Sugar and spice and everything nice: Dessert Truck

I'd already eaten a whole plate of ho-hum pad see-ew for dinner at Montien Thai with TL, ID, and ID's friend J, but as we headed to the train we ran into the famed Dessert Truck and I stopped dead. I had read an entire post about all of the truck's various offerings not long before, and there was no way I was passing this one by.

I opted for the goat cheese cheesecake, "topped with fresh blackberries, rosemary caramel, and a pistachio crisp," as well as their acclaimed chocolate bread pudding. I wasn't crazy though…I took them both back to my apartment before digging in with MH, giving myself time to digest before padding my dinner with sweets.

I'm glad I waited. Not having a sweet tooth, there was no way I could have finished either one by myself, though both were quite good. Goat cheese haters wouldn't have been able to overlook the unmistakable goaty tang in the cheesecake, but luckily, I'm a fan. And I enjoyed the pool of rosemary honey around the cheesecake, which added a surprising herbal note.

The sweetness of the honey did get sickly after a while though, and with the chocolate bread pudding I didn't fare any better. Even MH, who can inhale a pint of ice cream in about ten minutes, ate a spoonful and paused before commenting, "Oh, that's…thick." She stopped eating shortly after.

This isn't to say that either of them were bad, just that they were both much too sweet. I could clearly taste the quality of ingredients, and I'm impressed that desserts at this level are being offered from a truck. For most other folks this mobile dessert vendor is probably a dream, but for me, I'm good with stopping at what I've tried.

Smith's? The Smiths? No, The Smith

With white tile, a black-and-white motif, and an everyman name, The Smith has transformed what had formerly been a Pizzeria Uno into a bustling restaurant about ten times more hip. I like the casual, friendly servers, and how diners are offered bottles of both still and sparkling water at no charge. I like the open, unisex bathroom and the photo booth and vintage barber's chair that act as sentry near its entrance. I keep eyeing the massive downstairs room for some kind of special event, but none have presented themselves yet.

At dinner with TC last month, really good butter arrived with a tough, paper-wrapped baguette, bread that was sadly only okay. My order of moules frites featured tasty if stubby fries and passable mussels. They weren't as plump as they could have been and were just slightly tough, but their flavor was good and the sauce they swam in, divine. I dunked unshelled mussels, fries, and eventually whatever was left of the baguette into the creamy broth sitting at the bottom of the pot, trying to sop up every bit of its silky richness. I'd had the ricotta gnocci in truffle cream the last time I'd come, and had found its sauce similarly addictive.

To cut things a bit I also asked for their baby arugula salad, a lemony, perfectly dressed creation tossed with thin shavings of fennel and parmesan. TC seemed happy with her meal too, enough to return just a few weeks later with our friend GQ in tow. With its wallet-friendly prices and lively, comfortable atmosphere, The Smith would probably be a regular spot for me…if only I was going to still be living in NYC.

One day in June…

I had meant to hit up the Indonesian food bazaar in my neighborhood, but to my dismay when I checked the website before I headed out, I learned it had been rescheduled to a later date. Since I had already made plans to hang out with TL though, I suggested that we head to the nearby Socrates Sculpture Park instead.

It ended up being one of the most surprising days in my summer. Having only really met TL a few weeks earlier, I was delighted to discover that he has as much of a wandering spirit as I do. Over the course of an afternoon—one which turned into evening, and then night—we made our way on foot all around Socrates and Rainey Park, across the bridge to Roosevelt Island, onto the tram which took us to Manhattan, into and around FAO Schwartz, and then eventually to Midtown West, whereupon we decided it was time to feed ourselves.

I'd been to Sake Bar Hagi a few other times, and while the food has never been knock-your-socks-off, it's always been comfortable and pretty decent. It's a good place for cheap and casual Japanese food. After a brief wait we settled in and chose three dishes, the first of which was a daikon and fried baby sardine salad. The heaping pile of teeny, crunchy fish paired with the daikon matchsticks was still hot, which meant the salad had a refreshing and pleasant contrast of warm, crisp, briny, and cool.

Unfortunately the salad ended up being the highlight of the meal. The spicy cod roe spaghetti, which I'd had at Hagi before, was thick with mayonnaise and barely spicy. I remember it having been prepared in a thinner cream sauce the last time I'd ordered it, but that night the dish was overwhelmingly gloppy and heavy.

Similarly disappointing was the okonomiyaki, which was leaden and practically gluey inside. After sampling a piece each, both TL and I concluded that the rest wasn't worth it. The food at Sake Bar Hagi wasn't awesome that day, but others had plates on their tables that I was eyeing, such as the shrimp with chili sauce and some fried items, so maybe I'll still come back sometime.

Post-dinner our wanderings didn't end, though they only took us as far as Rockefeller Plaza before we made our way back to Astoria where we both live. It seemed wise to save our energy for more adventures another day.

Sky's the limit….

