Eataly

I spent the day in Manhattan yesterday.  Visited the Frick Collection uptown, then took the 6 train to 23rd to check out Eataly, a food center for all things Italian.  It is basically a walk-through market divided into sections for produce, dairy, cheese, fish, meat, wine, kitchenware, etc. peppered with several restaurants dedicated to different aspects of Italian cuisine.  There are some stands for take-away, an espresso bar, a pastry shop, a gelateria, a "standing table enoteca", a pizza/pasta restaurant, a fish restaurant, a meat restaurant, and (predictably where I ate) Le Verdure, an all-vegetable restaurant.

Le Verdure leaves something to be desired in the way of atmosphere.  As all of the Eataly restaurants are, it is open to the rest of the market, so I dined next to a shelf full of bottled syrups and fruit juices.  I'm not picky, but I'm not totally psyched over spending $50.+ a person to sit in a plastic chair 50 feet from the checkout counters.  I was with my boyfriend, so we split a bottle of their cheapest white wine ($28. and quite enjoyable), shared the salad special (a spring concoction of lettuces, fava beans, radishes and things in a nice basil dressing), and the bruschette of the day, which were excellent (one with grilled spring onion and red pepper puree, the other with a pea and mint puree and some very nice fresh peas).

The boyfriend ordered a roasted fennel dish with parmigiano, tomato and olives and I ordered the mixed plate which came with a cup of the day's soup, a bit of farro salad, a citrus-y shaved vegetable salad and some amazing battered and fried veggies.  The fennel dish was good, but a little puny for $19.  My soup was a tasty vegetable and bean number, the two salads were alright, nothing to write home about, but the fried vegetables were excellent--so good that I threatened the waiter torture if he wouldn't tell me what was in the batter.  Turns out the secret is Wondra flour, salt and pepper, fried in olive oil.  Seriously delicious.  One day when I'm feeling adventurous I'm going to try cooking it myself.  There were fried asparagus, scallions, zucchini, radish, onion, and sweet potato from what I remember.  I just found this recipe by Lidia Bastianich which, minus the seafood, I'm sure is pretty close to what I was served.

We hit up the gelateria for dessert, taking our wine with us, which was novel.  I wanted to head over to the pizza restaurant to split a pie instead of gelato, but the man wasn't up for it.  The gelato was nice, almost as good as what I had in Italy.  He got coconut, I got hazelnut.  Pizza would have been better, but it's a good excuse to go back.  I've heard good things about their pizza ovens and the guy at the espresso counter said they are supposed to have the best pizza in NY, or America, or some such other improvable claim.

The market was mostly way too costly for me to justify buying much.  I would have considered some cheese or yogurt (they had nice stuff from an organic NY dairy), but I didn't think it was wise considering the hour I had getting home via public transportation.  I did get some nice Italian licorice drops for my mom, and some violet scented ones for me, some "thirst quenching" mints, and a gorgeous gigantic loaf of bread.

 

This bread is seriously huge.  It was their Wednesday special called Miche.  It's made from mostly whole wheat flour with a sourdough starter and some rye flour.  It's pretty much all the bread I will use for a month, so I cut the thing in half, froze one half, sliced the other and portioned it in ziplocs for the fridge.

Definitely worth the $6. and change I paid for it.  In fact, the bread counter had some of the best prices in the place, although their slicing machine was down.  I was kind of disappointed by the lack of samples anywhere in the market.  If I had gotten to sample some of the other breads, I might have left with more than one loaf.  Ditto to the cheese area.  In markets overseas they love for you to taste things, Eataly needs to get up on that if they really want to impart that true Italian experience.  I guess they'd rather have you just go to one of their restaurants.  

All in all, It was an enjoyable experience.  I will definitely go back to try out the pizzas and maybe splurge on some fancy olive oil once my supply runs low (another thing I probably would have bought if they were giving samples--I'm an olive oil-addict).  Certainly, I will make it a point to return on a weekday.  Wednesday night there was crowded enough, and I've read about 2 hour long waits for restaurants and terrible service on weekends.  We were seated within 15 minutes, and found the service to be fine.  I was a bit skeptical about going, but had a lovely meal and a look at what is probably a thriving business.  Whatever they don't sell in the market, they can cook and sell at three times the price in the restaurants.  And I'm sure my bread will show up as part of recipes in blogs to come.