IT in NYC Pt. 2: Me Want Food
My guilt has caught up with me and a long overdue follow-up post about our latest trip to New York is finally here.
As mentioned in the previous post Billie, Elph, Jillian, Kathleen, and I went to NYC in the first weekend of September (already a month ago!? I apologize in advance for the gaps in history). The highlight was Satuday dinner at Babbo - if you get the chance to eat there you must not miss it. For lunch on Saturday Elph, Jillian and Billie hit up another Batali biz, Otto, for pizza. We had eaten there when we visited in 2007 (don’t miss the lardo pizza) and the report from ‘08 was more of the same: delicious!
With Saturday spent enjoying Batali’s menus, we decided that Sunday should be spent with Danny Meyer and Union Square Hospitality Group. We started with lunch at Union Square Cafe, a regular stop on our semi-regular NYC trips. We started with Bloody Maries and fresh oysters (Elph, oyster connoisseur, do you rember what they were?) and homemade garlic potato chips. I had a cup of the fresh corn chowder and a salmon BLT, and several more Bloody Maries. Kathleen had the curried vegetables, and I forget now what everyone else had, but none of us were disappointment. Our server was great and brought us practically an entire dessert tray gratis.
Afterward we walked up Broadway, killed some time at Strand before we went our separate ways for the afternoon. We met up later at Blue Smoke/Jazz Standard, the USHG barbecue joint. We gorged ourselves on three different kinds of ribs, brisket, pulled pork, collard greens, mac & cheese, coleslaw, sweet potato fries, onion rings, and more. I had no room for dessert until I saw Uncle Granddad’s Whiskey Float (or some other absurd name like that), a cream soda float with a heavy pour of Jack Daniels. Elph noshed on some key lime pie that made us pucker like caught fish. By that point in the day I had eaten so much I was in pain sitting at the table - a long walk back to the apartment helped that.
We woke up at 5:00am feeling not the least bit hungry after a weekend of gastronomic grandeur. Another successful adventure.