New York CIty~David Burke's Kitchen

I chose to go to a fancy lunch at "David Burke's Kitchen," which is known for farm-to-table sourced foods with a slight whimsical touch.  He also developed some flavor sprays that provide flavor without the calories. 

 Butter on a slab of salt.

 Lobster Soup with a lobster dumpling, coconut fennel creme, red watercress

 Salmon Pastrami with horseradish, mustard seeds, beet bellini. I liked how the salmon looked like pastrami slices.

 Spicy Spaghetti with shrimp, zucchini, and basil.  I had a difficult time eating this dish because the sauce had thai basil in it and I felt that the spicy thai basil flavor overpowered the whole dish. 

 Herbed mac and cheese with a prosciutto wrapped egg. 

Mmm...the egg was delicious and perfectly cooked. Mike and I were trying to figure out how a extremely soft boiled egg was wrapped in prosciutto, deep-fried, and it still retained its soft texture. Mike contemplated that the egg was placed in the refrigerator before it was deep-fried. 

 Apple Tart with lemon-thyme ice cream, apple cider caramel, and apple crisp.

I really was not a fan of my entree, but we ended the meal on a positive note. The desserts were delicious. The apple tart felt lighter version of apple pie with it's puff pastry crust.

 Cassis panna cotta with hibiscus meringue and rose jelly.

A good panna cotta goes a long way in our books. Mike and I are not fans of flower-flavored foods, but we didn't mind the hibiscus and rose in this dessert.

David Burke's Kitchen
23 Grand St.
SOHO, NY 10013

(212) 201-9119

New York City~Doughnut Planet, Gruppo Pizza

A couple of years ago, I remember watching a show that highlighted "Doughnut Planet" in New York City. It could have been the Travel Channel's "Fried Food Paradise" show or the Food Network's "The Best Thing I Ever Ate." 

Some of the donut flavors include: blueberry, banana pecan, carrot cake, green tea.  On the episode I watched, I remember them focusing on the peanut butter and jelly donut. The peanut butter and the jelly were all made from scratch.  I think the Doughnut Plant even had a secret patented process to make a filled square donut. 

Look at the unusual assortment of flavors and colored donuts!

Mmmmm...peanut butter and jelly doughnut! It's really a grape jelly filled donut with a peanut butter glaze. 

Mike and I concluded that we would chose Round Rock donuts over this donut, but I do not think it's fair to compare a gourmet donut to a hot, fresh, plain yeast donut.  It's also difficult to compare a $3-4 donut to one that is $0.70. 

Doughnut Plant
379 Grand St
New York, NY 10002
(212) 505-3700

Mike and I wanted to eat pizza in New York City and one of our friends that lives in New York recommended "Gruppo." I bought the lunch special, which was a drink and two slices of pizza for around $6-7. The pizza was delicious and just the way I like it...thin crust, but thick enough that it has a slight chew to it. 

Funny story about the pizza. I wanted to order one slice with olives and one slice with mushrooms. Did you notice that there is broccoli on the pizza? For some reason my brain did not communicate with my mouth and I ordered broccoli pizza.  (FYI-broccoli is one of my least favorite vegetables, unless it's stir-fried. No mushy broccoli for me).  Mike even looked at me funny, repeated, "broccoli?" and I said "yeah."  Dumb, dumb Lauren. I blame it on the heat and getting lost finding restaurants.   

Gruppo Pizza

186 Avenue B , Bet. 12th and 11th St.
NY, NY 10009
212-995-2100

New York City~Momofuku Milk Bar

One of the places I had to check out in New York was David Chang's Milk Bar.  I had read about the compost cookies, the crack pie, and all the wonderful creations at his shop. 

If you've been keeping up with all of Mike and my travels, you know that we have a tendency to get lost...A LOT. Especially when the maps I download on my ipod touch do not allow us to mark exact locations.  We were walking for what seemed like forever. The heat was getting to us and I was getting grumpy. We finally got to his corner and say the signature peach of momofuku.  I peered in and saw people eating noodles.

Mike asked, "Do you want to go and eat pork buns and noodles?"  I through a small fit and cried, "No, I do not want to eat at Ssam bar. I just ate pizza, you just had Katz, I want dessert, not lunch!"

Then Mike saw the neon pink sign "Milk" and we got really excited.  We walked into the clear doors and saw noodles being cooked. I asked one of the servers if I could see the dessert menu.  Then he directed me across the street to the Milk Bar. 

Ahhh!! We made finally made it there! The Milk Bar is a really small shop with only a couple of bar stools. I am guessing that people just pick up snacks after a late night out or after eating at the Ssam bar.  Here's the chalkboard menu. 

Truffles

There were so many choices at the Milk Bar, so we settled on buying a trio of cookies.    We bought the blueberry and cream cookie, the compost cookie, and the corn cookie. I have now added "creating a cookie with corn flour or corn meal" to my "Things to Do" list. 

Look at this cute birthday cake!

