It's weird that there's a fancy food court a few blocks away, on Delancey Street, once home to jelly shoes & ultra-cheap jeans. It's a theme park of the old Lower East Side, superimposed on the still-extant LES, or so it seems to me. I don't often cross Houston, but I went down there with my best girls the other day. The 11-year-old wanted a Bing sandwich: a deep-fried scallion pancake wrapped around a filling such as tofu or tempura veggies. Then we had expensive pudding & I indignantly explained that lemon & strawberry pudding are in no way trifle.*
*The name is a joke ~ trifle is a time-consuming dessert, made & served in a cut-glass bowl, with layers of red wine-soaked ladyfingers, pudding, fruit, whipped cream, jello, & a few other elements. My back still hurts from carrying a trifle dish from Auntie May in Wales to my mother in Sioux Falls.