A Foodeating, Sightseeing, Subway Hopping Trip -NY&DC-Day 4

[Hannikins]

A Foodeating, Sightseeing, Subway Hopping Trip -NY&DC-Day 4

Late start today after the food-a-thon of yesterday. You’d think that would mean a lean day today, but oh no, today we were having a pizza tour!

Not one to pass up on a free breakfast we headed down to get some grub. Playing it safe we had the continental which basically swapped the eggs, bacon and hasbrowns for 4 pastries instead, probably more filling but I felt better, I left one... I’m not a compete pig!

Full and happy we headed out and took the metro to Spring street… only there are two spring street stops, one near 6th ave and one near layfayette street… I’d picked the wrong one, so with 5 minutes to spare we hot footed it across Soho to get to our meeting point at the time allocated. I need not have worried we were the second group to arrive and we were much earlier than our guide.

She’d been held up as there was a large Chinese demo going on, something to do with a spiritual group who were campaigning to raise awareness of how their group was being targeted by the Chinese government, and here’s the freaky bit, murdered for their organs! I kid you not!

And on that bombshell of an explanation for being late we headed off to eat pizza!

Joanne, our lovely newyork/Italian tour guide took us to our first stop, Lombardis



The oldest pizza place in new york and the ‘original’ as it were

We were shown the oven and given a brief history of why exactly this oven made amazing pizza before been shown to our seats where we discussed our ‘ideal’ pizza and the psychology between that ‘first pizza’



Once seated we were all given a ‘pizza’ goodie bag. It contained mints to eat between ‘tastings’ to cleanse the palette, A gummy pizza in case you just couldn’t wait between stops for some pizza goodness, a hand wipe (because pizza is messy) and the best bit, a notepad and pen to detail all our pizza findings!



FINALLY the pizza arrived



oh and it was heaven, my ‘ideal’, fresh, light on the toppings and crispy. Nom nom nom nom

Adam thought it was pretty good too ;P



We discussed a little about what we all liked/disliked about the pizza and talked about where all the ingredients came from and why that made it special.

I think even without the massive build up this would still be the most epic pizza.

Next up we had a little break from the actual pizza and instead visited a store which made pizza ovens (the bad none brick kind)

At first I was a little stunned that we were touring an actual shop but this place was amazing, check out this for some kitchen equipment!



and this thing puts my kitchenaid to SHAME!



this tour wasn’t just about pizza though, Joanne knew a lot about the neighbourhoods to and as we headed into Greenwich she explained lots about the history and pointed out some amazing buildings too



Next we arrived at ‘Pizza Box’

These guys had a modern oven, not the brick kind and were a ‘bytheslice’ place

Check out the date on the sign!



We were led out to a lovely courtyard garden out back (another thing that made this place great) where we enjoyed our second slice of pizza.



A bit too heavy on the toppings here but nice in it’s own way. While eating Joanne explained the different pizza eating techniques, I’m a partial folder, which it apparently Scott’s preferred method, Joanne, she’s a full folder ;P

She also ‘borrowed’ some dough from the chef so we could play with it and see the difference between rested, and unrested dough. We also talked a little about other pizza places, there were a few newyorkers on the tour and they were all pretty confident their local pizza place was the best, very into turf wars new Yorkers.

We walked a little bit to our next stop and all of a sudden things started to get very familiar, we were at the park from yesterday! We headed a few doors down to ‘John’s’



We weren’t allowed in here as lunchtime was in full swing so we stood outside and ate some pizza!



This fell somewhere in the middle of the previous two, still not as good as the first though, despite them being a similar oven.

While eating we discussed a bit about the history of John’s (he used to work at Lombardi’s) not to be confused with Joe’s down the road and certainly not john’s near Times square, apparently they were once the same company but are no longer, bad blood etc etc.

Pizza finished we went round the group and asked which everyone preferred, Lombardi’s won slightly over John’s.

I really enjoyed the tour and after 3 hours I felt we came away with a lot more than just three slices of pizza to show for it, I could definitely recommend this to anyone, Joanne was amazing and sooo enthusiastic about pizza it was bordering on odd… in a nice way.

So after three slices of pizza there was only one thing for it… LUNCH!

I knew that a few doors up from our meeting spot was one of my foodie ‘stops’ Rice to riches.

It’s basically and icecream parlour where the icecream has been replaced with rice pudding. Yum yum!

The place had a great fit out and I couldn’t help taking a photo of the signage in the loos (now who’s odd!)



We ordered a two scoop so we could try two flavours. We had cherry chocolate and Almond.



both were nice but there’s only so much cold rice pudding you can eat before you want to heat it up. Still full of pizza we left over half of it ☹ Still I’d ticked another thing off my list and experienced it so that’s what counts.

On the way to the subway I ticked another off the list, Parisi bakery. We couldn’t eat here but it was nice to look around



We also passed Lombardis again which was PACKED, clearly you need to get here very early if you want to try it.

