NY Food Fair

Okay, if you have time in the next two days, get yourselves down to Ikebukuro's Seibu (7th floor) asap and check our the NY Style Fair that's going on now! It finishes at 5 p.m. on Wednesday (Tuesday it's open until 9), so get over there quick!

I heard about this fair through a co-worker who's stationed at our Ikebukuro office. She has a predilection for red velvet cupcakes, so when she saw them at the fair, she sent me a text to tell me I'd better get my butt down there. I'm so glad I did!

I actually went twice. lol Once on Saturday night, where I just bought stuff I wanted to take home, and then again on Sunday to have lunch with GEG. Mochi will show you what you could be missing if you don't go.

There are the expected cheesecakes and bagels, of course. I also found deli-style sandwiches, pickles, buffalo wings, barbecue sauces, Johnsonville sausages (which I don't need to buy since the local supermarket stocks them), pretzels, etc. I kind of laughed when I saw the cheesecakes from Junior's, because I'd seen them the day before at Queen's Isetan for about 700 yen MORE than the fair was selling them for.

Now Mochi, can you recommend some goodies to us? What should I buy?

Bagels? Check! Ess-a-Bagel was high on my list of priorities.

Cupcakes from Billy's Bakery and brownies from Fat Witch? Done and done!

What, everything? Um, Mochi, let's not get greedy! If I buy all that how can I afford to keep you in gourmet cat food?

There's also a wine and cheese section at the fair, but considering how commonplace that stuff is in Tokyo these days, I didn't even bother browsing that section. I walked away with some great stuff from the fair! Let me show you what you could be chowing down on!

Oh yes I did! I also bought an original one with no walnuts, but I forgot to take it out of the bag when I snapped pictures. I sampled one yesterday at the fair and it was AMAZING! The caramel is good, but I think the regular or walnut versions are the stars. They also had a red one, which I assumed meant red velvet or something similar, but turned out to have dried cherries in it. Not my kind of thing, but it may be yours. Check them out.

Cupcakes from Billy's bakery. Clockwise from top left hand corner: red velvet with cream cheese icing, vanilla with butter cream icing, chocolate with butter cream icing and chocolate with chocolate butter cream icing. The vanilla one was phenomenal, but my chocolate ones were burned on top! They looked super dark to me when I got them home and sure enough, they were black under the icing and dry as a bone inside. Gross. I'm sure I just got a bad batch, because my co-worker said the red velvet was out of this world and she's really picky, but buy with caution if you decide on chocolate!

Sigmund's pretzels came with the option of various dipping sauces for an extra 32 yen, which I thought was very reasonable. I chose the honey-mustard sauce to go with my salt pretzel and it was awesome! I really wish I'd gone back on Sunday to buy more!

Mmmmm. I love pickles. These were especially welcome since I spent rather a lot on a big jar of pickles from Queen's Isetan the other day that were packed with garlic and dill and for some reason have this weird, sweet taste like bread and butter pickles. These pickles from Brooklyn Brine Co. are exactly how I expect dill pickles to taste.

I'm not from NY, so I'd never heard of this chocolate brand before, but the samples I tasted were all so good! I'm a huge fan of sweet and salty, so this black salt caramel bar intrigued me. I haven't touched it yet because it was so pricey and I'm thinking of saving this for a chocolate emergency. lol Er, ignore the fluff on the carpet. Mochi is shedding big time since it's getting warm here and I can't keep up with the fur.

I also bought several bagels, but forgot to take pictures before throwing them in the freezer.

I didn't get a chance to try them, but several other things that looked good were the lobster rolls from Luke's Lobster, the whoopie pies from Ciappuccino, the cookies from Soul Snack Cookies, the beer from Tail's ALEHOUSE and the ginger ale from BCGA.

If you're in the neighborhood, and even if you're not, run right up to the 7th floor of Seibu and check it out! I promise there's something for everyone!