Cloudy with a chance of ice cream sandwiches

For Melissa's birthday, we went down to the Lower East Side to The Meatball Shop - the place everyone's been raving about but we've never been able to get into due to the 2+ hour wait times.
Luckily, 5 of Melissa's closest friends were able to join her on Stanton Street to mark up our menus and create all kinds of meatball concoctions.

Now, the fun part of The Meatball Shop is the ability to customize your meal.  You can order a beef meatball slider with tomato sauce, alongside a pork meatball with parmesan cream.  Or a bowl of meatballs covered in sauce.  Or a meatball hero. Then there's the side dishes.  Salads, and vegetables, and pasta, served over or under your meatballs.  There are so many decisions to make with your meal, you could spend hundreds of visits trying each combination once.  The menus are printed on a dry erase sheet, and you X off your selection with black marker.  By the time I ordered, I had changed my mind so many times that my index finger had turned black.

One would assume that because dinner was so hard to order, dessert would be easy.  Not the case.  Dessert was JUST as tricky.  The Meatball Shop lets you customize your ice cream sandwich by selecting two cookies, either the same or different flavors, with a choice of chocolate chip, peanut butter, brownie, ginger snap and coconut macaroon.  Then you pick the ice cream, vanilla, chocolate, mint, and the special flavor of the day black raspberry.

Our group mixed it all up, and our selections ranged across the entire dessert menu.  I ordered a brownie cookie, chocolate chip cookie, and vanilla ice cream in the middle.  I know, I know - what chocoholic orders vanilla?  But I was so full from the meatballs that there was no room left for dessert.  I figured if I ordered something I didn't like, I wouldn't eat it all.  (PS - special thanks to guest stars of the night, Melissa, Ariel, Tristan, Annabel and Ryan for letting me gather the sandwiches for a picture before digging in!)

The brownie cookie was great, although I couldn't figure out at first which was which because the chocolate chip cookie was a dark shade of brown.  The brownie cookie was soft and had large chocolate chips that were melting slightly from the warmth of the cookie, into the ice cream.  The scoop of ice cream was large and couldn't be eaten as a sandwich, so most of us ate the cookies, dipping them into the ice cream as it melted into our bowls.  The chocolate chip cookie was harder than the brownie, and I didn't enjoy it as much.  The vanilla ice cream was a nice dip for the cookies, moistening them just the right among to make them soft and delicious!  Chocolate was the preferred flavor throughout the group, however Ryan raved about the black raspberry, and asked if it was possible to purchase a pint to go (it wasn't.)  The ice cream sandwiches are $4 each, which was consistent with the reasonable prices for the meatballs ($3 per slider, $7 for the bowl of meatballs, and $4 for side dishes).

The Meatball Shop is open Sunday - Wednesday from 12 - 2am, and Thursday - Saturday from 12 - 4am.   It's located at 84 Stanton Street, across from Arlene's Grocery.
http://www.themeatballshop.com/

One spot on the Jersey Shore you won't find Ron Ron Juice or a Snookie

Tasti D-Lite has been around since 1987.  You can hardly walk down a NYC street without coming across a store selling this ice cream alternative in one of their 100+ flavors.  Tasti has been a personal favorite of ours for years, and despite the recent shift of popularity to frozen yogurt, we continue to take Tasti breaks and welcome their new flavors (German Chocolate Cake and Oreo's and Cream are our favorites.)

Tasti D-Lite's are often sold as franchises, and occupy small shops that can only handle 4 flavors at a time, 2 of which are always vanilla and chocolate (or chocolate pudding.)  There are only a few Tasti's that are large enough to sit in to enjoy your ice cream on a hot day.  Columbus Circle, their NY flagship, is probably the biggest one, and they also allow you to make your own flavor if you don't like what they have 'on tap' that day.  The Murray Hill 3rd and 30th location is quite large as well, with a giant selection of bulk candy and outdoor seating.

The problem occurs once you leave Manhattan.  Tasti's are extremely hard to come by!  There are only two in Brooklyn (at least 2 that I know of have closed down, or were bought over by The Lite Choice), and none in any of the other boroughs.  On a nice summer day, sometimes all you want is a light ice cream cone to eat at the beach.  This weekend I went to Long Branch, NJ over the weekend with guest stars Melissa and Christina. After hours on the ferry and in the sun, we needed a snack.  But what can you eat when it's 100 degrees on the beach?  As we walked toward the 7-11, in front of us arose the most beautiful site I've ever seen in Jersey (after Snookster's pouf, of course.)  A giant, stand-alone Tasti D-Lite shop!

