friedman's lunch

chelsea, nyc

website

it's been so long since i took this picture of pancakes (auto-dated october 31) that it first took me about 10 minutes of searching through my old emails to determine what city i was in that day and then where i might have eaten pancakes. i need to start carrying around a notebook. or i need to avoid having a backlog of photos waiting to be posted. anyway, now i remember the restaurant - friedman's lunch in chelsea market.

however, i can't remember why derek and i dared to wander through chelsea market on halloween. the market was incredibly crowded -- full of trick-or-treaters and people on stilts. it probably had something to do with getting chocolate-covered cheerios from jacques torres for my niece (who refused to eat regular cheerios after eating a few of the chocolate ones -- oops). derek, amazingly enough, remembers that he ordered the fish basket and that it was delicious. i clearly had pancakes and if i remember correctly, i really enjoyed them. i vaguely remember that it seemed like a great place to recommend to my friends. so - there you go.

red farm @ foodparc

6th ave (29/30)

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michelle, derek, and i had lunch at the madison square market (review to follow), which is an outdoor food court. it was a gorgeous day, so we decided to walk through chelsea and check out the limelight marketplace. once done with the marketplace, we tried to figure out what to do next. why not keep eating? michelle and i had heard about the new foodparc food court in the eventi hotel in north chelsea. nyc has this new obsession with food courts that i find very promising.

upon entering the food court, you're directed to computer kiosks where you can order from any of the restaurants using a touchscreen menu. since we had already eaten lunch, we decided just to get the egg rolls from red farm, made with katz's pastrami. katz's is possibly my favorite deli in the city, with amazing pastrami. someone at red farm decided to add chop up some pastrami, add some cabbage, roll it up and deep fry it. a great idea, but executed poorly. while the roll had a nice crunch, you could barely taste the pastrami. it was overwhelmed with pepper and cabbage. really unfortunate.

the lobster place

chelsea market
(15th st/ 9th ave)

website

neal has been raving about this lobster sandwich for a while now. our original plan, however, was to eat at some organic health food restaurant with soy cheese and other healthy things. but first, we decided to walk through chelsea market to get some specialty food items (i picked up some mushroom-shaped pasta and chestnut jam from the italian grocery). but then we passed by the lobster place and our dinner plans quickly shifted from soy to lobstah.

the lobster place is actually a fish market. there's various puddles on the ground and everything is made of stainless steel. head to the back corner of the store, however, and you'll find a window - ring the small bell and ask for a lobster roll. it comes packed in a box with pretty good coleslaw and crunchy potato chips. it's an excellent lobster roll - big chunks of lobster, coated in a lemony mayonnaise and topped with chives. the bread is simply toasted, missing the coat of butter that mary's fish camp slathers onto their buns. i like the lobster place version - it's simpler and a little bit lighter - but both are tasty options.

people's pops

new york, ny

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i was taking christine and val on a walking tour of manhattan and we passed by chelsea market on our way to the high line. of course we had to stop in and check it out. after walking by several different cupcake shops, i remembered reading on a food blog somewhere something about a fancy popsicle shop in the market. in new york city, everything is fancified - even the popsicles.

we made our way over to people's pops, which is a small booth in the "arcade" of the market (right behind the jacques-torres booth). the chalkboard lists the day's flavors - all made with fresh and local ingredients, of course. christine and i each had a blueberries and cream pop (pictured) and val had the lemon ice. my blueberry pop was less a popsicle than it was frozen blueberries on a stick and i didn't taste any cream at all. it was $3.50 a pop (i know) but i feel like i got a full serving of fruit out of it. a nice treat for a hot summer day.

boqueria

new york, ny

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lovely tapas place recommended by opal. it's a bit crowded and loud on a thursday evening, but it definitely quieted down by 10 pm. again, i love small plates and my favorites here were the meat & cheese platter that we started with and the churros dipped in chocolate that we ended with. sorry for the fuzzy photo - my berry was running out of juice...

in addition, the service was awesome. our waitress regaled us with unique food and wine recommendations and funny stories about devious grapes. boqueria is spanish tapas, as opposed to the italian small plates of alta. but again, two bottles of wine, a dozen plates of good food, and excellent company make for a great night out.

basta pasta

new york, ny

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the highlight here is the "spaghetti con prosciutto e parmigiano." they have a giant hollowed-out half-block of cheese that they wheel to your table on a cart. inside the cheese is your spaghetti. on a plate are paper-thin slices of prosciutto and shredded basil. the waiter than swirls your pasta around inside the cheese, collecting small gooey gobs of cheese in the process. then out onto a plate, with one more scoop from the cheese wheel collecting the cheesy liquid and gooey gobs. it's then topped with the prosciutto and basil and served to you. despite all the cheese, it's actually a rather subtly flavored dish - more infused with cheese flavor than covered in actual cheese.

derek managed to catch a nice action shot of the noodle-swirling. his homemade fettucine with bolognese sauce was just as tasty. if it wasn't so darn hard to get a reservation, derek and i would eat here all the time. this is definitely a call-at-least-the-day-before-if-not-a-week-in-advance kind of place. an interesting tidbit - it's an italian restaurant run by japanese people so there's some interesting japanese-italian fusion pastas on the menu which i have not yet tried...