My friend Niki and I went on a creative date the other night. Niki and I have known each other forever: we went to the same elementary school, were constantly mistaken for twins, and our parents are very good friends. Sometimes life gets in the way, but with old friends, you always come back to each other.
At Niki’s suggestion, we met at Kalustyan’s, an amazing gourmet grocery store in the heart of “Curry Hill” (a strip on Lexington filled with Indian markets and restaurants),
I get serious crazy eyes when I walk in here. There are so many spices, teas, jellies, beans… all sorts of really cool edible goodies.
Upstairs, they have a little café where they make a small variety of Indian and Middle Eastern dishes.
Lots of great vegetarian food to choose from!
The man behind the counter wanted to be sure we tried everything, which was all delicious. We both ordered a pita stuffed with mujaddara, a lentil and caramelized onion dish.
Did I mention our sandwich was huge? And for $5.99, it’s a great dinner you can make a lunch out of, too!
We walked down to Madison Square Park where Niki turned me on to another really cool thing: you can skip the line at Shake Shack (a burger chain here notorious for extremely long waits), order a bottle of wine, and drink it in the park. Yes, really!
They can’t give you the bottle, but they’ll pour it out for you into 16 oz cups and then give you classy little plastic wine glasses.
Very cool.