I promise I won't always do food blogs, but we had the best time eating our way through Manhattan. Ha! I mean seriously, we have traveled a lot in the past 3 years since being gluten free & this was my favorite trip food wise. I probably spend more time researching gluten free restaurants than I do anything else before we get there. There is an app I use and of course I look at Open Table, Yelp, etc. but I have mostly enjoyed reading other blogs from travelers just like me. This trip took a little more research because several of the restaurants have multiple locations so I had to really plan out which restaurant, in which location when we were on a certain side of town. All of the research was totally worth it though!
When we landed on Wednesday we were hungry so we went & grabbed lunch before we headed out for the day. I had read about this brazilian spot that I knew would be perfect for a quick grab & go lunch:
We love Brazi Bites, which is brazilian cheese bread so that is what this place makes, but they use the bread to make sandwiches & wraps with:
If we were there longer, I would have gone again!
That night, we met our friends at their apartment on the Upper East Side & they took us to one of their neighborhood restaurants, Lilli and Loo:
It was probably one of the best Chinese meals I have had because in addition to the edamame & chicken fried rice (which is what I usually get) they also had crunchy rock shrimp. It was by far my favorite!
Friday was when we spent time downtown with 9/11 museum & the statue of liberty & I knew for sure where we were going to go:
I had read that it had the best gf pizza in the city & it did not disappoint! It was literally hand tossed & usually they are only thin crust so that was a fun surprise,
In addition to the pizza, they had several fried appetizers we could have - meatballs, fried mozzarella sticks, etc.:
Since we had a big, late lunch, we only stopped for a snack/dessert later that afternoon/evening. I had read about several bakeries & we tried the first one in Soho:
Online I thought it was called Erin McKenna's Bakery, but I guess it is also known at Babycakes. Honestly, I thought it was a little sketchy when we first got there, but then I took one look at their display cases & knew it would be awesome. Most of their stuff is dairy free & gluten free, so I was in heaven:
We got cookies, bread & cake for dessert but we saved the donuts for breakfast the next morning. I mean, her face says it all:
On Friday, we had lunch at the holiday market at Bryant Park after we went ice skating. I showed a picture earlier, but Sophie was so excited to try:
It must have been good because she ate every last bite! I hadn't really researched eating here, but I knew they would have snacks & figured we could grab something somewhere else if we couldnt find anything but then I saw this sign:
Yes! First Brazilian, then Italian, then Chinese, now Columbian! Sadie chose an empanada but I went with the corn arepa & yucca fries:
It was so good, Bryan even ate with us instead of trying something else. Remember this picture I showed in an earlier post?
I made a comment about this being one of the first times we really experienced the crowd, in fact, I took this picture as we were waiting in line for our food. I think it took us about 45 minutes to get dessert! At least it was right by the ice skating rink so we had some entertainment and it was worth the wait:
We actually saw this vendor at the top of the Empire State Building but it was closed when we were there so we were doubly excited when we saw it here. Sophie got a s'more but the rest of us tried their gourmet marshmallows:
Friday night we met our friends in Soho again. They had suggested going to eat at one of their favorites in Chinatown (since that is where they live) but I was a little nervous about the gluten contamination, so she found a regular neighborhood restaurant that offered a gf pasta. They didn't have any other choices but the pasta was delicious:
Since it was a Friday night & there was 9 of us, we had a hard time finding an open reservation that could seat us all, but this was a nice surprise! They didn't have room for us inside, but they had a heated cabin outside on the street which was perfect:
One of the top places on my list to visit was the Milk Bar. I first discovered it in Vegas & I loved it so much that I ordered Sadie's birthday cake from their flagship location in NY last year. We never made it to their flagship store (which is what I really wanted!) but they have a small pop up in Soho so we stopped there instead. They have a big menu but really only have the cake or the cookie truffles that are gf but the cake is the bomb:
I mean literally the night before Taylor Swift had her birthday party in NY & she had the exact same cake at her party! I'm sure she had the regular cake though & not the gluten free?!
One of the top breakfast places I read about was Friedman's. Again, they had multiple locations, but the closest to our hotel was in the theater district at:
We went at 10:30 so I split breakfast with Sophie. We had the normal eggs, bacon & fruit but of course we had to try their chocolate chip pancakes, since that was their signature item & they did not disappoint:
Sadie didn't want breakfast so she ordered a hamburger but she was mostly excited about the french fries, since they had a dedicated fryer:
They had a long wait when we were there, but thankfully, I was able to make reservations with them a few weeks before we went.
Speaking of reservations, I mentioned how I made them for Serendipity also. 30 days in advance!
They are not exclusively gf, but all of the items are marked on their menu. I wasn't planning on eating dinner here until I looked at their menu online. It wasn't the best meal we had, but we actually ordered a bunch of appetizers to share because they were items we don't get to have often like loaded fries, boom boom shrimp & potato skins:
Can you believe our girls didn't know what potato skins were?!
Who can forget their dessert! Most of their ice cream & frozen hot chocolate were naturally gf, you just had to be careful about the toppings.
Our last meal on Sunday was at
This was another top one on my list! It is also in Soho & our friend suggested it for dinner Friday night but we couldn't get in. They had a 4 hour wait & reservations were full for the whole weekend at night. However, we went on Sunday afternoon hoping it would be slower, and it was. Only a 1 hour wait. Ha! But totally worth it for the fried mozzarella & crispy calamari:
Bryan & I used to order calamari all the time but it's one of those dishes I have only had a few times since going gf. Of course we couldn't leave without trying their pizza:
They had hand tossed, deep dish & thin crust, but as predicted, their gf was thin & crispy, which isn't my favorite, but it was still good. Bryan liked this restaurant so much that he said we would make reservations before we go next time!
Not sure if anyone is still reading my random post about food, but if you haven't figured it out, eating is one of my favorite things to do when we travel! I don't know if anyone else even reads these posts, but at least I can use it to refer to other people or I can go back myself & reference it. Obviously, there are so many more restaurants that we didn't get to try in our short trip, but maybe next time that will give us something to look forward to. Particularly Modern Bread & Bagel and By the Way Bakery. Those were both high on my list, but we were never close to one of their locations. There were a couple of nicer restaurants also that I would love to try next time it's just Bryan & I. Bon Appetit!
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