Prince St. Cafe & Catering

A recent article on the Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York Website asks: "Is a New Yorker's right to an affordable dining-out experience a livability issue?" I certainly feel that it is, so I was delighted to discover Prince St. Cafe & Catering tonight. For $12, I dined like a king! I ordered the homemade fettucini, which is prepared in six different ways: with wild mushrooms and English peas, grilled veggies and goat cheese, duck confit and truffle butter, crabmeat and sun-dried tomatoes, prosciutto with tomatoes and mozzarella, and my choice, the luscious pine nut pesto. Olive oil coated the thick noodles and crunchy pine nuts, and the wonderful aroma of fresh basil permeated the room. A customer walked in and said that this delicious fragrance was the first thing he noticed. (The special also included hunks of fresh baguette and a big vinaigrette-dressed green salad.)

I still had a few bucks on me, so after gaping at the red velvet, lemon meringue and chocolate cupcakes ($2), I ended up taking a giant chocolate fudge brownie home with me. I'm still too full to eat it!

Prince St. Cafe & Catering, 26 Prince St., (212) 343-7310.

Sweets News

You may have heard that in the darkest night of the soul, it's always 3 a.m. Well, this is no longer true, with the opening of the Insomnia Cookies shop at 50 West 8th Street! The store serves up fresh-baked brownies and cookies studded with giant chocolate chunks until 3 a.m. (If you've ordered online, you know that you must place your delivery order by 2:15, but if your cravings keep you up even later, you have until 3 to get to the shop.) According to store employees, they are now selling thousands of cookies a week; the shop has provided much greater visibility for what was once just a delivery operation.

As for the cookies, I would say "Get them while they're hot," but they're always hot!

Insomnia Cookies: 1-877-63-COOKIE.

Drinkable Art

You've probably heard of edible art. You may even be familiar with edible, wearable art. But have you seen the drinkable art of master barista Sammy Lin? At Bottega Del Vino (and Via Quadronno on Sundays), he delights customers with imaginative coffee-and-foam paintings of monkeys, snowmen and women's faces. (He uses a coffee stirrer.)

A native of tea-drinking Fuzhou, China, the 33-year-old Lin had his first cup of coffee at the age of 25. He thought it tasted like bitter water. But he was soon to move to New York, where he would develop a keen appreciation of the beverage. At Via Quadronno, he perfected his basic technique, but soon decided that it wasn't enough to make a great-tasting cappuccino. It had to be great-looking too!

One day, Lin tried his hand at painting a snowman on top of the cappuccino foam. And then he made a mistake, and the snowman ended up looking like a monkey. The monkey is now his signature painting - Ivanka Trump requested it one morning, and children regularly demand it on their hot chocolates. That's not to say that Lin can't be convinced to paint another animal. One customer, on being told that she was not allowed to bring her dog inside the cafe, pleaded with Lin to look out the window at her forlorn little pet and paint it. He obliged.

Customers from as far away as Japan, Germany and France visit Bottega Del Vino just to see what Lin will paint next. Some people even bring in photos from newspapers or magazines. On my recent visit, the visage of an elegant lady appeared atop my cappuccino. It was almost too pretty to drink.

When I asked Lin if he saw himself expanding into other artistic mediums, he shook his head. "I love my job! I have created my own style."

Bottega Del Vino

You could be excused for thinking that Bottega Del Vino, with its shelves full of wine, hand-blown crystal stemware, and glass walls forged from wine bottles, was a very adult restaurant. And indeed its owner, Severino Barzan, prides himself on his 130,000 bottle collection. (He was the 2004 recipient of Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence.) But when I visited the restaurant for lunch yesterday, I sat next to an Italian family of eight with three young children. The mother asked for "un po' di prosciutto" and soon her youngsters were happily munching on a big plate of ham and cheese (when they weren't throwing their spoons on the floor).

I'm not sure what else the family ate, because I was thoroughly engrossed in my own meal. I'd ordered some of the daily specials; my appetizer was a poached duck egg, its yolk spilling out into a velvety beige bed of pureed fava beans. Smoked tuna carpaccio livened up the mild dish, as did a basket of oregano-sprinkled focaccia.

