week 40: terroir

an amazing meal in this city is easy to find. i can walk out my front door, spit, and trust that my spit will land on multiple good food places.

an amazing experience is a little more high maintenance. it takes super silly people, endless good conversation, magic, glitter, a crap ton of tasties, 

and gallons of riesling. 

good thing my night at terroir had all of that.

::::

my dates consisted of oleg, hannah {you know them from here}, donny, and mister culverlake. 

and we're all friends because of schnitzel. it's like a schnitzel fan club. or mafia. or support group.

but apparently if you're out with the schnitzel truck man, it's faux pas to order schnitzel. 

so i held my tongue and we got the selection on the menu that said something to the effect of

if you don't like looking at menus,

sit your tookus down and we'll bring you whatever we want to bring you. 

best decision ever. 

 for hours we sat, sipping wine, talking about cheese and paris and other awesome things, 

and every so often a new little plate would come strolling out, begging to be destroyed.

beet risotto balls flew through the air, bone marrow bruschetta globbed across the table, 

and at one point, without even thinking about it, i ate a mushroom sandwich. {i was just having such a good time and all of a sudden a mushroom was in my mouth, and i noticed it, but i somehow didn't care i just kept eating it...and i survived, miraculously.}

we also got chicken liver and crispy duck salad and lamb sausages and dandelion greens and a reuben!

yep, i think we actually tried just about everything on the menu except for the schnitzel. awkward.

 it was delicious. everything had gobs of flavor! my favorites were the bright red risotto balls and the duck salad and the chicken liver. 

really. four of my new favorite people + risotto balls...under one roof?? i was certainly a happy molly.

cruising through manhattan afterwards, listening to la roux... that made a happy molly too. 

go to terroir. wear your eating pants, don't ride your bike there, and bring a lot of {cool} people so that you can try everything. it will be a jolly time.

...oh my...i've got12 restaurants to go.

xoxo

yeh

terroir {terr-warr} is on harrison and greenwich in tribeca. there's another one on east 12th... but tribeca is so gosh darn pretty!

week 39: tehuitzingo

not that i'm too much of a gossip girl,

but i do lovvvve a good secret.

{secret passages, secret forts, secret burger joints...}

tehuitzingo

is the first secret mexican place i've been to.

it reminded me of the time my friend took me to a gross, broken down bodega in boston: he told me to walk directly towards the vending machine in the back of the store, and as i was about to chicken out for fear of smashing my nose, the vending machine slid to the side and tout à coup i was standing in the biggest, most luxurious sneaker store i ever did see...

tehuitzingo doesn't have a secret vending machine door, but it does just appear to be an itsy bitsy snackee store in the outskirts of hell's kitchen. {one that i probably wouldn't have gone to, had a tipster not told me about the secret in the back}. after squeezing past some pastries and piles of mexican candy that look like they're about to avalanche on your head, a wooden man welcomes you to a space with counters in the back. and there you are... sitting in a green-lit nook that's reminiscent of the jungle gym from your youth. a half-door at the back is where the cook takes orders...

and of course i got a torta.

{chickens}

as i waited, some music came on via the jukebox {hey, my jungle gym didn't have a juke box! no fair!}

and when i finally stopped giggling from being in the secret world, i gobbled up my torta, no mess. it was heavy on the lettuce and avocado which made me feel good cause i was getting my recommended daily amount of vegetables. i think. 

the bread was a bit crispy, and held its junk in real good.

the horchata was non existent :-( but, i mean, what can you do with four square-feet of space? 

mirrors on the walls made the space, and my rump look bigger {maybe it wasn't the mirrors...}

dessert was this cutie patootie from the front of the store!

it was like the inside of a milka egg. and equally as importantly, it came with a little plastic spoon. teehee.

it was a very scrumptious and mischievous meal indeed.

i will be back!

but first...

i've got 13 more restaurants to go!!

xoxo

yeh

tehuitzingo is on 47th and 10th

week 38: pasha

queens is:

a) the borough with the airport

b) where new york's token beer garden is

c) a little bit scary if you haven't a clue what you're doing

all of the above. 

no really, i can count the amount of times i've been to queens on one foot {well, maybe two foots and a nostril if you include laguardia trips}

it's something about the bridges and the q train and the striking similarities that it shares with the town near my home that my eye doctor's office is in that i've just never had a sensational desire to go. 

but then my friend danielle came along who is, i shit you not, the sam sifton of queens. and she was like 

come to astoria and eat bosnian burgers.
 they're the size of your ass.

she didn't say the ass part, but that's really the approximate size, i think, i hope. 

and so i smushed like a little baby sardine onto the q train {EEEEEEECK} and i deboarded somewhere somehow and then we {danielle, peter, nick, me} ate at

pasha

which is the bosnian burger center of the universe, apparently.

nick and i each got one.

and it's essentially what would happen if a schnitzel got with a spotted pig burger 

and then was garnished with creamy tangy cheese and roasted peppers and cozied up in a pita 

{read: a reeeeally flat lamby burger, i think there's beef in there too?}

it was insane and enough like an american burger to really have something to grasp onto, but different enough to make you want to go alllll the way to queens for it.

danielle got some sausagey thing that was essentially the burger in sausage shape. and peter got another smokey sausagey thing that was equally as scrumptious. 

but not ass-sized.

and the whole entire time, danielle was telling me about all of these different cuisines in queens that i've never even heard of. and i was all what the ef am i missing 

and she was all yeah, you haven't even had good uzbek-peruvian-azerbaijani fusion until you've had it in queens.

anyways, the burger was so big i couldn't finish it all. {that's a first} 

it was so good. and so cheap.

believe me when i say,

queens: it's what's for dinner.

take me to the queen, i've got 14 restaurants left.

xoxo

yeh

pasha: don't eat lunch, and then take the n or q to 30th ave. 

there's no better way to say it,

but it's true,

i'm on a boat.

and i've got three dates: alex, sam, and lady liberty.

it was our last little hoorah last week before classes started,

and boyyyy was it pretty!!

have i told you how pretty new york is lately?

it's very.

pretty enough to date, like, berlin or something cool like that.

xoxo

yeh