more for being their best hope of avoiding complete bankruptcy long enough for their debt holders to be lined up against the wall and shot during the inevitable populist uprising. As someone who has the prospect of postgraduate financial stability through an accident of birth, I am not obligated to prostrate myself before the rapacious god that is instant ramen. This has the practical result of the pasta I make being named in Italian instead of Japanese. Pasta has a long and storied history, most of which can be condensed down into “it’s easy to make and tastes okay.” The cooking setup in my dorm consists of a microwave and a gas stove with two cookers with enough room for exactly 1.5 pots, so ease of preparation is appreciated. Also, I’m very lazy. All anyone needs to prepare pasta is a pot, some water, some salt, and a stirring implement. Put the water, salt, and pasta (preferably but technically not necessarily in that order) in the pot, and then boil until it is ready. After an amount of time totally unrelated to whatever it says on the packaging, the pasta will be ready. This can be tested by eating some of it and seeing if it triggers your gag reflex; other testing methods exist but they all sound as if they were dreamt up by lunatics. This will give you something that is edible. Making something good will require a lot more thought and I am not sure if I am actually up to the task. Sure, I enjoy a lot of the pasta I make, but that’s because I like my food to be as carbohydrate-dense as my writing is linguistically dense, not because I achieved any great success in preparing it. My most frequent failure occurs early. The pasta I prepare most commonly is spaghetti, because I have fond memories of eating it as a kid. I probably ate other pasta as a kid, but spaghetti is the only one I remember. It’s also a terrible choice since I inevitably put too much in, then stir too hard before it gets soft, causing the noodles to snap into pieces and defeat the entire point. I usually have better luck with tortellini and macaroni, yet I make them less because I apparently value nostalgia over competence. Fortunately, any pasta can be saved through use of a good sauce. Unfortunately, I am both too lethargic and too ill-informed to make any so I always use canned sauce from the store (or from my parents when I can swipe some off them). I eat mostly red sauce, which inevitably burns and creates an incredibly annoying brown crust on the pot whenever I try to heat it up. There are many instances where I nearly surrender to the dishes instead of cleaning them, and 75% of those come from red sauce. At least it usually tastes decent, though I somehow managed to always spill some on my shirt. Good pasta ultimately requires good sauce, and not having any saucing skill I am utterly unqualified to instruct anyone in its creation. And let’s be honest, you could figure out how to make it adequately without me telling you.
Alexander Rose studies satire at NYU Gallatin and wishes he was actually just Oscar Wilde. He is interested in writing, roleplaying games, and procrastination. Describing himself in the third person like this makes him feel weird.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
Any time I’m asked about how I’m handling online classes and being away from the NYU campus and my friends, I give the usual answer. It’s okay, could be better, I just wish I was with my friends and could learn in person again. But I always end with what I’ve been clinging to for months now – I’m going to make my Senior year the best it can possibly be.
With a few finals and the spring semester of this year to push through before I get there, I am slowly putting together plans for my last year at NYU with my friends. Lamenting over our lost Junior year this past summer, my friend Leslie and I decided we’d have to put in a lot of effort (and savings) into our last year.
“If we don’t have the best Senior year, I don’t even know what I’ll do,” Leslie said to me on multiple occasions.
I have to agree. We both felt our freshman year was uneventful and after our time on campus during Sophomore year was cut short by the pandemic, there is a gaping hole left in us, a desire for the New York life that we’ve yet to start living. There is an urgent need to have all the fun we could have had this year, to visit all the places we wanted to but never did. But with a little less than a year to go before we’re there, all we can do is plan.
So far on the agenda: concerts, photoshoots, a quick trip to Canada, and our favorite – lots of going out to eat. When talking with Leslie about the first place we’d go when we’re back in New York, the only place that came to mind was Max Brenner.
Located on Broadway near campus, Max Brenner remains my favorite place to go for dessert. Frankly, I doubt that will ever change. Always in the know about the best restaurants in New York, Leslie first introduced it to me during our freshman year. I fully believe it is one of the places I’ve felt the happiest while living in New York. My first visit there undoubtedly marked one of the happiest moments of my fall semester that year.
