Taim Mobile makes the best falafel I’ve had in the United States, hands down, and it could hold its own against the falafel I’ve had in Israel (a taste test is deserved, but would be a challenge). I had heard of Taim Mobile because it’s been written about in food blogs and won awards, and happened to stumble upon the truck in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They actually fry the falafel to order, so it’s just perfect. Not overdone, not cold - the perfect level of crispy chickpea goodness. It comes with hummus, Israeli salad, pickled cabbage and tahini sauce, but I recommend getting it “with everything” - then they will add pickles, s’rug (traditional Yemeni cilantro-garlic-chili spicy sauce) and amba (pickled mango-fenugreek chutney). It’s a wonderful sandwich at $5.75. Their ginger-mint-lemonade is refreshing and the rest of their drinks and smoothies sound great too (Brown Sugar Lemonade, Pomegranate Honey Iced Tea, smoothie flavors like Date-Lime-Banana and Strawberry-Raspberry-Thai Basil). You can see their location on twitter @taimmobile or check their schedule on their website, www.taimmobile.com

Currently, they seem to frequent midtown locations for lunch and Williamsburg and the High Line for dinner time.

Two Little Red Hens is my favorite bakery in New York. They rarely make a misstep, and they make wonderful goodies every day. I have a lot of respect for the opinions of the Serious Eats New York team, and I feel validated that they love this bakery as much as I do. They named it one of their top 10 American-style bakeries in NYC.

http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2011/05/best-bakeries-in-nyc-new-york-manhattan-brooklyn-nyc-slideshow.html

Their cupcakes are the best I’ve had in NYC and were ranked #2 in Serious Eats NYC Cupcake Roundup (#1 was Baked all the way out in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and I still haven’t made it there yet). Their Brooklyn Blackout Cupcake was #1 for chocolate cupcake in the same competition - moist, delicious chocolate cake, rich fudge frosting, and chocolate pudding filling. It’s one of my favorite desserts anywhere. Their cheesecake is delicious - not too heavy or cheesy. This was ranked Serious Eats #1 cheesecake in NYC. They make delicious coffee cake and bundt cake and their sticky buns look amazing, but I haven’t tried them yet. I also long to try their pies, which are supposed to be excellent, but are not available by the slice.

I wandered into 2LRH today to see people eating a new swirly brown and black cupcake I had most definitely seen before, and knew I would have to check it out. This new cupcake is their Peanut-Butter Fudge Cupcake. It looks like their Marble Cupcake because of the swirled chocolate and peanut butter frosting, but it’s actually closer to the Brooklyn Blackout Cupcake. Instead of a chocolate pudding frosting, the filling is peanut butter. This is a scrumptious cupcake. I like chocolate and peanut-butter, but I’m not one of those people (and I know many) who think chocolate and peanut butter is a combination of the gods. Even so, I thought it was delicious - for those who adore this combination, it’s a must-have. 

One of my favorite things about NYC is the prevalence and success of bakeries - bakeries have disappeared from so many smaller towns and cities as people learned to go to the mega-supermarket for all their needs. It was the end of specialized shopping - separate stops at the butcher, cheese shop, bakery, etc. The rise of dessert mixes made homemakers’ lives easier, but it meant that many people grew up without being accustomed to eating home baked goods from scratch. It’s hard to miss what you don’t know. As a result small bakeries increasingly went out of business and became harder to find, but NYC experienced a resurgence in the 1990s (starting with City Bakery in 1990) and is now a city of bakeries - and Two Little Red Hens is one of its best.

Two Little Red Hens is located at 1652 Second Avenue between 85th and 86th Street. It is close to the 4,5, and 6 86th Street subway stop. Open Weekdays 7am-8pm; Sat 8am-8pm; Sun 8am-6pm.

Tumblr unkindly deleted my inspired draft about summer ice cream, so that post will have to be recreated. In the meantime, here are a few announcements about fashion history exhibitions going on in the next few months.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty is the Met’s blockbuster Costume Institute show this summer. This week the Met announced that the exhibition will be extended for an additional week to August 4. Every year’s Costume Institute summer show is fantastic; the Met has a phenomenal collection and a history of brilliant fashion curation. But this should be one of their most exciting shows in years - I have been anticipating it for almost a year, since it was first publicly announced. Despite being a Met member, I haven’t made it to the exhibit yet, but I won’t miss it - not a chance. The Met is located at 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue and suggested admission is $20. 

FIT’s current exhibition The Sporting Life does not strike me as the most exciting theme, but I’m looking forward to their exhibition from Daphne Guiness’s collection, starting September 16 through January 7, 2012. FIT is located at 27th Street and 7th Avenue and is free every day. From FIT’s website:

The exhibition Daphne Guinness will feature approximately 100 garments and accessories from Guinness’ personal collection, including designs from the likes of Alexander McQueen, Azzedine Alaïa, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, and Valentino. Guinness’ own designs will also be on display. The exhibition is co-curated by Daphne Guinness and Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at FIT.

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts will be presenting Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern from July 19 to November 25. The MFA is located at 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, and general admission is $20.

From the MFA Website:”Jewels, Gems, and Treasures”…will examine the various roles and meanings associated with a wide range of gem materials.

