It really sucks that the vodka slice at Pomodoro is the best pizza in the vicinity of Little Italy.

You’d expect Little Italy to have at least one absolutely uncontrollable-awesome pizza place at it’s heart, but that isn’t happening. Instead, you have one awesome slice, and with slices, you’re subject to The Slice Law.

What is the slice law, you ask? Defined simply, the slice law states that quality degrades in relation to how long a slice has been under a heat lamp and can be revived only by the hands of an expert. It’s a bit more tricky than that, but here’s the gist of it. Hopefully, the equation will be worked out soon, but it can be worked out!

So what about the Pomodoro slice made me think of this equation? I went there twice before I wrote the review. I forget who told me this, but one of my friends took a food writing course recently, and she (I know it was a she – I have way more she friends right now due to food blogging) said that if you’re going to write a negative review of a place, you are going to have to go there at least twice to pan it. I usually don’t have this luxury, so I don’t follow this rule. Three slices – one was good, two not so good

My first time at Pomodoro, I had the Vodka Slice and a Pepperoni and Mushroom Slice:

Like I said before, the Vodka Slice is the best pizza in Little Italy. It’s so much better than Lombardi’s. Now, I haven’t had the clam pie at Lombardi’s, and people are really urging me to check this out, so I might have to go back and try it sometime when there’s no line. The Vodka Slice is gorgeous. Vodka sauce, Buffalo Mozzarella … awesome. Why more places don’t use vodka sauce on their pizza is beyond me – it’s damn tasty.

The problem with Pomodoro is that after biting into the Vodka Slice, biting into another slice will make you feel like this guy (just watch it for 25 seconds):

And of course, I mean to indicate that the pizza quality drops off like a motherfucker. Don’t get another thing in here.

The regular slices: they aren’t BAD, they’re just not excellent. I would even say that the pepperoni and mushroom slice I had was above average, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, average pizza in NYC is bad pizza. This girl was visiting from Toronto, and I asked her if they had as many pizza places per capita as we do her in the city.

“No,” She said, “Pretty much only chains.”

New Yorkers! Feel blessed. You can have great pizza pretty much wherever you go. Most slices in NYC are far better than any pizza from a chain. Have you ever had pizza in Baltimore? It’s pretty much all junk. Kansas City? Now, I’ve never been, but how many places serve pizza anywhere close to what we New Yorkers would call average?

Of course, the upskirt:

Yeah, I ate half the pizza before taking the upskirt shot; lay off me, I was starving.

“But Hagan,” you ask, “I thought you had three slices?”

Ahh, astute reader, you’re correct. I did have three slices. I was on a date with a girl and was trying to explain why, as we walked by Lombardi’s, that it wasn’t the best pizza in Little Italy, so we walked over to Pomodoro for a slice. The pizza guy threw the pizza into the oven for a minute and then took it out. The second he came up to me with the pizza, I knew it was underdone. There’s no way any pizza could have reached an acceptable level of crispness with that amount of time in the oven.

She bit into it and said it was good; a lie. I bit into it and knew it wasn’t up to par. Nowhere close to the caliber of pizza one might expect if they were being told they were going to get the best slice in NYC’s Little Italy. I was disappointed but didn’t ask for another slice, fearing my usual pickiness could wait for date #2. I feel like these guys owe me a slice – they definitely owe her one.

Regardless, properly heated, it’s still the best slice in Little Italy. Could be the best slice below Houston, but I haven’t had enough pizza in this vicinity to make this call. If you get a cold one, send it back. Don’t order anything else unless you’re pumped for some mediocrity.

Pomodoro
51 Spring Street
New York, NY 10012
(212) 966-9229

Eataly opens today and I am pumped! It is almost sure to become the Italian food capital of the city and, from what I’ve read, might set the precedent for specialty stores going forward.

The live broadcast starts here at 1:30!

I’m trying to make an equation for how good a reheated can potentially be. So far, this is what I’ve got:

I need help creating the equation! If you’re any good at this type of stuff, can you help me out in the comments section?

Thanks!

This was the week I was living in my RV. Did I ever tell you this story? No? Yeah, I lived in an RV for about two weeks in June before moving into my place on Delancey.

Lived. In an RV. On 31st between 1st and 2nd. I had an RV party, and people came, and we played cards and drank. In my RV.

