As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my post about Eataly, we had some amazing food experiences on a trip to the mainland earlier this year. One wonderful day was spent experiencing all things food related (well, not ALL, but many) in Greenwich Village, New York.
This was an organized food tour, led by an amazing, funny, well-informed guide. We met up with our friends from Maui and about 8 others at Murray's Cheese Shop on Bleecker St. in The Village. Waters were distributed and we were quickly on our way. First stop-Pizza!
I'm sure there is a big debate whether this is "the Best of New York" but it was a very simple and delicious slice of pizza-nothing too fancy-thin crust, sauce, cheese, salt.
How good does that look? Not as good as it looked in person or as it tasted! At each stop on the tour, our guide gave us the history of the place, the food, the architecture, and the area. So in addition to feeding our stomachs, we got to feed our minds too. After a leisurely stop to eat a slice, look around inside and hear about Joe's we were off to our next stop.
At O. and Co. we tasted several olive oils as well as honey. I love the beautiful cans the oil comes in.
And, I was very taken with this display!
Some of the streets in the Village are just full of little restaurants and historic buildings. We didn't go in all of them of course, but we were fortunate to get a bit of history of the places we went by like Little Havana...
or Pó, Mario Batali's first endeavor in NY and home to the first off-off Broadway theater.
Time for more food to nosh on! Back to Murray's for cheese and olives. I could have spent the whole day in there looking at all the cheeses and other goodies!
At Faicco's Italian Specialties shop, we were treated to the most wonderful arancini (rice balls).
And they had cases full of house-made sausages. Mmmmm.
On the tour, there is always one sit down course about half way through. You can get a glass of wine with the course and use the facilities, both most appreciated! Our stop was at Centro Vinoteca, an Italian restaurant and wine bar. We had a nice mushroom risotto (and glass of wine).
After our stop, we walked around several blocks and different areas of the residential portion of The Village. Historical buildings were pointed out, architecture discussed, and famous landmarks identified. Recognize this?
I really enjoyed our stroll through the charming side streets.
As we headed back to the more commercial streets, we passed many small and large restaurants and food shops. I never realized what a food-centric area this was!
To round out our tour (and ourselves!) we enjoyed a divine chocolate chip cookie from Milk and Cookies.
Boy did it smell good in there.
I was tempted to buy the cookbook but knew that would be trouble! Here's why:
The tour was just about three hours in length and thank goodness we did a lot of walking! I would definitely recommend this to anyone visiting NY who would like to experience a neighborhood close up through its food, restaurants and shops.
Oh, that landmark building? The fascade of the building used in the TV show "Friends".
