A Taste of Tribeca

My friend and I trekked downtown to Tribeca to sample some of the best food the neighborhood has to offer at the Taste of Tribeca food festival. We had a deliciously wonderful time--but it was no place for children, even as there were scads of them. The streets were packed with visitors who had purchased tickets to the event and we all had to navigate around babies in high-end strollers outfitted like mini-vans and little kids strolling past on scooters. Still, it was of little matter: everything was a ball.

Nobu and Pepolino sold out immediately but we carefully considered our road map to check out the other participants (close to 100!) as we made our way through and chose wisely to sample some of the small plates that the bustling chefs prepared during the gloriously bright and sunny afternoon.

Seasonal ramps from Telepan Local were first up for us, with asparagus, wild garlic, lemon ricotta and sorrel.

Two pieces of seared foie gras "sushi" from Daruma-Ya were pretty great and we chugged thirst-quenching lemonade from Dirty Bird To Go while we waited in line (fortunately we were first for the new batch) for truly scrumptious buttermilk-dipped chicken nuggets that everybody was clamoring for, and rightly so.

The fantastic jazzy blues quartet rocked the pavement...!

Alaskan King house-cured salmon from Landmarc was perfection, served in a considerate vessel with pickled onions and creme fraiche with mustard seeds; the aroma of sherried shrimp and crab meat with shallots stuffed into homemade tortellini led us to Acappella restaurant's stand; divine deviled eggs from The Butterfly fluttered about; crispy shrimp from Megu filled a temaki handroll; Bouley tickled our taste buds with Japanese a root vegetable kuzu chip topped with an aligot whipped potato and cheese preparation topped with black truffle pate, alongside a raspberry cherry amaretto white chocolate mousse; and classic Apple Brown Betty from Bubby's Pie Co. finished us off--well almost, because we went for a apple and lemon popsicle from Ward III as well. 

Taste of Tribeca was quite tasty indeed! Thanks Bayer Public Relations for the invite!