Last days in New York

We went to the incredible Natural History Museum, which sits opposite the Met, on the other side of Central Park.  Many people are familiar with this brilliant museum - it has been mentioned in countless films, television shows and novels, as a real landmark of New York.

The museum had a fantastic temporary butterfly house exhibition.  This is really good advice:

This sign made me laugh.  I have to admit that I got the giggles, thinking of some poor little child shaking with fear because a butterfly landed on their sleeve.  Bad mummy!

You know how a shepherd has a cane crook, to gently field his sheep?  Well, a butterfly keeper has a giant feather on a long pole, for the same purposes:

The displays at the Museum are really beautiful - delightfully retro, each striking nature scene framed neatly with a heavy wooden frame.  The displays are amazing - many of them look real, almost like a zoo instead of a museum:

The life-sized blue whale is famous, suspended high above the Ocean Hall. It is breathtaking to view the size of this mammal:

Cute overload:

The space under the blue whale, the expansive floor of the Ocean Hall, was the perfect place for Tabitha to burn off some energy and practice her walking:

Did you know that New York is famous for its high quality tap water?  Admirably, the Museum does not sell bottled water, objecting to the use of plastic bottles and transport of the water.  Signs like this one, below, are throughout the Museum, sitting next to drinking fountains and taps:

This is a giant sloth.  Scary!

After the zoo, we went (again) to Bubby's Pie Co. for dinner.  Seriously, this place is brilliant!  Such a beautiful space, homely and cosy and inviting and family-friendly and full of character.  The food is really great, too.  We both agreed that Bubby's is exactly the kind of place you wish you had in your own local neighbourhood.  Lucky TriBeCa locals!

Can you remember I mentioned Tabitha's Snack Ball?  It's a really cute little round container which I fill with snacks like raisins, puffed rice and dried apple, to entertain her when we're out - particularly waiting for a meal.  Here is The Daddy playing with Tabby and her Snack Ball at Bubby's:

I had a delicious matzo ball soup, full of veggies and shredded chicken:

Tabitha had chicken schnitzel and broccoli:

After dinner, The Daddy had a peanut butter chocolate pie:

I had a 'mile high apple pie':

Here are all the pies in the rotating display cabinet.  I have had their book, 'Bubby's Homemade Pies', for a couple of years.  It's excellent - go and buy it if you like baking pies!

Here is the outside of Bubby's, so you know what to look for when you are next wandering around TriBeCa.  It's open 24 hours.

The next night, we went to Les Halles.  Tabitha was mostly interested in climbing over the partition wall to laugh at the people over the other side - they kept her pretty amused:

More chocolate cupcakes.  This time from Magnolia Bakery, which was a few doors down from where we were staying.  Magnolia is generally voted the 'best cupcakes in NYC' however it also has plenty of detractors - people who say the cakes are completely overrated, and are dry.  Well, I wouldn't line up for ten minutes out the front for one (which plenty of people do) but if you happen to be walking past, and there is no queue, it is certainly worth popping in.  The cupcakes are perfectly nice - not the best I've ever had, but the shop is cute and it's fun to watch all the workers frosting the cupcakes so deftly.

However.  One thing Magnolia Bakery DOES do really, really well is Banana Pudding.  In my opinion, easily the best banana pudding in the world.  The pudding is light, creamy and delicious.  Nicely vanilla flavoured.  The wafers are deliciously soft and cakey.  The bananas are nicely overripe.  I could eat a kilogram of this, no kidding.  I have bought a whole stockpile of Nilla Wafers to bring home, so that I can make my own banana pudding, otherwise I will go into withdrawal:

We left New York (sob, sob) and picked up our hire car, driving to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  This is the heart of Amish Country - I have always been fascinated by the Amish, and it's been a lifelong dream to visit the area.

On the drive, half way there, we stopped to let Tabitha have a play and to eat some lunch.  We couldn't resist taking her to Chuck-E-Cheeze for a play - there is all sorts of play equiptment, and a whole lot of scary Chuck-E-Cheeze characters.  Here is Tabitha hanging out with Chuck - she has her arm around his shoulders:

Here is Tabitha looking super excited:

We couldn't bring ourselves to actually eat at Chuck-E's, so we wandered further along the giant strip mall and ate at IHOP - International House of Pancakes.  I have never seen quite so much sugar in one meal!  Tabitha had some fruit - the one good thing I have to say about American 'family restaurants' like Denny's, IHOP and Appleby's is that their children's menus tend to have fresh fruit or vegetables as the 'default' side dish with their main, instead of fries.  Good to see - I hope that Australian restaurants follow that lead one day soon.

