Il Mulino

Geees, I love the fact that our hotel has free internet, and lots of it. It's so much fun to be able to come "home" and send you all the stories of the day.

So, Obama is in town. I figure this is the perfect time to rob a bank or something because 99% of NYC cops are around the Waldrof tonight, along with most of America's television crews. It's mayhem out there, just like when Julia Gillard comes to town hahahahahaha. Sorry, did I laugh too loud?

The Gleeks are still filming around the corner too, along with Tom Hanks and Richard Gere but they're hiding behind black plastic so we can't see them. How rude!

Nothing super exciting happened today (unless you count more shopping in Macy's) but tonight we had the single best culinary experience of our life so, I'm sharing. The venue was Il Mulino in the Village.

WOW. It was unlike any other restaurant I have been to. The waiters were all in proper suits, bow ties for some, white bus boy outfits for the others. It was typical old school service style and it was better than five star.

The restaurant was very intimate, only sat about 60 people. There was dark lighting and we were surrounded by home made cherry liquour, grappa, a cherry blossom tree and wine bottles as far as the eye could see.

The food was phenomenal.

When we sat down they brought us complimentary brushcetta, salami, cheese (literraly cut a piece out of a 3kg slab in front of us) and some bread...ohhhh the bread, don't get me started!

Then the "capo" comes out to tell us the specials. By about the fourth "special" entree we forgot where he had started and had no idea what to order. He was on about entree special number eight before I gave up and figured I'd just let him pick for me!

In the end we decided on (well, we remembered so ordered) a kind of mixed entree plate consisting of angel hair pasta with wild boar ragout; porcini ravioli and melanzane stuffed with spicy shrimp. Oh man, there was a huge party in my mouth and everyone was invited. I cannot say enough about the tastes on our plate.

For main I opted for the rack of lamb. I figured a couple of lamb chops and with a sprig of parsley would fill the tiny whole that was left perfectly. Rack of lamb my culo, it was more like half a cow! Out on this silver platter (think big, a-la-Shrek) comes this side of lamb, eight chops to be precise and a half a kilo of roasted potatoes! WTF! How was I meant to eat all of that? Turns out I didn't and they had to give me a doggy bag to take home with me (I was suprised they asked if we wanted to take it away but I guess a lot of people don't finish their meal there)!

Leo chose the spicy lobster, off the shell. It was ridiculously massive; a whole lobster with garlic and chilli. Deeelishous.

Although my mind was telling me enough, there was no stopping the dessert traing. Tiramisu with Zabaglione for me and fresh Strawberries with Zabaglione for Leo but, hold on people, if you have learnt anything from my emails so far you have learnt about the size of things...if I tell you that Leo's strawberries were the size of a lime, seriously, I am not kidding! They were huge and there were eight of them too, I reckon it would've been a good 500g, hands down. Nuts. 

Anyway, it was, seriously, the best meal I have ever had and the restaurant was beautiful. I wanted to take photos but it didn't seem like the type of establishment in which that would be appropriate so you're going to have to take my word for it.

Tomorrow we're off to the Nate Berkus Show and then I am attempting my final celebrity stalk of the city! After that we'll try get to Serendipity for some Frozen Hot Chocolate (yes, you read that right...google it)!

On Friday morning we move along to Chicago, hopefully the tornado that is currently in that zone will have moved well away by then!

Thanks for reading, lots of love.
Px