One of the things that makes eating dim sum in New York City exciting is the seeming endless variety of savory and sweet morsels. Even veteran dim sum eaters are rewarded by new discoveries every so often. An initial visit to Chatham Square Restaurant for lunch last Friday yielded just such a find. One of the dessert carts had flaky green pastries that resembled caterpillars. Oddly colored desserts are fairly common in dim sum......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. What, you’ve never heard of Ranggupnya Biskut Kelapa Tropi Coco? One doesn’t need to speak Malaysian to figure out that this box contains coconut cookies. Unlike the West’s venerable soft macaroons, these little discs are ranggupnya, or crispy. The package’s claim of Malaysia Terkenal, or Malaysia Famous, just screamed "buy me!" The fact that they’re also......

Photograph of Michael Strahan, coach Tom Coughin (holding the Vince Lombardi trophy) and quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning by Tien Mao Gothamist was amazed after the Giants won the Super Bowl, the city went wild, and it witnessed a ticker-tape parade.Barack Obama drew 20,000+ ahead of Seattle’s Saturday caucus.Londonist had Super Tuesday too.Elusive guerrilla street artist Banksy revisits Los Angeles.After the Patriots lost the Super Bowl and came this close to making......

Two deliverymen-turned-thieves ripped off a shipment of Apple iPhones headed for Hong Kong, and traded in their loot for matching maroon cars and "diamond stud Yankee earrings." Really! Cathay Pacific Airlines reported the theft when they discovered not the almost $150K of digital devices (475 of them), but reams of copy paper. Nassau County cops traced the theft to two workers who delivered the shipment to the airport and had quit their jobs almost immediately......

Tim Russert has invited all the presidential candidates to appear on Meet the Press, and yesterday former Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared. We imagine many New Yorkers watching the program gnashed their teeth and/or swore at the TV (we happened to do both), as Giuliani tried to answer questions ranging from the straightforward (Giuliani's Iowa poll numbers, Russert asked, "Fifth place, is that a problem?") to the interesting (Russert on Giuliani's consulting business: "A Las......

Developer Charles J. Urstadt, the man behind the creation of Battery Park City in the 1970s, is eager to duplicate the feat further north up the Hudson by creating an additional 40 to 50 acres of Manhattan real estate. How? Well, by depositing fill dredged from Lower New York Bay. Urstadt estimates that the city could create land for $75 a square foot that could be worth $2,000 to $3,000 a square foot when developed......

Lust, Caution (directed by Ang Lee) For fans of Hong Kong cinema, it's a bit of a surprise that a wonderfully expressive and nuanced actor like Tony Leung hadn't worked before with the Oscar-winning, Taiwanese turned New Yorker director Ang Lee. But the two artists have been united now in Lee's new thriller set in World War II Shanghai, Lust, Caution which comes out this weekend. An erotically charged film with such explicit scenes that......

Ooh - NY1 has the exclusive on this exciting bit of subway news: The MTA is planning on installing subway platform doors on the 7 line extension. The platform doors are not only a safety feature, they create savings with energy bills and keep stations cooler. Additionally, they would prevent people from being able to litter in the tracks (and that litter can cause track fires, which is a major cause of subway delays).......

What’s worth watching, food-wise, on TV this week? Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Hong Kong. His show is followed by Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, who goes to Alaska to eat jellied moose nose and reindeer pizza, among other things. On Top Chef, Episode 10 airs Wednesday at 10pm (Bravo). There are seven remaining contestants, and this week Michael Schwartz is the guest judge. And PBS continues their......

amNewYork has a report from Hong Kong's Prestige magazine where actress Heather Graham discusses her "pet project," a labor of love for the past ten years that she's securing financing for. Graham said that money will be locked down in "one or two months" and will go towards her movie about the 1911 New York City fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that killed 146 women. She will also star as one of the factory......

Thought Governor Eliot Spitzer and Senator Hilary Clinton appeared at a press conference to discuss health coverage of New York children, they had to answer questions about campaign donations they accepted from fugitive apparel executive Norman Hsu. Clinton received $23,000 from Hsu and announced that she would donate the money to charity after revelations that Hsu has been wanted in California for defrauding California investors since 1991. Hsu has fled to Hong Kong but......

Exiled (directed by Johnnie To) Over the long weekend you could go for something at the movie theater that's mindless and features ping pong balls, but why not stretch your comfort zone instead to take on a stylish and provocative foreign film? Kickin' ass, takin' names and commenting on the lingering legacy of Imperialism and the hand off of Hong Kong to the Chinese—there's not a lot of movies that would take such complex agenda......

The New Decade: Hong Kong Film BAM Cinématek A pervasive theme in the films coming out of the prolific national cinema of Hong Kong has been their transfer over to China in 1997. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is putting a spotlight on this preoccupation in their current series The New Decade: Hong Kong Film. Running through the end of next weekend, the series offers a number of intriguing prospects made in the last 10......

Zodiac (directed by David Fincher) A series of attacks and subsequent puzzling communiques from the alleged killer to the San Francisco Chronicle terrified the Bay Area during the '60s through the '80s. Director David Fincher grew up in that part of California and uses his childhood feelings of dread and fascination to craft an unconventional thriller. Unlike a more typical detective story with a evil-doer and a single valiant sleuth, Zodiac meanders over a long......

Asian American International Film Festival July 19 - 28, Asia Society Founded in the '70s by Asian American activists wanting to capture with hand held VHS cameras the lives of their Chinatown neighbors, Asian Cinevision celebrates the 30th birthday this year of their annual Asian American International Film Festival. Held at the Asia Society (on Park Avenue and 70th Street), the AAIFF features quite a bit of notable and intriguing programming over the next two......

