New York: the "Inter" in "International"

Dave was noticing how much Chinatown had converted over to being almost exclusively restaurants. Lots of Asian food and kitchenware markets he used to patronize in the 90's are no longer there. I found out later that most of the non-tourist parts of Chinatown have moved north, to areas that used to be part of Little Italy. We did find a couple of markets, but nothing particularly exciting.

The really interesting international food in NYC is found all over the city, and often where you least expect it. For example, this "Wafel" cart was parked in the Upper West Side, near Fairway Market. Too bad we were full from brunch. The menu has, as their pièce de résistance, the "WMD" or "Wafel of Massive Deliciousness".

What were even more fascinating were the obscure specialty restaurants and bizarre combination foods. For example, "Rice to Riches" serves only rice pudding, in some 12-18 flavors daily. Near our hotel was another restaurant which served only Japanese rice balls.

What really took the wasabi-pineapple rice cake, though, was the combination foods. For example, this restaurant served Puerto Rican and Chinese food.

Or, if you really can't choose an ethnicity for your fast food, why not have all of them?

As always, full size photos are available on smugmug.