March in New York (March 2014)

Prepare to get hungry!

First stop, Barney Greengrass on 86th and Amsterdam, a great Jewish stop:

Smoked tongue and egg bagel, smoked sturgeon, matzo ball soup, finished off with babka, a sweet yeast cake. Where has babka been all our lives?? It's like a cross between a pain au chocolate and a cinnamon bun.

 

Walking through a snowy Central Park.

Twitcher! She spotted a woodpecker.

A red cardinal...

...and that's an American robin:

 

Aside from babka, the other culinary discovery has been 'bao" which is a steamed bun filled with a variety of things. Ippudo is renowned for both its bao and its ramen noodle-soup bowls. It must be good considering the near two-hour wait!

 

Knife-sharpening masterclass with a Japanese knife sharpener. We really want some Japanese kitchen knives. They are the best!

We watched an episode of Man v Food on TV one evening and decided to visit two of the restaurants in the show. Brennan & Carr is located deep into south Brooklyn.

 

Famous for its hot roast beef, each sandwich is 'dipped' in the cooking liquor of the beef. Single dip is just the meat being dunked, double dip gives the whole sandwich a quick dunk, whilst the holy grail is the triple dip, which takes step two and pours extra 'jus' over the sandwich into a bowl. Messy but so, so good.

 

Next on the itinerary was L&B Spumoni Gardens, purveyor of amazing Sicilian square pies. L&B started in the 1930s selling 'spumoni' (ice cream) from a horse and cart (L&B gets its name from Ludovico the owner, and Babe the horse). However the pizza has become just as famous as the ices now, and rightly so. The mozzarella is put directly onto the dough to create a 'barrier' between the dough and thick tomato sauce on top. So good.

 

Later in the month we visited Baohaus which unfortunately did not compare to Ippudo. However full marks for the name. Introducing Chairman Bao (on the right), and a Coffin Bao - a deep fried bao with deep fried fish, condensed milk, coriander and peanuts.

 

One of our wedding gifts was a voucher for the famous Russian Tea Rooms. Very opulent! Good vodka cocktails.

 

 

We started with some borscht and Siberian-style beef pancakes, then moved onto stroganoff and chicken kiev...the waiter makes the first cut in the kiev for you to prevent any explosions!