There’s this RV in the village called the “Free Willy Nelson.” The guy has his cell phone listed on the back of the rig – I’m assuming this is to make sure someone can contact him if there’s any issues with it instead of calling a tow truck. Before I drove the RV up, I texted him a few times asking him how hard it was to live in an RV in the city, and he never got back to me. I assumed that his non-response meant that it was pretty easy to live in NYC in an RV and he didn’t need any competition (or that he was a crazy weirdo recluse, you decide).

Living in the RV for two weeks wasn’t that bad. I got a free seven day trial to 24 hour fitness in Madison Square, then I got a 30 day trial membership to NYSC on 1st in Murray Hill. I could shower and use the bathroom in the RV anytime. I spent most of the day at Starbucks for wifi. I ate out every meal, (but there’s nothing special about that as a New Yorker).

As I exited Starbucks this particular day, I had my Red Sox hat on and some frustrated and quizzical mannerisms going on, because a girl asked me what I was looking for as if I was a tourist (but it was simply that my blackberry just worked like shit). I wanted to know where I could get some AWESOME cheap food within a few blocks of 31st and Park. “Eata Pita is pretty good,” she said.

“I don’t want pretty good; I want awesome. Is Eata Pita awesome?” I asked? She either modified her stance on the issue or placated me with agreement on the term. I walked down to the corner, peered in past the boisterous Eata Pita salesman outside, and the line sold me.

The salad selection didn’t look to shabby:

The deal they had going was something like Falafel and salad for $3. First, I thought the line might have been because of the price, not the food, and while this was surely part of it, there’s another part to the equation I’ll get to later.

Of course, I am a huge Mamoun’s fan (still haven’t written them up). Mamoun’s is probably my favorite $2.50 to spend in the city, to get this falafel (with as many cucumbers and red onions and as much tahini and hot sauce as you want) for $3 is pretty awesome, I would agree, but for $5.75, it’s only awesome if you don’t know you can get two of them for seventy-five cents less a mile south of here.

The Falafel:

Like I said, awesome for $3, pretty good for $5.75 in Midtown. My gauges for excellent falafel: Crispiness on the outside, Smoothness on the inside, Greenness on the inside. Yes, the more green the better I feel. The less green, the more chickpeas – more green, more parsley. I mean, if I had anything to do with making falafel, I would put green food coloring in mine just to make it more green. This one was green as hell inside ..

but I couldn’t get the white balance right. I should have shot this photo outside.

The one thing you want to take away from this review: the tahini and hot sauce were MONEY. I absolutely loved the combination. Then I tried them side by side and the hot sauce one the flavor battle. I crushed the rest of the falafel and killed the salad – no pics of the salad; nothing special.

Satisfied, I decided I’d go to Bryant Park for the rest of the day and enjoy the scenery/get inspired. I was on Madison when I realized that I didn’t have a shot of the hot sauce:

I back and crossed Park to get a shot of this hot sauce. Yes, it was that good. You wouldn’t put it past me for slugging that ramekin of hot sauce, and that’s exactly what I did (dotted with a little tahini). When I came back, the place was empty. I looked at my watch, looked around for any differences, and noticed that the loquacious sales guy was taking a smoke break around the corner.

“That guy must be pretty good, huh?” I asked the cashier.

“Yeah, fills the place right up. He’s a natural.”

I mean, it can’t hurt when you’re slanging gorgeous $3 Falafel + Salad combos in Midtown.

Just to reiterate, the regular price is $5.75. Great at $3, not awful at $5.75, but not nearly as great.

Eata Pita
441 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10016-8002
(212) 725-7482

Shit, this interning stuff ain’t no joke! I’m glad I can ease back into this “work” stuff with a four day work week and barely a commute doing something that I’ve basically been doing for the last two years anyway.