It was the best find ever - with giant ice creams on the store and 4 benches in front to sit and enjoy your ice cream.  We went inside to find that this particular Tasti also served ices and a vast array of hard ice cream.  They had 6 flavors on tap to choose from, and we were quite excited.  Even though Tasti tastes the same no matter where you go, to be able to eat it at an actual Tasti restaurant was an extra special treat!  Why they don't open more of these ice cream shops is beyond me - perhaps it's a business venture for the Cjaps in the future!

 Next time you're down the shore, make sure to stop by this extra special Tasti, located at 588 Ocean Avenue.  Or, if you're afraid of getting attacked by the fake tans, you can visit any one of the 23 remaining shops in NYC.

The Best Chocolate Cake...on Spring Street. Maybe.

We've been reading about this Chocolate Cake place that opened up in Nolita, touting that they have the 'Best Chocolate Cake in the World'; going so far as to uncreatively name their shop exactly that - 'The Best Chocolate Cake in the World.'

We had been avoiding stopping in, mainly because any place that claims to be the best at anything usually isn't, and we'd been reading mixed reviews about the $6.50 a slice dessert.   The shop comes to NY all the way from Brazil, where Portugese Chef Carlos Bras Lopes established the chain, duly titled 'O Melhor Bolo de Chocolate de Mundo.'

Now, I've been to Brazil and can say from first-hand experience that they have some damn good chocolate.  I don't know what the South American country does so different from the US, but I could have died happy eating half of the desserts I tried in Rio.  I figured, if the chocolate in Brazil is so amazing, how bad could this cake that claims to be the best be?!

We stopped into the store in Nolita, located at 55 Spring Street.  I'm going to rephrase that.  We stopped into the store in Soho.  Since I'm not sure what Nolita actually stands for, and I was two blocks from the Apple 'Soho' location, I'm going to assume that's where I was.  It was a tiny store that I had unknowingly passed by multiple times in the past few weeks.  Inside, there was enough room for 3 small tables, 2 seats each.  All tables were being used when we got there, so we had to take our $800 piece of cake and bring it to the bench outside.  Already I wasn't thrilled with the set-up.  I wonder if the Lisbon or Brazil locations had room for people to actually eat the cake they just sold their first born to pay for.

Despite our hesitations, we were there, so we had to weigh in our opinion.  There were 2 choices - the semisweet contained 55% cocoa, and the bittersweet had 70%.  The woman behind the counter told us the semisweet version was favored highly, so we  opted for that one.  She cut a tiny sliver of cake (at least I would have no guilt about eating this since I could barely see it on the plate), sadly emptied my wallet, and brought the cake to the exiled bench in Guam.

The cake contains Belgian chocolate mousse, meringue, and  chocolate ganache.  It looked thin and - for lack of a better word, wimpy, on the plate, with the top layer of chocolate peeling off.  Cjap and guest star of the day Melissa stuck our forks in and tasted it.

To be fair, the chocolate was good.  It was soft and smooth, and the mixture of mousse, meringue and ganache blended nicely.  Was it a bad cake?  No.  Was it a good cake?  I'll be generous and say fine.  Was it the BEST chocolate cake in the world?  Not even close.  I might have preferred Entermann's to this.  My expectations had been high, to no fault of my own - the store itself told me to prepare to be blown away.  The best part of my experience was that they gave me a free glass of ice water, which I think I enjoyed more than the cake.  2.3 bites each and we were finished.  Not worth $6.50.  Not worth the calories.  Not worth a trip to Nolita/Soho/whatever new name the neighborhood might take on this week.  Even worse was the fact that since we had to sit on the bench in front, all the people passing by that stopped to call out that they spotted 'The Best Chocolate Cake in the World', were irritating since we had no choice but to sit directly in front of the sign, and couldn't enjoy our microscopic overpriced chocolate in peace.

Their website is currently under construction; if you try to find it through search you'll be directed to their Portugese site.  So unless you can translate Portugese, you're stuck going to the actual store to see for yourself.  Or if you are my Brazilian friend Thiago, kindly send me actual Brazilian chocolate.  If you care to waste some money and put it to the test, go for it, but this place is not getting our endorsement.!

My Big Fat Greek Cookie

After riding 30 miles in the scorching heat in Tour de Queens, we decided we needed to refuel. Forget energy bars- we were on the prowl to try a new treat. After we finished a substantial Turkish vegetarian dinner at Mundo Café, in Astoria, we were instantly drawn into Omonia Café.

