Good Eats

My sister told me that she enjoyed the food places we went to while she was visiting me here in New York last week, which made me quite happy because I was able to share with my own family the good experience my friends have shared with me during my stay here in New York. Perhaps next time I will indulge in the usual tourist attractions like a Broadway show, although the "food tour" should be on everybody's list when they visit the city.

We were mostly limited to the area around West 14th Street where my sister and my nephew stayed. But I'm glad I knew of some good places in the area:

Whole Foods Market at Union Square - well, technically for groceries, which included Puffins Peanut Butter!
A Salt & Battery - for some authentic English fish and chips. I usually order sole or haddock which are tastier than cod.
La Gamin Cafe in Chelsea - a very nice French bistro. We ordered Salade Nicoise, chocolate-banana crepe and their pasta special of the day which was a seafood fettuccine. They had a very funny message in their menu that they were in the process of renewing their liquor license so in the meantime, bring your own wine.
Cafe de Bruxelles - ok, I didn't actually eat in this Belgian restaurant before, but I did attend a meeting once. We ordered some mussels in a basil cream sauce which were absolutely delicious. My sis wanted to bring home the sauce! Haha. We also had a crabcake and some pasta again.
La Focaccia - I was actually hoping for a Hillary Swank sighting here which didn't materialize, but the Italian food was still very good. We had some Bruschetta and Prosciutto with melon for appetizers. I normally order the baby lamb chops for myself, but we ordered the "grill for two" instead since we were eating family style. Of course we couldn't finish it. And for some reason my nephew wanted to be vegan at 12 and got excited over the sight of grilled cauliflower. Haha. I was glad we arrived early because by the time we left it was jam-packed and the servers were already confused.
Caffe Dell'artista - My usual dessert hangout. I introduced my folks to the wonders of banana-banana.

Even though the food was on the expensive side, my sister thought it was worth it since we brought home some of the left-overs and heated them for lunch the next day. Next time, I will bring them to Chinatown and some other Asian restaurants in the city like my newly discovered Cendrillion, which is Filipino-fusion. The taste of good food in your mouth, certainly more pleasurable than being on the 86th floor of New York's tallest building.