Ok, before I tell you about hot dog's you might be thinking eeewwwwww! Yuck! How can you eat them??? - But all i'm going to say is "don't go diss'ing the dog yet........... let me explain."
On Saturday night I really wanted to indulge in one of New York's gourmet delights, the "Hot Dog" and of course have a yummy dessert. As you know, earlier in my blog I talked about Nathan's at Coney Island and how they came up with the modern day "hot dog". Now, I didn't say that they were the nicest hot dogs, only that they invented them.....so I had heard that there were two places that did amazing hot dogs, "Gray's Papaya" and "Crif Dog". Gray's Papaya do not have seating and because we had a busy day running around Manhattan shopping Bryan and I decided to give "Crif Dog" a try.
Crif Dog is located in "The East Village". This part of town has a very similar feel to Newtown - lots of cool little pokey one-off shops, cheap restaurants and lots of uni students (NYU is located near by).
To get to the East Village from our place it takes about 20 minutes which includes walking and taking the subway a couple of stops.
As we had had a busy day, we decided to have a late dinner which was not a problem for Crif Dogs because they are open until 4am Sunday morning. So, Bryan and I headed out around 9pm in search of these famous dogs.
By the time we got to the East Village it was pumping. Lot's of people in bars, cafes, restaurants and music coming from all different directions. We eventually found a sign that consisted of a giant "wiener" that said "Eat Me" on it. We knew we had found the place. Directly below the sign were some grungy stairs leading down to this small space that had old tables and chairs and, arcade games (that people were using as tables). There would have been around 50 people crammed into this tiny place that should have really only had about 20 people in it. Bryan was nearly hitting his head off the ceiling. It was chaotic, loud and had an awesome vibe to it.
As an Australian I was not aware of how many different versions of a hot dog you could have until I saw the menu at Crif Dogs. They had dogs where the sausage is wrapped in bacon, served with avocado - basically anything you could come up with they could pretty much serve it to you on a hot dog. Oh yeah, the sausage they use in hot dogs here is very different to the hot dog sausages we use in Australia. For starters they are not fluro and they actually have flavour!
For my first Crif Dog I decided to go simple and plain, American cheddar, grilled onions, mustard and ketchup.
We struck gold in getting a table and as we were waiting for our names to be called out (to collect our order) we struck up a conversation with the two guys next to us. It turns out that one of the guys knew a colleague of Bryan's, how small of a world is that!
When the dog's arrived I was salivating........and it matched my expectations. Lip smacking yummy!
While we were having our dinner and talking to the guys next to us a lot of people would come into the cafe and head straight for this old telephone booth that was off to one side. They would pick up the old telephone and dial a specific number, then disappear. The guys told us that it was the entrance to a secret club. The door on the other side of the booth would open up, letting them in. Pretty cool.
But I did feel sorry for one young kid (looked like he was fresh off the farm - about to start his first year of uni (uni starts in September here)), he went into the booth to try to make an actual call. I was watching this poor kid becoming frustrated and after a few attempts he left the phone booth. Yeah, I know I should've said something to him, but it was kind'of cute watching him trying to make his call.
Anyway........Because Crif Dogs is so small, it's the kind of place where after you have finished eating you pretty leave, so Bryan and I said good night to our new friends and headed off to the other end of town, the "Upper West Side" to check out a cafe I had found online that had over 100 different cakes, tarts, slices, cheesecakes......Cafe Lalo.
We caught the subway up to 86th street and walked back to 83rd street, where Cafe Lalo was located. As we turned the corner onto 83rd street, I could hear jazz music as well as lots of people chattering away. As we walked toward the music what came into view was a place that you thought had been lifted from Paris. The cafe had beautiful old french windows with brass fittings and they were all open onto the street allowing the night air into the cafe. As I walked up the steps to enter the cafe I knew that this was going to be a very special place.
The interior consisted of old chandeliers (as well as modern lighting), exposed brickwork and lots of framed pictures decorating the wall. People were seated very close to each other just like in Paris. It was a fantastic crazy zoo of people looking into the cake cabinets getting excited about what desserts they were order.
I had a Belguim Chocolate Mousse Cake and Bryan had the Chocolate Strawberry and Banana cake which consisted of chocolate sponge cake filled with bananas and strawberries, iced with fresh whipped cream.
When I took my first bite of my cake, I could hear the heaven's open and the angels singing......it was unbelievable! Yes, I had found my heaven!
I stretched out eating my dessert for as long as possible soaking up both the flavours of the cake and the atmosphere of the cafe. We'd had the perfect evening and were ready for home so we took the subway back downtown floating on a cloud of sugary happiness.