“We’ll go after our History of the Universe midterm, as a treat!” Leslie said, and that is exactly what we did.
As we walked in that night, we took in just how nice the restaurant was. It wasn’t the kind of place you’d need to dress up for per say, but almost everyone there looked well- put together, stylish, and even polished. When we were shown to our seats, we looked at each other and hesitantly shrugged off our coats to reveal our university sweatshirts and jeans. We sat down, trying not to laugh. We had decided to only order dessert and scoured the menu (the very long, very tempting menu), and it was another twenty minutes before we chose what to eat. After taking our order, the waiter left and we spoke about our relief about nearing the end of the semester. Before long, the stress of the midterm we’d taken earlier in the day had faded away and we sat laughing and joking with each other. Then the food arrived, and we felt as though we were in heaven.
I swear I’m not joking. Leslie’s tiramisu came in a small mason jar with a tiny beaker of chocolate syrup on the side. She took one bite and quickly exclaimed, “Oh my god.”
Munchies Waffle from Max Brenner in New York.
The munchie’s waffle (as named on the menu) that I had ordered brought out the same “Oh my god” from me a second later. Two soft waffles topped with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, and hazelnut sauce drizzled over. A small beaker of chocolate syrup. On the side, a bowl of tiny, crunchy chocolate balls to sprinkle over. A light dusting of powdered sugar on top. After dressing the waffles with the sides, I took my first bite. It melted in my mouth.
If anyone heard our loud proclamations about the delectable desserts we were eating, they didn’t say anything. If someone thought we were being paid to act, they wouldn’t have been without reason. Maybe we were just too stressed or maybe we were simply starving, but either way we could not stop gushing about how good it was. It became a night to remember, and ever since I’ve considered Max Brenner one of my happy places.
“That’s how I want to feel all of Senior year,” I told Leslie recently when we were making more additions to our plans.
It’s a high expectation to have, but one I’ll do anything to fulfill. After such a hectic past few months with the pandemic and online classes, it is all I can do to keep myself going and have hope. But what can we do while we wait for that special time? Here are some tips I found from the Self website:
Have a Calendar – The Self website recommends having a calendar and writing down anything you think you would look forward to. This can be small things like the airing of the next episode of your favorite TV show, or the release of your favorite musician’s album.
Special Events – Create special events for yourself, and these also don’t have to be big! Something like saving a certain food or movie for weekends or for a day when you know you’ll need them can help.
Entertainment – Keep yourself occupied with those favorite shows, movies, music, books, video games, or anything else you thoroughly enjoy. While we pass the time during the pandemic by avoiding unnecessary outings, keeping yourself happy through these things is essential.
Looking Ahead – At this point almost everyone has plans for what they’ll do when the pandemic ends, but if you don’t I highly recommend you make some! Having something to look forward to, even if you get a bit of tunnel vision about it like I sometimes do, is essential. Whether it’s just looking forward to graduating, or maybe a vacation, or maybe even a concert – find a future event to plan and hold onto it.
In the meantime, we have to make do with remote learning and meeting up with friends over FaceTime. I keep telling myself that dessert always comes last, but it comes. It just requires patience. For now we’ll hold onto those special moments and our future plans. My mind keeps coming back to Leslie and I in our gray NYU sweatshirts, laughing in Max Brenner and eating little bites of heaven. We’ll get there again.
If you’re eager to have your dessert now though, Campus Clipper offers some helpful coupons such as the one below! Click here for the link.
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Anaïs is currently a Junior at New York University and is majoring in English with a minor in Creative Writing. Her goal for the future is to work in the publishing industry and write on the side. She loves to write and read poetry and fiction in her spare time.
For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC, from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.
At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.
The first time my friend Maria and I shared a meal together we went to a Mexican restaurant on University Place. Truthfully, neither of us remember the name, likely because we never felt compelled to return there later on. The food was decent, perfectly acceptable, nothing without flavor. But we were both looking for something else. Maria wanted more of the traditional cooking that her Mexican parents, particularly her mother, would make for her. I was looking for more of the Tex-Mex angle that I favored, being from Texas. We were inevitably disappointed because either way, the restaurant could not provide the comfort Maria got from her mother’s cooking and I from my favorite Tex-Mex restaurants back home.
