Foodie's Paradise.

I have taken a bite of the Big Apple, and boy, was it delicious. To tidily sum up what I did over this trip to New York, I simply ate. I ate and ate and ate. I ate meals that I didn’t know were meals. Out the window went the typical breakfast-lunch-dinner mold – I ate at all hours of the day. Famous names, foreign names, street names, I ate it all. In the past four days, I have sampled four different cupcakes from four different cupcakeries and ate what may very well have been the best meal of my life.

Highlights include:

* Best pizza: Lombardi’s
* Best cupcake: Red Velvet at Buttercup Bakeshop (possibly better than Sprinkles.. and that's saying a lot)
* Best precursor for Europe: Pastis
* Most darling dessert place / favorite movie setting: Café Lalo
* Most pleasantly surprising: Rice to Riches (rice pudding, who knew?)
* Fun, but overrated: Serendipity
* Biggest disappointment: Bonchon.. running out of chicken ("does McDonald's ever sell out of hamburgers?")
* Best meal at Google NY: Lobster ravioli
* Best (& probably most expensive) meal of my life: Nobu Next Door

All in all, it’s been a great week in food. Onward to NOLA and it's po' boys, beignets, and jambalaya!