Eataly

As I mentioned in my last post, last weekend I went to my favorite specialty food market Eataly.  Twice in fact.  I have a big love/hate relationship with the place.  On the love side, the place is fantastic and has every Italian food you could possibly want - pasta, bread, pizza, cheese, meats, produce, desserts, gelatto, coffee, wine, beer, limoncello, the list goes on.  But on the hate side, it is SO crowded ALL the time!  It's hard to enjoy the experience when you keep causing collisions by stopping to gaze at the breadcrumbs.

Friday night, my girl friends and I tried out the beer garden, Birreria.  I've been wanting to try it for awhile, but it has been very popular and I'm not the type of person that likes to wait to get in.  I finally summoned enough patience to give it a try.  Thank goodness because we waited an hour and a half to get upstairs.  In the meantime, we strolled around the market, I grabbed a foccacia sandwich, and then we found a seat at the bar area.

The foccacia was great, the waitress was not.  She announced that I could not sit in Eataly and eat my Eataly sandwich that I had purchased just five feet away from an Eataly vendor.  Huh?!?  That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  So I threw the sandwich at the waitress and kicked her in the shin.  No I didn't.  Instead, I had a glass of Barbera wine.  How could I pass up such a thing?  Can you read the name on the barrel?  :)

Finally, I got a text from the beer garden (it beats those giant buzzer-beeper things that those corny chain restaurants give you) and our spot was ready upstairs.  It could have great views (the Empire State Building and Flatiron building are in eyesight), but the way they designed the place doesn't really show them off.  We had a great time and drank some good new beers.  And the way we all felt the next morning makes me think they are a lot stronger than a regular draft beer.

The next day, my husband and I went grocery shopping and picked up Lidia's cookbook.  We bought the ingredients to make caprese, pasta from scratch, meatballs, sugu, and white sauce - all secret family recipes.  :)  More on that to come...