New York – Food Diary

Ok back to inputs now. I suppose this is much more palatable than outputs. One of the things that I did successfully on this trip to New York was to sample various kinds of cuisines. There were some repetitions, and there was this one particular restaurant I ended up giong to thrice, but overall I had an extremely good culinary experience. I’m writing this in the past tense as I’m on the way out of New York as I write this. I’m at the Emirates Lounge at JFK Airport (more about this in another post).

On most weekdays, breakfast and lunch were at office. There wasn’t much variety in lunch (our cafeteria wasn’t very diverse) so I ended up eating salad on most days. Breakfast I experimented and had a variety of things. Dinner, however, I ate out on all days, and though I couldn’t keep up completetly with my initial aim of a different cuisine each day, I did quite well. One of the reasons for not achieving my “target” was that Battery place, where I was living, wasn’t very well served by restaurants and on several days I put NED to take the train.

There were only 2 days when I didn’t have salad for lunch at the office cafeteria. Two fridays back (8th of Jan) I had some thai vegetables with rice. It was extremely heavy and I had trouble finishing. Oh and one of my regrets of this tour is that I didn’t have a good Thai meal anywhere. Green curry with rice types. Then, today I had mexican rice for lunch at the cafeteria. Rice with beans, roasted sweet corn and lettuce. Was pretty good stuff. Liked it.

Breakfast I tried a variety of stuff. I had “home-style fries” (basically south indian alu fry), scrambled eggs, omlette (really liked the omlettes in my office; had it several times), fruit salad (usually a supplement to other stuff; avocado, kharbuja, strawberries, grapes and pineapple), cream of wheat, oatmeal, etc. I realized how you need to add stuff such as raisins, honey, etc. in order to make oatmeal porridge more palatable, and if you add these stuffs it can be made really tasty while yet being healthy.

Dinner diary:

• 3rd, 10th Jan: Chipotle mexican grill. Excellent stuff. Had been ages since I’d had Mexican stuff and it was extremely tasty. Highly recommended
• 4th, 18th, 21st Jan: Alfanoose, Maiden Street, off Broadway. Mediterranean place. Excellent veg platter. One main dish (hummus/baba ganoush/falafel/.. ) with rice or salad, one side dish (chickpeas, tabouli, etc.) and a pita bread. Very filling and very tasty. I also had falafel sandwich as a supplement a couple of times. Excellent again.
• 5th Jan: Wendy’s Fresh Mex. Right next to my office on Vesey Street. Supposedly authentic Mexican. Maaaajor letdown.
• 6th Jan: Maoz Vegetarian, near Times square: Hummus-falafel sandwich with unlimited salad helpings. Brilliant. And cheap.
• 7th Jan: Taj Tribeca, Murray Street. North Indian. Surprisingly excellent. Broke my no-Indian-food policy since some friends wanted to eat there. And it was extremely good.
• 8th, 15th Jan: Adreinne’s Pizzabar, Stone Street. Bloody brilliant pizza. The Margherita I had on the 15th is the best I’ve EVER had. crunchy thin crust, just the right amount of cheese, etc. Can’t praise it more!
• 9th Jan: Uncle Nick’s, Hell’s Kitchen. Greek. Had just a starter since it was so heavy. Essentially capsicum bajji with cheese. Decent.
• 11th Jan: Hangawi, 32nd and 5th. Where else but in New York will you find a Korean Vegetarian place? Insanely brilliant salad and awesome soup. Main course (stonepot rice) wasn’t as good as the starter but ranked high on an absolute scale!
• 12th Jan: Meskerem, Macdougal Street, Greenwich Village. Ethiopian. Cold dosa with 3 dals, 4 sabjis and one dal-level thing with wine. Pretty good stuff. But bad ambience. Too crowded.
• 13th Jan: The Hummus Place, opposite Meskerem. Buggers didn’t accept AmEx cards so had to pay in cash. Fawa beans soup, roasted eggplant for starter, some hummus and chickpeas thing for main course nad Turkish coffee. the coffee was absolutely brilliant. Out of the world. Heavily laden with spices and extremely strong.
• 14th Jan: Capri Caffe, Church Street. Authentic cuisine from the island of Capri. Again main crib is they didn’t take AmEx. Pretty good salad and excellent soup (green peas).
• 16th Jan: Harrington’s. 31st and 7th. It’s a pub. Had some fried cheese and capsicum for starter. Panini for main course. How good can you expect the food to be in a bar?
• 17th Jan: Some mexican place in Hell’s Kitchen. Decent but not brilliant. Expensive (ok friend’s wife’s relative paid for it, so I didn’t even expense it! ). No value for money. But excellent dessert (friend’s wife’s relative described it as a liquid Tiramisu – coffee, tequila and whipped cream). And this friend’s wife’s relative (US-settled) was surprised that you get Tiramisu in India!!
• 19th Jan: The Village Trattoria, Greenwich Village. Lentil soup, bruschetta, some pasta with pesto sauce. Again brilliant. Excellent stuff. And not too expensive.
• 20th Jan: Ancora Ristorante Italiano: Somewhere near Broad Street. Don’t konw exact address. It’s a high-class looking underground Italian place. Again pretty good. Ok I’ll reclassify that to brilliant.
• 22nd Jan: Ok this was more of an evening snack preparing for the impending flight. Greek Salad at Cosi’s opposite my office. Excellent.

Ok I suppose I haven’t mentioned the times I ate breakfast or lunch out but it isn’t that significant so I’ll leave it out.