Two Californians making a leap of faith and moving to the Big Apple.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Food

At this point we've been in the city for about two and a half weeks. We've apartment hunted, we've seen a show, we've shopped, we've had grocery delivery. We've even hosted out-of-town guests. Which isn't to imply that we've done it all or seen it all, not by a long shot. There is still stuff within 5 or 6 blocks of us that we are discovering and being wowed by. The city is full of nooks and crannies, and the best of them are delicious.

A friend of ours said before we came here that "All food in New York is better than any food anywhere else," which is (I think I've mentioned) a touch of overstatement. But the thing that is genuinely impressive is how you can walk into random places on the street and find stuff that would be truly 5-star top-notch food anywhere else.

This morning I poked around for a solid 2 minutes on Urbanspoon looking for a nearby breakfast/brunch place, and came up with Madeline's Patisserie about a 5-10 minute walk from the apartment. I went down there, picked up some croissants and a macaroon (lemon espresso) and was back before Victoria got out of bed. And the fruit of that labor? Possibly the best croissants I've had in years, maybe ever, possibly including croissants in Paris (admittedly without the help of online ratings or reviews, not quite a fair comparison.) And definitely the best macaroon ever.

And this is just the sort of thing that happens basically all the time. The pizza place across the street from us is divine. Bagels a couple blocks away is irresistible (seriously, even though the company provides breakfast, V and I have been to bagels twice on weekdays already, so good).

So, the list of OMG, 5-star food that we've had already:
Bagels: Brooklyn Bagels
Cupcakes: sugar Sweet sunshine
Mediterranean: Gazala Place
Croissants, macaroons: the aforementioned Madeline's
Thai: Room Service (at least for the lunch special, wow)
And we've had magnificent bread from several little places I can't even dig up links for

Not to say that everything is stunning. There's definitely been some ho-hum food, and (more commonly) drinks. We haven't made it yet to the fine cocktail places that have been recommended to us, or some of the beer places that have been recommended, but we have yet to find anything that is the match of Noble Experiment, Hamilton's, or O'Brien's. Local IPAs here taste OK as beer, but rate poorly for IPA.

And we haven't even bothered to try eating Mexican here yet.

Still, all in all, the trade has definitely been in an "mmm" sort of direction.

1 comment:

  1. If you want macaroons, check out Bouchon Bakery in Columbus Circle.

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