Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

Where I work, we have a sister office around the block and their staff orders lunch from Lioni’s every week.  The result is a giant cardboard box of foot-long logs wrapped in white paper.  Lioni’s is an Italian specialty store in Bensonhurst (i.e. my neighborhood) that is famous for mozzarella di bufala and prosciutto, not to mention its literally hundreds of heroes.  Once, I was about to throw in an order for a sandwich for lunch, but reading the menu took way too long so I missed the opportunity. How can you have hundreds of items on a menu?  Their heroes are named after Italian and Italian-American celebrities and contain endless permutations and combinations of toppings.  At a glance, the toppings include prosciutto di Parma, mozzarella di bufala (imported from Italy), roast beef, cappicolla, mortadella, salami, turkey, ham, bologna, sweet and hot Italian sausages, pepperoni, roasted peppers, olives, chicken and veal cutlets….  Hundreds, I’m tell...

On my birthday weekend, Alex and I were going to have a quiet, peaceful dinner at Luzzo's, a brick oven pizza place near Alphabet City.  The place was small and people waiting for tables were squashed all around the entrance.  The hostess said we could sit downstairs, so we headed down a rickety staircase but when we entered the dining area in the basement, a bunch of people sitting at a long table shouted "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" and hoisted gifts and iPhones in the air.  I gasped, froze for a few moments, and then turned around and started sobbing, happy tears of course.  There are videos of this on people's iPhones apparently...how embarrassing! I was a little bit too aflutter to really remember what we ate, but between our group of 8 people, we split 4 pizzas.  Thinking back on it now, I literally don't remember what we ate, but I do remember it was good.  The pizza was a bit soggy after a while because we all started swapping slices/fourths of ...

Hey.  Hey guys.  We're going to let you in on a really great secret.  Can't get reservations for Valentine's Day dinner next Tuesday?  Forget that.  You and your hunny should check out Saluggi's in Tribeca.  We had dinner there last night and I'm still craving their food (and Alex is still eating their food; more on that later). When I first walked into the place, I thought we were having dinner at a run-of-the-mill pizzeria.  It's fairly dark inside, but its bare brick walls are illuminated by a neon pink scripty sign of "Saluggi's NYC".  At the back, the kitchen and bar were pretty open, but it was a little odd looking, since the dining area seemed to blend seamlessly into the waitstaff's prep area and kitchen....  They don't earn too many points for decor in my book, save for an interesting painting of a subway car facing me, but their food makes up for that. Everything on their menu sounded delicious, and was moderately pric...

Morris Panini Sometimes I really love Groupon, Living Social, and the like. One great deal we got was to Milux Cafe, a little place off the beaten track in Soho. The decor inside is eclectic and recalls a cafe in Italy: dark creaky hardwood floors, mismatched furniture, and the heavy smell of roasted coffee hanging in the air.  Specifically, it reminded me of a cafe we visited on our trip to Milan; we popped into a hole-in-the-wall kind of cafe and I had a delicious sandwich of some cold cut and some cheese on some bread.  I find the simplicity of foods is sometimes what makes certain meals so memorable. Golden Panini If we had not had our coupon, I would judge Milux Cafe to be on the expensive side.  They specialize in panini (~$9) and smoothies/shakes (~$6).  Alex had a turkey-smoked mozzarella panini with a vanilla-gelato-orange milkshake (Creamsicle!!) and I had a prosciutto-mozzarella panini with a strawberry-banana-mango smoothie...