After traveling for 20+ hours, it was time to get situated back into my old stomping grounds. One of my fantastic interns was leaving so we took her out for her last lunch. There’s this wonderful little Italian place that’s about a block from my office called Terra Winebar – the wine is good, the food is fresh and perfectly portioned, and the specials are fantastic. Below is some prosecco and fresh gnocchi in parmesan sauce, truffle oil, & mushrooms.

Since my roommate and I had some catching up to do, we celebrated our reunion that weekend at brunch at one of my bucket list restaurants – Cornerstone Cafe. We shared a pitcher of sangria and basically ate like kings (eggs benedict, blueberry pancakes, baked eggs, with toast and potatoes are pictured below!)

My best friend also managed to score me some tickets to a Yankees vs. Red Sox Game (another thing to cross off the bucket list), but probably one of the biggest highlights was the garlic cheese fries that we had for dinner. YUM.

Which was later followed a couple of days later by taking her to Umami Burger and Big Gay Ice Cream.

 

Continuing to use my friends as an excuse to cross things off of my NYC restaurant bucket list, I visited Rogue & Canon to try some of their signature cocktails and peanut butter burger. Definitely made my list of top 10 burgers – the crispy pork belly on top really made it extra delicious.

And because I was in too much of a food coma that night, I ended up getting one of my favorites for lunch – soup dumplings from Joe’s Ginger.

And later that weekend I was in the Rutgers area, so I had to have a Fat Sandwich. It had really been too long (and that’s the reason I’m going to go with for eating something a sandwich that had bacon, mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, french fries, cheese steak, and honey mustard).

Oh, and I also had a reunion with my roommate from Paris over some of the fantastic hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies at City Bakery. I haven’t been in over a year (still mad I missed the Hot Chocolate Festival this year) and their hot chocolate is my fave!

And then another one of my interns treated us with a pretzel & beer cupcake from Prohibition.

 

Wow. Writing this just made me realize how much I use reuniting with friends as an excuse to eat some really sinful, but oh so tasty treats.

Anyone wanna meet up (and eat up?!) – I have lots more to cross off on my NYC Bucke(a)t list!