Dancing Taste Buds – Delancey

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On a Saturday night, after a long hard run, I wanted pizza. The Black Knight had never been to Delancey’s, which some say, is the best pizza place in town. Well, on a Saturday night at 6:30, we were going to find out.

delancey - spicy salumi pizza

spicy salumi pizza – flavorful with fresh ingredients, but the magic of this pizza is the crust which has a great chewy consistency throughout. IT’s chewy and crunchy, but not so chewy to make your jaw tired and still a little fluffy in the middle. The pillows of fresh mozzarella only highlight the textures of the pizza. The char bubbles on the crust are not my cup of tea, but most people says it adds the bitter dimension and increased texture.

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Excited for Espresso – Starbucks Roastery

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The first Starbucks is a tourist attraction and this new bean to cup roaster is going to be their next stop. While there are quite a few other bean to cup roasteries, like Vivace, Ladro, and Stumptown, none of them turn the art of roasting beans into a spectacle. And this is exactly what the Starbucks Roastery is – grand spectacle. Like the Cirque du Soleil of coffee and worth the time spent watching and admiring.

I’ve been on roaster tours in Hawaii, but none have the copper, the library, or the wiz bang of Starbucks. Starbucks is also roasting beans on a massive scale, so their equipment is twice as large and twice as shiny for display. Of course you have to try the coffee while you’re here, along with the pastries, and to really make an event out of it, stay for Serious Pie pizza. Even if your palette isn’t sensitive enough to tell the difference between the different beans, you can still enjoy the experience here in learning about how beans are roasted and partaking in the coffee ritual.

If you’re a coffee connoisseur, they offer a brew flight and a bean flight. However, unless you can drink 32 oz. of coffee in a sitting, you might want to share with a friend.

starbucks roastery - the line

expect to wait about 45 minutes to order your coffee; skip the line if you just want to walk around the roastery, go to the store, or go to serious pie

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Setting a High Bar – Bar Cotto

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Dining with Nutkin and the She-Nutkin, we decided to try Bar Cotto, yet another Ethan Stowell restaurant. This one is a pizza and salumeria (cured meats) restaurant. It’s located right next to his other restaurant, Olives and Anchovies, and on a Thursday night was rather empty.  As this is a pizza and salumi restaurant, we ordered exactly that:

The salumi plate:
– Spicy coppa: flavorful with a hint of fire, the milder version of a sopresetta
– Petit Jesu: a hunk of cured meat that’s the size of the baby Jesus, delicious and hard to find in most places!!!
– Mangalitsa Lardo: back fat, and I’m not kidding.  It melts between your fingertips, but it’s sliced so thinly that you won’t find it too rich
– Torta Frittas – little pillows of fried pizza dough crust, perfect for wrapping for stuffing your cured meats in.  For 3 cured meats, you’ll need two orders of these. I’m not sure if they have bread to go with the salumis… Continue reading »