Home of the best $1 dumpling deal in town, this Chinatown mainstay is looking a lot spiffier these days. Back when it was known only as Dumpling House, it was half as wide, twice as dirty, and usually steamy from the vats of cooking dumplings. The long line of locals waiting outside was the only sign that anything tasty was going going on in there, and speaking Chinese certainly helped in jockeying to be the next order. Now with snappy new signage and a relatively spacious seating area, this feels like a whole new place. Fortunately, the dumplings still rock.

They’re pricier now (4 for $1 instead of 5) but it’s worth it. Get the pork and chive dumplings–fried-crisp yet tender pockets of juicy pork (defuse an embarrassing squirt of juice by nibbling a hole in your dumpling first, instead of biting it in half, similar to eating a soup dumpling). The sesame pancake sandwiches, at $1.50-$2.00, are one of the best deals around. Sesame pancake is a fluffy, buttery wedge of flatbread studded with sesame seeds and stuffed with fillings, like fried egg and cucumber ($1.50) or pork, cucumber, carrots, and cilantro ($2.00). The pork sandwich was my favorite although ideally there would be more filling to balance out the thick, greasy bread. I thought the just-barely-spicy hot and sour soup with tofu and mushrooms was okay, but I loved the fact that a hefty bowl was only $1.25. The only thing I didn’t like was the steamed vegetable bun, which was oddly rubbery. Fried is obviously the way to go here.

The menu (expanded from the one on menupages) is packed with items that cost under $3, so no surprise it gets busy here during the evening rush and orders may take ten or fifteen minutes. But the pork dumplings are undeniably delicious and so cheap it feels like stealing. There’s also a 14th St. location, expect to pay more there.

Vanessa’s Dumpling House, 118a Eldridge Street between Grand and Broome
7:30am-10:30pm every day
Frozen dumplings available 50/$9.00

Well this is terrible news. Joe Ades, peddler of vegetable peelers and sidewalk personality has died, as reported by the New York Times. Always stylishly dressed in a sportcoat or vest, peeling carrots with orange-stained, latex-gloved fingers, Joe reeled in window shoppers all over town with his cockney carnival barker’s voice, pushing $5 peelers with more passion than an army of QVC showmen. Joe, it turns out, lived in a swanky Upper East Side apartment (and he always seemed especially proud of his appearance in Vanity Fair). I’ve stopped to watch him in Union Square in the dead of winter and Soho under the beating sun, always joking with customers and adding to his fistful of cash. It always struck me how much he seemed to enjoy his job. I’ll miss seeing him.

Some New Yorkers seem to have a bottomless appetite for super-sweet buttercream cupcake frosting, something I could never understand. But that was before I tried French buttercream. The Gallic version is airier and more mousse-like than its sugary American counterpart, and Butter Lane has both available to sample, along with rarer flavors such as grapefruit ginger,  blueberry, and pumpkin. Having never been an icing freak, Butter Lane’s raspberry buttercream was a pleasant suprise, with a hint of tart raspberry and plenty of crunchy seed bits swirled throughout. As for the cake, my chocolate cupcake was somewhat dry and tasteless, the vanilla was ok but nothing special, but the banana was moist, buttery, and actually tasted like banana. It came dolloped with vanilla cream cheese icing and was my favorite of the three ($2.50/each).

As for how Butter Lane stacks up to the competition, the various flavors rendered as icing are a nice touch, but I think picking a cupcake is kind of like picking a toothpaste: whatever. Butter Lane’s main distinction is that it’s located in the East Village, where nary a Magnolia Bakery or Crumbs can be found, it’s cute inside, with orange floral wallpaper a la Alice in Wonderland, and it’s tourist-free. They also sell Harney & Sons tea by the cup (my favorite). There’s no seating though, and if you are traveling more than a few blocks, it might be a good idea to call ahead since their hours are somewhat irregular. On a couple of Saturday afternoons I noticed the shop was shuttered with a “Sorry, out of cupcakes” sign posted in the window.

Butter Lane delivery menu

Butter Lane, 123 East 7th St. between First Avenue and Avenue A