Florentina's Christmas Shopping in New York City

**A quick adjustment below for accuracy!**
You've all seen those movies and television shows where you see New York City all decked out in Christmas gear from Thanksgiving to New Year's. This year I cut it a bit close in terms of time, and have just returned from visiting Joey's Dad in Brooklyn, so that shopping might get done in a big way in Manhattan. But things don't always turn out as hoped.

Last Friday I took the train out of Brooklyn to Midtown. The problem was that, unbeknownst to me, I was really under the weather and shouldn't have been traveling at all, not even on the subway. (The MTA does warn you of this, as they ask people not to get on the subway cars if there's a chance of feeling ill.) I discovered this was true of me because I kept getting on the wrong train and getting off at the wrong stops. Luckily I was never in danger of ending up somewhere really far off from where I needed to go, but I found myself going uptown when I wanted to go downtown, or headed to the West Side when I needed to be on the East Side. Some of you will notice this is a real change from the last time I had a subway marathon, when it was Florentina's NY Nosh Week.

Even so, Florentina did her best to do NYC at Christmas. Here's the list of places and things Christmasy that I encountered.

• The excited crowd waiting to get into Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas Spectacular.
• Walked past Rockefeller Center very quickly.
• Mario Badescu salon on E. 52nd Street to buy gifts.
• A sushi Bar to recruit strength (three Japanese places on E. 52nd Street!).
• Bloomingdales on 59th Street: here I was ambushed by the Clarins cosmetics woman, and later spent a few meditative moments with the Hermes perfume guy, talking about the androgynous scents offered. Pretty windows.
• The Container Store. Bought a few little gifts here.
• Williams-Sonoma.

In reality this turned out to be a bust of a shopping day and I gave up at the end when I realized I couldn't find the last address I wanted to hit. That said to me it was time to go home to Brooklyn and Joey's Dad.

We made up for it the next day with Florentina's Spa Day. Admittedly it was a low-key spa day, but it was still a spa day because of:

• European Facial at O Spa.
• Haircut at Charles Elias Salon.

My face actually looked different when I walked out of the facial. I had no idea such a thing could be possible! Together with the new haircut made up for the previous blah day of shopping.

While Manhattan lights were not happening for Florentina, Brooklyn had plenty of them in store. Here is what greeted us on the way to Grand Szechuan House:

The day was topped by a visit to Grand Szechuan House near 86th Street. For the record, this is a terrific place for Chinese food, and we've had some terrific meals here. Some of us (whose name begins with an "F") need to be better aware of our tolerance for ma-la Szechuan peppercorns. Florentina's no wimp when it comes to food and being adventurous, but let it be known that the Chengdu Spicy and Aromatic Fish in Hot Wok nearly did her in. Sorry, El Señor, that's a first in Chinese food for Florentina. I passed by Hinsch's Confectionery and wished I could have had a burger instead, because I was in pain. I know I'll have better luck next time in NYC!

Guilty Pleasures with a Twist: Florentina New York Nosh Week

In case you haven't figured it out, New York City is really "New Nosh City" for Florentina and her relatives. Wednesday's food tourism eventually spilled over into Thursday, moving from one guilty pleasure to another. For a few brief moments, Florentina and cousins thought about how each tasty bite might take us a step higher to the pinnacle of Mount Cholesterol, but after reminding ourselves this was a vacation for them, we gave that up. In this posting I'll be covering twists on my favorite guilty pleasures: candy, pizza, and sushi. (Sushi isn't actually a guilty pleasure, but these days it's as ubiquitous as pizza, if not more so for its lowfat content. N.B.: Florentina dislikes the American tendency to count calories and cholesterol counts, but we cousins are more adult than we used to be, and perhaps more American now, too.)

Two pounds of candies from around Asia.
Look for the pale yellow bits; they're durian flavored. 