No sooner had I scooped up the last bit of beans when the server brought my cacio e pepe. (If you like cheese, this pasta dish is impossible to resist. There's even a restaurant named after it in the East Village. At Cacio e Pepe, the server brings by a giant wheel of pecorino and swirls the tonnarelli around and around in it before depositing it on the plate. But although I enjoy the presentation, I never feel like I got quite enough pasta!) The version at Bottega Del Vino was made with thick, rigatoni-like tubes, which caught every melted mouthful of sheep's milk cheese and smidgen of black peppercorn. I actually couldn't finish the dish, much as I wanted to. And I didn't have room for dessert, which was a shame, as I hear that pastry chef Annamaria Kosa whips up some pretty special sweets, among them buffalo ricotta cake with raspberry compote, apple fig strudel and white chocolate semifreddo with caramelized chestnuts in rum sauce. For Easter, Kosa has created a watermelon-sized, hollow chocolate Easter egg into which you can hide a gift. Children from 1-100 can enjoy it!

(There is a very important reason why you should end a meal at Bottega Del Vino not with an espresso, but a cappuccino. It's so important that it merits its own post.)

Bottega Del Vino: 7 East 59th St., (212) 223-2724.

Nirvana In A Jar

Today, my companion brought home the March issue of New York Spirit: Resources For Natural Living. Among the magazine's coverlines were "How to Beat the Winter Blues" and "The Fast Track to Enlightenment." I have my own recipe, however unwholesome, for beating the blues; it involves a spoon and a jar of Guido Gobino's Crema Gianduja. This creamy chocolate-hazelnut spread is about 50 times better than Nutella; it contains 34% IGP hazelnuts from Italy's Piedmont region and not a whit of vegetable fat filler. Fold it into a crepe, smear it on a piece of toast, refrigerate it till it turns fudgy, or just spoon it out of the jar right into your mouth. It might not steer you towards enlightenment, but you might reach nirvana!

Guido Gobino's Crema Gianduja, and the darker, more cocoa-y Crema Al Cacao spread can be found at Chelsea Market's Buon Italia (75 9th Avenue, (212) 633-9090). It is also sold, along with other scrumptious Gobino products, at Grom Gelato (233 Bleecker St.).

Brunch at Cookshop

This past Sunday, I thought it might be nice to brunch with a friend at Cookshop. It turned out that half of Manhattan had the same idea. There was a wait even though we had a reservation; fortunately it wasn't too long, as my buttermilk beignets craving was unbearable! Cookshop serves the four hot, puffy, sugar-dusted doughnuts with a stroke of genius: cardamom-spiked pineapple compote. Like lemon squeezed over fried zucchini, it's a perfect combination.

After polishing these sweeties off, we decided against the cornmeal pancakes with caramel bananas. My friend ordered a thick slice of rye toast which had the dual function of supporting some braised chard and poached eggs, and sopping up a pool of velvety cheese fondue. I downed the "Cookshop Scramble" with smoked salmon - a halved biscuit holding a portion of eggs scrambled with caramelized onions, dill and salmon.

When we were finished, I briefly considered ordering more beignets, but one must occasionally show some kind of restraint.

Cookshop: 156 Tenth Ave., (212) 924-4440.

Eataly Excitement!

Attention, obsessed foodies: gourmet food mecca Eataly is set to open its first store in Rockefeller Center in June. It'll be small, only around 400 square feet, but plans are afoot for a second, much larger store (6,000-7,000 square feet) in the Meatpacking District. I just got back from Turin, where I visited the original complex and ate at the most formal of its eight restaurants, Guido per Eataly... I'm still thinking about the vegetable-foam rainbow parfait, and a thin layer of white onion melted around a pork meatball, and the roulade of pheasant with thyme-scented grits, and the fresh agnolotti, and the incredible crusty bread, and the torrone semifreddo...

Speaking of torrone semifreddo, in early April (ETA: April 12), Turinese gelateria Grom is opening a second store. It will be located on Bleecker at Carmine. Watch out, Cones!

6/24/08 ETA: At the time of this writing, Eataly was expected to have opened in New York, but it has not! I am waiting with bated breath.

6/29/09 ETA: According to the New York Times, Eataly has finally signed a lease.