El Quijote

Saturday night Michael and I went to one of our favorite spots in the city...El Quijote on 23rd Street. We are CRAZY about their garlic soup. We also shared a salad. Nothing to talk about as far as lettuce goes, but they give you a plate with 3 small containers of different dressings and we LOVE to mix the blue cheese with the vinaigrette-it has chopped onions and stuff in in it (yum). Michael ordered arroz con pollo which comes in a metal pot, quite a nice size portion, way too much for one sitting and I had a 1 1/4 pound broiled lobster. It was sweet and delicious and just what I wanted. We began at the bar with a 1/2 pitcher of red sangria (it's REALLY good) and finished it at our table.
Afterwards we passed Eataly (Mario Barali's homage to Italy) (http://eatalyny.com/) so Michael made a u-turn to park (2nd u-turn of the evening on 23rd Street). It's a HUGE place with several different seating/ eating areas/styles. One is stand up bar height tables where you can order wine by the glass and antipasti, etc. Another is a fancier white table cloth area, also a cafeteria style area, coffee bars, wine bars, chocolate, cheese, meats, pasta, eating and cooking paraphernalia, bread, desserts, and anything else you can think of that might come from Italy. Expensive, but so fun to walk around and look. I bought flour for pizza. I am still trying to perfect my pizza crust :)