Hope everyone had a great Christmas! I worked Christmas morning and flew to NYC to visit the girlfriend and her family. Arrived in town, dropped off my stuff and walked a few blocks to Rudy's Bar (9th Ave @ 44th St).

It's one of my fav dives and conveniently located a few blocks from her mothers place. Draft between $2.50-$5.00. Plus free hot dogs. Selection is nothing glamorous. I stick to the Rolling Rock while she did Shock Top. Plus they are friendly with the buy backs.

Friday we did some returns at Bloomingdales and walked aimlessly south through Midtown down to the LES. While walking stopped at Lenny's. She grew up on this place. There are multiple locations throughout Manhattan. She's not a foodie like me but is my favorite place for a quick and easy deli sandwich. The #1 classic corned beef and pastrami on rye dressed with coleslaw. She had the chicken cutlet dressed lettuce tomato and cheddar. Both are only $8.99 each; after chips and 2 drinks was only $23.

Following Lenny's we made it into Alphabet City (my fav area). Hit up Ace Bar for a few pints of Yuengling ($3.50 pints during happy hour). Music was a little out of my comfort so walked down the street to Sophie's for some smooth delicious Guinness. Love this little place. Still has a real jukebox with real music (rebirth, Kermit, Prima, ect).

Following a 4 hour evening there we proceeded to Momofuku. The host put us down with a 1 hour wait. When we came back we still waited another 15 min and drank 2 Tiger beers on the house (or they just forgot to add it to the bill.

Onto the food: started with the shrimp buns and pork buns. The shrimp was dressed with lettuce and what tasted like a classic New Orleans remoulade (heavy on the red chili though).

The pork was super juicy and heavy on the ginger and scallion.

The third app was the ginger and soy wings. The were good. Nothing to brag about though.

Now the bowls; I had the Momofuku bowl with pork and scallion. Broth was amazing with a fresh scallion finish. Perfect amount of salt, I added just a few drops of house hot sauce.

She went with the veggie bowl. Cucumber, scallion, and ginger with extremely intense shitakki mushrooms. The mushrooms had such an earthy funky aroma like nothing I've had before. Must have been some high end mushrooms. This bowl was both our fav (surprising because yes it is vegetarian and I love the pork). Without the broth it reminded me of a vermicelli.

Both bowls gave us a huge appreciation for fresh noodles. Never had homemade noddles like that. The seaweed served in each bowl added to the majority of the salt which was really good to incorporate with each slurp of the noodles.

For dessert... Another order of shrimp buns because that shite was good.

After the 3 beers at dinner, 4 apps, and 2 bowls (and the 2 free beers) the bill after tax and tip was $120. For the quality and amount of food, along with trendy atmosphere, and that its a Chang restaurant, $120 is an amazing bang for your buck.

Other than that, a lot of drinking and visiting with friends and family. Good relaxing escape from nola.