NEW YORK CITY: DELECTABLE DINING

May 2023

One of the best parts of going to New York City (besides visiting our loved ones) is eating there. I think it might be my favorite city in the world for pure culinary joy, and this trip was no exception. Here are a few of the places (but not all) where we enjoyed a meal or a treat. 

How have we never known about Chelsea Market before?  It is a food hall, shopping center, and more located on the West Side. It was built in the 1890s as the home for the National Biscuit Company (aka Nabisco) and is where the Oreo cookie was invented and first produced. It was redeveloped about 30 years ago into its present form.

It occupies an entire city block and is full of multicultural dining and shopping experiences.

This was our first meal after arriving in NYC, so we were hungry, but there were so many options! We bypassed the Heatonist, even though it had a tasting bar.

We  finally settled on an early lunch at the Miznon Chelsea Market, which advertises that it serves Mediterranean Street Food and has an Israeli chef. 

We look pretty tired, don't we? But we weren't too tired to enjoy 

Of course, we had to try "The Original World Famous Baby Cauliflower." It was good, but I wouldn't rank it as being the the "World Famous" category.

Traditional Sicilian-style gelato? I'm not sure what that is, so I had to find out at L'Arte del Gelato.

I'm still not sure how it differs from other gelatos, but the chocolate-raspberry combo was a perfect Mediterranean street food chaser.

We ended up going back to Chelsea Market on another day for another meal, but I didn't get any pictures. I think we had some pretty good pizza. I think I could go the this place ten more times and find ten more places where I'd like to eat. Hopefully, we will make it back on a future trip.

On another day, after we spent some time in the Natural History Museum, we stumbled on Mamoun's Falafel, and Bob remembered Andrew saying he liked the food here.

Another win. It reminds me of Bella Pita in Los Angeles near UCLA, which I love because you can add all the toppings you want to your pita.  I had to throw in the photo of the watermelons. Yikes! Expensive!

Next we stopped at one of my favorite places, Levain Bakery.

I'm not that fond of the coconut cookie, but I love the one with double chocolate chips. Bob isn't a huge fan, so we stopped at a frozen yogurt place for him (and me) called 16 Handles. It is your basic frozen yogurt place where you make your own and add your own toppings. In other words, it was delicious.

On one of the evenings, we all went to one of Andrew and Michaela's favorite restaurants, Cadence, which specializes in vegan soul food.

If you are skeptical about vegan food, check out this buffalo oyster mushroom sandwich. Yeah, it was as good as it looks.

However, without question the best meal of the entire trip was the one Andrew and Michaela made for me on Mother's Day. They had a centerpiece of beautiful peonies, one of my favorite flowers. There was an amazing array of appetizers, all homemade, including baba ganoush, olives they cured themselves, pesto made from foraged nettles, and delicious hummus.

But the pièce de résistance was this shakshuka, a Middle Eastern dish that was at least as good, if not better than, the shakshuka we had in Israel. 👍👍

I love being spoiled. 💗