Food Coma

Sorry this blog is a day late, yesterday was a busy and tiring one.

Since I last wrote to you, we've left New York City (*sobs*) and have arrived for a brief stay in Chicago.

So yesterday was our last full day in the Big Apple, and another chance to savour the delicious food choices of the city. New York embraces and revels in its multiculturalism (at least to my eye) which is very reflective in its food offerings. As part of our interest in food (and in maintaining my svelte figure) we had booked a Food Cart tour of the Financial District, with Turnstile Tours. It was by far away one of the things I was most looking forward to on our holiday and I was not disappointed at all.

The tour was to start just off Wall Street, so we got there about 90 minutes early, so we could wander around the area. Wandering around the lower part of Manhattan had been one of our favourite things we'd done on our first trip together to New York City. We ended up at the South Street Seaport, where we had never been before, and stared across at Brooklyn.

The food truck tour started at 12, and was possibly the best lunch ever. We stopped at 6 food trucks, and got samples (but generously sized samples).

The foodcarts were
- Veronica's Kitchen - jerk chicken, so well cooked the chicken slid off the bone. Aaron commented that it was probably the best savoury thing he'd eaten on the trip

- Adel's #1 Halal - best falafel I have ever had. It was so packed with herbs and cooked to crispy on the outside, and soft in the middle.

- Jianetto's Pizza - grandma style pizza. It was similar to the Sicilian at Spumoni Gardens on Tuesday,  but with a thinner crust.

- Souvlaki GR - chicken (or pork) souvlaki with the best Pita bread ever.

- Korilla BBQ - Mexican/Korean fusion. Korean beef and kimchi in Mexican tacos and burritos. Because I have some weird allergy towards corn tortillas and thus can't eat tacos, I was given a burrito here.

- Waffles and Dinges - OH MY GOD. Belgian Waffles smothered in cream and a sauce that was as if Anzac Biscuits had been melted. Similar colour and texture as Nutella, but actually tasty, unlike Nutella. (Controversial!). Waffles and Dinges was featured on Man vs Food.

The food was amazing. Genuinely amazing. The tour itself was also very informative. Example - there is currently a 20 year waiting list to get a food truck permit, and the list is so popular you have to win a raffle to even get on that! So anyone new has to find a permit owner willing to lease their permit out. This is a cost of around $20,000!

After the tour ended, we decided the day was beautiful and we should walk the 9km back to our hotel. Obviously we were completely food drunk to think that was a good idea. We did it, walking down Broadway, until we got to Madison Square Park where we swapped to 5th Avenue to avoid some of the crazy foot traffic that exists around Macy's. It took us about 2.5 hours with a few short breaks.

We didn't have a lot of time after we arrived back to the hotel before we had to go out for dinner on the way to see the new musical Bullets Over Broadway, based on the Woody Allen movie with Zach Braff in the John Cusack role.

It was okay. The songs were not at all memorable and the very end was so weird/disjointed that it's affected my memories of the show but parts of it were good. Very few of them featured Zach Braff though, unfortunately. He sang better than I expected but he was overacting you couldn't really see his character instead of a Woody Allen impersonator.

This morning we left NYC (I cried again) to travel to Chicago. Where the weather was perfect in NYC, it was in the 30s and very humid here. Apparently it's going to rain tomorrow which'll hopefully break the humidity.

We got to our hotel, checked in and discovered we had been upgraded to a one bedroom suite. Awesome - the lounge suite is so comfy, I'm wondering if the hotel would notice if I took it with me.

For dinner we joined friends in Chicago at RPM, which is a restaurant founded by Bill and Giuliana Rancic. The food was really tasty and served Italian tapas style - even the pasta was shared which with the conversation made the night a lot of fun. I have now also developed an obsession with Zucchini frites. We ate so much food, for a reasonably cheap price (not super cheap but when you realised how much we ate for the price it was definitely reasonable). So I'm in my second food coma in as many days.

No real plans until dinner and a movie with the same friends tomorrow, so we'll see how things play out. :)