Comfort foods are named for their helpful properties, for their ability to provide just a little relief from whatever stressor may be occupying your mind. In these past few months since the pandemic started, it only makes sense that we might all be craving our favorite comfort foods more than usual.
Talking with Maria recently about it, I learned more about how she has noticed a change in her relationship with her comfort foods.
“What do you think constitutes a comfort food?” I asked her first.
On the small screen of my phone I watched her pause to look up at the ceiling before answering, “Probably something that makes you feel, like, warm inside physically, or in a way that brings back fond memories,” she said, “any foods that take you back to a time when you felt good.”
I agreed completely. The point of comfort foods is to do exactly this – make you feel comforted, make you feel warm and of course happy memories are probably attached to a lot of these.
“What are some of your favorite comfort foods?” I asked her next.
“Anything my mom makes, for the most part. Actually, a lot of breakfast foods that she makes. Chilaquiles, or eggs with chorizo or potatoes. They’re all simple foods. Sometimes just a tortilla spread with beans, then some cheese and salsa can be amazing. A lot of times it’s just whatever we eat whenever there’s nothing else.”
In Maria’s words: “Huevos rancheros con chilaquiles, y frijoles fritos con chorizo.”
We both laughed at that, and I completely understood what she meant. One of my own favorite comfort foods is what my mother calls “estrellitas,” “estrellita” meaning “little star.” It’s a simple, light tomato soup with star pasta, but it never fails to warm me.
“Okay, and how much access did you have to your comfort foods while we were on campus in New York?” I asked.
Maria gave me a look and I laughed.
“You know,” she said, and I laughed harder.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, recalling a time she dragged me with her on a long subway ride to Queens.
“Yeah, to get the good stuff, the real stuff, I have to go to Brooklyn or Queens. I have to find a panaderia there, and somewhere I can get chorizo, too. So in other words, not a lot.”
“What about the pandemic? How has your relationship to food changed during the pandemic?”
She frowned for a second but then shrugged.
“Honestly, it’s just nice to be able to have my mom’s cooking again, to be able to eat those comfort foods every day. But then also, since I recently moved in with my friend it’s kind of like New York again, I don’t get it as much. Sometimes though she has my brother send some over. And sometimes I just beg her to make someone send me some.”
I nodded along, then asked, “Have you noticed yourself craving your comfort foods more during the pandemic?”
“Hmm, not necessarily? But also, I’m just really appreciative of the fact that I can eat my mom’s cooking. Obviously I normally wouldn’t be able to during the school year. I’m just trying to savor it in the limited time I have. And it saves me a lot of stress, time, and money to be able to eat what she makes.”
Comfort food, as I learned after this brief conversation with Maria, is oftentimes food that is not easily accessible. This could very well be the case for you, too. Whether it be the resources or the chef, it usually takes an outside factor to help provide the beloved meal. When craving something you enjoy that you are unable to get to, especially during a highly stressful time such as now, it can then be difficult to cope. I decided to include a link to an article on some other ways you can comfort yourself, such as talking things out, meditating, and even things as simple as taking a shower.
Remember it is okay to take the time you need to comfort or care for yourself. In fact, it’s necessary. To avoid burnout and overall exhaustion, check in on yourself and make sure you give yourself the breaks you need. If you find yourself wanting to order take-out to do so, Campus Clipper has a variety of coupons to pick from to help you out, such as the one below! Click here to view the coupon, and make sure to go to the Campus Clipper website to explore more.
KC Gourmet Empanadas Coupon on the Campus Clipper website.
You can find all of our active coupons at this link. Redeem them here:
Anaïs is currently a Junior at New York University and is majoring in English with a minor in Creative Writing. Her goal for the future is to work in the publishing industry and write on the side. She loves to write and read poetry and fiction in her spare time.
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