For the candy category, we have this offering from Mott Street in Chinatown: the Aji Ichiban store near the Church of the Transfiguration. This is where Mott Street takes a sharp turn to the left. I don't quite remember what was there when I was a kid, but when this awesome store opened up a few years ago, I was more than excited. Not only can you get all sorts of sweets, but you can also get little dried fish snacks and rice crackers with seaweed. Cousin Mona was excited to try everything, and they always have samples available. In this two pound bag of candy, I picked up four durian candies; you will see them as the pale yellow candies on the right side of this picture. I have one left, after Joey's Dad had one on the street, and Florentina's mom took two of them. (Arrgh -- the whole kitchen smelled like rotten broccoli while she chewed it!) Don't be fooled by those pale yellow candies masquerading as salt water taffy, to those Americans out there looking at the picture.

From www.Kanpai Sunset.com.
If I had ordered this,
I would have made sure to have the
whole thing filled with temaki rolls.

This part goes out to my sushi buddy, Lori. For sushi, Joey's Dad and I limped back to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn after a whole day of hanging out in Manhattan. The walk through the arms and armor display in the Met may have taken it out of all of us. We had some sushi at a place around the block and discovered that they did a great job with the salmon skin temaki roll. I adore the salmon skin handroll because it combines two of my favorite things: sushi and a cone (of nori) holding it together. For this piece of awesomeness, the sushi chef has to crisp up a piece of salmon skin to complement the sushi rice.

Light Pizzas. Left: seasoned beef and egg on pita.
Right: Labne cheese, mint, tomatoes and olives on pita.
Sorry! I had originally said the green stuff was basil
in the earlier version of this post.

For pizza, my cousins went to DiFara Pizza in Brooklyn, a famous place that draws crowds. This was a good bookend to their trip to Pepe's Pizza in New Haven, CT on the previous Friday afternoon. While they all had some traditional pizza, Joey's Dad and I tried a new twist on the pizza at Man'ouChe Restaurant on Fifth Avenue (between 77th and 78th Streets) in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. These pretty pitas are called manakeesh and are surprisingly filling. The pita on the right is like a fresh salad on a pita. Definitely lacking the pale orangey grease spot on the paper underneath both of these pitas, unlike a real pizza like the kind my cousins had. But it hit the spot to get some refreshing Lebanese food after some of the heavier lifting of the previous day.

No, no diet in the near future for Florentina. (The words "diet," and "calorie"are akin to nonsense syllables in any of Florentina's languages in use.) Florentina's next major adventure involves visiting Houston at the end of next week. As it's not a known quantity, I hope to see what makes it an interesting destination.

Gray's Papaya: The King of Hot Dogs

El Señor is just gonna laugh his head off about this one. Hot dogs are probably easy to find where he is, and in fact, bratwursts are probably more popular. This week, it's Florentina New York Nosh Week. Today was Gray's Papaya on 72nd and Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Not only was it a fast food excursion, it was also a Florentina sprint day through NYC public transit, namely the subway system. Coming from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, combined with a detour in Grand Central Station because of a mistimed email from my sister asking to meet there beforehand, this trip took an hour and five different subways: R, N, 5, S, and the last and most awesome, 2 train. The 2 train got me from Grand Central Station to W 72nd Street in a matter of minutes as an express. If you were in Grand Central Station at around noon today, you would have seen me sprinting through the terminal. If I had not made that detour for my sister, I still would have needed to take three different subway lines to get up there.

 
The paper versions of fruits hanging above these besotted fast foodies represent the fruit flavors for various cold drinks to go with your hot dog or two. My sister made sure to order the Recession Special ($4.95) of two hot dogs with your choice of toppings, and a drink. She got me a papaya drink, as requested. The different colored signs also tell you what kinds of drink flavors are available, as if the paper decorations don't grab your attention. Understandably, the hot dogs will take a lot of your attention because they are the star of the show here.

When I was a kid in New York City, I just loved getting a hot dog from the streetside carts. Sure, they're probably terrible for you, but it was a rare treat. Gray's Papaya gives you the same thrill but in a more hygienic fashion, as well as some friendly faces behind the counter. My hot dog with ketchup, mustard, and sauerkraut really hit the spot. In fact, I realized tonight that it was pretty much the only thing I ate for most of the day, with half of the papaya drink. I'm sure tomorrow will be a better day for my nutritional intake.