NYC - Just like I pictured it.

Henry Street Settlement House

Yesterday I chaperoned a student field trip to NYC.  I've been on this trip a few times and always enjoy spending the day walking around the Lower East Side with 30 teenagers - no, really, I mean it.  Most of the kids have never been in this part of the city before (other than some Canal Street shoppers) and I like watching them absorb the culture and history surrounding them  The trip is part of an elective course called History of NYC and the students are each given an assignment in advance to prep for the visit.  The walk focuses on Chinatown, Little Italy and the Foley square area and the students are each responsible to research a site or address along our route.  They then must present to the class at their location, and we end the day by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge into Brooklyn Heights, where we eat dinner and meet our bus. 



Broom and Orchard Streets

Often the large group splits up for meals since we don't make any advance reservations, and my group was the non-chain, not-available-to-eat-in-Delmar, restaurant posse.  For lunch we went to an awesome dumpling place suggested by another chaperone, called Vanessa's.    Wow !  It was everything I want in a lunch - cheap, reasonably fast and tasty.  While there is some seating available, it was more a take-away place and we ended up eating outside, co-opting some nearby stoops.  I had an order of chicken and basil steamed dumplings (8 per order) and a sesame pancake for the grand total of $5.  The dumplings were tender and filled with fresh flavor.  The pancake was a bit thicker than I'm accustomed, but, in all honesty I was expecting a scallion pancake not a sesame pancake - duh.  It was fantastic - crispy, salty and a bit buttery.  Yum!  The kids sampled a wide variety of dumplings, soups and some wonderful looking sandwiches which used the sesame pancakes in place of bread.  Dinner was a quick bite on Montague Street.  We were leaning towards Indian, however, the Indian place was closed so the students elected to have Mediterranean - how cool is that?  I had an ideal green salad and a bowl of red lentil soup, which set me up perfectly for the nap  bus ride home.  Two self proclaimed foodie girls thoroughly enjoyed an appetizer platter of assorted dips and salads, although there was no way they could finish their feast in our allotted time.  No worries - it was packed up and enjoyed on the bus ride north.  I'm not an expert on this cuisine at all, but everything was fresh and well prepared, and our group was pleased with their decision to eat at Taze. 

Below our some pictures from our very full day.  Enjoy! 

 

A really cool market filled with delicious things to eat!




Old Synagogue

 

Dragon fruit



Pomegranates

 

SVU was filming!

 

Brooklyn Bridge - random man






Brooklyn Heights



Cool view of the Brooklyn Bridge