Drinking it in.

The last couple of weekends, I've taken advantage of the near-perfect early autumn weather to enjoy a few laps around the Central Park Reservoir followed by a stroll down to Joe for a post-workout caffeine hit.

These outings have only added to the love I've been feeling for the Upper East as of late.

We're something of the red-headed stepchild up here, what with our reputation for stuffiness and terrible restaurants, but things have been improving like mad. Plus, we have most of the good museums.

 It's okay; your Metrocard will work up here, I promise. Come visit!

Something neue.

I love it when Louisa comes to town. Not only because I get to spend tons of quality time with my best friend (living thousands of miles apart can be rough), but also because having her here reminds me to take full advantage of the wonders of the city.

When she was in town in September, we spent a day on the Upper East Side. We managed to do some shopping (thank you, Joe Fresh and J. Crew Collection), but before that could happen, we needed sustenance. Enter Café Sabarsky, one of the very best things within walking distance of my apartment.

Housed in the Neue Galerie - itself dedicated to German and Austrian art - Café Sabarsky is a recreation of the cafes of Austria, right down to the Thonet chairs, Hoffmann fixtures and sausage-rich menu. On this visit, we ordered a green salad to share, plus two different plates of sausage (my roasted bratwurst came with riesling sauerkraut and dijon potatoes; Louisa's was flavored with cheddar).

The food (and the coffee and hot chocolate we enjoyed afterward) was, as always, delicious. But, for me, Café Sabarsky is always about the experience as a whole. That gorgeous room, that wonderful atmosphere...that sparkly chandelier. I just love it there. I'd say it's something you could only find in New York, but that's obviously not true. But I'm sure glad it's here.

Recently.

I've been trying to enjoy the last of summer's bounty these days. The evenings are falling earlier and earlier, but I managed to sneak in a meandering twilight stroll around my neighborhood last week. The Guggenheim looked gorgeous all lit up by the setting sun to the west.

 

The tomatoes have been ridiculously good. I made a little sauce with the San Marzanos and ate the heirloom ones with avocado and red onion.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I stopped into Joe for a pick-me-up cappuccino and a delicious hour of reading. I've been plowing through books on my Kindle this summer; I just finished The Dog Stars and started a Louise Penny mystery.

I spied this cookbook when I popped into Barnes & Noble to pick up a gift for a friend. I'd never heard of Leon (a restaurant in London), but I think I might need this book sooner rather than later. Anything with a cover like this one has to be full of deliciousness. 

A little bit of France on Third Avenue.

 

The food blogosphere has been abuzz of late about the opening of a New York outpost of Maison Kayser on the Upper East Side. Founded by French baker and pastry chef Eric Kayser, the bakery and patisserie has shops all over the world, and is now taking the Big Apple by storm. Obviously, I had to stop by as soon as possible to see what all the fuss was about.

The goods (I sampled a few different kinds of brioche, a bit of raisin bread, and a bite of baguette) were uniformly delicious. The plié au chocolat I ended up spiriting away to Central Park was delightful - its custardy innards cut through with dark chocolate, its pastry hardy but flaky.

That said.

I tried to grab lunch in the café, and it was a nightmare. Since it was their first weekend open, and since the Upper East Side tends to descend upon any decent restaurant like a horde of hungry teenagers, I knew it would be crazy. I was ready for crazy.

But I wasn't ready to be ignored while the host chatted with the people on either side of me, or to be brushed off when I asked if I could put my name on the list to be seated. (Given the whole being ignored thing, I wasn't going to trust someone about my place in line unless it was written down.) While the storefront crew were incredibly helpful and pleasant (especially given that I saw several customers cut the line and generally act like jerks), I am still pretty peeved about my experience with the cafe staff.

I'll likely give them one more go, on a weekday this time, but that's about it. Hopefully it will be a different host, and the Real Houswives rejects around me won't be as exciting for him.

What I spied a-marketing.

Spotted at the St. Stephen's Greenmarket on East 82nd Street last Saturday. Amazing colors, right?

In the neighborhood.