To recap, I was selected to participate in the shoot for the show “Outrageous Food” with Tom Pizzica as part of the Fried Shit episode at the Park Slope Chip Shop. As an outrageous food lover myself, I am part of the Gastronauts; the group tapped to try the outrageous food in Brooklyn. I’ve never been to Gastronauts, outing, but their but they know who I am. Their final application question is “Tell us a secret,” and let’s just say that if the selection came down to two people, all things being equal, I would feel pretty good about my chances at being picked based on this secret. In fact, I’ve got a few minutes before work. Think I might go see how Lee’s doing …

This is Sallie:

Sallie was the cameraman for the shoot; he’s from Brooklyn and travels with the production company. The production team kept getting shots that looked good, and then when they got all those, they said “Make sure you shoot one for Page.” Page is the production company that would be editing the footage; I’m assuming this meant that page wanted the cookie cutter production shots and not the creative panning/scrolling/zooming shots. If I was the editor, I’d feel the same way (as far as ease of the edit goes) but I can see where these guys thought getting creative might benefit the show. As an editor, you just want the shots that fit into your system.

This is one of those shots:

Tom is auctioning off the food! I have never worked at any restaurant where you wouldn’t get fired for this. He’s only doing it for the camera, though – he remembered all the seat numbers. So our table got Fried Cheetohs, Fried Sushi, Fried Blood Sausage, and a Fried Lox Bagel. The Cheetohs:

Disappointing. The cheetohs are better just cheetohs. Fried, they get chewy. I don’t know if this is a definitive answer on these guys, though. We had them after they’d sat for a little while, and if they held their crispness as they came from the fryer for a few minutes, we might be humming a different tune about them, but the overall feeling was not so great.

The Lox Bagel:

I took this next shot and remembered Bourdain’s rant on food bloggers where he famously exclaimed “It’s just a fucking hamburger, man!”

I didn’t really understand this statement. Either he doesn’t really feel this way and was doing it for this camera, or he’s oblivious to the guy following him around with one eye closed and some large, foriegn device on his shoulder pointing at everything he eats. Huh? Where’s the disconnect in his thinking? I’m going to the 92Y talk with him and Chang on the 13th and I’m definitely asking him about this if there’s any Q&A.

Here’s the cross-section:

This was damn good, aside from them missing the red onions and capers. Suzanne (owner of the Chip Shop) told me that it was going to be too hard, but I didn’t have that problem. The cream cheese didn’t melt too much (or it melted and then congealed – everything was cold when we got it) and the salmon cooked a bit. I think I preferred the salmon cooked in this version of the sandwich. Even though Tom said he wasn’t a fan of lox, he took a bite and I think he appreciated it.

All in all, a pretty fun saturday. Got to know Sarah a little better, she’s got some big stuff in the works that sounds awesome. She also told me about her specialty: Orange Marmalade (Google luv – you’re welcome ) Need to try that recipe. Got to talk with Tom for a sec:

Super nice guy. Planning a phone interview with him sometime in the next couple of weeks to shoot the shit about The Next Food Network Star and Outrageous Food. I still think “Outrageous Munchies,” might be a better name.

Park Slope Chip Shop
383 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718) 832-7701

A few weeks ago, I was reading my Gastronauts newsletter and saw an invitation to be on a Food Network show, so I figured, what the heck. Might as well send them an e-mail and see what happens. Maybe I was one of the only people to send an e-mail or maybe they handpicked me from a list of thousands, doesn’t matter to me because I was there and had a Fried Lox Bagel.

It wasn’t half bad. Could have used some red onions and capers, though. The people that ordered the food were from a production company in Minnesota – I don’t know if they’d ever had proper Lox bagels before, so for the record, all you Minnesotans; Lox, Cream Cheese, Capers, Red Onions, and if you like soupy jelly on your bagel as well, Tomato (I don’t know why this is such a staple – it’s terrible).

Here’s the pre-shoot (we couldn’t take video when the production company was taking video):

Tune in tomorrow for my full bloggity rundown on all the wonderful and interesting things we ate at the shoot!

Pasting these pictures into their little HTML brackets, I am wondering why I haven’t written up Banh Mi Saigon yet … $3.25 for a sandwich, and it’s good. I bought two drinks there that cost more than the sandwich last time. And the seaweed salad there? Gorgeous.

Someone just wrote me on Twitter and asked how many posts I do a week, and right now I’m doing a post a day. This might slow down, it might speed up from time to time. Anyway, then he tried to convince me that three posts a week might be better.

Doesn’t he know that I’m unemployed? WTF else am I going to do? Cutting down on my posting really isn’t an option unless I want to feel like a total skidbag. Of course, I do a lot more than just post links to my website. I’m doing cool stuff, eating at far-off places, meeting influential people, talking with just about everyone … I’m a busy guy.

