So you know, that means it was awesome. One thing I learned about this school is that every other Monday has no classes. This has something to do with the fact that a lot of people work on the weekends and therefore the school gives them a day off once in a while. I think this is great, because we get extended weekends all the time. Today was the first one that my class would encounter, and instead of using it to hang around and do nothing, study more, or go home for a long weekend, I was extremely proactive and signed up on my second day here to go on a food tour of Greenwich Village in New York City. The school organized it with a company that runs these tours for tourists and foodies (food enthusiasts).
It cost thirty-five dollars for a ticket, and only fourteen tickets were available. A couple friends and I were able to get the last three, and once the tour was over we realized how very fortunate we were. The money we spent on the ticket went towards our transportation and food. We were told we'd be fed the entire trip. The trip was supposed to last until about 6:00 PM.
It turns out that a lot of people wrote their names down on the waiting list, hoping that someone would drop out or something, but it turns out that no one did. Not only that, the number of people writing their names down on the waiting list grew so large that the woman in charge of the trip had to pull the list. This was a great sign of faith that the tour would be a successful idea if they wanted to run another one.
On Monday morning at 7:45, the three of us met the rest of the group with tickets at the Rec Center lobby and waited for the woman who was in charge to show up and tell us what the plans were. When she arrived, she told us that we were going to take our awesome little CIA bus to the Poughkeepsie train station. From there, we would take the train to Grand Central Station (about a 90 minute ride). Once we got to the station, we'd hop on the subway and ride it for a couple stops until we reached the station right below the spot in Greenwich Village we would soon tour.
When we made it to the spot below the marquee of a cheese shop where we were told to meet our soon-to-be tour guide, we found her smiling and excited to give us the tour. She explained that her name was Sefra (Zefra, or something else that sounded like it) and that she was thrilled to be able to give a tour of the Village to people who weren't old enough to be her grandparents, because she explained that that's mostly who shows up for the tours. She was a pretty interesting woman, but very friendly and extremely enthusiastic. She told us that she used to work for Bobby Flay and that her husband used to work for Mario Batali; therefore, she is very experienced and knows what she's talking about.
I want to let you know that I won't be just typing everything that happened, but I have an extensive amount of photos. This tour was really fun, I must say, and I learned a hell of a lot. So let's start. Here's a list of the places we went to:
-Joe's Pizza
-Murray's Cheese
-Palma
-Soy & Sake
-Milk and Cookies
-Cherry Lane Theater
-Bleecker Street Pizza
-Rocco's
Let's start from the beginning, shall we?
We started our journey by trying what Sefra described as arguably the best pizza place in New York.
-- Cheese Pizza
She brought us a big ol' pizza pie while we waited outside on the curb. She explained that this pizza is known for using fresher cheese and crushed tomatoes. I don't remember her explanation in its entirety, but the point she was trying to get across was that it's supposed to have significantly less oil and grease runoff than other pizzas. Also, it was supposed to taste fresher. I have to admit, I'd get that pizza sometime again. It did in fact taste very fresh, and there was little grease, not that I care at all.
One thing I forgot to mention is that the woman who organized the trip had her fiancé join us, so our group contained 16 people, plus the guide.
After we tasted the pizza, we moved onto what would be my absolute favorite stop on the tour. This cheese shop, called Murray's Cheese, is a very old establishment and they specialize in certain things. They have a cave in the basement and have their own affineurs (cheese agers), as well as having an enormous selection of freshly imported cheeses, meats, and other delicacies.
That's a pretty good array of photos to show you what the store looked like. There was a lot more to it too, including shelves of oils, candied fruits and nuts, olives, and more. We went to the room up on the top level where we all sat around a long table to do a tasting. This was a pretty great tasting, and here's what we ate:
Clockwise from top
-- Drunken Goat Cheese (soft)
-- Cerignola Olive
-- Sopressata
-- Cow's Milk Cheese (hard)
-- Sheep's Milk Cheese (hard)
-- Cheese Rind Puffs
I'm sorry, but I can't remember the names of the cow's and sheep's milk cheeses. But it doesn't matter because I didn't care for them too much. They were quite tasty, and I knew they be fantastic in numerous preparations, but I don't like eating hard cheeses in that form. The goat cheese was phenomenal, and I could eat that stuff all day. That's probably why I bought some. It actually had an edible purple rind which was a fun addition. The olive was nothing new to me, and I'm a huge olive fan. My favorite happen to be cerignolas, although I prefer black ones, and I ate more than my share from the platter. The sopressata was something I've also tried before, except this one I could tell was a bit more authentic. The cheese rind puffs were really cool. They were, well, cheese rinds that were fried.
Murray's Cheese shop was just an incredible treasure-filled amusement park for someone like me, and I spent a lot of time in that store. But I'll get back to that later.