When your sandwich jones calls, go to Parisi Bakery

It seemed like every time I asked SYB what he wanted to have for lunch or what he had eaten for lunch, he would mention some kind of sandwich from Parisi Bakery. Much like his love for noodles at Marco Polo (now closed!), his devotion to this small Little Italy storefront is unparalleled. So finally, when I met up with him in SoHo one afternoon, he led me to Parisi, according to all reports long unchanged despite the entire neighborhood having morphed around it.

Parisi Bakery has the feel of an old school place, alright, and I hope it stays that way. I also hope it'll stay around for pretty much forever. In a schoolyard nearby SYB and I split a sandwich on a sesame-speckled semolina loaf as large as my head, and it was delicious. The massive amount of bread, which looked overwhelming and dry before I bit into it, was fresh and dense and a bit sweet, standing up perfectly to the mozarella, capicola, and sweet sopressata layered between it. I also tucked in a few huge pieces of marinated sweet pepper, which provided a perfect tangy contrast to the meats and bread. Normally I wouldn't eat so much, but that afternoon I found myself polishing off the entire half. My stomach paid for it afterward—but it was so worth it.

Peanut Butter Truck or Treat

I like cookies, I like peanut butter, and I like treats. This peanut butter cookie from the Treats Truck pretty much fit all my happy requirements. Not quite as melt-in-your-mouth as the amazing peanut butter cookie from City Bakery, but delightful in its own sugar-coma kind of way. I could just as soon do without the extra-sweet peanut butter filling though, and munch away on the slightly salty cookies on their own.

Scoping out Fort Collins: Taqueria los Comales, New Belgium, Colorado Cherry Company, and Mama Rose's

So you all know I am moving to Colorado, right? And in fact, I'm going to be heading there for good on August 18th, and somehow between then and now I've got about thirty or forty New York City posts I should get up before leaving. Whaddya say, can I do it? Welllll…I'll try…

A month or so earlier RT and I flew out to Fort Collins, CO with several purposes: he to visit his older sister CH, and I to scope out the campus, the city, and to secure myself an apartment. It was kind of a last-minute trip, and getting there involved red-eye flights, some white-knuckled driving in a rental car from the Denver airport (I do not drive. I'm a New Yorker damnit), and a middle-of-the-night arrival to RT's sister's house. But we two city slickers made it, and after a night's rest we got up early the next day to begin a morning of apartment hunting. Let me tell you, it's almost hysterical what the rental scene in Fort Collins is like as compared to NYC.

friend: did you find a place in Colorado?
soopling: I did!
soopling: I am going to be the resident
soopling: of a two bedroom with a patio, and a small garden
friend: I hate you
soopling: ahhahah
soopling: I can have a study! /guestroom!
friend: I just put an application on a place where the shower stall is in the kitchen.

Oh, and here's where I tell you that including cable, internet, and utilities, my rent is $600 per month. Yeaaaaah.

Anyway. We made good progress that first morning, looking at five or six different apartments over just a few hours. Around 2 pm, hunger struck. CH took us to one of her favorite Mexican joints, Taqueria los Comales, a casual, unassuming restaurant nestled in a shopping strip near the CSU campus. There, horchata came in a massive plastic glass, towering over the salt shakers and sugar packets. It was delicious but so huge I could only drink about half of the thin, creamy, cinnamon-infused rice drink.

This place has a condiment bar, which I always love. So my giant chicken burrito arrived nearly naked on the plate, but from the bar I swiped the cucumbers, marinated chiles, limes, guacamole, pico de gallo, and red and green salsas that you see above. Everything tasted really fresh, and I was one happy girl.

Afterwards, we bumped into a car show, dozens of vintage cars displayed along the shop and restaurant–filled streets of Old Town. The sun was out and the sky extraordinarily clear, and everyone around me seemed healthy and in good spirits. I think that's when it struck me that this would be my life for the next two years: wholly different from my beloved NYC, but a place where I can take more than a few clean breaths.

After Old Town CH took us to New Belgium brewery, birthplace of Fat Tire Amber Ale, a beer I remembered first tasting six years ago when I drove across the country with JSK and BH. The brewery, a place strongly committed to environmental stewardship, is apparently a fairly popular local spot in Fort Collins.

For good reason, too. I don't know how they do it, but along with tours the brewery offers pretty substantial free samples of four of their beers to each person that wanders in. For mine I chose Mothership Wit, Loose Lips, Skinny Dip, and Abbey. And after downing all four, I was feeling pretty fine.

New Belgium also offers up stacks of coasters/postcards that you can fill out on the spot and have them mail to anywhere in the world. I spent some time figuring out who I actually had mailing addresses for—a surprisingly low number. O email, how you have taken over the world.

That night, CH and her husband fired up the grill and we sat outside on their back patio, enjoying a simple but delicious meal of thick steaks, baked potatoes, and salad. As the sun set, we sipped from glasses of red wine, chatting comfortably while their dog Bear ran around and a hummingbird dipped in and out of the flowering bushes nearby.

