A Day in the Life of a NYC Foodie

Last year we came to New York for the Brewskeeball Championships. Yes, it’s true that my boyfriend is a skeeball high roller. Due to the many activities squeezed into a few short days, we didn’t get a chance to experience the restaurants of New York City. This year however, we decided to put skeeball on the backburner and try all the greatest restaurants NYC has to offer. We had our NYC family transplants leading the way and off we went.

First up was Otto, a Mario Batali Italian restaurant. Grandma doesn’t like pizza, so when my aunt and I ordered prosciutto and arugula pizza to share, Gram decided that she would steal all the prosciutto off the top. The little bites we managed to try with the fancy thin ham were delicious. As we were walking out, we had a surprise Mario Batali sighting. We heard he lives across the street. Let’s just say it was a good thing that my grandmother didn’t notice him because she might have given him a piece of her mind about the worst brioche she’s ever had. The rest of the meal well made up for the brioche in my humble opinion.

My next encounter was with a sinful hole-in-the wall bakery. Levain. We went to buy a few rolls for the balloon party and instead ended up with all four types of cookies the bakery has to offer. The chocolate peanut butter cookie was exceedingly large and mmm good. If I lived nearby, I would have to run when passing in order to restrain myself from those cookies.

And then there was the Thanksgiving feast. Since we cooked for a group of about twenty five on Wednesday, we decided to go out to eat for the holiday. What a great choice. Collichio & Sons wined and dined us for the evening with white truffle pasta, scallops, juicy turkey and gravy, and good ole pumpkin pie. I was busy licking my fingers and forgot to take pictures.

Friday night, we decided to go a little on the lighter side with some sushi. My cousins picked Blue Ribbon Sushi where we got the blue ribbon special platter. I don’t usually like sashimi but it was so fresh that it melted in your mouth.

On Saturday, Jon’s dad wanted his usual weekend brunch, so off to Harlem we went. The Red Rooster treated us with amazing cornbread, chicken apple sausage, fried chicken sandwiches, and cheesy grits.

We didn’t eat again until our late French dinner at La Sirene with the Parisians. We enjoyed foie gras like it was legal, escargot like it wasn’t a snail, chocolate lava cake like it had no calories, and wine like it was BYOB (wait, it was!).

To end the vacation, we went to see a Broadway show called the Mystery of Edwin Drood. It was Charles Dickens last play and since he died before he finished the script, the audience got to decide the ending. After the show we headed to Sardis– you know that famous place in NYC with all the caricatures of famous people?

I guess my great gram took my gram after her first Broadway show; Gram took my aunt when she was sixteen for her first cocktail; my Aunt took my brother and cousins, and now my aunt and Gram took Jon and I.

And for our grand finale, we went back to where we started this food adventure; with Italian at Mercato. Lasagne, gnocchi, and strachiatelli, oh my.

Good thing we did yoga all week in order to keep our figures.