Pop goes the weasal

The other day I attempted a thing I’ve always wanted to attempt- a round trip, on foot, around Manhattan, from Midtown, to Morningside, back through to FiDi and down. Wacky misadventures ensued.
While around the uppper West Side, I ran into a place that smelled good. I had two policies for eating food: 1) if it smells good, try it 2) or, stay true to the classics. This place smelled good. It had a lot of Yelp stickers, some other foodie street cred, and, as I came to realize, was pretty darn tasty, at least, for what we had.

It was the Popover Cafe, which, for some reason, despite it’s 227 Review Score on Yelp and self-proclaimed world-renown, I’ve never heard of. BUT, my hurt food-ego aside, my buddy and I walked in, ready to sample their wares.

However, there was another rule...the food couldn’t take long. After all, we had to walk whatever the length of Manhattan is. So, we ordered their speciality, the popover bread.

Delicious. It was cheap, too, about $3 for the funky loaf, which, in the City, is a bargain. The bread was very buttery, and I don’t know how they got that weird, kernel shape, but it had a taste that held its own. I expected the insides to be thick, but the bread was hollow inside, but teh dough seemed fresh, its cave-esque hollow structure was dismissed because the bread was filling, AND, we got some cool strawberry jam. It was kinda hard to apply jam and walk, so we had some sparingly, but the cool, almost ice-cream taste of the jam. It went well with the buttery taste, and it almost felt like the combination of flavors had been inverted. Instead of the condiment complementing the main dish, it felt like the bread, because of its buttery texture, was complementing the jam.

All in all, it was a great find, even if I should have known about the restaurant beforehand, at least according to Yelp. It not only served as a delicious snack along Amsterdam Ave, but it also served to humble and make me realize that my quest to eat at every restaurant in Manhattan might be futile...or at least really hard.