Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The best thing I ever ate...

Our foodie contributor Diane recently took an amazing food inspired trip through the streets of New York City. I live vicariously through her traveling and food discoveries... enjoy!

Day 1:
Our first stop was Normas at Le Parker Meridien Hotel in Manhatten for the Chocolate Decadence French Toast.

Now this isn’t any ordinary French toast because it’s not toast at all. Its chocolate pound cake dipped in a special egg batter and then seared. Then it’s covered with (ok deep breath) fresh strawberries, pistachios, chocolate sauce, whip cream and maple syrup that is given to you in a little jar from Vermont  (ok now exhale) The picture only shows a half portion. We had to split it even though I didn’t want to share!!! As a special treat they gave us a sample of their fresh daily smoothies in a shot glass. It was Peach and Mango and it was yummy and the French toast well…. what was left on our itinerary had some stiff competition.

Our next stop was a quick one and not a planned one. A HOT DOG! Now this was my husband’s doing. Before I could even pull out the camera to diary this delicious moment it was gone in a NY minute!  :0)

It was an inviting 29 degrees (insert sarcasm here) so of course I had to go for a hot chocolate at Dean & Deluca. It was like warm chocolate syrup. Yum! 

Our next stop turned out to be not so appetizing but extremely entertaining. 

We had to tickets to sit in the audience of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and my honey got picked to be a contestant! What I meant by not so appetizing is that he had to pick a series of buckets from the stage in hopes that the bucket was one with $100 dollars and have it dumped on his head. 


As you can see that’s no 100 dollars. Instead it was Orange Fanta, condensed milk, chocolate syrup and GRAVY all over him. It was all in good fun they let him shower and gave him a 100 gap gift card.
We stayed with my bff in her place in Yonkers. Yonkers is like night and day from the city. It’s very hilly and there are actual homes not brown 50 story buildings. However the elevator was a trip!!!! 2 people max 


My bff cooked us some delicious dinner (whats better than a home cooked meal) and it was time to rest up for day 2 of our short but tasty trip.


Day 2:
We started with a Belgium waffle from Wafles & Dinges food truck. It was one of Bobby Flays Throwdown episodes so OBVIOUSLY we ordered the Throwdown Waffle. 

 http://www.wafelsanddinges.com/menu.html . The secret is their ‘spekuloos’ spread which is like making a syrup out of graham crackers. Best $6 bucks I ever spent.

We ventured out to Brooklyn 

 to hit Peter Lugers. Now Peter Luger is already famous for their porterhouse steak but being that we needed to have room in our bellies we opted for the Best Thing I Ever Ate feature: Bacon.


Yes that’s bacon. It was so thick almost like ham.  It was crunchy, yet chewy oh man all I needed was some scrambled eggs. We ordered 4 and it was so filling! At $3 a slice it was something to blog about. Well time to walk off the bacon grease…

Doughnut plant Brooklyn 

 These people have done something to better the world I think. The donut shop is about the size of a walk in closet but wow. They don’t use eggs to make their doughnuts and you can tell the difference in the taste. Oh yeah and some of them are square. Now Dean & Deluca sell some of these but it’s not the same. We had the pistachio donut and the coconut cream filled coconut doughnut. WOW.

For a snack we headed back to the city and into the IBM building where OBIKA was there with all its fine mozzarella cheeses.

They have every kind of mozzarella and it’s a mozzarella bar so they pretty much wrap everything into a mozzarella rolltini. I had bruschetta w/diced mozzarella and my husband had the buffala mozzarella caprese salad. Just a little snack before we went BIG.


BIG: David Burke Townhouse
This is one place we intended on going for just the Best Thing I Ever Ate feature: Cheesecake Lollipop Tree and only that. But we got sucked in. We were treated to their special soup of the day, cauliflower and pancetta. It was perfect for the freezing temperatures outside of this NY basement like restaurant. For the entrĂ©e my husband ordered the crab cake which was covered in pretzel rods with white sesame seeds topped with a Mango sauce and tomato molasses. 

He’s still drooling over it. My bff and I split a braised short rib w/ gnocchi and mushrooms covered in a white truffle sauce. On came the dessert

liquid nitrogen frozen dark chocolate (brown) triple chocolate and strawberry cheesecake (pink). To top it off the dip, if you will, was bubble gum whip cream. We were in awe. The cheesecake was so creamy the shell was like candy. We were about to fight over who got the last lollipop. 

Another treat the maitre’d gave us was a mini tasting dessert sample, Mini rice krispie treats, chocolate strawberry cupcake (middle), macaroon and a mini brownie. UNBELIEVABLE! At that point we all declared that this very moment we were all experiencing THE BEST THING WE EVER ATE. -By Diane

Here are a few more pics:



Monday, April 18, 2011

Easter dress sneak peak...

Love my new Easter dress by Petticoat Alley- I just recently discovered this brand at Macy's.  It's by far my favorite!!!!  here's a sneak peek!