On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered in Union Square to participate in a huge pillow fight on INTERNATIONAL PILLOW FIGHT DAY! Chris and I were on our way to lunch, but stopped by to watch the shenanigans:

Justin and I took a lunch break in Union Square one afternoon because we read online that the Wafels and Dinges truck was set up by Trader Joe’s for the day (they change locations on a weekly basis). I’m really into food that comes out of a truck (DessertTruck, Chicken and Rice, bulgogi, smoothies, etc), and I’ve been meaning to check out the Wafels and Dinges truck for a while. It’s owned by Belgians that claim to have REAL wafels. [sic] I’m usually out of town on the weekdays for work, but luckily, I was in town and the Wafels and Dinges truck was close enough for me to stop by. Justin and I went down to 14th and 3rd and ordered from the truck:

I decided to order the Cinnamon liege:

Everything is pre-made (I didn’t see much batter lying around) and they take the liege or the waffle and heat it up using the wafflemaker. The cinnamon liege was chewy and …slightly soggy. Neither of us were fans.

Justin was contemplating what to order (there’s actually not that much on the menu) but we couldn’t decide what toppings to order. You can get the waffle with one topping, three toppings, or a combination of ALL of the toppings (I think the combination of all of the toppings costs around $7.50). We had to order the waffle with ALL OF THE TOPPINGS KNOWN TO MAN (duh!):

Okay, I exaggerated…just every topping known to the Wafels and Dinges truck. Dinges, if you were wondering, are the toppings you can add to your waffle/liege. Our waffle had strawberries, dulce de leche, chocolate fudge, butterscotch, whipped cream, AND powdered sugar. The chocolate fudge was my favorite - it reminded me of the cold fudge Jarlings Custard Cup serves (something I’d have EVERY summer). Other than the cold fudge, the waffle wasn’t very crispy and it was kind of stale.

After we ordered, a older Russian woman came by and asked the owner how much the waffles were. She decided to order a liege because it’s $1 cheaper, but after the owner told her it was still $4, she walked away and the owner said he’d sell it to her for $1!! WTF we just paid $4 for ours!! I didn’t know it was negotiable!!

How to get to Wafels and Dinges:

Wafels and Dinges - changes on a weekly basis, so check their website!

Last night, Chris and I went to my holiday party at Tavern on the Green. We ate a lot of shrimp cocktail…seriously. Here’s a picture outside the restaurant:

I asked this guy to take a picture for us in front of the sign and that’s all we got. I don’t think he had any previous experience with a digital camera because he kept moving the camera around and tried to figure out what was going on.

After the holiday party, Chris and I walked to Lincoln Center to see the Christmas tree:

That area of the upper west side is really beautiful (around 66th and Broadway) and there are lots of trees that are wrapped in white lights. It’s not really crowded, either (well, unless there’s a show at Lincoln Center).

I think the tree’s even more beautiful than the one in Rockefeller:

I’m headed to North Carolina on Saturday for Christmas…and to play my brand new Wii! Happy holidays!

After hearing great reviews about the Little Owl, a small restaurant in the West Village that sits below the apartment used in Friends, Chris and I decided to check it out. Does this place look familiar?:

I read that you can have the perfect meal at The Little Owl; the host is attentive and gracious, the chefs pay attention to detail, and the menu options are creative and delicious (what’s not to love?). I also read that getting a table at the restaurant is hard to do - the restaurant only seats 28 people and online reservation systems like opentable.com don’t always have availability. Chris and I decided to try The Little Owl for brunch one Sunday afternoon and were surprised that the restaurant was practically empty - around 12PM - PRIME Sunday brunch time! We were seated right away (there were only 3 or 4 couples in the restaurant) and were able to get a look at the menu right away.

After glancing at the menu, we realized that there weren’t that many options for brunch. Maybe everything on the menu was so great that they only needed a couple things anyway, right? I decided to order the corn pancakes with berries and clear syrup and Chris opted for the hamburger. After the waitress painstakingly asked how Chris wanted the burger to be prepared, she went off to the kitchen and put in our orders. Five minutes later, she came back and declared that she forgot the kitchen had run out of beef. Seriously?! Did the restaurant really run out of one of the FIVE options for brunch? We were taken by surprise but looked at the menu again and decided to go for the eggs Benedict with greens.

My corn pancakes:

The corn pancakes tasted nothing more than corn bread with some syrup. It wasn’t even MOIST cornbread - it was dry and the corn bits in the pancake were too sweet. I read online comments on how great the clear syrup was, but there was a dead fly in my syrup, so…I don’t see what’s so special about clear syrup. The consistency of the pancakes was too grainy because there wasn’t enough milk or egg whites in the pancake mix, leaving much to be desired.

Chris ordered the eggs Benedict with greens:

After one initial bite of the greens, we knew that we shouldn’t have ordered the dish. When greens are cooked, it’s understandable that they should change color….but these greens were brown! We ended up sending the dish back because the greens tasted like they were a week old!

To top off our disastrous meal at The Little Owl, the air conditioners were loud (there were THREE of them) and it was still uncomfortably warm in the restaurant. When leaving the restaurant to grab burgers at the Corner Bistro, we overheard a girl ordering iced tea, only to be turned down because the restaurant ran out of iced tea.

How to get to The Little Owl:

The Little Owl
90 Bedford St between Barrow and Grove
New York, NY 10014
212-741-4695

Josh wanted to see Manhattan’s skyline from Brooklyn, so I took him over to Brooklyn (gasp!) to get a view of the city. While we were over there, we stopped by the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory for some touristy ice cream. We saw Rachel Ray feature The Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory on her $40/day show because of their all natural ingredients (and it’s supposed to be cheap):

The line was really long, but we figured if Rachel Ray recommended it, it had to be YUM-OH, right? We ended up waiting in line for 30 minutes - just to freaking get inside! The place is really old fashioned and has only five or six flavors, but apparently the vanilla content is really high, so we decided to go with vanilla and chocolate chocolate chip. Our guy scooping up our ice cream:

And a shot of our ice cream:

The ice cream was good, but it tasted JUST LIKE BREYERs! Was it worth waiting for? Probably not. Was it worth $6? No, I don’t think so. It was rich and creamy, but I didn’t taste any difference between the vanilla they produced and the vanilla that comes out of the supermarket. Rachel Ray, what were you thinking?

How to get to Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory:

Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory
1 Water Street
Brooklyn, NY 11230
718-246-3963