This European bakery shop is filled with varieties of pastries, cakes, cookies, homemade truffles, and Greek specialties. When we walked through the door, we were taken aback by the many varieties of sweets. We couldn’t decide which to try first! We knew anything we tried couldn't be bad since this was the bakery that made the cake for My Big Fat Greek Wedding!  We were smitten by the rainbow cookies - you may remember from an earlier posting how we ran into Parisi bakery when we spotted a rainbow cookie cupcake).

These were no ordinary rainbow cookies- they looked thicker, chocolatier, and more colorful then the ordinary kind.  Since we had eaten dinner, we only ordered two cookies- just for a taste. Cjaps almost had a mini stroke when we heard the price-$2.73 for 2 cookies (fyi- these a sold by the pound- not sure how much per pound but we are guessing a lot). When we were given the bag and felt how heavy they cookies were, we felt a twinge of relief. Each cookie is really the size of 2 (oops - honest but well-appreciated mistake!)

The cookies were delicious- they were very cake-like yet had the perfect consistency, and a generous helping of marzipan in between each rainbow-filled layer.  The chocolate wrapped around, with sprinkles on top really brought the cookie together. It was very satisfying and well worth the price.

Omonia Café serves a variety of specialty coffees and drinks. There is large sit-down area to enjoy patisseries as well as a meal. 

Omonia is located in Astoria at 32-20 Broadway.  Upon doing some research, we discovered they have a second location in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn on 76th street and 3rd Avenue.  Good thing I learned this now, after living there for 3 years!
www.omoniacafe.com

V is for Vegan, that's good enough to eat

Now that our blog has reached 100 hits (thanks everyone for reading!), we have decided to incorporate new places (hopefully before other people get to them), and some of our old favorites into the mix so we can share the chocolatey knowledge.  On the way to explore the new Trader Joe's last night (which, by the way - is amazing! Never going to Union Square again!), I decided to walk down 9th Avenue and pop in to an old favorite, known for their flavored marshmallows.  On the way down, I passed Cocoa V, a vegan (and kosher) bakery, dessert and wine bar opened by Pamela  Blackwell of Blossom fame (at least famous among the vegan audience).  The 'chocolate boutique' is relatively new, having just opened in November 2009.  Pam's mission was to educate chocolate lovers about animal cruelty, and show them that dessert can taste just as good, even without using animal parts. Who would ever guess!

Now, as I mentioned, all of the desserts are vegan.  The chocolate is made with organic cocoa, cocoa butter, soy lecithin and sugar or agave syrup.   They use cocoa beans from Dominican Republic, then process them in Switzerland, and are then shipped over to the states where all products are made right in their kitchen down in Chelsea.  This of course makes them more appealing, because we only like things that aren't from America :)

Needless to say, I didn't make it to my marshmallow place (which WILL be featured at a later time and date, promise.)  I went in to the bakery section and found it hard to choose between the chocolate covered edamame, the dark chocolate bark, and the assortment of baked goods.  Of course, I opted for the brownie, because I'm always on the hunt for THE best brownie.  We've found our best cookie already, the Cjaps agree is Levain.  To date, our favorite brownie is the recently reviewed Astor Bakery brownie. 

Now whether you're an animal lover or have moose heads hanging on your wall, you'll agree on one thing - you can't tell the difference when you eat the brownie.  It's about the size of your palm, and half is covered in powder - we can only guess that's for decoration, as it didn't alter the taste in any way.  The brownie was fudgy, but not overly sweet since it was made with agave instead of sugar.  There were chocolate chips spread throughout, although it wouldn't have disappointed me if there were just a few more.  The Cjaps and guest chocolatier of the day Matilda all agreed that it wasn't their favorite, but it was pretty good.  The more bites we took, the better it got.  It wasn't overwhelming, and the 3 girls were easily able to share it.  And since it's vegan, we can justify by saying it's good for the animals. We saved a cow. And maybe a chicken. At least the egg.  I would definitely come back to Cocoa V for their wine/dessert pairings.  What's better than alcohol and chocolate!  The only down side is it's a little bit expensive - the brownie was only $3, but the chocolates are around $7-$10 for the bark.  But, this is NY, so that isn't too shocking considering it's vegan and contains all natural ingredients.

Cocoa V is located at 174 9th Avenue near W 21st Street.
www.cocoav.com

3 Spoons in the Fountain

On the 4th of July, the Cjaps decided there would be no better place to celebrate their nation's independence  than Philly, where it all began.

Of course, now that we use this blog as an excuse to eat more candy, we did some research on what the best chocolate place was in Philly.  Caryn remembered a special feature on amazing desserts around the US on the Food Network a while back, and knew there was a brownie sundae in Philly that was on the top 10 list.  It turned out it was at Franklin Fountain, located right by the water where there was a special festival for the 4^th of July.  It fit in perfectly with our plans, so we set off.

