ps… it’s snowing.
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happy weekend…
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Category Archives: new york city
dream dining… 2.0
amazing, right?
this week’s dream dining destination: the restaurant at the nomad hotel in new york city. it’s more or less in my backyard, but i haven’t been yet. the restaurant is run by the same chef as eleven madison park, which bodes really, really well. i love the building it’s in, the dark and clubby look of the interior, and the food…. the food looks to die for. tdf, for short. this roast chicken for two (above) is their signature dish, and arrives stuffed full of brioche, foie gras, and truffles. oh my.
(photographs from the nomad hotel’s website)
monday obsession: melt bakery
the ice-cream sandwiches from melt bakery are perfection. i am a huge fan of the classic, but i’m seriously thinking i need to branch out and try some of their other flavors, like the “lovelet”, which is red velvet cookie-cakes with cream cheese ice cream. yes, i could eat that…
see a demo of how to make the perfect ice cream sandwich here.
and did you know? melt bakery just opened their first shop!
(image credit here)
cheese, please
across the pond raw cows milk cheese from lucy’s whey
i hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. we had great weather here in nyc… the kind where it’s a shame to be indoors for even one minute.
being a total cheese nerd, of course i had to go to the cheese market and dairy bar at the new amsterdam market on sunday. i love this market – it’s steps from where the famed fulton fish market was held for years before moving to the bronx, it’s in lower manhattan, which is steeped in the (to me) fascinating history of the first dutch settlement in what we now call manhattan, starting around 1609, and it’s right on the water, with the brooklyn and manhattan bridges posing nicely in the background. it’s also held directly under an overpass of the fdr freeway, making it a wonderfully loud and uniquely nyc-style experience.
in addition to buying as many goodies as i could carry – including some amazing sullivan street bakery bread with tomatoes baked right in – i also had a milk tasting. it was kind of like having a flight of wine… but instead you sample milk from different breeds of cows. how great is that? see more photos from the afternoon below…
(all photos by laurakinsey)
friday favorites…
happy friday, everyone.
don’t ask how, but i managed to come down with a major sinus infection during the heatwave we’ve been having here on the east coast. i’m hoping to shake it by tomorrow so i can practice some baking. turning on the oven might sound like a dumb idea, but there are so many fruits and berries available right now… it just seems like the perfect time to experiment.
if the weekend lasted more than two days, i’d love to do each and every one of these things:
the cheese market and dairy fair at the new amsterdam market tops my to-do list on sunday!
visit monet’s garden exhibit at the new york botanical center
check out williamsburg’s farmers market
a class in making and decorating model boats? sounds interesting…
take a tour of castle williams on governors island
visit the cloud city exhibit by tomás saraceno at the met
weekend snapshots
happy monday! i’m hoping everyone had a great weekend. mine flew by and the theme was indulgence… (too much food! too much drink!) but the weather was perfect and mk! and i did some great exploring. highlights? a drink and a snack at the recently opened parish hall, and a great little cocktail at two door tavern, involving cucumber vodka, black pepper, soda water, and lemon or lime. the weekend was nicely bookended by beverages on rooftops – and the ease and frequency with which this is possible might just be one of the best things about new york city.
hester street fair
last summer i became a huge fan of the hester street fair, which is held every saturday on the lower east side in manhattan. well, every saturday from mid-spring to mid-fall, that is, and when they closed up shop last october, it gave me mild anxiety. which is why i was so excited when i heard saturday was opening day. i contemplated going at 10 on the dot but waited until the more respectable hour of 2pm to stuff myself. and i ate enough calories to cover me for about 3 days…but it was totally worth it.
favorites? the korean bulgogi from we rub you. grilled, thin-sliced marinated beef with sesame apple slaw, plus shredded carrots and cilantro on a challah roll. i mean, come on! i could have eaten two. or six, but i wanted to save room for other things.
i scarfed a couple of pork tacos from brooklyn taco. enjoyed a to-die-for cup of salted caramel crack ice-cream from ample hills creamery. downed a mini mojito flavored cupcake from prohibition bakery and a little s’more from s’amore! (which i love – see this old post). the sugar was starting to hit and my friend betty jo and i were super full. she got coffee from the amazing cafe grumpy and we walked around some more, looking at prints and jewelry and old books… but thoughts quickly returned to food. should we get a lobster roll from luke’s? a ricotta cheesecake pie from pie corps, or maybe a popsicle from la newyorkina? i did buy the fruit & nut granola from spatzi’s and thought about buying some pickled cauliflower from sour puss pickles. but i was too full and suddenly my bag felt to heavy. i know what the solution is. i will have to go back next week.
(the hester street fair runs saturdays 10-6 from april 28th – oct 27th. more info here)
snack of the week: cookies!
did you know there is a cookie bar at whole foods on houston street? a COOKIE BAR! what are they trying to do to me? i was there to get spelt flour and a few other things, including a salad, when i spotted it. i couldn’t resist the vegan gingersnap sandwich cookies with vegan frosting (top photo). they got a little banged up on the way home, but they were tasty… and if they weren’t labeled as vegan i’d never have known. (i’m not a vegan, but i like to taste-test vegan baked goods sometimes to see if they taste as good as the real thing…. these did!)
in other cookie news… Gourmet Guild opened recently in my neighborhood, and mk and i stopped in last weekend to see what’s going on in there. it’s great – kind of like a mini-market of brooklyn-based (or at least new york based) food artisans. several companies i recognized from the outdoor summer markets, like La Newyorkina and Kings County Jerky, but there were some new-to-me faces, too. couldn’t pass up a package of chocolate chili cashew biscotti (bottom two photos) from Whimsy & Spice. they are seriously divine, and they tasted sooo good dunked in my afternoon macchiato.
on the Whimsy & Spice website, i loved reading about this brooklyn-based company run by husband/wife team Mark & Jenna. he does the baking, and she does (among lots of other things) the packaging and product photography, AND manages the blog sweetfineday. i’m adding it to my list of daily must-reads.
(photos by laura kisney)
vogue living…
a couple weeks ago, i was admiring the “farah” shoes from tabitha simmons online…. (you have to watch the video on her website!) and then on friday, vogue arrived in the mail and now i get to see inside her house. leave it to vogue. they have the best house & home features, and i especially love it when the featured space is here in NYC.
first the shoes:
now the house:
(photograps by Françios Halard for Vogue, story by Lynn Yaeger)
pre-holiday weekend fun…
i hadn’t gone up to midtown to see the twinkling holiday decorations or store windows for a couple of years. on friday, after a lovely dinner right next to the fireplace (here), mk and i went for it… the crowds are a kind of a drag but you have to just go with it. pretend you’re the only people on the street.
my favorite windows were at Bergdorf Goodman… love the giant birds wearing feathery dresses, and the girl with the loooong neck standing next to a giraffe. the Gaga windows at Barneys were also a sight to see… do you want to live in a room where everything is made of hair? where there is a swirl of hair in a picture frame made of hair? rest on a hair sofa and gaze out a window framed in hair curtains? bizarre-o but cool.
want to see where the evening ended? look here.
and… you have to watch this:
(bottom two photos are windows at Barneys; photos above are windows at Bergdorf Goodman. taken with my iPhone)
