Now that we've enjoyed a warm, glowing beginning to April out West, we're in for a bit of a long (mostly wet) slog to the end of the month with not a lot of days where Nacho is home. I guess that's the trade off we've come to expect with his always changing schedules, but knowing that he starts six weeks of training away from home in May means we're trying to make the most of our time together now. So this week, with rain in the forecast again on Tuesday, we decided to try out our new family membership to the American Museum of Natural History. Now I'd been past the museum many times, but had never actually entered, figuring it was more a place to go with a kid than on our own. And now after having gone with a two and a half year old, I can definitely say it's not for the smallest of tikes. Even Elisa had a few minutes of dread over the darkly lit rooms and stuffed animal displays. I think she's at that strange point where she doesn't quite know what to make of all the ambience and creatures staring back at her. And as much as I tell her it's not real, that there is glass between us and the animals can't reach her, she just wasn't buying it. However, she did like the brightly lit rooms with dinosaur bones, so all was not lost. See this happy smile...
Naturally, Elisa's favorite part of the museum was the Astor turret which was a nice carpeted area with floor to ceiling windows overlooking Central Park West. It seemed to be the nanny-zone that day with lots of kids climbing all over the benches, taking their shoes off and generally mucking around. Elisa was enthralled and of course, quickly demanded her shoes be removed as well. She latched onto two older boys playing with a car and I had to keep yanking her dress back down as she nervously hiked it up.
After grabbing some burgers at our much beloved Shake Shack (sorry, In-N-Out Burger, but they really beat the pants off of you), we decided to wind down with a coffee at Joe on the UWS. It was partly to restock Nacho's coffee bean supply, and partly to give our girl a quick fix of her favorite foamed milk concoction. She loves spooning up the sugary froth and ruining the pretty little leaf imagery as she goes.
Now normally, this big day would be enough to coast on until bedtime. But after returning home for a nice (albeit late) family nap, we had dinner plans with our man about town Dan Riley at the newly opened Salt & Fat on Queens Boulevard. With the thunderstorms finally picking up the pace and lightning all around, it was a kind of stormy night for adventure and that's just what we had--a culinary adventure just a few blocks from home! The initial word on the street about this American, small plate restaurant was you better love bacon before you go. And I will agree that the bacon grease-fried popcorn freebie was a good introduction to this theme. But otherwise, the plates were filled with all kinds of interesting flavors and wide-ranging ethnic influences. I really enjoyed the deep fried bacon-topped gnocchi (pictured below) which was swimming in a cheesy bechamel.
I think Nacho's eyes rolled back in his head a little when eating this, so yeah, it was a hit. The mussels were fine, and the boys both liked the pork belly tacos. The seared scallops over truffle-oiled golden beets were pretty nice as well (see below).
But the fried chicken was just so-so and the pulled pork sliders a little dry for my liking. Elisa managed to sit through most of the meal with interest, but after such a long day out and about, I couldn't blame her for trying to dance her way through dessert. It didn't take us long to inhale that so we were done and out of there by about 8:45 p.m. It felt like the kind of day where you come home late and somewhat tired from all the running around, but you go to bed knowing you made the most of the city. Afterall, that's why we live here.
No comments:
Post a Comment