If you’re ever in Washington Square Park and you feel your stomach rumbling because you don’t feed it enough, you’re in luck! There’s a great cart that serves fresh dosa’s – every Monday through Saturday, a guy pushes a cart with fresh ingredients to Washington Square Park to prepare dosa’s for the NYU kids and other people that are lucky enough to work in the area. I stopped by one Saturday afternoon to try his famous vegan crepes:
The newspaper clippings on the side of the cart are all about him – he’s appeared on Rachael Ray’s show and in some of the local papers! The dosa man cuts all of the ingredients every morning and prepares the dosa when you order it, so you’re always guaranteed a fresh crepe like this one:
The dosa has veggies inside and you dip the crepe into the chutney (on the right side), which is made with coconut milk and lots of spices. Dosas are really healthy since you’re getting lots of veggies AND it’s really tasty, so you don’t even MISS meat. I loved the dish (and Chris did, too) and I can’t wait to go back again.
How to get to The Dosa Man:
The Dosa Man
50 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10014
917-710-2092
On our recent Labor Day vacation to California, Chris took me to his favorite pizza restaurant by his house: the Pizza Box in Milpitas. The place is in a strip mall (apparently strip malls are all the rage in Northern California) and it’s slightly run down (and by slightly, I mean it looks like we walked into the 70’s when we were pulling into the parking lot):
Chris hadn’t been there since last Thanksgiving, but he told me that the place hasn’t changed since the late 80’s, when he first started going there as a kid. The place is owned by a Filipino family and the wife is known to be a little…spacey. She wasn’t sure if they had garlic bread or not (another one of Chris’ favorites) but she did charge us up front for a product she might not have…couldn’t she have just gone to the back and checked? I suppose not.
The Pizza Box is known for their large pizzas – look at the different size options you can order:
Chris said we should only order one slice of pizza and one piece of garlic bread. I asked him if he remembered who he was with (I’m a really big eater…what can I say?) He really wasn’t kidding when he said one slice would fill both of us up. Look at how huge this ONE piece is:
I put a knife next to the pizza to do a side by side comparison. Yeah, it’s huge! The pizza was comparable to New York style pizza (I’m thinking John’s + Patsy’s). There was so much cheese and toppings on our slice that I really couldn’t eat the entire slice on my own (which is saying a lot, considering I usually scarf down at least 3 pieces of John’s).
They ended up having garlic bread (whew!) and like their pizza, the garlic bread was also gigantic:
Can you even see the knife to compare the size?! The garlic bread was oozing cheese and oil (but the good kind of oil…yeah, you’d like it). It was so chewy and doughy – definitely great garlic bread.
We finished our pizza and garlic bread right before the after school rush (thank goodness) but it seems like it’s still really popular with kids. I can’t wait to go back the next time I’m in Milpitas!
After hearing great reviews about the Little Owl, a small restaurant in the West Village that sits below the apartment used in Friends, Chris and I decided to check it out. Does this place look familiar?:
I read that you can have the perfect meal at The Little Owl; the host is attentive and gracious, the chefs pay attention to detail, and the menu options are creative and delicious (what’s not to love?). I also read that getting a table at the restaurant is hard to do – the restaurant only seats 28 people and online reservation systems like opentable.com don’t always have availability. Chris and I decided to try The Little Owl for brunch one Sunday afternoon and were surprised that the restaurant was practically empty – around 12PM – PRIME Sunday brunch time! We were seated right away (there were only 3 or 4 couples in the restaurant) and were able to get a look at the menu right away.
After glancing at the menu, we realized that there weren’t that many options for brunch. Maybe everything on the menu was so great that they only needed a couple things anyway, right? I decided to order the corn pancakes with berries and clear syrup and Chris opted for the hamburger. After the waitress painstakingly asked how Chris wanted the burger to be prepared, she went off to the kitchen and put in our orders. Five minutes later, she came back and declared that she forgot the kitchen had run out of beef. Seriously?! Did the restaurant really run out of one of the FIVE options for brunch? We were taken by surprise but looked at the menu again and decided to go for the eggs Benedict with greens.
My corn pancakes:
The corn pancakes tasted nothing more than corn bread with some syrup. It wasn’t even MOIST cornbread – it was dry and the corn bits in the pancake were too sweet. I read online comments on how great the clear syrup was, but there was a dead fly in my syrup, so…I don’t see what’s so special about clear syrup. The consistency of the pancakes was too grainy because there wasn’t enough milk or egg whites in the pancake mix, leaving much to be desired.
Chris ordered the eggs Benedict with greens:
After one initial bite of the greens, we knew that we shouldn’t have ordered the dish. When greens are cooked, it’s understandable that they should change color….but these greens were brown! We ended up sending the dish back because the greens tasted like they were a week old!
To top off our disastrous meal at The Little Owl, the air conditioners were loud (there were THREE of them) and it was still uncomfortably warm in the restaurant. When leaving the restaurant to grab burgers at the Corner Bistro, we overheard a girl ordering iced tea, only to be turned down because the restaurant ran out of iced tea.
One of the many staples of my diet is pasta (also included: watermelon, mangoes, apples, peanut butter, potatoes, steak, and Pinkberry). I love making pasta at home topped with Whole Foods’ basic marinara, some bell peppers, and a little Italian sausage. When I don’t feel like cooking, I’d like to have a restaurant to fall back on for quality pasta/Italian food that’s not too pricey. That’s where Il Mattone comes in – it’s a not-too-expensive Italian place in Tribeca that offers quality Italian foods (antipasti, pizza, pasta, and other goodies). Chris loves the pasta and the artichokes from Il Mattone, so of course, we had to order both!
We started off with the artichokes:
They’re in a buttery lemon sauce that was so tart and tasty I can definitely see why Chris loves them so much. The tomatoes and artichokes paired well together and the dish was a great way to start the meal.
I ordered the rigatoni, the pasta Chris usually orders, which came with portobello mushrooms, chicken, and smoked mozzarella in a light tomato cream sauce:
The dish was absolutely amazing – the tomato cream sauce was really chunky (which I loved), the rigatoni was cooked perfectly, and the smoked mozzarella added a great overall flavor to the dish. The one thing I didn’t care for was the chicken – it was a tad dry and didn’t add anything to the dish. If I were to order the dish again, I’d ask that they make it vegetarian (add more mushroom instead of the chicken for a meaty flavor). The dish was perfect otherwise!
Chris ordered the seafood ravioli – ravioli with shrimp, crab meat, and lobster in a vodka sauce:
We heard that the seafood ravioli was a great dish that was a special treat, but neither of us liked the ravioli. The crab meat tasted grainy and I don’t think the proportions of the different types of seafood was equal, making the dish too crabby. Also, I don’t think the vodka sauce paired well with the seafood ravioli.
Il Mattone was a great place for pasta and it’s on a quiet street in Tribeca. There’s also outdoor seating, which is great for summer nights. I hear the pizza’s great, too!
Zabar’s is a large grocery store on the Upper West Side that offers a ton of free samples ALL the time. Next door is a small shop serving sandwiches, soups, and frozen yogurts. Being a lover of frozen yogurts, I had to be adventurous and try out their plain yogurt when I trekked over to the Upper West Side though it was offered in a supermarket. My raspberry/plain yogurt mix:
It was actually really delicious! The raspberry wasn’t too sweet and the plain was really yummy. The yogurt reminded me of Bloomingdales’ Forty Carrots, which I love because it’s slightly tangy and smoother than Pinkberry’s. I would go there again if it wasn’t such a pain in the butt to get to the Upper West Side!
