I Carried a Watermelon

Hi friends,

Did you catch that reference in the subject line? I watched Dirty Dancing this week (still holds up, and is just as hot as you remember). Carry a watermelon to someone cute this summer, you never know what could happen.

Anyway, welcome to This Needs Hot Sauce.

Something to cook:
I'm excited about such a meticulously researched tahini sauce recipe.

These soba noodles with peanut sauce got rave reviews from a few of you so here's the link to make them if you haven't.

I've been eating out a lot and am craving a good broccoli salad for lunch. My friend Rachel, normally not a broccoli fan, had seconds of this one.

Berries are starting to get really good so buy some and eat them with a friend. Allison and I demolished a bowl of cherries on her roof one evening and it was the perfect end to the day. And my parents visited Golden Earthworm farm on the North Fork and picked some berries as a souvenir. 


Make pizza! Ian uses this recipe for the dough and last week's meal was so good if you're feeling ambitious. 

Something to order:
Order a drink and take in the sunset at Our Wicked Lady, a Bushwick Bar with free movie screenings every monday through Halloween. They start at sunset so fairly late and the views are great. 

I went back to Win Son for the first time in forever and wow, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I had the summer salad without the shrimp and it's the perfect thing for a hot day – a crunchy combo of cabbage and mango and raisins and herbs and smoked tofu and peanuts. Frida and I split the pea shoots (always get the pea shoots, this is canon) and the clams with basil and a scallion pancake. It's lovely and always easy to get a table before 7,

I spent the weekend in Princeton for the Princeton in Latin America Orientation. I was a fellow in 2015 and spent the year in Guatemala. Alumni come and meet the new class, share advice, and this year, it ended in a dance party at a frat house. Unclear. All this to tell you, if you ever find yourself in Princeton, you should eat at Tacoria, which catered Sunday's lunch. The salsa selection was excellent - and don't miss the brussels sprouts. 

Anjali's in town and her family took us to dinner in deep Queens at Mumbai Xpress, which serves vegetarian chaat, or snacks. It's Mumbai street food and her dad took over the ordering. We started with cold coffee, which somehow has ice cream in it, and ate so many great things - puri and dosas and vada pav, potato sandwiches that are everything most veggie burgers wish they could be. It's a very casual environment but the food reminded me of dinner at Dishoom in London. Everything had this balance of crunch and spice that made it impossible to stop eating. Bourdain was talking about Punjab here but his point about Indian food stands. 

I love the Bon Appetit foodcast and Julia and I went to see it live on Wednesday. I ran into my friend Emma and we did a full ranking of all the free food on offer. The favorite was a labneh with a seedy cracker from Shuka with the savory corn ice cream from Bessou a close second. The best part of the night was a conversation between Adam Rapaport and Alison Roman that highlighted both their food knowledge and sense of humor. As a surprise, all the guests received Dining In, Alison's cookbook so I will be cooking from that ASAP. Can't wait.


My mom and I had a surprise lunch in Soho this week at Jack's Wife Freda. The place is an instagram photoshoot on weekends, but it's lovely during the week. I always get the breakfast bowl with the housemade green hot sauce and a mint lemonade (it's made sparkling water and super refreshing). 

Huckleberry, a bar I walk past all the time but had never visited, is great. The lighting is sufficiently flirty, the stools are comfortable, they made all the syrups in-house, yada yada. They had two spicy drinks - one with tequila and one with mezcal. Because I am nothing if not a guinea pig for This Needs Hot Sauce, I tried them both and prefer the tequila one, which comes with pickled jalapeño slices, which I did not eat out of concern for my mouth.
Coffeeshop update:
I worked at Gotan and Maman in Tribeca this week, in a sort of a one-two punch. I spent the morning at Gotan, ate my packed lunch in Tribeca Park, and then had a cookie and wrote/thought about Kate Spade in Maman's weird couches, which have enormous cushions.  


I am working my way through punchcards at the West and Hungry Ghost so if you have work to do in Williamsburg, come hang there with me. 

Something to read:
Can you make the Superiority Burger at home?

Julia Turshen has a new cookbook coming out and it's all about leftovers! Check out the trailer. 

From 2007, 101 Summer Meal Ideas ready in 10 minutes. Worth a read.

Excellent comments on this post about summer plans. 

If you're planning a wedding (anyone?), feel free to set the usual catering rules on fire. 

So impressed and inspired by Jose Andres and the rapid response of #ChefsforGuatemala post-volcanic eruption.

I just finished Jessica Knoll's first book, Luckiest Girl Alive and love this essay about food guilt and social media. 

Wine, like most things, is about the story. 

King Noodle, which I wrote about here (and quite enjoyed), closed.

What to order at Bunna, a great Ethiopian restaurant in Bushwick. Thanks toTilden for the photos.

On Straws: 
Last week I shared this article about alternatives to plastic straws and this week Bloomberg reported a shortage of these alternatives as hospitality groups rush to provide alternatives.

Where did this sudden tide of straw alternatives come from? Has it made any impact in your personal use?

I was on a several day streak of not using straws (making coffee at home helps with that) and then spent Friday at a WeWork and was horrified at the plastic all around. There are mugs for hot coffee but plastic is the default for the nitro cold brew on tap, the fruit water, and the beer. I was extremely hydrated and extremely wasteful. My mom has ordered a set of four metal straws that we will be debuting on a family trip to Napa at the end of the month, so stay tuned for more. And tell me how you feel about straws. 
As Julianne said, 'I do love to drink out of straws and truly wish there was a sanitary reusable straw option restaurants could give us for our beverages." Amen, girl.  

On a very different note, do you like wine and cheese and backyards?
Come hang out this Thursday, June 14th from 6:30 - 8:00 for a This Needs Hot Sauce Happy Hour at the Tuffet in Williamsburg. Fill out this form to RSVP and please consider making a $10 donation to Pueblo a Pueblo if you're planning on coming. 

Finaly, I don't know what to link to talk about Anthony Bourdain because the waves of content surrounding his death have been extremely stressful to sift through. I so appreciated his voice, especially the way he talked about places other people tended to avoid - seeing the history, exposing US responsibility and recognizing humanity. It really sucks and I'm sending all of you reading this a hug. Always reply if you want to talk. 
 
Happy eating and thanks for reading.
Xo,
Abigail