new york’s finest in less than 48 hours
Our first New York culinary adventure lasted less than 2 days. We flew in on a red-eye and immediately started our cherry-picked tour of area restaurants. Since we were really hungry, we opted to go with an old favorite which, conveniently, was only a few blocks from our hotel. For the past fourteen years, Le Pain Quotidien has been our ‘go to’ breakfast place all around the world. When we lived in Leuven, Belgium, we were introduced to Pain Quotidien under its Flemish name, Het Dagelijks Brood. Even though it is a chain, each location features amazing, freshly baked breads/pastries, communal tables and a variety of jams and Nutella-like spreads. The lunch fare is equally nice, FYI.
After a brief nap, we took a moderately expensive taxi ride to Brooklyn so Tate could realize one of his 2010 goals: eat a BLT at Choice Market. Fans of “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” will remember this small restaurant from the ‘with Bacon’ episode. Our friend, Dave, who lives nearby, met us for lunch. Five BLTs were ordered and quickly consumed… delicious! To this day, Tate still describes the sandwich with a combination of awe and longing. Dinner that night was at my favorite NYC establishment: Balthazar. The boys were excited about the fries, dubbed the ‘BEST’ by Bobby Flay in the ‘Totally Fried’ episode of “The Best Thing…” They didn’t disappoint, neither did the perfectly cooked steaks and my selection of spring pea ravioli.
The next morning, we raced down to Clinton Street Bakery, made famous (at least to us) in an episode of “Throwdown with Bobby Flay” (most of our tv-watching is on the Food Network, in case you didn’t notice). The Clinton Street Bakery makes, hands down, the best blueberry pancakes I’ve ever eaten. That, plus the sugar-cured bacon, was enough to make me pre-diabetic, but it was so, so good. Later that morning, we decided to double down on the sweets and try to find the Wafels and Dinges (Belgian waffle) truck. Even though we were in the right place, we missed the truck by about half an hour (they sold out early). So we found a cute little lunch place (also a chain, I believe), Financier. Everyone had salads (Greek, Italian, etc.) and we resolved to find the truck on our return visit the following week.
In hindsight, it was better we didn’t find the waffle truck just then. In the afternoon, we trekked over to the upper West side and went to Levain Bakery to sample their chocolate chocolate cookies (favorite of chef Rocco Dispirito). The taste (and calorie content) were off the charts! We ate them fresh from the oven and they were crispy on the outside and moist/chewy on the inside. It would be so nice to know how they do this but it is a closely guarded secret (that not even Rocco or Bobby Flay can get out of them… a bummer for those who live on the West Coast).
That night, we had an early dinner at Daisy Mae’s BBQ on the recommendation of TV Chef, Michael Symon. He raved about the beef ribs in another “The Best Thing…” episode so it was definitely on our culinary radar. We walked up to the counter and innocently ordered two beef ribs and two sides without looking at the price list. When the woman behind the register said, “Eighty-three dollars,” my jaw dropped. Each 20-oz beef rib was a whopping $38. We quickly re-thought things and decided to start with one, just in case it was too much for the four of us. Turns out, it was just enough! Tate insisted on saving the 10+ inches of beef bone for our dog, Scout, and we wrapped it up to go (we carried the bone to Connecticut for a few days and then to Maine, finally throwing it out just before returning for a last, 24-hour stop in NYC).
My apologies for the lack of photos; we brought our little Nikon Coolpix camera instead of the multi-lens Canon Digital Rebel and I don’t like to photograph food with a point-and-shoot.
To be continued…
