road trip to nyc: a few weeks ago my friend karen and i took the day off and drove to nyc....several of the boroughs...some accidentally, in search of delectable european specialty food to stock the kitchen at home. karen had read about a specialty irish grocery store in queens and was willing to drive so we could cart it all home. we pulled into the butchers block at 11 am and got an awesome parking space right out front. karen is irish....forgot to mention that... her brother and sister in law who recently moved to the states from ireland are missing some of their favorite foods. as soon as we walked into the store and surveyed the wares karen dialed up her sister in law on the mobile and started giving her an inventory of what was available. special easter eggs filled with cadbury treats, irish sausages, irish butter, cookies, crisps (the delightfully helpful staff opened cases directly off the delivery truck)... between the two of us we filled the back of her suv with bags.
that was so lucrative we decided to start internet searching from the car and found another euro grocery less than a mile away. this one turned out to be mainly greek. pitas, olives, cheeses, olive oil.....it was fun. bought just a few things (italian olive oil for $8) but it was very entertaining. some of the things at the deli counter resembled actual hoofs......and the sounds system played an all greek sound track, fantastic.
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this is the olive bar at the euro market |
starving by now we decided to walk a few blocks and found an awesome restaurant bare burger......wow what an awesome lunch....my ice tea was pink, the burger was fantastic, fries also delicious.
next stop was eataly in manhattan. we put the address into the gps and found ourselves at that address but in brooklyn stuck in traffic. we laughed a lot at how dense we were and how long it took us to figure out that we were not in manhattan. an hour later we pulled into the flatiron district, parked our car and headed in. i had been there once before on a day that was insanely busy. this was a friday mid-afternoon so it wasn't too bad. we window shopped the olive oil (mostly very expensive) and visited all of the different departments. we checked out the balsamic vinegar. it was very expensive.... twice as much as we had paid for really good quality balsamic vinegar we picked up last fall in florence italy. we stopped at the coffee bar and had excellent macchiatos and we did buy a few things.....a load of bucatini, aborio rice and some nice italian cookies. (karen also bought some prosciutto)
next up we met britany for dinner at momofuku noodle bar....pork buns...fabulous! then around the corner to momofuku milk bar for dessert....french toast soft serve ice cream.....wow you could taste the butter and syrup and the crack pie......yummmmmm. we also got birthday cake truffles and 2 kinds of cookies way too much. i was still nibbling a cookie 3 days later. we jumped back in the car and made it home by midnight...i have to say i had to sleep late and chill out all day the next day. what a wonderful day off! thanks karen great idea!!!!
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