Day #4- Saturday

After our past two late nights, we had reservations for a 12:00 brunch at Mercer Kitchen, a Jean George restaurant, located in SOHO. Living up to his world renowned reputation for exquisite food, Jean George did not disappoint:

This was my roasted lamb sandwich with red peppers, arugula, and garlic aioli. It was phenomenal.

Holly and Jon split this appetizer- heirloom tomato salad with mozzarella and basil. Yum!

Scott and Jon both ordered the raw tuna and wasabi pizzza. This was absolutely amazing- the wood-fired dough was chewy, not too thick, and the "sauce" was a spread of wasabi and ricotta. Unbelievably good!

Scott and I shared this roasted beet salad with goat cheese and balsamic for our appetizer. This dish really showcased the versatility of beets- some were roasted with a sweet, caramelized texture, and some were pickled, for a tangy, vinegar flavor. With that creamy, fluffy goat cheese and the peppery salad that accompanied it- this was amazing! SO good!

Holly had an omelette with goat cheese. She said it was the best omelette she'd ever had in her life- look at that texture! How do you make an omelette with that type of velvety texture? I guess that's why we are eating at these restaurants- we could never make food that good ourselves!

To top off our fabulous brunch, we had to have some delicious drinks as well. Holly had a ginger margarita (on left) and Jon and I each had a pineapple mojito. Mmm! These were fruity and delicious, the perfect addition to our meal.

After our wonderful start of our day, we needed to walk off some of that food. So, we walked to several record stores that Holly and Jon had on their "things to do" list. I wandered around outside of the store while the 3 of them looked at old records, and stopped in front of a Gelato store. For those of you who don't know, gelato is a type of Italian ice cream. It's like ice cream, only richer, thicker, and creamier. As I was looking at the menu of various flavors, a man in a white shirt caught my eye. I looked at him a little closer, and realized that it was Jose Garcias, the newest Iron Chef on Food Network! My first celebrity sighting on this trip! While he's not as famous as Bobby Flay or Mario Batali, I was completely thrilled to have seen this newest Iron Chef! I had to sneak a picture of him, of course!

After that little thrill of excitement, I decided to celebrate with a cup of gelato. No, I wasn't hungry, but you can't buy gelato in Louisville, so I got a small cup with 4 spoons so we could all trysome. I got a cup of pistachio gelato, and it was delish!

After that, we spent most of the afternoon walking around. We wanted to see the restaurant that Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer always eat at in Seinfeld episodes, so went to see it. They never actually ate inside here, but used this building as the restaurant setting:

Walking around in the neighborhood, we came upon St John the Divine Cathedral. It was really beautiful, so we went inside and walked around and admired it.

This table was an art exhibit inside the Cathedral. The sign out front invited you to come, sit, eat, and drink at the table. We all went and sat around the table, which had place settings for 12. As you looked at the table, it was as if you were actually eating and drinking because there were hands that appeared right in front of you... picking up silverware, drinking from the wine glass, cutting up food on your plate- there was a projector above the table that played this "movie" of the action at a dinner table. It was kind of weird, but kind of cool as well. You could just sit there and watch as the dishes on the table were changed to different types of food, bowls were moved around, and food was cut up on the plates. Neat concept!

After spending some time admiring all the beautiful stained glass windows, marveling at the intricately carved stone figures, and just being immersed in the complete grandiose of the Cathedral, we walked down the street to Central Park. From all that standing and walking for the past few hours, we decided that we should stop somewhere and get a glass of wine and take a load off. There was a tapas restaurant called Boqueria that Holly had read about and wanted to try. So we hopped on the subway and went to check it out.

As it was already 6:00, we decided to have a little snack to go along with our wine. Being a tapas restaurant (this means small plates), we wanted to try a few different things. We started off with a delicious goat cheese that came with some olives, raisin bread, and Quince jelly. Then we each picked one dish to order that we could all share. Holly chose the lamb meatballs, Jon chose blistered peppers with sea salt, Scott chose potatoes, and I chose salt cod fritters. Of course, I completely forgot to take pictures of most of this, but remembered half way through. Here are the meatballs, which were delicious:

That is the only picture I got, as the other dishes were so delicious that we just ate them right up.

Another item on Holly and Jon's "to do" list was to see Shakespeare in the Park. This is a traveling play, meaning that the cast moves around the park (Battery Park) for each scene, and the audience follows along. It's a neat idea... Scott and I saw King Lear last summer. The play was Much Ado about Nothing, and the cast's costumes were set to the 1940's fashion style. One scene was set as a masquerade, so they handed out masks for the audience to wear:

The play was great, and we all really enjoyed it!

After Shakespeare, we took the subway back to our end of town so we could change for our 10:30 dinner reservation. We went to Esca, a Mario Batali restaurant, and it was FABULOUS!

Here are a couple pictures from our dinner:

Holly: Peach Bellini

Jenn: Watermelon Cosmo

Holly and Jon had an appetizer of paper thin ahi tuna

Scott and I had pink snapper crudo (which means raw) for an appetizer.

Holly and I both had the gnocchi with roasted eggplant and parmesan. It was AMAZING!

Jon had squid ink spaghetti. I was skeptical of this dish until I took a bite of it, but it was SO GOOD! I have seen this dish made on Iron Chef before, so I'm glad he ordered it so we could all try it!

Scott had Artic Char fish. It was rich and delicious. What else could you expect though from a Mario Batali restaurant.

We had an awesome dinner, a great end to another awesome day in NYC!