Weekend Sightseeing (Part 1): Little Italy

Little Italy at night, Mulberry Street.

My boyfriend, Clement, came to NYC to visit me this weekend. We did a lot of sight seeing. Clement is from the a small town outside of Ithaca and has only been to the city a few times - so I have a lot of places that I want to take him.

The logo of the smartphone
 application HopStop.

The problem is, is that I'm not exactly the best person when navigating through the subway. I've taken the subway for years but I only know the lines that I take constantly. So, my friend Annie told me about the app for the smartphone, HopStop, which will give you directions including subway stops. Clement and I found our way to Little Italy, now really Little Italy because it's only one block in Chinatown.

Clement really likes ravioli, to the extent that anytime it's on a menu when we go out - he'll order it. He happened to order pumpkin ravioli when he first met my Dad, Tom, who is the biggest carnivore next to a T-Rex or Jaws. Only four pieces of ravioli were on Clement's plate, so my Dad made him order something else. Since then, he's a little weary of ordering his favorite little pasta dish.

Clement's ravioli, in a tomato cream
sauce. He wanted me to take a
picture with just four of them...

As much as I make fun of him for loving ravioli, I can't blame him. A week ago, I was checking out restaurants in Little Italy and found one with lobster ravioli - Lunella Ristorante. So, we had to go there. Like I said before, we used HopStop to get to this bubble of restaurants and bakeries.

We were able to sit outside, which was wonderful since it was just becoming dusk - cooling down the hot humid cement of the city. Our dinner was delicious, of course. I ordered veal francese, one of my favorite Italian dishes. The sauce is buttery, lemony, and probably has a hint of white wine. It's beautiful with pasta, but there was one problem. 

Clement had more food than I did, and he ordered ravioli.

The portions were a lot smaller than I thought they would be. As Clement said, "They're actually a single portion size," which is way to small for me. At least this meal was. I had two very thin but tender pieces of veal, both pieces smaller than my hands (and I have very small hands, abnormally small), one piece of broccoli and one very small roasted potato. I shouldn't really be complaining because the sauce was honestly the best francese sauce I have ever had, but I would have loved to smother more veal with it.

La Bella Ferrara's sign. We sat right
under it, outside on a small patio.

Lunella's was really good, worth the money, and I will probably go back but we decided to get dessert somewhere else. Sometime in my childhood, I remember eating in a bakery Little Italy with my Dad. He has been to Little Italy many times, and actually the only other time I've ever been to Little Italy was with him. I messaged him before dinner to ask the name of a good dessert place on the block, and he told me to go to Ferrara, which is where I went when I was little. I just realized that we went to the wrong place - we went to La Bella Ferrara which is a smaller bakery. Still, it was really good.

My beautiful box of Ferrara pastries.
(left to right) Two lobster tails, two cannolis,
italian cheese cake and fruit tart.

You walk into the bakery and there are glass boxes lined with endless amounts of pastries, big ones and small ones - cannolis and fruit tars. To me, it's like going into a jewelry store - you're just in awe of the presence of these beautiful pastries. It was just magical.

Clement and I both ordered individual desserts, probably $5 each, and split a decaf cappuccino. This totaled for around $15 dollars.

I don't really spend a lot of money anymore, so I decided to splurge and take some pastries home. I bought 6 miniature desserts, which cost the same and as our dessert! Next time, I'm not going to bother ordering the big desserts (except that tiramisu, it was to die for) and I'm just going to order the miniature ones - you get more for the same amount of money! Either way, the desserts were delicious.

Clement and I made our way back to the apartment, with various desserts in hand and continued our adventure in the city the next day.

Weekend Sight Seeing:Part 2 --- Coming soon!