While the residual mustard stains have barely dried from last week’s extremely popular Hot Dog Eating Contest at Nathan’s Famous, it seems like the realm of competitive eating in NY has reached an overdue “I’m full” saturation point. So it’s only in the interest of each borough having its own event that we bring you this next story- the 4th Annual Dumpling Eating Contest, taking place on Sunday August 5th as part of the Hong......

The police department has launched a citywide dragnet to find suspects who fired at two police officers during a Brooklyn traffic stop early yesterday morning. 23-year-old police officer Russel Timoshenko was shot twice in the head while 26-year-old police officer Herman Yan was shot in the arm and chest. A surveillance video showed that the cops were shot before they had reached the driver and passengers in the car. The Daily News' Michael Daly......

Brooklyn’s sprawling Chinatown, concentrated on 8th Avenue from 62nd to 42nd Streets, has an array of bakeries, dim sum houses, noodle take-out shops. Mixed into the neighborhood are some Malaysian restaurants, Vietnamese sandwich shops, and even a branch of the chain Hong Kong Supermarket. Lower Sunset Park rents and smaller, rentable square footage make it ideal for a crop of modest, decent restaurants. Because it’s less touristy than Manhattan’s Chinatown, it is also a great......

30 Years of Kino International Film Society of Lincoln Center In the creation of great cinema, a far-thinking and nurturing distributor is almost as important as the artists they're supporting. This year one of those historically important movie companies, Kino International turns 30 years old and in celebration of their fine work over the years the Film Society is showing two weeks worth of films all originally released by Kino. The movies featured in the......

New York Asian Film Festival IFC Center and Asia Society Grady Hendrix and the Subway Cinema crew know a thing or two about Asian cinema. Actually, that's a serious understatement. Every year these film fanatics cull the international market in search of Far East movie gems, often films without U.S. distribution, to show to an eager and enthusiastic New York audience. This year the fest moves to the IFC Center in the West Village and......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A home invasion robbery in Queens, an attempted abduction on 4th Avenue & 17th Street in Brooklyn, and a possible electrical shock at Broad and Bridge Streets in Manhattan Trees rejoice: Phone books are getting thinner because so many people have cell phones nowadays - with 1,796 pages, the 2007 Verizon white pages for Manhattan are the smallest EVER. A-Rod lashes out at paparazzi following him in Chicago Those......

Oooh - according to the NY Times, the MTA has been investigating the possibility of installing floor-to-ceiling glass walls and sliding doors at the Second Avenue subway. Apparently, having walls and doors might "allow substantial energy savings" and "reduce temperatures by about 10 degrees." Whoa, imagine that - no more super hot platforms on those summer days? The interesting back story is that former NYC Transit President Lawrence Reuter rejected the idea when it......

Yesterday afternoon, a Continental flight from Hong Kong landed at Newark Liberty International Airport but passengers were held because some were feeling ill. In a reassuring piece of news, apparently seven passengers had "signs of fever and reported vomiting" even before the flight took off. We thought that Hong Kong's airport had those post-avian bird flu scanners that shows if a passenger has a higher body temperature than usual - and stop people who are......

Yesterday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 416 points (a significant 3.3% drop) after a plunge in Shanghai's stock market. Well, now the Asian stock markets have fallen again, because investors are worried about the American economy! The NY Times reports that share prices rebounded in China, rising "nearly 4 percent today after state-controlled media reported that the government might allow greater foreign investment in Chinese stocks and would not impose capital gains taxes on......

Virgin Vacations created a list of the 11 Top Underground Transit Systems in the World, complete with photographs and YouTube videos to give readers a sense of what mass transit might be like on their trip. The number 1 underground transit system is the oldest - the London Underground. After that, it's the Paris Metro. Then the Moscow Metro. Then Madrid, Tokyo, and Seoul, until you finally see New York City's subway coming in......

Nothing distracts from this sub-freezing weather like a good flick. Here's a few options out this weekend in New York Theaters. Ryan Phillippe works hard to figure out Chris Cooper's espionage secrets in the new thriller Breach. Cooper is always great and for our money, you can't beat Laura Linney so hears hoping this drama lives up to its smart cast. Someone recently told us that eventually they'll run out of comic books to turn......

Just a thought as we look ahead to this week's new releases. Someone should really take Diane Keaton aside to tell her that this series of increasingly painful looking romantic comedies where she plays an over-the-top meddling mom aren't good for her cinematic legacy. The newest installment is the Mandy Moore romantic comedy, Because I Said So, where Keaton plays a mother desperate to marry off her headstrong youngest daughter. Please Diane, after loving you......

Baby, it's cold outside—go see a movie, why dontcha? Werewolves, comic books and hot girls who prowl the streets of Bucharest in high heel boots should be the stuff of great geek cinema. Unfortunately, Blood and Chocolate, a new movie starring Agnes Bruckner as a werewolf girl trying to get along with the pack is utterly laughable. And not even in a good, kitchy, throw popcorn at the screen and giggle with your friends sort......

Today, Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Schumer and Governor Spitzer announced a report that shows NYC may not be the world's financial center in 10 years if government regulations stay the same. Fearing that NYC will become a "secondary city," Bloomberg and Schumer's report shows London has been gaining ground in attracting foreign business. For instance, NYC has tougher immigration laws and a "complex and sometimes unresponsive regulatory framework," not too mention there's the lawsuit-happy atmosphere.......

Last weekend, a Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood was shocked when a cashier at the Chinese take out restaurant Happy House was shot in the face while another worker who shot in the hand. Neighbors were devastated, telling ABC 7, "That's wrong, [the restaurant] didn't bother anybody. They tried to help people out. I don't know why people would do that to them." Today, the NY Times has a closer look Happy House's relationship with the neighborhood.......