I did not move to the Upper East Side because it was cool. I did it because it was cheap, convenient, and, well, that's it. I've never regretted it, but I do wish I lived in a neighborhood where grabbing a tasty bite to eat in a cool atmosphere with good drinks was easier to do. For years, that was a pretty tall order. It's still not the easiest thing, but it is getting better. And the folks behind ABV are a big part of that.

I've been a few times, but only once when it was light enough out to get some decent snaps for you guys to enjoy. I paid a Friday evening visit with my friend Cristin, and we both ordered a flight of rosé. (The French one on the far right was definitely the best.) Then, we enjoyed a couple of snacks - first up, the fish tacos with kimchee. I really liked these, except for one thing: the guacamole was really strongly flavored with cilantro. For some of you, that would seal the deal. For me, it meant an early stop to the proceedings. I hate it when menus don't specify that things have cilantro. Grrrr.

Next up, the fried pickles. These are fancy fried pickles, with a light, tempura-ish batter coating seriously juicy half-sours in large chunks, all served with a miso mayonnaise. The enormous serving is enormously cheap (five bucks), and well worth your time. They go swimmingly with wine, too.

ABV is a wine bar, and, accordingly, they have a great selection of sweet and fortified wines to keep the drinking going once the savories have been dispensed with. My selection this time? The 10-year-old Nierporent tawny. Delicious on its own; even better with sticky toffee pudding. (Just saying.)

One quick note: my very favorite thing that ABV serves is their meatloaf sandwich, which comes with fries and is served on a toasted bagel and topped with a fried egg. It is, in a word, delightful. So don't not order it just because I've only eaten it when it's been dark out, is what I'm saying.

ABV
1504 Lexington Avenue
Between 97th and 98th Streets
212.722.8959

In the neighborhood.

When I moved to the Upper East Side, it wasn't because the neighborhood was a happening hot spot. I needed a place in a hurry, and a friend's cousin was subletting her super-cheap studio. It seemed like kismet, and I moved in a week after I first visited the place. Seven years and two apartments later, I'm still here - mostly because it's a ridiculously easy commute (to work, to the East Village, you name it) and pretty cheap, in Manhattan terms. But, of late, it's turning into a halfway exciting place for food and drink, too.

Spigolo has been a big part of the neighborhood's self-improvement plan. It opened a few years back, and has been serving delicious Italian food to standing room only crowds ever since. Every time I visit, I realize I don't go often enough.

On my most recent trip, I started with a house cocktail, the Bulleit Burlesque. A mixture of rye, cherry and ginger (I honestly can't remember the exact ingredients), it was a spicy take on a Manhattan - so of course I loved it.

For my starter, I ordered Spigolo's take on the Caesar, a half head of romaine topped with anchovy dressing, Parmesan and piping hot, lightly fried rock shrimp. I loved the flavors in this, but it was a bit overdressed. I ended up pushing about half the sauce to the side - but nothing could ruin the contrast of the plump, toasty shrimp with the crisp, cold lettuce.

On my insistence, Kyle and I split an order of the Romano potatoes. From what I can tell, these bad boys are boiled, then smashed, coated with a bit of cheese and salt, and crisped on the grill. They are, in a word, ridiculous.

I was lucky enough to visit early in the evening, before the restaurant sold out of their house-made chicken and broccoli rabe sausage, which was split, grilled and served on top of a cold farro salad. The sausage - unlike so much chicken sausage - was moist, flavorful and a perfect texture. And the salad was a little creamy and peppered with roasted tomatoes and cold cucumber. So, as you can imagine: I loved it.

Dessert at Spigolo is particularly good - the co-owner is also the pastry chef, and she does a fantastic job. My favorite of the two we sampled last week was the sticky toffee bread pudding. I'd even go so far as to say that the sticky toffee sauce was as good as my own, and I loved the whipped cream/mascarpone combination that topped things off. (So much so that I might copy it.)

Over the next few weeks, I'll be offering up a few more reasons why the Upper East Side isn't seeming like such a bad place to be these days. Stay tuned! In the meantime, get your butts to Spigolo before they take that bread pudding off the menu.

Spigolo
1561 Second Avenue
Between 81st and 82nd Streets
212.744.1100

Finally!

It's snowing here in Manhattan today, and boy is it pretty.