New York - The Village

We spent our second last week in the West Village, staying at a gorgeous apartment right in the middle, near Magnolia Bakery and the Bleeker Street Playground, on West Eleventh Street.  It was a great location - strolling distance from the main Bleeker Street shops, within a few blocks of dozens of great bars and restaurants, across the road from a playground for Tabitha, and right near two separate Subway lines.

Having the park was brilliant - last week Tabitha really started to walk with assistance (e.g. holding our hands) and it is ALL she wants to do!  So having loads of space (with nice spongy padded rubber playground flooring) was wonderful.  She also loves climbing, and watching children play, so it was great all round.

I've bought Tabby a few pairs of jeans over here - they look so cute, I don't want to dress her in anything else!  Except that, since I myself tend to wear jeans and a blue top, and now Tabitha wears jeans and a blue top, we are a very Matching Family:

Tabitha has a small pink plastic hairbrush belonging to a My Little Pony (part of the Fun and Exciting toy collection we bought her to keep her entertained on the plane).  She is pretty obsessed with it, and likes to carry it around wherever she goes:

We went out to dinner at Pearl Oyster Bar in the Village.  It has a reputation of having the best Lobster Roll in NY.  I completely concur!  It was excellent.  The fries were unusual, really thin, almost like those French Fries chips you buy in a foil packet in Australia.  Lobster rolls here have SO much meat - almost a whole small lobster.  At any rate, I can generally find both pieces of claw meat, whole or halved, in the rolls.  I am really going to miss lobster roll in Australia.  I'm sure I could make it myself, but it would probably cost nearly $50 a roll, instead of around $20 here.

Lobster is one of Tabitha's favourite foods - she too will miss the cheap lobster when we come home.  I am not buying lobster at $99 a kilo for a baby, that's for sure!

After dinner, we wandered down to Milk and Cookies (remember, the awesome cookie shop from the food tour?).  We ate ice cream sandwiches - peanut butter crunch cookies filled with rich chocolate ice cream.

In search of New York's best pizza, we found ourselves at Lucali in Brooklyn.  I had done a lot of research, and Lucali kept coming up - it's a tiny place, just six or so tables, and a large woodfired oven.  The decor is minimal - though dark and vaguely romantic.  Some candles, low light.  A nice place for a casual date.  It's also BYO (or BYOB as they say over here).  The 'kitchen' (really just a wide wooden bench by the woodfire oven) is completely open, with the pizza chef facing the room as he works.  They don't take bookings, and are incredibly popular - if you want to sit down before 7:30pm, you need to arrive and line up outside by 5:45pm.  We did this, and were seated when they opened, on the dot at 6pm.

The menu features just two items - Pizza or Calzone - with an option of around half a dozen basic, exceptionally high quality toppings:  field mushrooms, basil from their garden, goat's cheese, artichoke hearts, artisan pepperoni, spicy sausage, shallots.  Nothing else - no salads, no bread, no dessert.  We ordered a pie with half mushroom and basil, half pepperoni.  The tomato sauce is made each day - a tangy, fresh and richly tomato-tasting sauce.  The cheese is perfectly fresh buffalo motzerella - so fresh that the pizza chef pulls it apart easily with one hand as he works.  The ingredients sit on the workbench, whole, ready to be sliced carefully to order - when I placed our order, I watched the chef slice a whole large field mushroom into slivers, then tear apart some basil (from their cottage garden).

The pizza was perfection - crispy, charred and slightly chewy crust, soft, damp and lightly soggy middle.  Incredibly thin.  The sauce was delicious, the cheese was salty and full-flavoured.  The pie was enormous, however we finished it quickly!

We then ordered a calzone with shallots - and we are so glad we did.  Easily the best calzone we've ever eaten.  Filled with perfectly fresh ricotta (made nearby) and finely sliced shallots, the calzone was heavenly.

