Gluten-Free in the City

Over Columbus Day weekend, Joe and I hopped on a plane for a couple days in New York City. That sentence makes it sound like a spur-of-the-moment adventure, but it wasn't. It was (we thought) a carefully planned trip of sightseeing and theater.

It wasn't.

Friday, October 2nd will now forever be remembered as the anniversary of our first fight. The Reader's Digest version: because Joe had booked our hotel in Laguardia and hadn't deciphered the subway system and just when exactly was I supposed to have time to do that? On the plus side, we did discover that my sister can very conveniently experience Hispanic culture by traveling to New York rather than, say Puerto Rico. And I was hungry and tired, those were pretty big factors in the genesis of our fight. It wasn't a very dramatic fight, people passing us on the sidewalk probably didn't realize our fighting couple status. It mostly consisted of angry walking, a lot of angry walking from Union Square to 248 Broome Street. Which is a mile and a half, in case you were wondering. No words were exchanged, except when Joe asked if I was ok and I glared at him. I just keep walking because I knew I was headed towards these:

Chocolate/chocolate and vanilla/chocolate gluten-free cupcakes from Babycakes. I'd like to say we ate these cupcakes and completely forget all our problems because I'd like Babycakes to get that sort of word of mouth advertising, but that wouldn't be entirely true. They weren't all-problem-solving delicious, but they were delicious nonetheless. The frosting was richly chocolatey and the cakes themselves were moist and well flavored. The vanilla had too much lemon flavoring for a so-called vanilla cupcake, but if they had called it a lemon cupcake, I would have been delighted.


We hadn't wanted to visit Mozarelli's Friday evening, a pizza place with both gluten-free and gluten-full pizza I've been reading raves about on other blogs, but they were closed by the time we got there! So, we had to save that eating adventure until Saturday lunchtime. When we entered, the cashier very apologetically told us only the GF pizza was available because they were having trouble with the other oven - perfect! I enjoyed spinach and mushroom and three cheese while Joe dined on two more carnivorous options, pepperoni and sausage. The crust was the best GF crust I've ever eaten, great texture and flavor - I wish it was closer!

Mozarelli's also carried fabulous cookies (which I neglected to photograph) from My Dad's Cookies. We grabbed a package of raspberry sandwich cookies and some chocolate dipped cookies. If the pizza had sucked, these cookies would have made it worth the trip.

Saturday evening we ran back to our hotel to get all gussied up for an evening of theater. We saw the revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center and it was FANTASTIC. Before the show, we had dinner at O'Neals' and it was also FANTASTIC. Both Joe and I ordered the grilled black angus sirloin and arrived grilled to perfection with grilled vegetables and mashed potatoes that tasted just slightly of bleu cheese (more cheese and it would have been perfect). Apparently, although I don't really remember this, I chose this restaurant based on their dessert menu and I did an excellent job. The creme brulee was perfect (but not photogenic) along with espresso.


After dinner, we walked over to Lincoln Center for South Pacific which was absolutely wonderful. If you get the chance to see it, jump on it! Someone enjoyed it SO much he may or may not have purchased a South Pacific key chain.



(Yeah, he totally did.)

We ended the evening with a quick trip to Times Square. We were in NYC afterall and we felt like we just had too.


We rounded the evening by getting Joe a hot dog in Times Square. Luckily, I don't have any ketchup accidents to report.