Wonderful MLK weekend

This weekend I was lucky enough to have friends in town so I didn't get to do any cooking or baking (sad), but I did get to eat lots of yummy food.  Over the course of the weekend we hit Fatty Crab UWS, Vanessa's Dumplings in Chinatown, Craftbar and Momofuku Milk Bar.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to take pictures of most of it and the pictures I did take didn't do the food justice.  Oh well.  

Among the tastiest things we ate this weekend were: 

• Our old standbys at Fatty Crab (the pork belly and watermelon pickle salad, wonton mee, and steamed buns with pork) and a new addition - the lamb shoulder roti, although they need to give you more bread to sop up the lamb juices with;
• The pork and chive fried dumplings from Vanessa's Dumplings;
• The sesame pancake with roast pork from Vanessa's Dumplings;
• The cornflake-chocolate chip marshmallow cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar (pictured above); and
  
• The Spanish Octopus with fingerling potatoes and lemon puree at Craftbar - which might actually be the most tender octopus I have ever eaten.
  

More after the jump!

The food at Craftbar was all very good, but nothing we ate (aside from my octopus appetizer) was THAT exciting.  I think that is one of the problems with American food for me.  No matter how well-prepared it is, I rarely find it that exciting.  We also tried the white anchovy bruschetta, the clam chowder, the porchetta (delicious and very moist) , the veal ricotta meatballs (a little salty), and the pekin duck confit (the duck was very good, but the hedgehog mushrooms served with it were cold and rather unappetizing in texture - they were strangely hard).  Everything we tried was good - very solid, well-executed food - but I'm not sure that I would make the trek down from the UWS again.  That isn't to say that it wasn't worth going to.  The food is very good, and you will have an enjoyable meal.  If you were in the neighborhood I would definitely recommend stopping by.  But for me there is just so much amazing food to be had in NYC that it is hard to return for more solid, well-executed food when you could instead try new and exciting things, or return to old favorites.

We also wandered through the Union Square Greenmarket.  While the Greenmarket is nowhere near as exciting in January as it is in September, there were still some amazing mushrooms, apples, and root vegetables to have.  We sampled some really good daikon radishes, watermelon radishes, and Rick's Pick's Smokra.  I also bought just under a pound of beautiful oyster mushrooms that I can't wait to cook.  While I didn't get any particularly great pictures of the food we ate this weekend, I did take some nice pictures at the Greenmarket.  Enjoy!