Whenever my brother, Alex (a different one than the one mentioned in the post about Rice), and I are in New York at the same time, we always end up going out with his friends from college. Growing up, I always wanted to tag along on what my brother was doing, and he was usually pretty great about having me around, if you disregard a couple of years during his mid-teens when he needed space.
Luckily, as a grown-up, he's no different and loves to have me come along. Alex's friends are always a blast to go out with because they know how to do it right; there's never any chance that we'll end up sitting around at the end of the night regretting that we put the effort and money into the ordeal.
This friday, my brother and I headed out to Astoria to meet up with a friend of his for dinner before we went out and ended up going to a great panini place called "Il Bambino" (34-08 31st Avenue, between 33rd and 34h st, Astoria, NY 11106. Phone: 718-626-0087). It's a small place, and has a nice vibe to it, really relaxed. It's BYOB, (or BOOB, if you will: Bring Our Own Booze) and there's a liquor store and a convenience store that sells beer and wine on either side of it. They charge 5 dollars per table for BOOB, but that can just be seen as a wine opener rental fee.
But that's not why you go there. Obviously, it's for the food. Which was amazing. They have all these amazing paninis, warm and crunchy and delicious, and crostinis, which are little bits of toast type thingies with stuff on them, to explain it with some awesome vocabulary. I wasn't feeling that hungry, so I got a crostini with truffle egg salad and speck. They mix in truffle oil in the egg salad, and speck is a type of dried ham, kind of like prusciutto. It tasted amazing. I tried my brother's panini and his friend's as well, and I immediately wished I could have more of their's, but then I tried a bite of mine again and I was happily confused by my wish to eat everything at once. Alex had some kind of mozarella and tomato panini, while his friend had some kind of goat cheese and artichoke thing going on. It was incredible and I want to go back and try everything on their menu.
Apparently they have cupcakes and such there too, but we didn't get a chance to try those.
It was a great way to start out a night that eventually led to many things, for example karaoke
Oh, and while I was looking around at websites for this post, I found a pretty cool flickr group that shares a bunch of menus from restaurants people recommend in Astoria! Handy to have a bunch of them together in one place online if you're ever in the market for a restaurant in Astoria. I'm guessing I will be again sometime soon.
1 comment:
Who in the world decided that Alex was a "grown up?"
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