The waitress brought out a dish of the incredible, fresh tomato sauce to dip our calzone into.  Nice.

By the time we left, at around 7pm, there were already lots of people waiting.  Apparently, Lucale is Beyonce and Jay-Z's favourite local restaurant, but don't hold that against it!

After our transcendental pizza experience, we wandered down the road to Brooklyn Farmacy and Soda Fountain.  This is a real Brooklyn treasure - an authentic old-fashioned drug-store soda fountain, lined with the original wooden shelving and glass cabinets, displaying vintage and antique pharmacy bottles, jars, as well as all of the glassware and paraphernalia essential for the soda fountain drinks, ice cream sundaes and desserts, and of course the original gleaming steel soda fountains.

The soda jerks wear cute paper caps and t-shirts reading 'JERK'.  The drinks on offer include Egg Creams, Lime Rickeys, Root Beer Floats, as well as sundaes, pies and cakes.  We only got to stay for a drink, as they were closing early for a 16th birthday party (what an awesome party!).

Tabitha and I both enjoying our milky drinks:

The Daddy's Root Beer Float:

You can see the cute outfit of the female soda jerk behind me.  The guys wore the cheeky 'JERK' t-shirts, which you can also buy there as souvenirs.

We went to the Union Square Green Market.  There was a stall with over 20 varieties of heirloom tomato plants:

More radishes than I've ever seen before at once.  I like radishes, as they remind me of a t-shirt I once saw, which really made me laugh:  "If I were a vegetable, I'd be a radish, because I'm only kind of rad".

Lots of freshly baked fruit pies:

Baby salad leaves - over two dozen types!

After the market, we wandered down into SoHo.  My friend Miss Kitty-Cat had insisted we visit Billy's Bakery to try their red velvet cupcakes.  Sadly, they were out of red velvet, but I really enjoyed their chocolate cupcake all the same!

While The Daddy was trying on some shirts, Tabitha put on a cute little show for me outside the fitting rooms.  What a little performer!

We walked across to Katz Deli for lunch.  You may recall me mentioning that there is an ongoing debate in the food world over which New York deli makes the best pastrami on rye sandwiches?  Generally, Carnegie Deli and Katz are the main contenders.  We ate at Carnegie last week - the sandwiches were really nice.  Certainly big!  But after eating at Katz again (last time was nearly 5 years ago), I cannot for the life of me fathom how anyone would say Carnegie is better?!  The pastrami sandwiches at Katz are insanely good.  Mindblowingly excellent!  The hot pastrami is hand-sliced, so it is perfectly thick and juicy.  The meat is incredibly aromatic and flavourful.  The mustard was delicious.  I cannot fault this sandwich.  If I could, I would eat at least one a week.

The Daddy prefers corned beef (boooo!) but I must admit, the Katz corned beef sandwich is really exceptional.  I do like corned beef - but pastrami is so much better!

Tabitha liked both the corned beef and the pastrami.  Here she is with a mouth full of pastrami:

She was also a big fan of the lightly pickled cucumbers which were served with the regular pickles:

On the walk home from Katz to the West Village, we visited a playground in the East Village.  I must say, I do prefer the West Village and the Village to the East.  The East is a little more dirty, a little less child-friendly, I think.  Still, Tabitha had a great time playing on the equipment:

Down the slide with dada:

Check out the dirty knees!

Once we made it back home to the West Village, I discovered that all that walking had left me hungry enough for another chocolate cupcake - so I wandered down to Amy's Bread on Bleeker Street (home to the 'second best cupcake in NY' as voted last year) and snaffled a Devil's Food Cake cupcake.  It was excellent!  Very moist and rich.

Before dinner, we managed to fit in yet another play at the playground - this time, the nice little one across the road from us, Bleeker St Playground.  The Daddy and I (and Tabitha) really fell in love with this little playground, visiting it at least once a day.  We would be happy if it were our local.  In the morning, we got into the habit of getting our coffees from Cafe Cluny, then wandering down so Tabby could wear herself out for an hour at the playground - and there were always lots of other mums, dads and babies doing the same.

How cute are her little jeans?  Jeans are great for this age - perfect for protecting soft knees while crawling and learning to walk.