A Healthy Foodie's New York Dining Adventures

Notes from a five-day visit to a culinary wonderland:
TOP MEAL was at the marvelous Le Bernardin in midtown. The restaurant is renowned as one of the best seafood-oriented restaurants in the world, and it didn't disappoint. (We had been only once before, for lunch a few years ago.) As fine as the food was, by the way, the wine that I had with my meal was even more memorable. Photos show first course (favorite of the three) of fluke with a jalapeno/lime sauce; crab salad; and a lobster entree. The wines included a deeply satisfying Meursault (white Burgundy, some of the world's best chardonnay), a fine Barolo, and with dessert a Sauternes.

First course @ Bernardin: fluke fish

Crab salad, 2nd course

Lobster entree at Le Bernardin

Trout with fava beans @ Met Museum

Other fine dishes sampled along the way include a scrumptious roasted artichoke appetizer, redolent of truffle butter, at Isabella's on the upper west side, near our hotel. (No photo of that.) We enjoyed lunch at one of the restaurants inside the fabulous Metropolitan Museum of Art -- including this trout with a lovely medley of summer veggies.





I had lunch at one of Daniel Boulud's places at the beginning of New York Restaurant Week (going on as I write, in fact), and loved this "Summer Old Fashioned" cocktail. Finally, here's a shot of a favorite Italian appetizer (beef carpaccio) at a theater district spot before we saw the wonderful, Tony Award winning musical, "Once."

Summer Old Fashioned, yum

Appetizer at Osteria al Doge

I wasn't too "bad" as far as eating rich food in mass quantities -- a hazard of visiting a great restaurant city like New York -- but I did have a few indulgences. I guess the worst in that regard was dinner at Carmine's near Times Square (fried calamari and penne in a tomato cream sauce) followed by cheesecake across the street at Junior's. We were with my brother and his son, and the food choices were for the kid, so we kind of had to go with the flow. I must say, the calamari was excellent and the chocolate cheesecake on my plate wasn't half bad, either.
Back home now -- picked up a cold along the way,  alas -- and getting back to regular exercise and eating.