My last day in NYC was a Monday, and we had a flight scheduled from Newark Airport in the late afternoon. So what better way to start off your day than with some freshly baked donuts in the morning. So we headed off to The Donut Pub.

The Donut Pub
Location: 203 W. 14th Street – Chelsea

The Donut Pub has been bringing joy to NYC since 1964, and it is opened 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now, we thought a quick stop at the Donut Pub would be uneventful, but we were wrong. It was probably the most stressful ordering experience of my life. I heard rumors about the Original Soup Man being tough (Soup Nazi Seinfeld episode), but that turned out to be totally fine. No one warned me about the Donut Pub, though.

It wasn’t super busy there, people streamed in and out to pick up donuts, but no one really sat inside. We stood to the side as we decided what donuts we should get, but then suddenly we were up. We knew what we wanted, but it turns out the lady taking our order had a very bad problem with listening. All we wanted were two french crullers, two honey glazed donuts, a tea, and a coffee. Oh and two more french crullers to go (for my mom and brother back home in Texas).

However, anytime I said one type of donut, she was like this one, that one, this one, without listening that I said the name, and she would say how many, 2, 3, 4, 5 and count at a fast rate without giving me a chance to say how many, and I was like 4 we want 4. Then she is like okay, bags it up, and says your total is blah blah (in a flash)! That isn’t all I wanted. So I was like we also want two honey glazed donuts, and again it was the same process, she didn’t listen, she bagged it, and it was time to pay. It was so crazy (and no one was even waiting behind us), but in the end we finally got what we wanted. It turns out the tea machine in there was broken so she poured me tea from a mug of tea….like it was her tea she was drinking. I don’t know. I just had to accept that since I really wanted some hot tea.

I was stressed after, it was more chaotic than I can describe simply because this lady would talk over you and not listen but we laughed about it so much after because it’s like okay this is the New York experience you hear about in the movies, she was like the Soup Nazi of donuts, it was pretty funny in the end. Apart from that the donuts were really good, but I’m not sure I’ll go back. There must be another good donut place in NYC that is less stressful. 🙂 This place wasn’t exactly cheap either.

After The Donut Pub we headed over to Chelsea Market to look around. It was a lot smaller than I imagined, but it was interesting anyways. We also walked on the High Line, which is a park built on an elevated section of a disused NYC Central Railroad spur called The West Side Line. Thanks, Wikipedia. :o) I’d love to go back there during the summer, it was really nice.

It was now time for lunch, and on my list was having a deli sandwich in NY. Finding a place to eat a deli sandwich at was really tricky. I have heard of the world famous Katz’s Deli but seeing it on TV and online, those sandwiches are out of control, and it looks super crowded there. It turns out most deli sandwiches in NYC are insanely huge and expensive.

However, after a lot of research I did find one, conveniently located near our hotel, that had deli sandwiches I could handle, and it was known to be a really good place. So we walked over to Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop next.

Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop
Location: 174 5th Ave. – Flatiron District

This place has more than just sandwiches. Eisenberg’s has been opened since 1929, and serves breakfast, soups, salads, burgers, fried fish, grilled chicken, turkey, various cakes and pies, milkshakes, and more.

I got the roast beef sandwich with cheese and mayo on white bread and my boyfriend got a pastrami sandwich on rye bread. My sandwich was pretty good, but I had a sample of the pastrami sandwich and that was even better. I had never had pastrami before. It would be a bit of a wild card to order something I’ve never tried before that could possibly be something I don’t like, and then to leave hungry, but this is exactly what my boyfriend did. I knew I could always just try his sandwich. :o)

So next time I’m getting the pastrami sandwich, it was that amazing, and I only had a sample. 🙂 I have to say the sandwich bread was very good as well. You could tell it was freshly baked, it was light, and had a good flavor. I really enjoyed it.

This place looked pretty small on the outside, but like a lot of places in NYC, it turns out there is more room than you think once you get inside. There was a room in the back with more seats, and even though it was busy, we had no problem getting a seat on a Monday at lunch time in there. The service was also really good, and if you look on the walls you can see a lot of celebrities have dined in there as well. The sandwich was more than enough for me, but the size was way more normal than the other deli sandwich shops around.

roast beef sandwich with cheese on white

pastrami sandwich on rye

So that is it. This is what I ate in NYC. It was a short trip, I was very sick the entire time, but I managed to try everything I wanted to. There was no rush about it, we just had an idea ahead of time on what places we might want to try, and found them on a map so we knew where they were. We also stopped at places that we didn’t know of ahead of time. This is how I like to travel. There is only a rough idea of a plan, but it’s all up in the air in the end.

Our hotel was centrally located, which made a huge difference. We were able to walk around with no problems, and we kind of planned our schedule the night before, but just a verbal rough plan. You know tomorrow we could take the Staten Island Ferry and that might be a good day to try Lombardi’s since it’s on the way back towards our hotel. That kind of thing.

I hope you enjoyed my NYC culinary adventures. Hopefully I will get to make a second trip there and explore a little bit more. I loved NYC and I hope to go back.

Day 3 of my trip was a Sunday. I didn’t mention before, but the weather was so nice during my stay in New York City. Coming from cold, dark, windy, and gray Copenhagen, it was nice to be in a sunny and warm NYC. In fact, apparently it was one of the warmest December days in NYC history.

