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"Dessert"
I love chick flicks. Always have and always will. Call it the hopeless romantic in me. As an ode to them, I purposely left these next two NYC food entries for last. Let’s kick it off with a Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack classic.
Tina and I—along with Tina’s real sister Jen and her wannabe one Justine—planned dinner around dessert this time around. We gambled and decided to head to Serendipity on a Saturday night without reservations. Although it wasn’t the best waiting close to an hour for out table, it was totally worth the wait. Warning: This entry contains absurds amounts of chocolate. It is quite possible you could induce yourself in a sugar coma by just reading this.
Just like the movie, we sat on the second floor and immersed ourselves in cute and quirky decor. The tables to the right on the picture above are exactly where John and Kate sat in the movie and dropped that famous black glove that sealed their fate.
So we bartered our plane tickets on the street just so that we could order this. Just kidding. We went the more economical route and ordered the Frrrozen Hot Chocolate and the Forbidden Broadway Sundae.
The Forbidden Broadway Sundae is basically chocolate on chocolate on chocolate with layers of cream separating them. The base of the goblet is their Chocolate Blackout Cake which is then topped with ice cream. The ice cream is then topped with super rich hot fudge and then whipped cream which is finished with a drizzling of chocolate shavings. See, I wasn’t exaggerating.
Besides, embracing our inner hopeless romantics, this delectable drink was the whole reason why we wanted to visit Serendipity. The Frrrozen Hot Chocolate is probably what this joint is most known for. I guess the contradictory name which seems to leave people going “Wha?”, is easily explained as being something close to a chocolate milk shake/slushee. If you love chocolate, this one is for you. I even purchased two packs of powdered Frrrozen Hot Chocolate from the General Store to take home back to Vancouver for my family.
Because of the massive sizing portions in goblets, I think all the desserts at Serendipity are best shared with good company. Even between the four of us, we were still in a state of sugar comatose once we were done!
Serendipity is located at:
225 E 60th St.
New York, NY
Have a sweet tooth? Well Momofuku Milk Bar will be right up your alley. The Milk Bar is one of David Chang’s five establishments scattered across the New York. I was lucky enough to also visit the Noodle Bar (see review here).
This little hole in the wall is literally tucked in and camouflaged so well into the other East Village buildings that if you weren’t looking for it you could easily walk past it. On our first time visiting, Tina and I chose to share a slice of their famous Crack Pie and a jug of their Cereal Milk.
The name Crack Pie is probably an ode to how it’s addicting like crack. It’s not your ordinary pie. At first glance you’ll feel that it’s under cooked because it’s uber oooey-gooey. But let me tell you it is goooood. So much so, that people are willing to pay the outrageous $44 price tag for a whole pie. The contents of this highly addicting pie are so simple it sounds to good to be true—butter, cream, brown sugar, sugar, and corn flour. I’ve found a couple recipes online that I think I will have to try and make this myself one day.
Cereal lovers, this one’s for you. The Cereal Milk is quite literally what the name says it is. Imagine you’re eating a bowl of cereal and you get to the part where there are none left. Depending on your preference for cereal to milk ratio, you’re left with a approximately three gulps of delicious milk that the cereal has been swimming in. Now instead of three gulps, you get a whole jug! You can buy the jug ready to drink or if you would rather make it yourself later you can by a jug filled with all the ingredients you need. All you have to do is add in the milk!
On our last full day in NYC, Tina and I decided to return to the Milk Bar post our adventure to the Noodle Bar so we could indulge ourselves one last time and buy some goodies to bring home. The picture above is pretty self explanatory now that you know the story behind Cereal Milk. It’s Cereal Milk soft serve dipped in Frosted Flakes. I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of the cookies I purchased that day for souvenirs (my family devoured that before I could get the chance) but I’ll list my favourites for you below.
Compost Cookie Pretzels, Potato chips, coffee, oats, butterscotch, and chocolate chips
Cornflake Cookie Cornflakes, marshmallows, and chocolate chips
I might also attempt to make these myself one day as there are recipes online. Or they do ship internationally …Hmm tempting.