Damn! It’s Monday morning and I have forty minutes to finish this post. Still technically unemployed, but now I have something to do during the day, and I’m pumped. Interning over at Morris + King. Such a busy weekend that I didn’t realize all I wrote about was how busy I was … I wanted to finish this post on Thursday!

Thirty minutes! So this place just got an addition – they’re breaking into the bubble tea market with a shop they just opened on the East side of the building connected with a doorway near the register. I like the ordering system here and I wish I took a picture of my receipt, but it says very clearly in Vietnamese and English what you’ve purchased and what your number is. It was a nice looking receipt, that’s all – not a standard line item system. I don’t know how to describe it, but it looked pretty enough to mention.

I got the Fresh Spring Rolls:

The one thing I always want to know is why they put so much damn vermicelli in the rolls:

OK, so that angle doesn’t really show how much vermicelli is in this particular roll, but I don’t know if that’s what I was thinking when I took this shot. Gee, how much vermicelli can I profile here? Seriously, though; how much vermicelli to they put in the rolls in Vietnam? More? Less? How much more/less? Does it depend on the area of Vietnam you’re in, or do they even serve them there? Maybe they’re like the Chinese Egg Rolls; no one in China has even heard of an egg roll – strictly an American Born Chinese side. I’m going to go with that assumption for now, besides, I don’t think these were showcased on “No Reservations: Vietnam.”

The spring rolls were a bit fresher than your average spring roll, but by themselves, they are not spring roll standouts. What made these babies pop was The Sauce:

I’m calling it The Sauce because I have no idea what’s in it. You can see that it’s peanut based, and it tastes kind of like a peanut satay with a hint of fish sauce. The carrots and radish(?) you see there add to the texture but the flavors of the vegetables are overpowered by the rest of it. Thoughts of what other dishes might be good with this sauce flew through my head, and everything I came up with was fried. Can you blame me?

The Banh Mi was my favorite part of the meal, as usual. I love this presentation, with the rubber band around the butcher paper. Classy. This place is two streets away from my subway stop, and if it’s open at 8AM, I will be planning some lunches ahead of time very soon.

You can see in the picture below that I got the traditional Banh Mi. I’ve talked about the actual pieces to the banh mi before, but I just wanted to go into detail today about what head cheese was. Head cheese scares off a lot of people if you explain what it is. It’s a lot like scrapple.

Head Cheese – From Wikipedia:

Head cheese is not a cheese but a meat jelly made with flesh from the head of a calf or pig. Meat jellies are made of the head of the animal, simmered to produce stock. When cooled, the stock congeals because of the natural gelatin found in the skull.

Scrapple – From Wikipedia:

Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste. Scrapple is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf.

I think the head cheese sounds worse, but I’ve eaten both, and will eat both again. They both remind me of the Lips and Ears skit from Kids in the Hall:

This was before sketch comedy characters got their own movies. I would have loved to see The Kids take Gavin to the big screen in their heyday, but I’m still stoked for the new miniseries. I digress.

Cutaway shot:

OOOH! You’s a sexy bitch! Look at that roast pork in there. I think some of my favorite sandwiches are hot meat on meat action – Roast Pork and Head Cheese Banh Mi, The Cuban – I think more chefs should try two preparation methods of one animal together in more dishes.

And I sometimes spell Banh Mi “bahn mi” Maybe God is telling me to do a German version of the sandwich.

OOOOH! I GOT IT – I’m making a phone call right now. Don’t steal my idea!

Saigon Vietnamese Sandwich
369 Broome Street
New York, NY 10013
(212) 219-8341

Another late May post held over until August. I just sent out thank you notes to most of the restaurateurs on the 93 Plates project, and I can’t help but feel a bit lazy for waiting so long to write up Sarabeth’s. Not that there wasn’t plenty of other stuff going on between then and now, but you know, it’s been a while. I’m lucky that I took pictures of the menu this time … I don’t usually do that, but I might start, for backup.

Speaking of backup, just installed a new 500 GB HD on the Macbook from the 2 TB Time Machine. Love that thing. If you do anything related to movies and don’t have a 2 TB backup, I suggest you grab one. I wish I could keep this one full of all my old videos, but I’m nearing the end of the free space – I’ll have to delete some of the vintage Wandering Foodie footage (from 2009). I had an outtakes reel that I never really produced and would have been funny if I had, but now it would just be old.