Coffee & donuts.

I am normally staunchly opposed to stuff in my ice cream. Ben & Jerry's has never been my favorite, in large part because they tend to add a whole slew of stuff to their flavors. For most, this is a prime attraction. All I see, though, are pint-sized minefields of over-frozen pretzels and chunks of chocolate, all chilled for far too long and at far too high a temperature to actually taste like anything. Bleh.

But. But, but, but. At Shake Shack, the special flavors that have, well, stuff in them are different. For starters, the custard is soft-serve, and so the added bits and pieces are in no danger of freezing to the point of tooth-cracking stiffness. And since everything is made fresh, the add-ins have just enough time to integrate, but not enough time to assimilate. In short, you can chew on and taste everything, as opposed to eating around chunks of chocolate hard enough to shatter your enamel.

I like.

And I especially like this month's special flavor for Saturdays: Coffee & Donuts. The coffee custard is rich, creamy and just a little bit salty, in the way that all of the most delicious sweet things are. The donuts are a light cake, and have a slightly maple flavor to them. They're soaked in the custard, but are a bit spongy instead of just soggy - kind of like (you guessed it) a donut that you've dunked in really good coffee.

Go forth and enjoy, free from the fear of the deeply frozen pretzel.

Fingers crossed.

I have to make a few more visits to cement things, but I think I've found a new local: Flex Mussels on E. 82nd Street. The mussels and oysters were delicious, as was the rosé. And, most importantly, they have a bustling bar up front. Stay tuned.

This scone.

This, my friends, is a strawberry-rhubarb scone from the lovely and amazing Two Little Red Hens bakery.

While my neighborhood (Yorkville, part of Manhattan's Upper East Side) is still woefully lacking a great coffee place (Joe, won't you please open over here?), it does have some seriously good baked goods. For bread, you can hit Orwasher's. And for the sweet stuff, you can go fancy and high-falutin' at Lady M, or down-home and amazing with the Hens.

This scone is a perfect example of how they take rustic to the next level. Yes, it's a slightly misshapen, large, American-style scone. But it's made with the best ingredients, it's seasonal, and it's incredibly tender and delicious. Its top is lightly crusted with crunchy sugar, it's stuffed with rhubarb and berries, and its innards are all creamy and lush. It is marvelous.

Next time, we'll talk about the buttery glaze on their cinnamon rolls. Drool.

Better together.

Salty and sweet, that is. There's little I like more than a dish that combines salt with sugar, and Shack Shack's salted peanut butter hot chocolate is no exception. It's deeply chocolatey, and instead of just adding extra richness, the peanut butter actually cuts through the sweetness with its salty edge.

There's not much more to say, other than that the beverage, which comes in one perfect size, is available at all Shake Shack locations around the city. You're bound to be near one sooner rather than later, right?

Right.

Snow day, part two.

As you all know, we had a pretty incredible snowstorm here in New York last week. It snowed overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, but Thursday afternoon was bright and sunny and clear as a bell - the perfect weather for a walk through Central Park.

The streets were a bit slushy, but the park was pristine, full of sledders and cross-country skiers and loads of folks just out for a stroll, like me.

Alexander Hamilton says hello.

One of my favorite things about where I live is that I'm a five-block walk from this, Cleopatra's Needle. The obelisk actually dates to about 1,000 years before the time of Cleopatra herself and was erected here in New York in 1880.

There's been some debate recently about how well the obelisk is holding up exposed to the weather, but one thing's for sure: there's something majestic and fascinating about seeing it juxtaposed against the snow.

On my way out the park, I saw some kids leaving (temporary) hieroglyphics of their own.

I also saw one of the coolest snow forts of all time.

The faces on the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art agree: snow is cold, but pretty.

Am I in Central Park, or northern New England?

Snow day!

Hello, my lovelies! As you've likely heard by now, New York was walloped yesterday and into this morning with a huge snowstorm. First came the relatively peaceful four inches yesterday morning and afternoon. Then came the thundersnow and the hail and the sleet. Then came the blizzard-like conditions, dumping up to four inches per hour overnight.