Momofuku Milk Bar is located at:
251 E 13th St
New York, NY
After a lovely meal at Finch’s Tea & Coffee House one afternoon (see review here), it was absolutely necessary for us to go get something sweet as a pre-class snack so we hit up Cartems Donuterie (Pop-up Shop). We’ve heard a lot about this little spot recently and decided that we needed to check it out! Boy, it was worth the trek.
Cartems makes their donuts fresh every morning and is open until they run out of donuts for the day. What makes them even better is that all their ingredients are sourced locally! They have staple donuts that they make almost every day but once in a while they get creative with some and have an interesting donut of the day.
1. The Green Tea & Mango Donut
This was their special creation of the day. And if you’re reading this Cartems, please make more of these! It was an interesting combination that was deeeeelicious. We both tried it and loved it. Pat then decided to include one more with the other five she brought home for her family.
2. The Classic
I firmly believe that the classic/plain flavours tell the full story. Bringing everything back to the basics if you will. The classic is anything but boring. As it says on their website, it’s nothing but straight goods. It’s a simple vanilla donut with vanilla bean glaze.
3. Triple Chocolate Threat
For all the chocolate lovers out there, this is for you. This baby doesn’t mess around. It’s a chocolate cake, with chocolate ganache, drizzled with little balls of chocolate. Drool.
4. The Carrot Cake
This one came out of left field. Carrot cake isn’t usually up there in favourite flavours, but this one ended up being Pat’s favourite! They embed carrots into the dough itself and glaze it with caramel. It’s finally topped with toasted oats. Would go great with a cup of coffee. Just sayin.
5. The Mexican Mole
I picked this one out of pure intrigue. Typically when people say chili and chocolate you don’t really imagine them together. But this worked. It had four kinds of chilis, cumin, coriander, star of anise, cinnamon and dark dark dark chocolate. Yum.
Say hi to the super friendly people at Cartems Donuterie! We’ll definitely be going back because we didn’t get to try their Earl Grey Donut that they were unfortunately out of for the day we went (stay tuned for review once we get our hands on it).
Cartems Donuterie (Pop-up Shop) is located at:
408 Carrall St
Vancouver, BC
www.cartems.com
Last Friday we had a late night frozen yogurt craving, so we looked up Menchie’s hours and realized we could make it right before they closed at 11pm. For those of you who haven’t heard of Menchie’s yet, it’s a self-serve frozen yogurt franchise that started in Los Angeles by the founding couple’s mutual love for frozen yogurt (awww!). To date they have 150 locations to boast and they’ve just opened one on Cambie in Vancouver. When we got there, we were taken away by how amazing the setup and atmosphere were! Colours were bright and inviting, and the seating area was laid out with simple pieces. The staff took the time to show us the ropes and encouraged us to sample the flavours. In my case, mine were WAY too big to be considered samples (of course).
Tina and I tried out the Cake Batter and Red Velvet Cake flavours and fell in love (: the best part was when we realized we could swirl the two together thanks to their middle levers. Freaking amazing. As for toppings, we had already gone through the list on their site to make sure they had mochi. They had a ton of stuff – an assortment of crushed candy and chocolate, chopped nuts, fresh fruit, syrups, and other yummy add-ons (full list here). Our personal favourites were the cheesecake bits and lychee boba! If you’ve never tried boba, take it from Wes: “Oh my god it’s exploding in my mouth” – yes a total TWSS moment.
The weekend must have been nuts for them because they were giving out free frozen yogurt between 12-5pm and other goodies throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday. Menchie’s even has this rewards program called my smileage where you can accumulate smiles for every $1 you spend, and for 50 smiles you get a $5 credit to use. If you have an account, they automatically give you 25 smiles for signing up and $5 for your birthday (it’s good until 2 weeks after)!
Overall, Menchie’s has a refreshing take on the frozen yogurt world. Beats the others – ex. Qoola and Scoop – by a mile! We have yet to sample their other flavours but from what we experienced, everything tasted awesome and it will be a repeat food adventure in the future. But probably a bit earlier next time to lessen the late-night calorie intake.
Menchie’s is located at:
2315 Cambie St.
Vancouver, BC
www.menchies.com
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