April Showers Are Hella Late: Clear Signs of 1/4 Life Crisis and Edible Consolation

So yesterday’s weather was an abomination. Windy, wet, cold and grey. I just tell myself that stoning the weatherman will do us no good because it seems like the Northeast is just unlucky this year. Ahhh, this crap climate is totally a sign of stormy days to come in my life. Someone up there (*points up there) is very clever. So schools been out for a while and I can’t say I’ve been enjoying things too much. Yea, my GPA shot up because I finally figured out what the HECK I wanna do but still…not good enough. It sucks that I’ve essentially boxed myself in and have very little room to move. One more mistake and my college career will be a bust…a very expensive bust, may I add. Someone pray to the gods of NYU that I get into honors English – burn a wad of Benjamin’s or something, its what those money-sucking leeches want anyway. ‘Cause really, I desperately want to write a 30-page thesis by the end of junior year. Lawl. I’m afraid it is happening. Nobody wants to major in what they like because someway or another, school will destroy everything it ever stood for. Before the end of 2008, I may very well hate English.

When we’re down, what do we do? We eat. Trudging home from work yesterday, I decided to hide from the rain inside Rive Gauche Bakery & Cafe. It looked like the run-of-the-mill cafe, but was cute, warm and glowy inside as opposed the depressingly drab streets of the UES. There’s a sweet little bench outside for you to sit on WHEN THE WEATHER ISN’T SHITASTIC and you can people-watch as NYCers hustle up and down a super-busy 86th Street.

Cute, eh?

They have lots of pastries and and all sorts of breads that they bake right there. I wasn’t feeling sweet (and didn’t want to gain like a million pounds) so I perused their sandwiches. Sadly, they were all refrigerated (*frowny face). Sticking a sandwich in the fridge compromises everything. Seriously. The bread totally loses it’s character and the filling more often than not just gets soggy. I bought a small latte and the tastiest looking one, a Caprese style s.w. Inside a baguette were fresh sliced mozzarella, fresh basil, sliced tomato and roasted red peppers. Total was a little under $11. Well, its NYC *shrug. The lady at the counter asked me if I wanted to warm my sandwich up. Feeling smarmy: “Iono, do I?”. Lol, I figured a warm s.w. is probably better than a cold one on a day like this so I told her to nuke it. But I was pleasantly surprised when she plopped the thing onto a panini press and grilled it for a minute or two, cus that sure as hell beats a microwave. I find myself a seat and OOOOOOOOOOLALA theres free Wi-Fi! And I’ve also discovered the wonders of macro shots! So picture quality is slowly improving. Here, don’t wet yourselves:

Mmmmm, melty cheese.

Grill marks. Sexy.

Grilling the s.w. definitely helped the baguette regain some of its integrity. The crust was crunchy and crackly while the crumb was tender, chewy and a little dense. It smelled faintly yeasty and there was the tiniest tang, like sour dough. The filling could’ve used some tweaking – too much cheese! Mozzarella is one of the blander cheese anyway, so it felt pretty pointless. I like a nice even ratio of everything in my s.w. and the cheese sorta nudged everything else aside. The basil cut through nicely though (I wish there was more!) and there was some smokiness from the roasted peppers. I would not have missed the tomato. It made everything soggy. Perhaps they could’ve brushed some olive oil on the surface of the bread so it wouldn’t get all mushy from the tomato juices. It was a decent sandwich. The latte however, was a dud. Talk about over-roasted and too milky =(. Look!

All I could taste was bitter; there was no crema or coffee flavor. FAIL. I’m seriously a coffee no0b, but this might be worse than Starbucks *gaps!

Anyways, I don’t mean to bash this place cus it’s really very decent. I left full and warm hehehe. Their breads looked tempting and next time I’ll try their sweets…they had tasty looking chocolate croissants ^_^V

I’ll blog about today’s “Dining Downtown” experience in a bit. Stay tuned, suckers =P