All told, we got about 19 inches here on the Upper East Side. And since I, personally, love snow, I am so happy! It's actually pretty warm out today, so I think I might take a little walk in the park this afternoon. In the meantime, enjoy a few snaps from my walk to grab coffee this morning!

Just around the corner. (Sort of.)

On Saturday afternoon, my mom and I paid a visit to the Cooper-Hewitt, where we perused the latest exhibit in the National Design Triennial series (Why Design Now?) and lusted over the Lobmeyr glassware exhibit. I'm still dreaming of the Josephine decanter, which is, temptingly, available for sale in the gift shop. (As a member, I get 10% off, but even that can't justify such an extravagant purchase at the moment. Sigh.)

In any case, a glorious afternoon filled with beautiful design was capped off by a seriously tasty meal at a restaurant that has become something of an Upper East Side institution: Sfoglia. Incredibly, even though it opened in 2006 (spurred by the wild success of their restaurant of the same name on Nantucket), and has been wildly popular ever since, this was my first visit - but definitely not my last.

I started my meal with one of the contorni, a beet and cucumber salad dressed with yogurt and poppy seeds. Mom and I loved this one. The beets were incredibly flavorful, to the point where I'm convinced that they were roasted, then marinated, and finally added to the salad. The yogurt dressing (which I think had a touch of sherry vinegar in it) bound the late-season cucumber to the beets, and the greens added a peppery bite to the proceedings. Despite the messiness of our post-salad smiles (damn poppy seeds), we loved it.

Sfoglia (which means sheet of pasta dough in Italian) offers their pasta dishes in either primi or secondi portion sizes; Mom and I both went for secondi-sized versions and skipped a meat main. My pasta was a penne tossed with braised lamb, plums and eggplant, all topped with whipped ricotta salata. It reminded me a bit of the eggplant and mascarpone pasta I made during Meatless Week, and I especially liked the play of the sweet, meaty plums against the earthy, melty lamb and eggplant. I'm a fan of sweet fruits in savory dishes, and this was no exception. The ricotta added a level of gentle funk to the proceedings.

Dessert was a dish of sorbet made with the Concord grapes I'd forced my mother to sniff down at the Greenmarket that morning. Creamy and lustily fragrant, it didn't go so well with the chocolate chip cookie, but the cookie was pretty good in its own right. And I'm never one to turn down a decent chocolate chip cookie, you know?

No meal so decadent would be complete without a cup of espresso, especially when the people eating are me and Mom - two well-documented coffee fiends. Sfoglia's espresso is up to snuff, and certainly did the trick. I walked the eight blocks home slowly, but contentedly.

Sfoglia
135 East 92nd Street (at Lexington)
212.831.1402

Nothing simpler.

While kirby cucumbers abound - and are wonderful - at New York's Greenmarkets in the summer, lemon cucumbers are less common. Imagine my delight, then, to encounter the round little fellers at Cherry Lane's St. Stephen's Greenmarket stand on Saturday morning. There they were, nestled in among the kirbies, looking for all the world like miniature honeydew melons.

Lemon cucumbers are round and pale yellow, which, I suppose, is where they get their name. Their flavor is a bit subtler than other varieties of cucumber, and their flesh is silkier, too. All in all, they're flat-out delicious. I enjoyed the first of mine very simply, just sliced and topped with a light sprinkle of sea salt. I have no solid plans for the remainder of my haul, though I'm thinking a cucumber sandwich (warm, toasted bread, a touch of mayonnaise, salt and pepper - and, of course, cucumber) might be in order.

What would you do with such bounty?

Meatless Week: Giving in.

On Thursday night, I became the embodiment of every parent's worst fear about their child's vegetarianism: I had ice cream and french fries for dinner.

After four days of cooking and eating meticulously sourced, impeccably fresh vegetable-based meals, I couldn't take it any more. I needed relief from the virtue and toil of Meatless Week. And so, when I was walking past Shake Shack and saw that there was a lull (for once, the line was not out the door), I pounced.

Ten minutes later, in possession of a small cup of vanilla custard (with peanut butter sauce) and an order of fries (mayo on the side), I sat myself down in the sunshine to be very, very naughty. Not gonna lie: it was seriously good. I hardly even missed the burger.