NYC Tastes

I'm on a big kick right now of trying out different places for espresso and macchiatos. I can no longer have a cup of cheap coffee from the deli like I sling back on the weekdays. The weekend is now reserved for tasting new coffee delights. This weekend I knew I had to try out Abraco. Abraco has been getting great reviews from everyone it seems. Ever since my experience at Fika where my Ninth Street Espresso macchiato had no comparison, I have been more open to trying out different joints. Abraco is much closer than Fika as well. It's down on 7th street in the East Village where we find ourselves almost every weekend. Abraco is a very tiny little espresso bar. When we arrived on Saturday there were about 5 people inside, which meant there was no room for us! That's how tiny it is!We patiently waited outside until a couple people left and then squeezed ourselves inside. As soon as we walked in the door the man behind the counter gave us a huge smile and jovial welcome....

I had a work function the other day and they ordered a bunch of pizza's from a place called Monty Q's on Montague Street in Brooklyn. I had heard people I work with rave about this stuff so I was pretty excited to try it out. Pizza is such a funny thing. Although it is only made of three main ingredients people swear by some kinds and really hate other kinds. I grabbed a fairly small slice to start and tried it out. The first thing I noticed was the grainy bottom and crust. This is usually the sign of a brick oven pizza. The second thing I noticed was the sauce itself which was quite sweet. I actually like a tomato sauce that's more on the sweet side but I have to say the sweetness got to me a little on the 2nd slice. I don't think I could eat more than 2 because of it. As you can see this slice of pizza is very thin and has an awesome floppiness to it that I love in pizzas. I also thought that the sauce to cheese ratio was perfect. Because of the sweet taste of ...

We went out for our “Valentines dinner” this past Sunday. We always celebrate a day or two later. I hate going out on the day itself. I feel like it’s very hard to get a true representation of a place on such a crazy restaurant day. This year we didn’t even try something new. We wanted to stay around our neighborhood so we decided to go to Giorgio’s of Gramercy. We used to frequent this place quite a lot but hadn’t been in at least a year. We started the night out first though with drinks at Gramercy Tavern. We grabbed the last two seats at the bar and each had a lovely glass of Tocai from the Channing Daughters to start. Gramercy is such a wonderful place to relax and after our glass of wine we decide to stay for one more drink since we just enjoy the surroundings so much. This time we went for one of our favorite beers the Saison DuPont. Between the wonderful selection of beer and wine, great smelling food and lovely ambiance it was hard to tear ourselves away from Gramercy ...

It was such a cold and windy day on Saturday I really felt like just curling up somewhere with a nice warm drink. I had been wanting to try out Saint Ambrous because I heard their coffe was excellent. On the way there it got so cold though that we decided to make a change and headed to Caffe Dante which was closer. Caffe Dante is an Italian Coffee Shop that has been around since 1912. They serve food as well but I've never eaten a meal there. The place itself is cute and cozy though. We sat down and ordered up a couple of drinks to warm ourselves up a bit. I got the Cappaccino Dante. The Cappaccino Dante is basically cappaccino topped with a dusting of cinnamon and cocoa. It was really creamy and oh so delicious. Caffe Dante really knows how to make a good cappaccinno. Mr T had a double espresso which was also pretty good. No where near the Fika goodness but pretty darn good. Caffe Dante has tons of delicious looking pasteries like cannolis, eclairs, tiramasu...Just tons of ...

I was dying for some more delicious caffeinated beverages the other day so we grabbed the train uptown to go to Fika. We actually stopped off on the way at the New York Public Library just to walk around and were surprised to see a really great exhibit on Jack Kerouac. We were delighted to have found such a great thing to do on a Saturday that didn't involve any money so....we decided to go out to dinner.   That's just the way we roll :) After Fika we walked down into the Times Square area and headed towards Sake Bar Hagi. We had tried to go here once before and there were no tables. This time we showed up at 5:45 just 15 minutes after they had opened, and scored the last table.   5:45...Who eats at that hour? And this place is packed! Even though this is in Times Square it is NOT a tourist destination. Hagi is a basement itzakaya barely visable from the street above.  We sat down and ordered some Kirin Light, shochu and a bunch of dishes. The point of an itzak...

It was a cold and wonderfully snowy Tuesday and I loved every minute of it! We haven't had any snow this year and I always love the first big one. I walked home from work and decided we needed to go out to a cozy Irish bar for dinner and to watch the snow fall. We didn't want to go far so we decided to head over to Fitzgerald’s. Fitzgerald's is just a local pub with the classic dart board and mega-touch machine. The one thing I love about it though is the windows up front. You can sit and just stare outside at the goings on of the world and that's exactly what I was looking for. We grabbed a seat and had a couple beers before we decided to order. We both went for the Fitzgerald Burger. The Fitzgerald burger is basically a ground chuck burger topped with cheddar cheese on a sesame seed bun. Classic toppings and a side of fries make the meal complete. The burger is pretty big- about 10 ounces and I couldn't even finish it. It was cooked perfectly medium-rare and ...

So....THE GIANTS WON THE SUPER BOWL!!!! Holy cow! Who saw that coming! One of the best Super Bowl victories of all time and the Giants are the ones that pulled it off. Mr Trekker is a HUGE Giants fan. So when Eli threw that bullet into the end zone we were going crazy!!! I woke up the next morning with half blurred memories of drinking way too many beers and some kind of weird blue shots chanting "Eli" "Eli"! Now normally after a night like that I would be done for the entire day. I had pro-actively taken the day off of work ahead of time just because I knew I wouldn't be feeling too well after such a big game. But you know what- I woke up feeling great! I literally bounded out of bed with the adrenaline from such an amazing victory still pumping through my blood. I wanted to continue the celebration but had no idea what to do. Mr T was on the couch dedicated to watching sports highlights all day but I needed to get out. I decided to call up Mr. T's...

We were hanging out in the LES this past Saturday having some drinks at Marshall Stack when I got a huge burger craving. And not just any old burger - I wanted a good gourmet style burger. I remebered hearing about a new place Seymour Burton opening up so we decided to head over and see if we could grab a table. From the outside Seymour Burton struck me as odd looking. It's on sleepy East 5th street which houses Sophie's and Lavagna. For some reason the outside didn't seem to fit on that block. It was a little too bright and sterile looking. Once I went inside though the place felt much better. We were greeted at the door by the chef. Now this has never happened before. We asked for a table for 2 and got the last one available. They had a large communal table that ran down the center of the room that was open but reserved for a private party. The place itself was nice. They made good use of the amount of space avaiable. Besides the communal middle there were tab...