So we decided it would be a nice day to take the Staten Island Ferry so we could see the Statue of Liberty. It was actually a tip from a friend who is a native New Yorker. Thanks, Heather. :o) She informed me that it was free, and everything is better free, right? 🙂

After some snap shots of Lady Liberty, it was time for lunch! The kind of lunch I had been looking forward to for maybe my entire life. One of the most important things on my list of things to eat while in New York City was pizza. I had to try real authentic NY pizza. It was really hard to choose where the one place we would eat pizza at would be, as there are a lot of great places in NYC to eat pizza. So after a lot of consideration, we decided to try Lombardi’s!

Lombardi’s Pizza
Location: 32 Spring St. – Little Italy

It is said that an Italian immigrant in NYC reinvented the Napoletana style pizza in 1897, and thus opened the first Pizzeria in the United States in 1905 called Lombardi’s. I had to try the first pizzeria in the U.S.!

When we got there a line was out the door, and we had to be put on a waiting list, but incredibly enough in less than 10 minutes our name was called and we were seated. The place looks small from the outside but it was surprisingly quite big inside, and very busy. We were taken in the restaurant, through the kitchen and around some corner and to our seat.

We ordered a pepperoni pizza and two sodas, but there were locals there alone eating a whole pie by themselves. That looked challenging as the pizza is quite big, but I guess if I lived in NYC and was able to swing by Lombardi’s during my lunch break, I would. :o)

The pizza tasted amazing. One thing that stood out was the mozzarella cheese. It was so different, stringy, but a bit firm. I really liked it. The sauce was great too, and I would love to try other things on the menu next time. You should definitely try Lombardi’s Pizza if you are ever in NYC. It was one of the best pizza’s I’ve ever tasted. The food was served pretty quickly, the atmosphere was relaxed, and the service was good. It was also a cozy place and of course Frank Sinatra’s New York New York was playing at some point during our meal. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch we walked around Little Italy and China Town, and decided to walk towards our hotel from there. By this time NYC was in full swing, and we ended up in SoHo in the midst of Sunday shoppers. I noticed a gourmet food store that I had heard of before and seen on TV so we decided to pop in and take a look.

Dean & Deluca
Location: 560 Broadway – SoHo

It reminded me of the upscale food store at Magasin Du Nord in Copenhagen, but on a larger scale. It was super crowded in there and everything was really expensive. We decided to get some dessert to eat later in our hotel room. The prices were by weight so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. We ended up ordering two Key Lime cookies, and two Dark Chocolate Dipped Heart Shaped cookies. When she told me the price I was a bit shocked, and felt like changing my mind. Basically these little tiny cookies were the most expensive cookies I’ve ever bought, $8.40.

I bake a lot myself and I know how cheap it is to make cookies, and I get that this is an upscale store, but come on, those prices are a little crazy. All in all I enjoyed the heart shaped cookie more than the KeyLime one, but I wouldn’t say they were amazing or anything. It’s definitely an interesting place, but just beware of buying things in the bakery section where the price is a bit of mystery. Perhaps you can ask ahead how much might this be and not feel inclined to buy it if the price seems too high to you.

 

 

 

Later that evening we decided to eat dinner near our hotel once again. We thought it would be nice to eat a steak with bearnaise sauce at a restaurant, that is if we could find one. I think it’s more common in the U.S. to have steak sauce with steak, but in Denmark and other parts of Europe it is more common to eat it with bearnaise sauce. I never had this kind of sauce before I moved to Denmark, but it tastes amazing, especially if it’s homemade.

So there happened to be a place near our hotel with just that called Brasserie Les Halles.

Brasserie Les Halles
Location: 15 John Street – NoMad

Brasserie Les Halles is a french brasserie style restaurant. It had a great atmosphere, beautifully decorated for Christmas, and was so cozy inside. We both ordered the Filet de Boeuf with bearnaise. The steak was so tender and juicy, the fries were really thin and crispy, and it also came with a side salad, house made bearnaise and some sourdough and rye bread. This was the real deal, what a restaurant should be, freshly prepared food, all homemade, and tastes great. I would definitely go back here again next time I visit NYC. It cost $38 for this particular steak meal, but in NYC for dinner at a restaurant I feel like that is a good price, especially when the food is at such a high standard.

 

Next up – Day 4 and last day in NYC here!

This last December I had a short stop over in New York City on my way to Texas. This was my first time in New York City and I had a list in mind of what I wanted to eat while there. Even though I was only in NYC for 4 days I managed to try a lot of different foods while there and more. So this is what I ate in New York City on my first day there.

I arrived in NYC around dinner time from Copenhagen, Denmark. I had done a lot of research before hand, and we decided to try the burger place near our hotel that I had found online called New York Burger Co.

New York Burger Co.
Location: 678 Sixth Avenue – Flat Iron District

The food was really good. They use all natural beef, and everything is homemade, down to the sauces. I got the New York Cheeseburger with cheddar cheese, fries, and a drink. It wasn’t really that busy when we arrived there, and the service was pretty fast. So it was a great first stop after an exhausting trip. We had flown straight from Copenhagen to Newark, New Jersey, and then took the train to NYC, then walked to our hotel, plus I was sick with a bad cold at the time. So this place was conveniently located literally around the corner from our hotel, and it had a nice atmosphere, so it was a great place to finally unwind a bit.

 

 

 

 

Find out what I ate in NYC on Day 2 here!