Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Ethiopian. Harlem. This Trip Is Getting Real.

After a quaint SoHo pizza tour and upscale BBQ near Madison Square Park, it's time to take this food tour in new direction. Enter our adventure in Harlem for (drumroll please) Ethiopian cuisine. I myself have never had Ethiopian, nor have I ever thought to myself, self, let's go get some Ethiopian food. But one thing I can say is that I am always up to try something new, so off we went to discover the flavors of Ethiopia.

First, I will say, I loved everything we ate. It is unlike anything I have ever experienced, probably closest to Indian food in my opinion but unique in it's presentation and overall flavor. And inexpensive. A full belly for only $5? I'll take that deal any day!

To be honest, I couldn't tell you what we ordered and I could barely distinguish between what was what. Maybe it was better that way because i had no preconceived notion of what I "thought" I would like. Trying everything blind allowed me to truly enjoy the flavors and possibly give things a chance that I normally wouldn't have.

 

Feeding My Stomach and My Soul

When I moved to New York from Florida a year ago, one of the upgraded amenities was the diversity of food styles. Not to say that Orlando doesn't have a diverse food selection, on the contrary Orlando has a great foodie scene with a variety of amazing cuisines. But I think the sheer number of restaurants in every food genre that you can imagine makes trying these food styles much more accessible. That being said, one of the cuisines that I have desperately missed is BBQ. I'm talking that smokey goodness that is as messy as it is delicious. So my excitement was off the charts when I found out our second food adventure was to try Blue Smoke - Manhattan's very own barbeque nirvana.

It was a beautifully sunny day, birds chirping and the sun warming our faces as we entered Blue Smoke. The exterior itself was delightfully snazzy, while the inside continued to solidify the theme of a happening jazz and BBQ haven.

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Inside the restaurant, the decor and atmosphere evoked a decidedly "Manhattan Casual" feel. Although this is absolutely an upscale BBQ place and not your typical rib shack, it's not so stuffy that you feel uncomfortable in your jeans with sauce on your cheek.

The menu itself has every item that I would want to eat, presenting the problem of what to get. My first instinct was to go for the ribs, but then I realized what I truly wanted was a saucy, tender sandwich of brisket. And a side of hush puppies. And a sweet tea, which they didn't have, so I mixed the unsweet version with their homemade lemonade. It didn't disappoint!

When the food came out, it looked and smelled amazing. I snagged a photo of the ribs ordered by Laure 'n Michael, immediately regretting my decision until my sandwich came out and couldn't wait for the first bite. Pile on the sauce and get ready to get dirty!

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After devouring our food, we had the opportunity to view the kitchen and, my favorite part, the smoking system. In my opinion, the smell of BBQ directly impacts the taste. Seriously, you can taste the smoke in the meat and if you can't, it's not any good. So to go back to the smoker, as full as I was, I wanted to eat another plate of ribs, pulled pork, chicken, EVERYTHING right then and there.

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I'll be honest, the food was very well done, but it wasn't the best barbeque I've had. A Southern girl loves her Southern BBQ, and I will definitely head back to my favorite restaurants when I'm back in Florida to get my BBQ fix. But it is nice to know that if you want that experience of a good, social meal with the comfort of smoked barbeque, it's right around the corner.

On the Hunt for the Perfect Pizza

It was an overcast day, but nothing could put a damper on our first adventure in the city - a quintessential New York Pizza experience with Scott's Pizza Tours!

Now, to be honest, I never thought of myself as a guided tour person. Being herded through the streets in a group with matching shirts while a guide waves a flag through the air yelling touristy facts is typically not my style. However, I underestimated Scott and his Cheesiest Guided Tour.

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He even has his own sweatshirts promoting his cheesiness.

 

You see, Scott appeared as just a normal, everyday Joe. Except his name was Scott, his knowledge for pizza was extensive, and his passion was even greater. To help you understand, Scott consumes such a high quantity of pizza that he utilizes an app called Daytum to track his daily / weekly pizza consumption to ensure that his pizza intake levels do not reach critical mass.

 

 

Scott, walk away from the pizza.

 

Aside from the pizza tracking, Scott also writes for Pizza Today, an industry publication dedicated to pizza AND is a recurring judge at a Pizza Conference in Las Vegas. Needless to say, we were convinced of his guru status. Now there was just the issue of the tacky tourist guide which he also immediately debunked. Instead of being the lame-o Hawaiian shirt tour guide that I imagined in my head, I felt like he was just a guy we happened to meet in the restaurant who decided to give us a behind the scenes tour of his favorite pizza places. It was like a food adventure with your cool friend who just knows a bunch about pizza.

It was awesome.

The journey began with a behind the scenes look at Kesté Pizza & Vino on Bleeker Street.

 

 

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Spoiler Alert: This was my favorite.

Kesté is a Neapolitan style pizza restaurant, which we learned has as much to do about the history of pizza as it does the flavor of the pie. 

To kick off our pizza immersion in style, we took a true behind the scenes tour of Kesté, getting so close to the wood burning oven that we could actually measure how hot it was inside with Scott's handy temperature gun. He even had a holster. I swear.

 

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Traditional Wood Burning Oven with Dome Shape to Help the Heat Swirl, Creating Pizza Goodness.

Scott put in an order for pizza, and true to Neopolitan style it was done within 90 seconds. Now THAT is service!

The first pizza we tasted, the mast'nicola, consisted of dough, olive oil, basil and pecarino. Now, you may ask, why no sauce? Well, as we learned from Scott (with some help from the A+ exchange student from France), the original pizzas did not have sauce due to the fact that tomatoes were not always in existence in Italy. Brought to the region via explorers from South America, tomotoes became popular later on. I am glad, because in my opinion, cheese and baked dough are all you really need. For the non-vegetarians of the group, the olive oil was replaced by another ingredient. After watching the faces of those trying to place the savory taste, Scott finally let them know the secret - lard. Yup, Paula Deen's ancestor was apparently from Italy and put lard on everything too. 

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Because of the "puffy crust", Keste provides a special angled knife.

You know something is good when it demands special cutlery.

The second pizza was a more familiar margherita pizza. Since this wasn't my favorite, I'll show you a photo, but that's all you get.

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All in all Keste was an amazing experience, one that I look forward to visiting again very soon with a group of good friends and great conversation.

Tomorrow we will conquer the last 2 pizza places, but for now, have dreams of Keste and it's connection with Italy's spectacular history.

In the beginning, there was food. And it was good.

As with many people, I love food. I love eating it, preparing it, shopping for it. I could walk up and down food aisles for hours and get lost in the new things to discover.

 

Writing has also always been a passion, developing words into sentences and paragraphs that express how I feel better than I could ever verbalize.

 

Which brings us to the present, as I am embarking on my first food blog with the organization New York Cares. For the next 8 weeks, I will be working with a group of middle school students at MS 104 to develop their own food blogs and explore various food genres throughout Manhattan.

 

The first field trip was a Pizza Tour of New York, and upcoming is an All Barbeque Adventure. What more could you ask for? And all the while, as I roam New York doing my favorite thing - eating - I get the opportunity to work with creative and energetic fourteen-year-olds who will probably teach me more about life than I could ever hope to impart on them.

 

Let the adventure begin!