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I met up with Joy and Pete for dinner Tuesday night. I don’t want to call it a band meeting since Tammy could not join us as they are on their first family vacation to Cape Cod. After throwing around some ideas about what to eat, we settled on Five Guys Burger & Fries. Was told it was similiar to In & Out/Fatburger although I was disappointed there wasn’t any onion ring offerings. I guess they can’t call it Five Guys Burger and Fries and Onion Rings? Well, I was quite pleased with my greasy burger and satisfied with my fries (I say satisfied because I did not eat them all and if they were fantastic, they would all be gone, no matter how big the portion was!)

(Pete prepares his area so neatly compared to me and Joy!)
We picked the Five Guys location on Bleeker and 7th because it was close to Grom, a gelato place from Italy that is supposedly fantastic. I was so excited to try it as I have never had any standout gelato since coming back from Italy in 2003. We sampled several different flavors including the mint, pistachio, Torrontino (italian nougat) and Stracciatella. We were all not impressed. I did enjoy the mint but not enough to spend almost $5 for a cup. Very disappointed! We were having a mini conference on what to do when Joy mentioned Otto‘s, on 8th Street and 5th Avenue. At first I did not recall the place but as we were walking over, I remembered! One of Mario Batali’s places and did remember reading that their gelato was really good. Excitement!

It seemed pretty crowded when we got there but noticed a sort of bar area with tables to stand up at. Pete asked the host if we could just get dessert and he said we can get served pretty fast at the bar area. Excitement! They had some insteresting gelato flavors and Joy heard the Olive Oil was pretty good. Can you imagine she was just going to get the one flavor? We convinced her to get at least another flavor and she let me pick the Balsamic Strawberry (it just seemed to be the right match.) I got the Peppermint Chocolate Chip, Pistachio and Dark Chocolate and Pete got the OLIVE OIL COPPETTA (OLIVE OIL GELATO, PASSIONFRUIT GRANITA, STRAWBERRIES, BASIL SYRUP, MALDON SEA SALT). It was delicious! Still not as good as I remembered in Italy but that can also be due to the fact that, hey, I was in freaking Italy! Joy and Pete got coffee as well and man, did it smell good! As much as I wanted to get a cup after smelling theirs, I was good! I had to sleep that night!

My three flavors!

Joy’s 2 flavors

Pete’s dolci
It’s funny how the dessert ending up costing the same amount as my dinner! Totally worth it! It’s times like these that will make me miss New York if we do decide to leave. But I’ll have to try their pizza before leaving!

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