Eating in New York City

June 23, 2008

I spent five days in New York City last week, from June 13th to the 18th. It was my first time visiting the city and I had a blast. I also would like to give a special thanks to my wonderful hosts for the trip – my girlfriend’s (Megan) aunt and uncle (and their two awesome kids) put us up for the duration. I just wanted to give a quick rundown of some of the culinary highlights from the trip. I ate a lot of good food, so just consider this a sampling. Tomorrow I’ll write up my visit to Annisa – a mega-fancy restaurant.

Fresh Pasta

Megan’s aunt made a delicious meal with fresh, flavored pasta on the night we arrived . It was my first time eating fresh pasta. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the flavors, but one was green and the other red. She served it with a simple oil (or butter) sauce with Parmesan; it was perfect for tasting the delicious pasta. It seemed to melt in your mouth in a way that dried pasta doesn’t.

Grimaldi’s Pizza

On Sunday we took a water taxi from the west side of Manhattan around to Brooklyn and walked to Grimaldi’s Coal Brick – Oven Pizzeria “Under The Brooklyn Bridge.” Megan’s uncle explained that it had been written up in the paper at various times over the last few years, so it had recently become much more popular, which explained the 30 minute line outside the door (the dining room is too packed to fit people waiting). The pizza was really, really good. You could tell they used fresh ingredients in the tomato sauce and they had huge bins of small slabs of fresh mozzarella. I also liked the addition of a few leaves of fresh basil.

I just read on their website that the secret to great New York style pizza is having a coal fired brick oven which can reach extremely high temperatures. Apparently gas and electric ovens can’t reach the temperatures needed for a good crust. Even more interesting is that New York banned the building of new coal brick ovens, which leaves only a few pizzerias with them. When Grimaldi’s wanted to expand, they had to build in Hoboken, NJ.

After the delicious pizza we had ice cream and walked back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge (very cool).

Ottomanelli Steaks

On Monday Megan and I went shopping with her aunt for the night’s dinner. It was cool because unlike suburban Cincinnati where I do all my shopping at Kroger, we went to four or five different stores – one place for fresh bread, another bakery for a cheesecake, a specialty cheese shop and finally O. Ottomanelli & Sons Prime Meat Market. This meat place doesn’t have website, but here are some glowing reviews. Ottomanelli meats have even been used on various Food Network shows, including Throwdown with Bobby Flay, Emeril, and Iron Chef. It is run by four (I think) brothers, and the one working the day we visited, Frank, was a really nice guy. It was cool seeing him slice the steaks individually after told him what we wanted.

We picked up dry-aged boneless steaks (ribeye I think, but I’m not positive), and Megan’s aunt pan-seared them and finished them in the oven. Like the pizza, I’m not sure how else to describe them but really, really good (and perfectly cooked).

Aquagrill

Finally, on Tuesday night, we went to Aquagrill for dinner. It is a nice fish place with an extensive oyster bar. It was delicious and I got to try my first oyster, which I enjoyed.

I had a great time in New York and as you can tell, I ate some amazing food. Does anyone from the area have any suggestions in case I ever return?

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