Righting injustice

Today we found ourselves dogless*, sodden**, and hungry in NYC. I had the bright idea to go to Pukk, a vegetarian Thai place I've heard some good things about. But could we find Pukk? We could not. (I blame the rain falling in our eyes -- Google maps says it's right here.)

Anyway, we tried to console ourselves with lunch at nearby Kate's Joint, but it ended up sucking for two reasons:

1. Given the startling advances in vegan cheese of recent (Teese and Daiya, for instance) what kind of vegetarian/vegan place serves "non-dairy" cheese that's not vegan?
2. I ordered their reuben***. It was not good. I hate wasting food and I couldn't eat it. (I think the main problems were that I was really craving a tempeh reuben, while this sandwich had fake deli meat like this, and that the thousand island dressing tasted weird -- I think it had BBQ sauce in it.)

So, I had to right some wrongs:

Baked tempeh along these lines, sauerkraut, mozzarella, thousand island dressing (vegan mayo, ketchup, plus some ajvar****) on a light rye bread. Yum.

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*He left for Australia today.
**It was raining, and waking at 5am to take one's dog to the airport does not incline one to remember things like umbrellas.
***On the menu it's called the Monte Mount Cisco. The sandwich that they call the Not Reuben has mustard rather than thousand island dressing.
****An untraditional but good addition.

Gluttony

I spent about 10 hours wandering all over Manhattan today. Sustaining me in my travels were many wonderful bread products:

• a sesame bagel from Absolute Bagels (So good! Crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside -- light textured and substantial at the same time.)
• pizza patate from Sullivan Street Bakery (Imagine pizza and potato chips had a love child. Crisp, rich dough topped with thin sliced potato (crisp and brown at the edges), rosemary and lots of olive oil.)
• vanilla bomboloni from Sullivan Street Bakery (This prompted fond memories of my Polish grandmother's homemade doughnuts, but was many times more amazing than they were, and they were good!)
• pizza at Motorino East Village (I had the filetti: mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and thyme. It was excellent. I will never be a restaurant blogger, because taking photos of food is embarrassing, but here's a review with some nice photos.)

I also went food shopping at Zabar's and Fairway. I really liked Fairway. Here's what I bought there: