Dining Downtown, Hip Little Bakeries and a Birthday, Part I

Wow. So behind. How typical. The past several days have been an accumulation of all sorts of unhealthy shit in my arteries. Albeit, delicious unhealthy shit. :]
This post will have to be chopped up into two! Cus I just have too much to write and post about. I will follow up with my visits to Two Little Red Hens Bakery, Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery and Grandma’s Bday Dinner soon.

On the 21st, Wednesday, I went downtown to the Financial District to check out Dine Around Downtown . 50 of downtown NYC’s finer dining establishment set up booths in front of Chase Manhattan Plaza for the crowd of hungry businessmen and women to peruse and graze. It lasted from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm and all the booths sell small dishes and plates from $3 to $6. I tried to get there before 11:00 to beat the masses that were sure to swarm the plaza during their lunch breaks but to no avail. It seemed that ALL of Wall Street had beat me to it! By the time I got there, it was already a sea of pinstriped suits, ladies in Italian leather pumps and corporate moguls clicking on their Crackberries.

It’s all of Wall Street!

Shoving/elbowing my way through the crowd, I made a beeline for Financier Patisserie’s booth. Yea, couldn’t help it. Had to start lunch off with dessert first. The selection looked so pretty! I wish I got a better picture of it but disgruntled and hungry brokers were hustling about everywhere. This was their menu for 2008:

Each dessert was only $3, which was fabulous. I bought the Chocolate Mousse & Vanilla Creme Brulee cup. Sadly, it was a bit of a misnomer. The mousse part was decadently dark and chocolatey but it wasn’t mousse! The texture was off by a million miles; it had the mouth feel of very very very grainy chocolate ganache. It wasn’t smooth, fluffy, light or at all like a mousse. The layer of vanilla was definitely not a Brulee (er, no burnt sugar crust) and tasted like a simple sweet custard. It wasn’t a winner in my book. Boo, I was soooo looking forward to Financier too. Here are some shots to show you the layers and textures:

With the desserts being so cheap, I easily could’ve gotten another one, but because I am resourceful and unwasteful, I actually finished the whole thing. That was plenty of sugar for one day, thank you very much. Moving on along, I needed some real food and found The Ketch Restaurant (harharhar get it, The Ketch? The Catch? Seafood, duh):

The slider wasn’t bad. It was sitting in a little lunch box which didn’t do much for the texture of the crabcake’s crust. The home-made potato chips were a little soggy too. But all in all, it fared well for the cheap lil sandwich that it was. The crabcake was very well-seasoned if a tad dry, but I bet it would’ve been awesome and crisp if it were fresh out of the fryer. The crabcake itself actually had a great ratio of crabmeat to breading. The remoulade had a spicy kick and the corn added a sweet crunch. The bun was boring; typical bready stuff you can find in the supermarket so blah to that. It wasn’t a horrible sandwich, just didn’t make me hop around happy.

The Innards of the Slider:

Ok so at this point, the crowds have become vicious. I don’t know if it was because of the midday sun and hunger or if maybe businessfolk are just inherently aggressive and pushy mofos but I was feeling like it was time to bounce. UNTIL I SAW THIS:

“Why, what is that man grilling?” you ask. LAMBCHOPS. *drool. From Harry’s Cafe and Steak .

I shoved my way onto line (it was probably one of the longest lines there, for good reason) and waited. And got this little beauty for $6.

It was wonderful. A little more well-done than I usually like, but hey, as a carnivore, I like my meat still (slightly) bleeding. The outside was charred to a nice smokey crust. The inside was juicy and tender. The sauce was a blend of sweet caramelized onions and fresh mint which masked the slight gaminess of the lamb. It was really really really good. A tad pricey, but oh, so worth it. It definitely made up for the lack-luster two dishes from beforehand. Yum. I washed everything down with a bottle of Pomegranate Fizzy Lizzy, which was supposedly a drink made from 100% fruit juice and seltzer water with no added sugar. It was tart, tangy and bubbly which helped cut through all the grease and sugar I had just ingested.

Then I took a couple more snapshots of the scene and bounced off to work. Overall, it wasn’t a bad experience. I suppose since it was created to cater to the massive and rather undiscerning crowd of Wall Street workers, the food wasn’t exactly restaurant quality. But then again, the food scene in the Financial District has never been quite up to par with oh I don’t know, say the Upper/ Lower East Side. Just my opinion though! I might just be an Up(per)town girl. I think there’s tons of potential for the restaurants down in lower Manhattan to progress (from business luncheons and such). The whole point of the Dine Around Downtown event was to promote the Financial District as a competent contributer to Manhattan’s food scene.

Interesting shape in Chase Plaza

Nothing quite like the dizzying height of a New York City skyscraper to make you feel…very tiny.