[Hannikins]

Next up I took the subway down to canal street to look around little italy and china town.

This place was very like times square in that it was VERY busy, made worse by all the street sellers blocking the pavement, the fake bag sellers were the worst and I hate to say it of the three people giving them the time of day they were all English ☹.

We made slow progress down Mott street passing Italian restaurants along the way. Lots of owners were trying to entice customers in. I couldn’t help but laugh, either these guys are living up to a stereotype or Hollywood has them bang on, it was pure comedy!

It was impossible to tell were little italy finished and Chinatown began to be honest, I don’t think it’s as clean cut as it once was as ‘italy’ seems to have been reduced to a street at most.

We finally came out of the chaos at a little park, Columbus park, which we guessed was probably part of Chinatown as it was full of old ladies paying games and a group wailing and playing what I can only think was Chinese music. I’m sure it was a very good song but to us it was just noise.



I had hoped that by the time we got here we’d be ready for icecream and dumplings as they were the next stops but neither of us could manage anything more. Instead we sat in the park for a while planning our next move.



Cookies won out in the end so we jumped back on the subway to the west side to visit Levain Bakery



This place is only small, and very easy to miss however once there you’re hit by the amazing smell!

We both ordered a chocolate peanut cookie and took them to a nearby park



Words cannot describe how much I loved this cookie, it’s like a boring cookie mated with a brownie and has lots of levain bakery cookie babies for me to eat. Seriously I think of these cookies often, I need them in my life!

If anyone’s going soon, please go, try them for yourself, and then bring me some back to!

Luckily the park was right next to the subway so we jumped on and headed back to the hotel for a rest before dinner.

I again wanted to try again for gramercy tavern but when we looked at the menu it had changed and we didn’t fancy anything on there. Instead we thought again of BLT steak, somewhere we were just going to go to for lunch as it was quite expensive but we thought, hell we’re on holiday!

I managed to secure a reservation for 9.30 so we had plenty of time to relax and get ready. This could only be a good thing, these crammed days were taking a toll on my feet, I needed to soak some life back into them!

We needed to catch the subway from Rockefeller again and as we were both ready early we decided to head on down to Nintendo world to have a look around.

I was disappointed with this, none of the games seemed particularly new.



I still had a go though and the history bit was quite interesting. I’d forgotten how many versions I’d actually had!





The subway brought us out on the edge of central park , so we walked along the edge looking at all the posh hotels until we found the plaza







Lovely building, we also passed the toy shop and made a mental note to return here later in the trip. Once I saw Prada I knew we were heading in the right direction.



BLT Steak is next door to the Dorchester and we almost missed it as we were too busy discussing Victoria secret models… don’t ask.

On the small side and hidden away we only really knew about it as this was the place the winner of Hell’s Kitchen won a place at.

I don’t know if anyone is a fan of that like us but basically this is the guy that won last year, Paul.



Anywho we made is to our reservation early so we sat at the bar and ordered beer and cocktails to start.

img.poptower/pic-57758/pa...chen.jpg?d=600

Once our table was ready we were seated right at the front with a view of the bar.

While looking at our menu’s a taster from the chef came.



It was a lovely little pate, very tasty.

Next came these ‘things’



It was a bread course but they were basically HUGE yorkshire puddings. Nom nom nom nom

We decided between us to forget apps and instead go for a better quality steak instead.

I went for the filet



with fries



and Adam had the strip



with onion rings



Everything was huge! Both the fries and onion rings beat us both but we made quick work of the steak, it was amazing!

As we were finishing off a chef came out of the kitchen… IT WAS PAUL!

He walked right up and asked how our meal was! Well it made Adam’s night.

Paul or no Paul this was by far my favourite meal of the holiday, Adam’s too I think.

Drinks, meal and coffees came to $150 + tip not bad for such amazing steak!

Again it was still early ish when we finished but after yet another packed day we headed straight back to the hotel and slept off the meat sweats ;P

[Guest]

Loving your trip! All sounds amazing, and looks amazing and almost smells amazing...

[Mike]

Well, I have to give it to you, you two can certainly eat!

A good day... can't wait to get back and mooch round Chinatown and Little Italy again.

More please!

[tracy99]

my goodness,where do you put it all!
it made me feel full,just reading it.
loving your report,its bringing back,some great memories
tracy x

[NatOwls]

Another amazing tip ! Making me REALLY excited for our trip and learning something new from each of your reports! Thanks for sharing x

[Guest]

OMG you met Paul - how cool! Very jel!

I'm hungry just reading your TR!

[Guest]

Lots of lovely food I don't know where you put it all :-)

[hross42877]

Great read, loving the food in fact I am really starving now!

[Guest]

Wow, how much food did you eat that day?! The pizza tour looks really good, how did you find out about all these amazing foodie places?!