Posts Tagged: NYC

Around NY / Bakery — 1 Comment
4
Dec 09

Butter Lane Cupcakes

First off: THANK YOU GROUPON! I write about food on this site, but you can see an article that I wrote for another blog on this fabulous group discount service that gave me my dozen cupcakes for half the price.

Second: HELLOOOOOOO BUTTERLANE!

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Ahhh, a group of folks after my own heart! Ever since I was two and my Dad gave me a small stuffed cow that was featured in all of my childhood photos, I have LOVED cows. I have a sweet spot in my heart for the resident cow of my childhood vacation spot, Block Island, and hopefully sometime soon will have his portrait purchased 8 or so years ago framed and hung on my wall. So you can imagine my little heart jumping for joy at the site of this beautiful bovine hanging on the wall of my sweet-tooth driven destination. Everyone working at Butter Lane is unbelievably friendly, talkative, and so helpful.

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Butter Lane is like most cupcakeries in that they have two or three cake bases (vanilla, chocolate, and I believe their only other one is banana), and then the frosting combinations are where the creativity lies.

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You know something has to be good when a patron already in the store tells you to trust the employees to picking the flavors for you.

Which brings me to:

butter lane inside

The Cupcakes!

Ahh, such high expectations. And for the most part, Butter Lane came through. To start off with, the brief not-so-goods: the vanilla and chocolate cakes that I had were just a bit dry. They crumbled too easily, and didn’t dissolve on my tongue the way I expect cake to. I also like my chocolate cake to be a bit bolder, with a chocolate flavor that you would be happy to have in your corner in a fight between the frosting. A real hold-it’s-own kind of chocolate cake. Butter Lane’s chocolate was just a tad shy of the bar.

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Now that we’ve got that squared away, on to the good stuff!

Ohhhh that frosting! The buttercreams are absolutely DELISH. They make all kinds: vanilla, chocolate, maple, cinnamon, raspberry, strawberry, espresso. And the banana cake was ON POINT! Moist, delicious, and not too overwhelming on the banana. It’s no surprise that my favorite cupcake flavor came with a banana base. The Banana with Cinnamon Buttercream is the kind of thing that I would go back and order a whole dozen of at full price.

Overall, I give Butter Lane a thumbs and a half up. I’m going to go back to see if cake is a bit moister next time, but I’m going to protect against dry mouth with at least a half dozen with the banana base. Of course, now that I’ve said that, the next time I go everything else will be oozing moisture and the banana will feel like sand in your mouth. That’s just how the world works.

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Butter Lane

123 East Seventh Street, New York, New York 10009 (p) 212.677.2880

Around NY / Bakery — No Comments
25
Nov 09

Best Ham and Cheese Croissant Ever

Ham and Cheese croissant

I don’t expect on-the-go food to be all that fantastic, especially when it comes to breakfast. So many places try to do it, and usual end up with mediocre, somewhat waxy bagel and other pastry sandwiches filled with highly processed meats and rubbery pre-cooked egg.

At Balthazar on Spring Street in NYC, the sandwiches are the complete opposite.

This ham and cheese croissant is probably one of the best breakfast items I’ve ever had. The croissant is fresh baked, buttery, flaky, and properly risen. The ham is really high quality, sliced thin with the savory skin on the edge of each slice. The melty cheese and slight hint of mustard round off the whole experience, making it salty with a hint of sour from the mustard. Make sure you ask them to heat it up, as the experience is not the same with a cold one.

This is not an every day breakfast sandwich (both in dollars and calories) but for the occasional “I didn’t get up in time to stop at Doughnut Inn before I caught my train” kind of day, Balthazar is the place to be. They also have the most delicious coffee EVER. Everything is completely worth the cramped 15 person wait (The staff there moves fast, they know what’s up in Manhattan in the morning).

Balthazar Bakery and Restaurant

80 Spring St, New York, NY? – (212) 965-1414?

Street Carts — No Comments
20
Nov 09

Not Just a Calexico Burrito

“This is not just lunch. This is a story.”

Calexico cart

My colleague Dan could not be more right. This story is about four interns from different places (Brooklyn, Manhattan, CT and NJ) who sit in a row at a desk. These four interns do drastically different tasks and have very different interests. Dan is a sports journalism intern, as is Glenn. Tanvir and myself are research interns for a consulting firm. The two things that binds us are our daily pilgrimage to the long desk set aside from the full-time employees we like to call “Intern Island,” and our quest for good, cheap food (Intern budget) in the ritzy Soho area of NYC. Originally, this was an individual task. We would go separate ways for lunch, each on our own schedule. Until we realized that there was a great opportunity in front of us: not only to enjoy the social aspect of connecting over a sandwich and soda, but, together, to find the best cheap places to eat. And for me to blog about them (We’re kind of like the Planateers). Now, we’re on a mission.

A mission that began around 1:30pm on Wednesday of this week. Tanvir had spotted a burrito cart right around the corner from our office a week or so ago, and so we made it our first official destination. At the intersection of Crosby and Broome, the guys at Calexico were creating what can only be described as “Burrito Masterpieces.” Their menu is small, and consists mainly of burritos, however as we discovered on our trip, Quesadillas can be ordered off-menu. Calexico started out as a street vendor business, that grew into a franchise that eventually opened an establishment in Brooklyn.

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We all selected burritos, were informed of about a 15 minute wait (during which we grabbed some sodas 2 blocks away) and by the time we came back the food was ready. Back in the office break room, we set up camp to taste and evaluate.

The consensus was one of overall satisfaction in taste, quantity, and overall burrito experience. The burritos were stuffed with large chunks of meat, making them particularly satisfying to bite into. My evaluation: a bit more avocado and a bit more acid (lemon juice, lime, pico de gallo, tomatoes, anything like that). Glenn suggested hot sauce. The burritos are customizable, so I’m sure we will be back. There’s nothing quite like a hot, fresh, tasty burrito for lunch.

Our Intern Island rating: tree_clipart_palm_tree_2