The next stop on our tour was a restaurant called Palma. It's an extremely nice Southern Italian restaurant with an impressive menu. We went into a special part of the restaurant in the back where they hold private dinners in a room that resembles a family's dining room. It's rustic and traditional, and the head pastry chef brought us all little dishes of glory.
It doesn't look so glorious, I know, but I'd walk to Cornelia Street (where this is located) just to eat another ramekin full of this stuff. It's called Cauliflower di Palma. It's made with cauliflower, black currants, caramelized shallots, pine nuts, and olive oil. It's a very simple list of ingredients, but if you ate this, you'd wish you'd thought of this first. It's got every flavor imaginable and more. The cauliflower gives the base and the body of eating a fresh vegetable. The pine nuts give a fresh, nutty flavor. The caramelized shallots give a soft texture and a sweet, onion-y kick of flavor. The olive oil makes everything moist and tasty, and the currants are the best part. They give a fresh, fruity, and incredibly sweet flavor that completes the dish.
After we visited Palma, we journeyed to an intriguing restaurant. This place, Soy & Sake, is a Japanese vegetarian restaurant.
We had the following:
-- Vegetable Gyoza
-- Vegetable Fried Rice
-- Plant Protein
-- Seaweed Salad
-- Cucumbers
It was exceptional vegetarian Japanese food. That sentence makes me laugh. The stuff on the top of the vegetable fried rice is plant protein. It looks like pork, smells like pork, and tastes like pork. It was a crazy experience, and I'm glad I got to try it. Everything else tasted really good, and I'd like to try it again sometime. The second picture is the bathroom's sink. I thought it was worth taking a picture.
After that, we went to a wonderful bakery called Milk and Cookies. This place is known for their cookies (what a surprise). They make custom ice cream sandwiches and custom cookies.
-- Chocolate Chip Cookies
These cookies kicked ass. Their standard chocolate chip cookies are made with the normal ingredients, plus a whole lot of oats. It tasted like a chocolate oatmeal cookie, and I loved it. It had the right amount of chocolate, oats, and crisp. I need to get more some time.
After the cookies, we visited a historical theater called the Cherry Lane Theater. There was absolutely no culinary significance of this place, but I supposed she showed it to us because it was on route.
After the theater, we went to another pizza place called Bleecker Street Pizza. She said that it was the Food Network's rated best pizza place in New York City. Sefra wanted us to decide for ourselves which place we liked best. The first kind was thin crust and round, but this was thick crust and square.
I preferred the first kind, because thin crust tends to have a fairer ratio of crust to cheese/sauce. This kind's cheese came off all in one bite, and it was too hot to hold. It still tasted really good though.
After we had that pizza, we went to the final stop on our tour. We went to a bakery across from Murray's Cheese called Rocco's. They claimed to have the best cannolis.
-- Cannoli
Doesn't this just look masterful? It was a pretty amazing cannoli too. I'm pretty sure it was the best I've eaten, and cannolis are one of my all-time favorites.
Once the tour ended, we went back to the front of Murray's where we parted ways, and we were allowed to wonder around and shop for the next couple of hours before we had to meet to go back home. I went straight into Murray's and besides the half hour where I walked around aimlessly with my friends, all I did was wait until 5:30. I was waiting for it to be a half hour before we had to leave so that I could get the food I wanted to buy from Murray's without it sitting around in my backpack for too long. I ended up getting stuff from Murray's and Rocco's. Here's the list:
-- Cannoli with Pistachios
-- Baba Rum with Cannoli Cream
-- Baba Rum with Custard Cream
-- Cured Duck Salami
-- Drunken Goat Cheese
-- Mint Lemonade
-- Candied Walnuts
-- Gallego Sardines
This was a party on my desk. The baba rums were too heavily drenched with rum for me, but still had a nice flavor. I just ate the cream. The mint lemonade was terrific, and I wish I bought a lot more of them. It tastes like a homemade fresh lemonade mixed with a whole bunch of chopped mint leaves. The mint was powerful in aroma and flavor, but it worked incredibly well. The walnuts weren't all that great, but they were cheap. They tasted like normal toasted walnuts, but they had a bit of a bitter, burnt flavor. The Cannoli was as good as I'd hoped, and the pistachios were a fascinating compliment to the flavor of cannoli cream. The duck salami was intensely good, and it competes as some of the best hard meat-like food I've ever eaten, and the cheese was as good as it was at the tasting. Last but not least, those sardines were awe-inspiring. I'd heard that sardines from the Mediterranean area were nothing like sardines you'd get in America, and that was true. These sardines smelled strongly of tuna, and they tasted like smooth, tuna-flavored, oily fish paste. It was just such a fresh flavor that I'd never experienced before, and I ate all of the contents of the can in one sitting with some crackers.
It was an incredible journey through a certain section of the city, and I'm very glad I was able to get one of those tickets. I would absolutely go on the same trip again if the school sets it up again.
Until the next post,
Eat well, then eat more
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