This was the morning after my lonely jaunt to Papaya King, and my mom called me and asked me if I’d meet her at Sarabeth’s. I heard that Sarabeth’s West was better (I wonder now if it is), so I asked her to change her plans and meet me on the UES. This is a picture of us – Included is her husband, William, and his son, Andrew:

Andrew finished college when he was 12. I always expect child prodigies to be weird and antisocial or live in sick lofts and wax philosophical about life on their blog. Of course, Doogie didn’t have a blog, but it’s pretty much what they were going for with his diary being written on the computer … whoa … is Doogie Howser the inspiration for what we now call the “Weblog?” I think I just stumbled onto something huge.

Andrew was none of that – he does typography and is a regular guy. He ordered a Bloody Mary and I had a sip.

Look at that fucking delightful concoction. The white things sticking out of the Bloody are the white parts of the Celery Stalk. What they do with the green parts, I’ve no idea. I like mine more spicy, but I wasn’t ordering. I don’t usually have alcohol when I eat out because I like to spend my entertainment budget on food. Even if someone else is paying, I don’t change it up unless everyone is drinking or there’s a pairing option. I’ll pay for a pairing option myself if the sommelier is any good.

All this is thrown out the window when a good menu writer gets to me:

All right, it does say “Fruity Beginnings.” That’s not what I’m talking about – I can’t believe I pasted that into the post before I noticed that. I don’t even remember seeing that the first time. All that put aside, you know I was getting the Four Flowers Juice:

I didn’t feel the slightest bit fruity drinking that. For the record, I don’t think this place is worth the wait in line, but if you just have to go, I would get this.

I order Fries just about everywhere I go, so I had them here, too:

Someone asked me “Fries or Chocolate Cake; you have to give one up for the rest of your life, which would you choose.” There’s no such thing as a stupid question, but if you answer chocolate cake, I don’t trust you anymore. I would go so far as to say this is a dealbreaker. I’ve had some fantastic chocolate cakes in my time, bun how could you give up French Fries? It doesn’t make sense. Am I way off base here? Weigh in using the comments section.

These fries are nothing special, but I enjoyed them – tough to say how good they were, but I’ll give them a 6.5. Can’t beat the fries at The Smith and Jane, though. Best brunch fries in Manhattan at either of those places.

Going to the menu pic for the name of this one; Chicken Apple Sausage with Chunky Applesauce and Sour Cream:

Meh. At first I wished it had more flavor, then I wished I wasn’t suckered in by that menu writer again. There’s not a whole ton that is going to make a chicken sausage any better than usual. Next stop, tofu sausage.

After checking Foursquare, I was instructed that the way to go was the Pumpkin Waffle topped with Sour Cream, Pumpkin Seeds, Raisins, and Honey:

They were wrong. It was spongy and dry. The pumpkin seeds were a gimmick – they didn’t add anything to the dish. The pumpkin-ness of the waffle wasn’t as prevalent as I’d hoped it would be. The sour cream and raisins were what I would normally call its saving grace if this dish’s salvation was possible. No. No no no no. Bad waffle. Avoid.

My mom had the Goldie Lox:

Smoked Salmon, Scrambled eggs, and Cream Cheese. I don’t like salmon in anything else but a bagel, so I didn’t like this. My mom loved it, so I guess it was excellent. My mom is excited about everything when she eats out, though, so I can’t really tell. As much as she loves to cook, she loves to have someone else cook for her. Her favorite birthday presents always include me cooking something for her. Last year I made Lobster Benedicts and a minty iced watermelon juice for breakfast. Love you, mom!

William had the Green and White:

It was the only breakfast item that I enjoyed, and I wasn’t completely pumped, just pleased. Of course, there aren’t too many flavor dimensions to this dish, and it’s pretty much exactly what you can imagine making yourself.

I’ve met a lot of people who aren’t brunch fans this year; moreso in NYC than in other areas. I don’t know if I blame this so much on the bars being open so late or people’s work-hard/sleep-hard attitude. One thing that I can peg about brunches is that most of the time, you can make all brunch stuff at home with little effort. The toughest thing to accomplish might have been the Four Flower Juice, and that would simply require a blender … maybe a juicer (not as many people have juicers).

