Saturday!!
Well yesterday I got to play in snow. Today I got to be in the cold damp afterthoughts of the snow. Not so pretty today.
At any rate, we stopped at Bagels Plus, a few blocks from the favorite niece's house. This is a required stop every time we come to Brooklyn. Bacon, Egg and Cheese on a Bagel for me, and the same on an everything bagel for Ana. Naturally the coffee to go with it. As usual, this place was amazing. While it might not look like much on the outside, one should be aware that its what they cook on the inside that makes the stop worth while.
From here we drove up to LaGuardia to drop off Ana's rental car. We took the Q33 bus down to Jackson Heights in Queens, then took the R train down to the Flatiron Building in Manhattan.
Flatiron Building: (Intersection of 5th, Broadway and 23rd Street)
From the front, it looks like a triangular shaped building:
From the air it looks like a "flat iron":
When it was built in 1902, it was one of the tallest buildings of its time, ringing in at 22 stories. Keep in mind that the Empire State Building wouldn't be built for another 33 years...
Hot Chocolate Time!
At this point our next destination was City Bakery's "Hot Chocolate Festival".
Now you should understand, there is "hot cocoa" like Swiss Miss, Starbuck's, and most places. Then there is "hot chocolate" like City Bakery's. When these other places make hot cocoa, they usually mix a powder or a few chocolate pieces to make it. City Bakery dips a ladle into a cauldron of pure molten chocolate bliss and then deposits it into your cup. Then they ask if you want marshmallow in it, and if you do they put a stay-puft marshmallow in there with it. I also ordered a molten chocolate cookie, which was just unbelievable.
City Bakery Hot Chocolate = Diabetics need not apply.
The rest of the afternoon Ana and I strolled from Midtown to NYU to Union Square shopping. I don't think there is any place on earth with as many shops competing for your dollar than in lower Manhattan. The last place we ended up shopping at was Filene's Basement, which ironically can be found on the 4th,5th, and 6th floors in a building across from Union Square Park.
From here we took the 6 train to Little Italy for Dinner. We wondered around Little Italy stopping in a few stores looking for purse and taking time for Ana to look in the Paul Frank store.
Dinner: Peasant (Elizabeth btw. Spring and Prince)
I read about Peasant on www.chow.com a site I highly recommend if you are looking for great restaurant reviews in a given area. They have never disappointed me here or in Tampa with their recommendations. What I didn't read about was the dress code... We were dressed ready to go to a hipster bar and that would have been fine for that scene, it was a little underwhelming for this place. Dress Up if you go here!
Our waitress was awesome. If you click the link above and look at the menu you will see it is all in Italian. She translated everything on the menu and explained in great detail how each dish was prepared and what we might like with it. I asked for a glass of red wine, and she then asked me a choice of about five different choices of just their house red.
We started with the Bocconcini (mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto) which was then baked in a wood burning oven. They also brought out hand churned butter, an amazing olive oil and artisan bread. The flavors of these things together were outstanding. I could go on for days describing the flavors of the olive oil alone.
For our entree's (forgive me I don't recall their Italian names) I had the lemon butter skate (think Stingray) and a creamy parmesan polenta. Ana had the chef's special lamb, which was served over the same parmesan polenta. The skate was flakey and so heavenly. You could taste every bit of the lemon and the butter. The polenta was very smooth and creamy and was an excellent compliment to the skate. The same could be said of Ana's lamb.
All told, for under $100 including tip, I had no complaints. The only oddity of the meal was when we were being seated, upon telling the hostess that we did not have a reservation, she said we would have to give up our table by 7:30. That would NEVER fly in Tampa.
After dinner, we strolled over to Ferrara Cafe to have dessert, but I'll spare the details, their quality was seriously lacking. At this point I am not sure that I will be making them a return stop in the future.
We stopped back by the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to see the city at night, but the 25F wind chill kept us from hanging out too long, and so we headed home.