Of course, as soon as we got off the train, we see this:


It was tempting, with their Zagat’s reviews and ‘Best of’ articles adorning the walls.  But we held steady and trooped on, down Chestnut street, all the way down to 116 Market Street, right near Penn Landing.



We knew we’d arrived when we saw a line out the door and down the block.  We watched as people came out of the store holding their ice creams served in glass sundae dishes, spoons in hand and smiles on their faces.  When we got closer and looked inside, we saw that it was decorated like an old-fashioned ice cream parlor.  There were fountain machines, and the employees all dressed like the year was 1804 and we were in Amish country, and there were hats on pegs on the wall so you, too, could look like you were in the 19^th century.  Or Amish.  Or an annoying tourist.

All of the ice cream is homemade.  The milk and cream come from Berks and Lancaster Counties.  An exciting bit of information for Lori was that the chocolate is sent over from Wilbur’s chocolate factory, a small shop near Lancaster, Pennsylvania her parents took her to many times throughout her childhood, at the early stages of the chocolate obsession.  There were many flavors to choose from, and some really cool sundae combinations that incorporated anything from pretzel rods to ladyfingers, but the Cjaps were here for one thing and one thing only – the brownie sundae.

Called the ‘Mt. Vesuvius’, it contained a heap of vanilla ice cream ‘erupting’ with chocolate brownie pieces, ‘cascading’ with hot fudge and ‘blanketed’ in malt powder.  Topped off with whipped cream, which served as the mountain’s ‘smoke signal.’  We paid for the sundae ($10 – a bit excessive, but we had to do it), tried on our funny top hats to take some tourist shots, and brought our sundae to the outdoor seating area for the taste test.  The Cjaps and honorary guest Mike, who generously agreed to share the sundae so the Cjaps didn’t complain they ate too much the rest of the afternoon, dug in to the sundae.
My first impression was how distinguishable the home made ice cream was.  Especially after the recent trend towards frozen yogurt, actual ice cream is thicker, and in each spoonful we were able to see specks from the actual vanilla beans the ice cream was made from.  The brownies were not too hard or soft, but the ice cream absorbed into them to make them just the right consistency.  Our only complaint was that the ice cream wasn’t proportionate – Caryn didn’t think there was enough hot fudge, while Lori didn’t think there were enough brownies – until they put two and two together and realized it hadn’t been placed properly and they weren’t smart enough to turn the bowl around.  It was a great amount; the Cjaps were full, and of course Mike wanted to go back inside to get a root beer float (he opted for a Philly Cheesesteak instead).


Franklin Fountain (www.franklinfountain.com/icecream) was worth going to for an old-fashioned experience, where you can eat the way Ben Franklin did.  The owners will be opening an old-fashioned candy store in October, which the Cjaps promised they would come back to for the opening to blog about. Stay tuned!

A Trifle by any other name wouldn't taste as Sweet..

You may be wondering, "what is trifle," and our response is, we have no idea but whatever it is, its amazing! Imagine, you are in the process of making chocolate chip cookies, as the cookie dough is made, you decide, screw this, and get a bowl, dump in the cookie dough, add some whipped cream, and throw some butterscotch into a 12 oz cup- and you have Chocolate Cookie Dough Trifle with Butterscotch pudding from Sugar Sweet Sunshine($4). This creation may not look or sound overly appealing, but it tastes like a cookie dough dream. After taking a spoon, we were both in awe- cookie dough bliss in a cup!! Sometimes an unbaked cookie enhanced with some whipped cream and butterscotch is just what a girl needs-baked cookies are so 2009!

The mixture works so well together and is not sickeningly sweet as one may think. Although we were skeptical about the butterscotch, we found it to be a great addition to this treat. It complemented the mixture and was not overpowering.
We really loved this mixture, however we advise splitting this among several people- Sugar Sweet Sunshine serves this in a generous 12 oz cup. If you have any dream of fitting into your jeans after consuming this, make sure to split it!

In addition to Cookie Dough Trifle, Sugar Sweet Sunshine serves various cupcakes which are tasty ($1.50) and other wonderful pudding creations such as the Chocolate Bomb ( believe it or not, this looked like to much chocolate for us), Strawberry Lemon Trifle & Pumpkin Eggnog Pudding (seasonal), cookies, brownies and cheesecake cupcakes.

If you are in LES and have a sweet craving, check this place out!
Sugar Sweet Sunshine
www.sugarsweetsunshine.com
126 Rivington St, New York NY10002 (Btwn Essex & Norfolk St)