Maybe I should blame my dining companions on my experience here at Sarabeth’s – Scallions and Eggs/Salmon and Eggs are fairly uninspired choices when there’s Lemon Ricotta Pancakes and Almond-Crusted French Toast with Cranberry-Cherry Sauce on the menu.

Maybe I’m being too hard on them. I could go back and see if I was wrong … It has been a while.

Sarabeth’s West
423 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10024
(212) 496-6280

Don’t you hate it when you write three or four paragraphs of a blog post and then delete it accidentally by clicking in the wrong place? Me too. You try to remember what you’ve written and get it back onto the screen, thinking it will be faster when you type it this time, but It’s only slightly faster than thinking up something completely new. Am I rambling or does anyone sympathize with me?

I can say that I’ve been to the Limelight Nightclub. A lot of New Yorkers I know never went. I was here in 1999 on an internship doing Y2K stuff for the NYSE (you’re welcome) and went once. I thought I was the shit. That was the night someone offered me ecstasy. I asked about what it did for him.

“Oh man, I mean, I can dance with girls, talk to girls, I’m not afraid of that at all. It’s very freeing.”

Here, I was thinking “I have no trouble talking to girls. My thing is that I believe that If I ran fast enough, I could probably jump and hang onto a subway.” I held off after that, but eleven years later, I might be open to experimenting.

I figured for this post, I’d do a contest: Post your best Limelight story in the comments section (pre or post marketplace) and win a lunch with me somewhere in the city, my treat. You can have an anonymous name, but please make sure it’s your correct e-mail. Only I see the e-mail.

I didn’t want to make this post all about Red Velvet Whoopie Pies, but those are the pictures that I have. Red Velvet Whoopie Pie pictures. I tried to get a shot of the gelato, but it came out blurry. Why? The table that it was on was wobbly. I don’t understand why it wobbled, why they didn’t fix it, or why it was even wobbly in the first place. I think the marketplace had been open a month when I first checked it out – certainly not enough time for tables to start wobbling.

The Red Velvet Whoopie Pies weren’t even that good:

I’m positive that the regular whoopie pies tasted exactly the same as the red velvet ones. What’s different about the ingredients? If anything, less cocoa?

Right now, the annoying new hotness in the foodie community is the Heirloom Tomato. Earlier this year it was Ramps. Someone just put Red Velvet Cake Crumbs in a fried chicken recipe. I’m not going to link it and don’t bother searching for it; it’s lame. I hereby declare the Red Velvet craze to be officially over.

Gotta admit, It does look pretty tasty.

My hand model is Dominique, she was eschewing desserts today because she’s more of an appetizer girl and we were both full anyway. The thing that I want to know is when cupcakes jumped the shark? Now it’s macarons, but I don’t like those either. I don’t know when the cupcake craze became played out, but American gluttony is keeping them around for a second act. Someone told me that they saw ten tourist women the size of offensive linemen lining up outside Magnolia a couple days ago. In matching shirts. Don’t worry, we’ll cover that medicaid bill with our tax dollars for you; you just go ahead and annihilate that cupcake. Oh, fine, have the whole dozen; who’s counting? The reason why sites like TIWYF.com and ScooterFatties exist is because cupcakes are fucking fattening.

How does it get to the point where people don’t make their health a priority? I had a job lined up before my last semester of college. I didn’t have to play fall lacrosse with the team, I didn’t have to get good grades, I didn’t have to work – I just smoked weed and drank beer the entire time. I got up to 227 lbs. I felt like a whale. I weighed in at 190 for lacrosse the prior season (37 pounds in four months! WTF). Then I went to China and got back down to 200 in no time, but I haven’t been 190 since. Most of my friends are amazed that I can gain and lose weight so quickly, especially when writing a food blog. I just feel like it’s willpower. There are other areas in my life where I’d like more willpower, but I’ll take what I got for now.

By the way, our next stop …

We had the Boston Cream (or Kreme, or Creme – I don’t know how they spelled it).

Wish I’d kept this around for my gelato; I have a feeling that the Cappucino Gelato/Boston Cream mix would have been quite gratifying. This was the best bite here, but we only had three things, so I can’t tell you this is a thorough review of the marketplace.

Here’s a picture of something I didn’t eat but looks goddamned delectable:

Little … miniature … wedding cakes. Completely reminding me of little chocolate donuts. You gotta watch that right now.

