Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

This summer, one of my girlfriends was on a very health-conscious diet, which was great for her but difficult for us to pick places to eat.  One of the places we discovered turned out to be a great find right around the NYU area - Ellary's Greens.  The restaurant has opened just recently and has a shiny awe-inspiring ambiance.  You feel like you're sitting under the canopy in a rainforest: a green metal trellis filters the light down through leaf-shaped cut-outs.  The menu has a variety of vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous options. The first time we ate here, I had the stuffed zucchini with quinoa and yogurt and the chicken sandwich with arugula and lemon ricotta.  The stuffed zucchini looked like vegetarian sushi.  It was light and refreshing, although it lacked any flavor of yogurt and instead came on a pool of tomato sauce.  I'm not a big fan of quinoa but having it stuffed in the zucchini masked the texture well.   The sandwich was...

As fate would have it, last week I basically met Mario Batali. Met his gaze, that is.  I was walking to campus when I saw an unusual sight stopped at a traffic light.  I promise you, it was the orange Crocs that I saw first.  Then the orange helmet.  And that sexy green Vespa!  It had to be Mario Batali!  And, as I walked in the crosswalk no more than 5 feet in front of him, we totally made eye contact.  Actually just last night by pure coincidence, I watched A Day in the Life: Mario Batali.  He explained his philosophy behind food and even though it sounds a little cliche and cheesy, it was basically: to use simple, fresh ingredients to cook things people wouldn't normally make at home.   Today, Alex surprised me with an after-8-hours-in-lab dinner at Otto Enoteca Pizzeria, one of Mario Batali's restaurants in New York City.  We've eaten here before, last summer when we all looked kind of like little...