Kitchen Arts & Letters

For all your food related literary needs. This modest store is packed to the gills with all manner of cookbooks, food and wine references, memoirs and biographies of culinary luminaries. The helpful staff directed my friend and I to a wine guide, a cheese reference, and a new book by the authors of Hot Sour Salty Sweet. I picked up a copy of The New Food Lover's Companion and Best Food Writing 2005. When I mentioned photography, one of the employees hustled into the stacks and returned in no time with their only book about digital food photography. In this day and age of super-mega bookstores and giant internet booksellers, it is refreshing to find a store where your passion is shared by the staff and there is a depth and breadth to their inventory.



Kitchen Arts & Letters
1435 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10128
212.876.5550
www.kitchenartsandletters.com

Hoi An Restaurant

Finally, pho! This little gem is in Tribeca, on West Broadway between Duane and Thomas. I've been craving pho soup as it was a staple in my routine back in rainy Seattle.

My friends I also ordered the #6 appetizer, Nem Nuong and Goi Ga, a shredded chicken salad with a lime & fish sauce dressing.
The appetizer was fantastic - yummy grilled pork patties that you assemble yourself in provided rice paper wrappers with basil, mint and lettuce. Don't forget the dipping sauce.



The soup arrived steaming hot with basil & sprouts already added. We were given small bowls of hot sauce and hoisin sauce to add as desired. At our request, the waiter brought more of both and a heaping bowl of lime wedges. He said that we were making the soup the way he does and that he felt like he had friends. It was darn cute.