There is a wonderful jewelry exhibition on display at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York City. The Jewelry of Van Cleef and Arpels is a major success for Cooper Hewitt and it has been extended through July 4. The jewelry in this exhibition is magnificent, and the curators have done an admirable job separating the hundreds of item into several key themes: innovation, transformation, the natural world, exoticism, fashion, and celebrity. VC&A’s mystery setting technique creates absolutely stunning jeweled flowers and brooches - don’t miss the video explaining the technique. A delight for lovers of jewelry and fashion history.

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Set in Style:

The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels

Through July 4

2 E. 91st St, New York, NY

General admission, $15

La Dulce Barcelona: in pictures!

For my first real post, what could be more appropriate than writing about my favorite sweets on my recent trip to Barcelona?

Barcelona is an unforgettable city, and will surely have many more posts devoted to its unique juxtaposition of the Gothic Quarter and Old City with the colorful, whimsical Modernism of Domanech i Montaner, Cadafalch, and most famously, Gaudi. It is also a city that delights in food and drink, and particularly, chocolate.

There are chocolate shops and pastelerias on every corner. Not all of the pastry shops are wonderful. Early mornings are a particular weakness, because the pastry shops are not open. Attempting to find something to eat before 9 am near the Placa Catalunya, we walked into one of the only open coffee shops. My muffin was simply inedible. My first croissant, at a unmemorable pastry shop near the Placa Reial, was unremarkable. As my first purchase in Barcelona, it didn’t bode well. But fortunately, this croissant was not the one I will remember.

Escriba, a chocolate and pastry shop at Las Ramblas 83, makes the most divine croissants I have had in my life. Not only did I sigh audibly while eating it, but I did the same thing again when I returned and ordered another one. The croissant is perfectly flaky without falling apart, rich without being greasy. The chocolate is good enough to elicit sighs, and the chocolate is what really sets it apart - this is a chocolate croissant with chocolate of the highest quality. Their hot chocolate is also wonderful. The hazelnut hot chocolate is rich and dark, with a hazelnut praline cream as you finish your mug. The 70% cacao is dense and delicious. The store sells chocolates, cakes, and pastries. They have solid chocolate shoes that I long for.

Xocoa, along tiny and adorable Petrixtol in the Gothic Quarter (home to several other chocolate shops), is a wonderful place for churros con chocolate. All churros I have had before, including once in Buenos Aires, have been overly fried. These churros are just the right level of crisp, and the hot chocolate is perfect for dipping and sipping. It’s not as dark as the hot chocolates I sampled at Escriba, but is perfect for churros or an indulgent afternoon snack. 

Bubo, on Capuxtes 10, is a little dessert jewel box tucked along the side of Eglesia Santa Maria del Mar, in El Born. There are tiny, beautiful pastries from celebrated pastry chef Carlos Mampel. I had the scrumptious Xabina, a chocolate mousse, capuchin sponge cake with vanilla, crispy praline, and sponge cake with olive oil. Try looking at the website without salivating. I bought a container of their chocofruts mani, chocolate covered peanuts. Wonderful. This is a place I must go back and try as much as I can.

Then there’s the gelato. You might well be in Italy for the number of gelato shops in every neighborhood. I researched Barcelona’s best gelato before my trip and was more than pleasantly surprised to see that one of the most touted shops was steps from my hotel: Amorino. Normally I like to try as many places as possible, but after one taste at Amorino my dessert wanderlust disappeared. This is fantastic gelato. The amaretto is phenomenal. The coffee, made with coffee beans from Brazil is perfect. I loved their classic dark chocolate (the Inimitabile, while delicious, was too dark to combine well with some of the other flavors). Even the vanilla was wonderful. It is only at excellent gelato shops that I will even deign to taste vanilla, but this was vanilla the way it should be.

I didn’t get to visit all of the dessert shops I had written in my notebook, but hopefully next time! Here are the other recommendations that I had found in my dessert research:

For pastries:

Mauri, Rambla de Catalunya, 102, www.pasteleriasmauri.com 

Dolso, C/ València, 227, in Eixemple, www.dolso.es

For gelato:

Arcobaleno, Ferlandina, 35, //www.gelateria-arcobaleno.es/

 La Jijonenca, Avda. Gaudí, 32, near Sagrada Familia, www.jijonenca.es/

Cremeria Toscana, c/Muntaner 161, Eixample & Canvis Vells 2, near Santa Maria del Mar, El Born

Vioko, Passeig Joan de Borbo 55, Barceloneta, www.vioko.es

For unusual dessert experiences:

Espai Sucre, a dessert tasting restaurant, is highly unusual and has been written about all over the world. This is not a conventional dessert menu, and some of it does not appeal to me, but it’s an experience that would be exciting to try. The tasting menu is 40 euros each, so it is not as wallet-friendly as the pastelerias.

Calle Princesa 53, espaisucre.com

What I loved:

Escriba, Ramblas de les Flors 83, Gothic Quarter (also at Gran Via 546 & Ronda Litoral 42), www.escriba.es

…(and the website is adorable - just wait for the “Loading” page - so cute!)

Xocoa Petrixtol, Calle Petrixtol 11, www.xocoa-bcn.com; see website for additional locations

Bubo, Calle Caputxes 10, El Born, www.bubo.es

Amorino, Las Ramblas 125 (also at Calle Gran de Gracia, 53 & Calle Portaferrissa 7-9), amorino.es