Eating In Translation

Cold Stone Creamery

A "Monkey Bites" folded in pecans, coconut, "crunch bar," and half a banana into banana ice cream. Fun, and even the "like it" (small) size is quite a lot. About $5.25, as I found only when I got to the register, since Cold Stone doesn't post its prices.

Cold Stone Creamery
253 West 42nd St. (Seventh-Eighth Aves.)
(one of many locations)
212-398-1882

Bello

For a late afternoon dinner with my brother, Jeremy, and five of his friends, Bello was very loud, thanks to bare walls and a full pre-theater crowd. By and large, our group seemed happy with the meal, but my grilled swordfish (special; about $24) had little body, and I thought Jer's veal was dry under all that sauce.

Bello
863 Ninth Ave. (at 58th St.)
212-246-6788

Balducci's

This Lincoln Center grocery isn't a patch on the old West Village location. Switch brand lemonade (12 fl. oz. bottle; $1.49) claims to be "all natural…100% juice…100% carbonated." It's also yellowish and flat, like a summer-camp beverage.

Balducci's
155A West 66th St. (Amsterdam Ave.-Broadway)
212-653-8320

LaGuardia Grill

(This venue is closed.) A few good choices here for the Vietnamese Dining Out Meetup group, even if LaGuardia Grill serves "Chinese, Szechuan, and Vietnamese cuisine" (usually a sign that a restaurant does nothing well). Fried calamari ($5.95) was very good, though I missed that black-pepper dipping sauce. Spring rolls (two for $2.55) had an interesting, almost earthy taste, and summer rolls (six for $4.50), though run-of-the-mill in flavor, tucked a lettuce leaf just inside the wrapper to lend a greenish hue.

Sugar cane shrimp ($4.75) wrapped artificial-tasting minced seafood around not-so-sweet canes; hot and sour soup (with chicken; $2.75) was neither. Many in the group liked the grilled pork chops (shown; $7.95), but the one I snagged wasn't thoroughly cooked. The usual bo luc lac (sautéed beef cubes; $10.95) was good as usual, as were Saigon-style noodles ($5.95).

Our organizer, Minh, made an especially nice decision with the grilled whole red snapper ($13.95), replacing the familiar, tired sweet-and-sour presentation by ordering a tangy, just-this-side-of-spicy lemongrass sauce. Doesn't seem to be on the menu at many other Vietnamese restaurants, but worth asking for.

LaGuardia Grill
541 LaGuardia Place (Bleecker-West 3rd Sts.), Manhattan
212-477-0600

West Side Healthfood

Ginseng Up, original flavor (12 fl. oz. bottle; 99 cents), New York. Medium amber; aroma and taste of ginger ale with notes of sweet apple — though once I got the label under decent light, I realized that was probably the honey. Large, antiseptic store; distant staff.

West Side Healthfood
2569 Broadway (96th-97th Sts.)
212-316-2993

Rosa Mexicano

For a dessert-only lunch at the bar, I ordered three scoops of ice cream ($7.50) from Rosa Mexicano's third annual Festival de Helados: cilantro, mango brown butter, and coconut-guajillo chile. Cilantro had the color of green tea ice cream but the flavor of some fleshy aquatic plant; other than a pale yellow tone, the coconut scoop bore no trace of chile. Mango brown butter was runnier, almost like a caramel-colored and -flavored topping studded with small cubes of mango. This was my favorite for the first few spoonfuls, but I reserved a little coconut to clear the taste from my mouth.

Rosa Mexicano
61 Columbus Ave. (at 62nd St.)
(one of several locations)
212-753-7407

Amsterdam Restaurant and Tapas Lounge

(This venue is closed.) Twenty years ago Amsterdam was a neon-signed college hangout with decent bar food. Last year (perhaps) it remodeled itself into a stylish lounge that never seems to be serving more than a handful of people, so six of us had no difficulty scoring a table outside after Wiffleball.

My tagliatelle fra diavolo ($19) — fresh pasta with mussels, clams, gulf shrimp, crab meat, and calamari in a tomato and white wine broth — was densely packed in a deep bowl; after a few minutes it had turned into a soggy, overcooked mass. Teammates tell me that burgers are OK; fries, very good.

Amsterdam Restaurant and Tapas Lounge
1207 Amsterdam Ave. (119th-120th Sts.)
212-662-6330

Rong Bao Fast Food

Three selections plus rice and soup for $3.75 is a cheap lunch for the garment district, but the selections aren't nearly as interesting as on Division St. Instead I snacked on a cream-filled bun, the size and shape of a club roll, topped with grated coconut (70 cents). OK.

Rong Bao Fast Food
270 West 38th St. (Seventh-Eighth Aves.)

K & S Deli Grocery

Not much interesting in this corner market, apart from a few sweets I haven't seen elsewhere in the city. Kinder Bueno chocolate filled with hazelnut cream (43 g.; $1.79) had a very light, creamy filling wrapped in rich German chocolate. Morinaga brand "Hi Chew Honey Apple" candy (57 g.; $1.50) was like a Japanese version of mini-Starburst chews.

K & S Deli Grocery
2257 Broadway (at 92nd St.)

Barcelona Gourmet

(This venue is closed.) This "European Spanish bakery" sells the customary varieties of butter cookies by the pound, as well as a few desultory presentations such as flat hamentashen wrapped in saran. But among the savory half-moon and puff pastries was a guava pastelillo ($1.75) shaped like a small slice of pizza — two layers of pastry sandwiching the sweet paste between them. A lot of filling for the price, though the fruit dampened all but the outermost flakes of pastry, creating a texture more like a guava newton.

Barcelona Gourmet
795 Amsterdam Ave. (at 99th St.)
212-663-8400