My Very Own NYC Food Tour

My apologies-- I have been slacking on the blogging lately. I have just returned from five days in New York City (for fun and for work) and admittedly, I was also slacking as a tourist. I visited with a ton of old friends, it was a gorgeous weekend in the city, and I took one photo. And it was a photo of cocktails. Good work, Anne.

A few photos from New York visits past...

I'm back home in snowy Chicago now though and wanted to share with all of you some of the great places that my friends took me to during my visit. A handful of my closest girlfriends live in New York and I was lucky enough to spend time with each of them alone and then to have a girls' dinner with all of them together too! Since food, wine, and shopping are a few of my favorite things I thought I would share with you some of the highlights from my trip...

I spent most of Saturday with Lisa, my best friend from high school. We met up for a long brunch at Cookshop in Chelsea and I had a delicious fritatta with ricotta and mushrooms. Normally I am not a big mushroom fan, but it is one of the "big kid" foods I am learning to eat as an adult (along with brussels sprouts and beets). We had some fabulous brunch cocktails here too.

Lisa and I wandered the city for the afternoon and did some window shopping (I was REALLY good and didn't buy a thing). She introduced me to the Madewell store (I have seen the catalog, never the store) and also to Fishs Eddy. As someone who is obsessed with my kitchen, this was obviously my new favorite place! They do wedding registries... I wish I would have known a year ago! Check out the skyline and floorplan themed dining sets. Love!

Following our little shopping tour of Manhattan, we met up with Meghan (college friend and my host for the weekend) and some more old friends from our Syracuse days and then she took us to Artichoke Pizza. More than one friend has recommended this place and now I know why. This pizza was SO good. There is always a line out the door at this takeout place and it is totally understandable. It's like spinach and artichoke dip meets soup meets alfredo sauce on a pizza. If I lived near this place I would need to plan all of my routes around avoiding it because I would want to eat it all the time.

Sunday was basically a continuation of Saturday's shopping and eating frenzy, but this time with Meghan instead. We had brunch at Mudspot in the East Village where we had some great eggs and fantastic coffee. Apparently Mudspot is the permanent home of the Mudtruck, a well-known Manhattan coffee truck. We followed brunch with more shopping (surprise!) where I scored a cheap dress for my company's Monday night cocktail event at Zara and Meghan introduced me to Uniqulo, where I probably could have done a lot of damage if my suitcase would have allowed it. It's like the Gap meets H&M meets J. Crew, with a little Japanese flair. Why don't we have this store in Chicago yet?

That evening Meghan and I met our friend Matt for cocktails and I took the infamous one photo from my NYC visit. We went to a cute little lounge called The Dove Parlour in Greenwich Village for some craft cocktails and it was happy hour-- always a plus! We followed cocktails with a girls' dinner with Lisa and Maggie (my other college best friend) at Otto, Mario Batali's pizzeria. I love a pizzeria because you can share everything with the table, which we did. The highlights for me were definitely the brussels sprouts antipasti, the balsamic onion and goat cheese pizza, and the olive oil gelato, which was highly recommended by all three of my dinner companions who had been here before.  Dinner was delicious and shockingly affordable.

Cocktails at The Dove Parlour. The lone photo from my NYC adventure.

I moved out of Meg's place on Monday and into my hotel where my meeting would be taking place for the next few days. Maggie was my New York babysitter on Monday and we continued the Mario Batali tour of New York with lunch at Eataly. I am in love with this place! It's a New York version of the open Italian markets that I visited while living in Florence with little themed cafes interspersed throughout. We tried the Verdure cafe and shared a great salad and a roasted winter squash. We obviously ended lunch with some more gelato.

The rest of my trip was full of meetings and networking, but the grand finale to my New York trip was dinner at Le Cirque on Tuesday night. It was a three course dinner that included surf and turf and some adorable petit fours and since I could never afford to go here on my own, it was lovely to be able to go for a work event. The restaurant itself is pretty gorgeous-- we were in the wine room, which was right next to the wine cellar. Phenomenal.

And in a nutshell, that is how I ate my way around Manhattan. Alex has never been to the city, so rest assured that my next trip will be with him and this time we'll have to see all of the sights so I promise to actually take pictures then.  Stay tuned!