Oh my god.. I think today’s abundance of food more than made up for yesterday’s lack of food.. I am so full as I start to blog this… it is 10pm New York time. Let me try to blog this real quick before I hit the hotel gym!! 😀
We started off this morning by walking two blocks to a local bagel place to try some bagels and cream cheese. Because Cookie’s heart desires.. This wasn’t even a Yelp-hyped place! I wanted to avoid a high tourist trap and just eat what the locals eat every morning. It was a small bakery that had a variety of bagels, muffins, cream cheese spreads, fruits and all sorts of morning goodness. There is even a bunch of different types of tofu spread.. that look exactly like cream cheese.. interesting huh?
At the top there is even an assortment of breakfast items and condiments to add and eat.
They have a good selection of bagels.
I got the toasted onion bagel with ..
Scallion cream cheese and salmon lox cream cheese. I couldn’t decide between the two so I asked if I could pick half and half. They said yes!!! The one on the left is the scallions and the one on the right is salmon lox.
You can’t tell until you open the bagels apart that there are chunks of smoked salmon in the right cream cheese. It was good! The cream cheese was light and airy, almost like whipped. The toast made the bagel warm and crispy with a nice crunch. Sighhhh I miss fresh bagels for breakfast!
Then we took the hop-on and hop-off bus in an attempt to get to a museum. We accidentally found the Fao Schweetz toy store at the end of our stop. Apparently it’s a big toy store that was very famous and have various locations in other big countries like Beijing. I never heard of this toy store before! It was grand…
My mommy got a bag of gummy bears for Dr. JoAnn’s kids. How sweet of her.
Mango, pineapple and watermelon gummy bears. They were so soft and chewy and sweet. These are what I call good gummy bears!!
It’s awesome when by chance we happen to find ourselves at the Rockefeller center and in front of the ice rink.
We got hungry! Let’s eat a quick lunch before we go to the Spyscape museum.
Why do I keep finding Italian pizzas in New York. I want New York pizza! I just realized that yesterday’s pizza wasn’t New York pizza.. it was Italian pizza 🙁
Buffalo pizza.
Italian sausage, mushroom and white Italian pizza slices. The mushroom pizza was my favorite.
And then I made everyone drop by Lady M because cookie wants Mille crepes where it first appeared in America.
Pistachio Mille crepe and strawberry mille crepe. They pistachio Mille crepe was soooo good… it had a light odor of pistachio and was very creamy and light and soft. That hint of pistachio cream flavor. It was so good! It was freshly made too because we had an easy time cutting the slice into smaller pieces to split with everyone!
The strawberry Mille crepe was basically the original Mille crepe with strawberries added to it. It was good and creamy and light but I personally think the strawberries made it too sweet for me. I like my crepe cakes to be lightly sweet ONLY.
Now we went to Skyscape using our sightseeing passes! Dr. Han was excited to find out what kind of spy each of us would turn out to be.
I learned that there were three types of spies: white, black and grey hats depending on your intentions and motives.
These are my results after completing the museum tour, answering a bunch of questions and doing some tasks and activities.
Whoa! I like my answer 🙂
BTW, did I forget to mention that it rained all day today?! Actually, it was obvious from the ponchos we were wearing before right?!
For dinner, we met with one of Dr. Han’s cousins who recently moved to NYC for college and work! She works for iheartradio. Haha! She made reservations for us at Supper that her VP recommended. Apparently there is very good Italian here in New York.
So disclaimer: I forgot to take a picture of the special menu and didn’t realize that what everyone ordered was from the special menu. Hence, I am going to make up the names of each item we ate based on what I think it is.
This must be roasted sourdough bread with white lentil beans in a light olive oil and peppers. There is a hint of spicy that I think is from those small shaved red peppers.
Polpettine pi Ditello. Baby veal meatballs in sugo. Okay this one I know because I picked this one. I love veal and meatballs is always yummy to eat. It’s an easy starter. Very chewy. Not gamey at all.
Finely sliced fennel. Grated Piave cheese and arugula leaves. Okay this one I knew also because I also chose it. Man this whole trip I did not eat any vegetables or greens yet so we had to eat some salad with our dinner! The fennel was thinly sliced and very firm and crunchy. It reminded me of daikon. This was interesting.
Spaghetti with clams in a white wine reduction sauce, garlic and chili. I LOVE THIS DISH. Even thought I don’t know the exact name of it, that white reduction sauce is so good! I think it was from all the shaved garlics that they used to season the sauce. It was so garlicky. So good. The clams were small.
Tortellini ravioli stuffed with a mysterious pink seafood stuffing on a thick brown reduction sauce. This was just okay.. it was an interesting and unique piece of dish only because I felt like the brown sauce had an Asian influence that I am not used to being used in Italian pasta.
Chicken Parmesan with spaghetti alla bolognese. This was very spaghetti, which I can appreciate for my love for the classic childhood spaghetti and meatballs. The sauce was almost exactly like that. Everyone kept calling it eggplant but after cutting it into pieces, I looked at the inside; it looks like chicken to me! Tasted like chicken too.
Sole fish. I didn’t even get to try the white potatoes on the side to even know if it is potatoes. The fish was very flaky and soft on the other hand with a lot of black pepper.
Seafood risotto. I love the calamari and squid. There was plenty of it!
Tiramisu. It’s mine and Nathaniel’s birthday coming up so they surprised us with two tiramisu cakes. It was so good! There is something about an Italian restaurant doing tiramisu right by serving it so soft and flufffy and airy.
MILK BAR NEXT! I will hike through the New York rainy streets if it means I can get some crunchy cereal milk again! I will never forget that other time I had it.. it was so milky and buttery and crunchy with fresh crunchy cereal.
Crunchy cereal milk shake. Walking in the rain eating ice cream is a bit inconvenient so I got it in drinkable shake form. Just like last time and still just as good.
It is not complete without a crack pie to accompany!
Crack pie. It’s called crack pie for a reason.. because no matter how much you hate sweets, you can’t deny the fact that you’ll be addicted to it after one bite. Very thick, very decadent, very sweet.
Tin box of cookie assortments!
We were tired but it was too early to call it quits. Let’s do our version of a charcuterie board with a spread of our acquirings for snacks. Is that even a word? Oh well haha
My favorite is actually the red salmon caviar cream cheese! There are actual whole pieces of salmon roe inside. It isn’t fishy either. Very creamy and cheesy.
The cheese on the left has apricots in it. I’m going to be honest: it was weird and not that good.
It is now midnight and I have finally finished. I took a break from blogging and went to the gym with my mom and Dr. JoAnn to show them workouts!
I’m kind of sad tomorrow is my last day in New York. It’s been fun and I haven’t eaten all the foods I want to eat yet.