Dining in New York, August 2019, Part 1

Mr Minx wanted to see an exhibition of old Batman comic art at the Society of Illustrators in New York, so we made a long weekend out of it. Blessed with magically cool late-August weather, we enjoyed our wanderings even more than usual.

Our first trip after dumping our luggage at our hotel was to Rip's Malt Shop. Some of you may know that I am a graphic designer, but you probably don't know that I designed Rip's logo and menu. Their original Brooklyn location is a bit of a palaver to get to, but their new Manhattan location is a short subway ride away from our regular Midtown base camp. After I snapped some pics of their snazzy neon sign, we sat down to enjoy some vegan comfort food. I had the Chicago dog, topped with tomato, neon green relish, sport peppers, diced onion, celery salt, mustard, and a pickle spear (with another on the side). It was a pretty reasonable facsimile of a meat hot dog.

Mr Minx had the Rip's Burger, a vegan patty topped with chili, cheese, bacon, special sauce, and cole slaw. It, too, was tasty, but not as convincing a replica to my taste buds. I'm not crazy about meat substitutes, and never sought them out in my brief time as a vegetarian. YMMV, of course.

After Rip's, we wandered up to Dough for some giant-ass doughnuts. We tried the Cafe au Lait, "inspired by a classic coffee cake made with a roasted coffee glaze and crunchy pecan topping," and a blueberry one with an oaty crumb topping. They were pretty good, but maybe too big? If there's such a thing as a donut that is too large, that is. And they were super fluffy as well, more the texture of coffee cake than a donut. The flavors of the glazes could have had more oomph, too. I dunno. I wanted to be more impressed than I was.

After dinner at NoNoNo (post coming soon), we hit up the Spot Dessert Bar in K-town for dessert. The Milky Puff sounded best to us: warm puff pastry, brulee bananas, white chocolate honey comb, corn flakes, and condensed milk ice cream. It was pretty good. The puff pastry was cooked nicely, and the chocolate honeycomb was a fun novelty that we had seen made on a recent episode of the Food Network's Worst Bakers in America. (The trick is to spread melted chocolate over bubble wrap. When it hardens and is peeled off, the result looks a bit like honeycomb. Cool, huh?) I wanted more bananas though, and didn't see the need for cornflakes when the puff pastry had a similar texture.

I know my reactions to these items are pretty meh, but they failed to excite me. We did eat a lot more on our trip, and much of it tasted great, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out these sites.

Rip's Malt Shop
48 Greenwich Ave
New York, NY 10012
https://www.ripsmaltshop.com/

Dough
14 W 19th Street @ 5th Ave
New York, NY 10011
https://www.doughdoughnuts.com/

Spot Dessert Bar
11 W 32nd St, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10001
https://www.spotdessertbar.com

Posted on Minxeats.com.