Creamsicle and Cereal Milk soft serve.  Yummy! It was so refreshing after walking miles to get there. Both flavors were not too sweet (just the way I like it).  For some reason I was expecting the cereal milk flavor to taste like the leftover milk in a bowl of Fruity Pebbles,m but it tasted like the leftover milk of corn flakes cereal.  It was good, but Mike and I both agreed that the creamsicle flavor was better.


Milk Bar
251 E 13th St
New York, NY 10003
Corner of 13th St / 2nd Ave

New York~Museum of Modern Art

Mike and I both would not classify ourselves as the "artsy fartsy" types, but we I enjoy the occasional look see.  We were debating whether we should spend part of our short trip to NYC checking out the museum.  We finally decided to go because Van Gogh's "Starrry Night" is housed at the MOMA.  Mike spent most of his time in the museum sitting on chairs and benches waiting for me. 

Can you see me in the reflection? I'm under the "er" of the word "Modern."  The images below are some of my favorite pieces. 

Van Gogh's "The Olive Tree"

Piet Mondrian's "Trafalgar Square"

I'm not sure who the artist was, but I love mobiles.

Jackson Pollack's work.

Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory"

It's probably one of Dali's most famous works. It was about the size of a piece of copy paper. I thought it would have been larger.

"Starry Night"~Van Gogh

This is my favorite painting of all time.  This is the main reason why Mike and I went to MOMA. 

Postsecret work Postsecret is an art project in which people anonymously mail postcards with secrets written on them.  Some of the secrets are super funny.  Other's not so much. This exhibit was composed of six video screens cycling through various postcards. 

A pyramid containing items that distracts people from doing actual work. An iphone is up there on that pyramid.

I saw this while we were walking in the city. I'm guessing it was called "Dandelion" or something along those lines? It's a water sculpture.

MoMa
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019
(212) 708-9400

New York City~Katz Delicatessen

I love vacations! Gone are the days of summer vacation, winter break, and spring break. Those are now distant memories. But if there is something I like even more, it's schedules, itineraries, and organized events.  Yeah, I probably have a minor case of OCD, but I like having a calendar and schedules for each day of a trip. 

Recently, due to Mike and my crazy schedules, we haven't had the time to plan out detailed itineraries.  We even have to sit down and make it a point to decide on where we would like to go, and make the necessary arrangements. 

We now each choose one place/event that we want to see during our trip. So far this method works for domestic travel, but does not work for international travel. We have used this technique for both our Las Vegas trip and New York trips and it has been quite successful. I'm slowly learning how to chillax and not stress out about the minor details.     
     For our New York trip, Mike chose to go to Katz Delicatessen, home of the famous pastrami sandwich.  I chose to see at least one musical. We ended up watching Mary Poppins and Avenue Q which were both great!

The trip was packed with adventure and we had a blast! We visited the Tenement Museum, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (I swear I saw a guy that looked like Zachary Quinto while we were walking, but what are the chances of him being in New York then?), and did a lot of shopping and eating!

Katz's Delicatessen

 

Mike's pastrami sandwich.  He said that it was one of the best pastrami sandwiches he has eaten.  Mike doesn't like to use descriptors such as "best" or "number 1."  He's very diplomatic and would not say that this pastrami sandwich was the "best sandwich" he had ever eaten because it's difficult to compare a hamburger loaded with bacon to a pastrami sandwich.

Homemade pickles.

Look how crowded this restaurant was! We were there around 10:30-11am, it wasn't even prime lunch time yet!

Katz's Delicatessen has cute little signs hanging from the ceiling at various spot. "Where Harry met Sally"'s diner scene was filmed at Katz's.

After Mike ate his pastrami sandwich, he deemed our trip to New York a success and was fine if we did not do anything else on our trip.  I forgot to mention that we went to Katz's on the first full day of our 3.5 day trip to NYC. 

Katz Delicatessen
205 East Houston Street (corner of Ludlow St)
New York City, 10002

New York City~Social Eatz

Are any of you fans of Top Chef? "Social Eats" is a new restaurant that Angelo Sosa from Season 7 of Top Chef.  Mike and I did not religiously watch the show (remember we don't have cable tv), but from what we saw, we thought that Angelo should have won that season. Of course we had no way to judge his food; we just based it on the judges' review of his food. 

Bulgogi Burger

Mike thought that the meat would have been sliced versus ground.  His burger was not anything special.  I took one bite and then happily enjoyed my burger. 

I ordered the Bi Bim Bap burger, which won the "Greatest Burger in America." I'm not sure who gave out this award, but this burger was flavorful....almost too flavorful.  Imagine a patty of beef topped with kochujang pickled shredded vegetables, a sunny side up egg and shredded lettuce.  With all the fusion dishes out now (i.e. korean tacos, irish nachos), you would think someone would have come up with a burger like this sooner.

It was a messy burger with all the pickled vegetables and egg yolk oozing out of it, but I didn't care.  It was so good! The next time I make burgers at home, I'll probably try to replicate it.

We also shared a side of crispy fires. They were okay. They were served with some concoction of mayonnaise or cheese. We added some sriracha sauce to it and it was tasty. You could skip the fries and just order the burger.

Social Eatz
232 East 53rd St.
New York, NY 10022
(212) 207-3339