2 for 1

So its been a while since I last posted but the past 48hr were filled with great food I must share! These food adventures began Wednesday night at Enoteca Otto Pizzeria. As a treat for my friend K's birthday 4 of us ventured to this pizzeria which is one of the many restaurants in the Mario Batali franchise here in NY. (including one of my favs Eataly!) What I enjoy about his restaurants is their decor. As my friend J pointed out its just like sitting at home at one of your kitchen tables. It seems to be a common theme to the two restaurants I've been to of his of these big and homey wooden tables. The restaurant itself is quite large and even on a Wednesday night full but set up so you're not crammed right next to another table. Being a celebration we began the evening with some wine. Upon opening the menu however you find an extensive wine list of well over I would say 200 bottles to choose from, and these are not the usual 10$ bottles I look at. We opted to ask the waiter how to navigate through this list to suggest a red wine to use narrowing down the list to maybe 100 now..I then threw out the idea of a Chianti knowing I've had it before with Italian and it seemed to pair well. (again, I'm definitely not a wine expert!) He suggested their most popular bottle, a Castello Di Meleto 2007 which at a fair price tasted great to all of us. For a main course we decided to split 4 pizzas. We chose 2 Margherita D.O.P's, an asparagus and goat cheese pizza and then quatro stagioni. All of the pizzas were made NYC style with a super thin crunchy crust. The Margherita D.O.P was topped with tomato, basil and bufula mozzarella. From now on I am switching my mozzarella to bufula mozzarella for these kinds of pizza. It added a nice almost smokey flavor to the pizza but the tomato sauce used was quite sweet so its created a good balance of flavors. My favorite was the asparagus and goat cheese pizza. Since goat cheese is slowly becoming one of my favorite cheeses this pizza was perfect for me. The pizza was just a layer of goat cheese with pieces of asparagus thrown on. Very simply but very delicious! The last pizza was the quatro stagioni which was tomato sauce, regular mozzarella and then 4 sections each with a different topping including mushrooms, peppers, asparagus and cotto (similar prosciuttio). Not my favorite of the pizzas but it had a surprising spicy kick due to the peppers which was nice for those of us that like a little spice. It was also good for sharing so everyone could try a different topping. Me and K also split an Otto chopped salad to get some of our greens for the day which I would say to skip next time. For 10$ they simply chopped up some radishes and lettuce, threw in garbonzos and salami and topped it with a creamy italian. Im not sure what lettuce they used though or if it was the radishes but it had a very bitter taste to it that couldn't be hidden by the dressing that wasn't very enjoyable. Finally comes the best part of the meal, dessert. I went for the coconut merenga which was COCONUT FANTASIA GELATO, WARM TOASTED MERINGUE, CACAO NIB, CANDIED KUMQUATS (yes i copied that from online). It was soooo good. The meringue with the coconut gelato was a great mixture of textures and flavors. Together it all tasted almost like a samoa girl scout cookie in gelato form! On the bottom you also have the nice suprise of the candied kumquats which were a nice crunch to add.  Overall it was a great meal spent with great people. 

My next venture was a midday macaron break to Laduree on the UES. After sitting at my computer working on a presentation all day it was perfect timing when my friend A texted asking if I wanted to sneak out for a macaron! Originating in Paris Laduree is known for their "le macaron". While there are many places to find macarons here in the city, I dont know many that fly their macarons in every morning from Paris! When you want to be authentic there is so competition with Laduree. I chose a pack of 8 for 21$ (gotta pay for them to fly first class I guess). They offer about 20 different flavors to please anyone ranging from more rich and chocolaty to sweet and fruity. For my 8 I chose the pistachio, blackberry and violet, chocolate, lemon, coconut, salted carmel, almond and vanilla. Feeling guilty for skipping out on lab I brought back 4 for my fellow lab mates to enjoy but I had a chance to try the blackberry, lemon, vanilla, and salted carmel. By far my favorite was the salted carmel. The cakes are all as light and fluffy as they look so to me the filling is what made the macaron and you can't beat salted carmel. My second choice would then have to be the lemon. It tasted just like eating a lemon square but not as heavy. Then I tried vanilla. What can I say about vanilla...it tasted like vanilla, not impressed but not sad I ate it. My least favorite was the Blackberry and violet which was the one I was most curious about. Thier filling however was just too sweet for me. It tasted a lot like eating a very very sweet jam in the middle maybe due to the violet it had a perfume taste to it as well, probably not one of my choices next time but I am usually not a super sweet kind of person, give me chocolate or caramel any day. They were definitely worth the midday excursion however, so if you find yourself around Madison and 71st check out Laduree!