The next morning, after we looked at a few last apartments (one of which would become the aforementioned two-bedroom), CH drove us into the Rockies. Along the way we stopped in at the Colorado Cherry Company, home of all things cherry. I love little shops like this.

All sorts of ciders were for sale, including, of course, a cherry version. We sampled a few, and all were tart and refreshing and just sweet enough.


In the Rockies snow lay on the ground, which amused me as I was wearing a summer dress and flip flops. We saw all sorts of critters, including several elk and a golden mantled ground squirrel—but not one moose. Maybe another day.


Later, in Estes Park, we had dinner at Mama Rose's, an Italian restaurant nestled just over a small segment of the rushing Big Thompson River. Unfortunately, the view was much better than the food. While the salad tasted super fresh and came dressed in a good vinaigrette, the garlic bread was mediocre and the baked ziti with a meatball I ordered barely passable. Cafeteria food is what came to mind.

But at least there was dessert once we got back to the house. With an unusual dryish filling of sour cherries (no gloppy syrup here), the pie from Colorado Cherry Company tasted almost like it had been filled with Chinese dried plums. Or at least that's what my mom said when she tasted a forkful from the second pie I brought back to New York for my parents. "I bought this at a small shop just outside the Rocky Mountains," I said, and they accepted their slices eagerly, tasting a new treat from a new place soon to be my home.

Tucking in pies from Tuck Shop

Anything wrapped in dough is worthy of adoration in my book, and I'd long thought about popping in for one of the Down Under meals-in-a-crust being sold at Tuck Shop. On the way to having drinks with our co-workers at d.b.a., DL and I decided to grab a few to pair with our beers.

It took a while for our pies to heat up properly, but once we got them over to the garden area of d.b.a. and dug in, we found they were worth the wait. The Guinness steak and mushroom pie I got had a buttery, flaky crust bursting with tender chunks of beef in gravy, its flavor nicely balanced. The pies were hefty, too, meaning one made quite a satisfying meal. Altogether they were way better than the ones I sampled at DUB Pies, though the comparison might be unfair (these were fresh, and I waited until the next day to eat the ones from DUB).

DL also picked up a lamington, a square of butter cake that had been dipped in chocolate and rolled in coconut. As it made the rounds among our coworkers they discovered the thin line of strawberry jam running through the middle, since we had begun breaking off pieces of the cake from the wrong end. Happily, the lamington came back to us intact enough so that we were able to eat another bite of cake, chocolate, and coconut complete with jam, providing a fruity and just-sweet-enough ending to a perfectly Aussie lunch.

Otto: Olive oil gelato without a trace of olive oil?

Before catching a showing of Take Out at the Quad with FC, I suggested Otto for our pre-theater eats. Despite mixed reviews of the place I'd long wanted to check out this branch of the Batali empire, in particular for its "olive oil copetta" dessert touted across the internets. As ya'll know I love when the savory mixes with the sweet, and a fruity, grassy olive oil gelato sundae sprinkled with salt sounded right up my alley. But first, there was an actual meal.

At FC's suggestion we decided to get the "grande" portion of fish antipasti, meaning all five selections for $21 (alone they are $8 each, so this is a good deal). This consisted of octopus with celery and lovage; pickled anchovies with scallions and topped with large olive-oil croutons; shrimp with chickpeas and chiles; mussels with stewed peppers and mint; and chunks of sweet marinated swordfish. We also added on an order of roasted beets with grape must. Of these the mussels were perfectly tender, the anchovies bold and flavorful, and the swordfish so addictive I found myself dipping repeatedly into its ramekin. I wasn't as enamoured with the other three, but that was just because the others were tastier, not because they weren't also good.

I felt like we should try one of the pizzas so we went with "Otto Lardo," a round of thin, chewy dough blistered in the oven and topped with translucent squares of pig fat. The idea of eating slices of fat atop dough was more decadent than the actual experience, which was more like eating a good, oily flatbread speckled with bits of rosemary. It was tasty, but it wasn't as interesting as I had thought it might be.

We also split an order of the spaghetti alla carbonara, which was rich and fine though I would have preferred it to be less salty.

And then finally, with only fifteen minutes or so before we had to take off for the movie, we squeezed in the olive oil copetta, the main reason why I had wanted to come in the first place. And it was…a disappointment. Though I liked the bits of salt atop the creamy, silky gelato, both FC and I were unable to discern much more than a faint touch of olive oil in its flavor, and that only if we really concentrated. It was so faint that FC even inquired if we had received the right order (we had).

So I have mixed feelings about Otto: while overall I quite liked the antipasti we tried, the other dishes were just decent and not anything I didn't feel like I could get elsewhere. And it remains a mystery to me why a gelato so widely praised tasted so much like nothing unusual to both of us. Given the discrepancy, I think I would go again just to figure out whether my first impression was the right one.