One other thing that I bought here was this gizmo:

It’s a plastic tea ball. You put your tea in there and close it up. Voila – tea ball (and stirrer).

Here’s a thorough review for you: this thing is fucking worthless. It expands and doesn’t clasp shut after two or three uses, you can’t put a lot of tea in, and when you do, sometimes it doesn’t close and it opens in your cup and leaves you with an entire mug of tea leaves. Don’t buy this. I don’t know if I’d even trust Miss Tea with any of their non-edibles. If they recommended this to me, and they were that wrong, I wouldn’t believe them if they tried to sell me something else.

Aside from the wobbly table and the shitty deco tea ball, this place is money. I am going to be spending a lot of time a few blocks away from this place, so I might have to swing by for some more desserts.

Just saved, published. Whew. I missed a whole separate rant about Red Velvet! I’ll save that for another time. Cake Man Raven, perhaps?

REMEMBER: Post your best Limelight story in the comments section (pre or post marketplace) and win a lunch with me somewhere in the city, my treat! Looking forward to the stories!

Limelight Marketpalce
656 6th Avenue
New York, NY 10013
Multiple Phone Numbers

the fuck you think i had, bish?

Obviously, it was going to be the Chicken Parm. I don’t have a whole lot to write about Torrisi, but I’d like to get the negatives out of the way: I was there at 3:30, in the middle of a shift change. I was the only one there. I ate in, tipped on the sandwich, but no one wanted to offer me any service other than handing me the sub. There were two people (probably the GM and assistant) holding a meeting at an adjacent table, and someone with a lot nicer camera than mine came in and took shots, talked with them for a second, and left. There was water available for everyone if you poured it yourself. I don’t mind this and I get it, but I do mind lukewarm water. Even though I wasn’t visited by a waiter, I felt rushed out of there. So many things going on around me and no one paying me any attention. I probably wouldn’t care about anything if they offered me cold water when dining.

Let’s talk about chix, man!

This sub has been talked about to death, so I had to try it, and I have to report on it here for you right now. The first time I had scheduled to go to Torrisi, I was going to meet a girl there and go on a Soho food tour. I get there and they tell me that they don’t serve the Chicken Parmesan Sub at dinner. She gets there a minute later and tells me she’s a vegetarian.

What. The. Fuck.

Is that the poorest form imaginable? So someone tells you that on a date you’re going to go on a food tour, and you don’t even think to tell that person that you’re a vegetarian? Like your average Soho food tour is going to focus on the vegetarian and vegan options of the finest restaurants in the area. I still don’t know why I didn’t just send the girl home right there. What a fucking waste-of-time, classless, selfish move. One of my friends asked me why I was going on a date with a girl who didn’t have the balls to tell me she was a vegetarian. I didn’t really feel it out as well as I could have; I met her at the Lost finale, she was hot, I asked her out. Flitty actress-type. Serves me right? I don’t know.

The sandwich – made with locally-sourced tomatoes, house-made mutz, house-made bread, a pleasant chicken cutlet, and fresh basil. The sandwich was on point. The bread crunches on the outside, soft on the inside, chicken crispy on the outside moist on the inside, Ice cream, Ice cre-I-Ice cream paint job. I would like a couple more leaves of fresh basil on the sandwich the next time I go; the flavor is faint when matched up against the rest of the sandwich. I don’t need it to kick me in the face, I just want to taste it.

Pumped about this sandwich. It’s certainly a redo (that means it’s damn good), but not before I get the Turkey. There’s a lot of hullabaloo about the Turkey, too (and Tippecanoe).

Here’s my recommendation (to Torrisi): close for an hour at 4. It’s not going to kill you. You don’t have a big enough space to hold meetings when other diners are present. If you’re dying to keep the restaurant open all day long, go over to McNally Jackson to hold your meetings and hold your pre-shift in the kitchen.

If that doesn’t happen, my other recommendation is to avoid Torrisi from 3-5 for anything other than take out. That being said, it’s a decent Chicken Parm. Is it the best I’ve ever had? Maybe. Will it blow your mind like Leo’s Latticini in Corona? Probably not.

Torrisi Italian Specialties
250 Mulberry Street ‎
New York, NY‎ 10002
(212) 965-0955