Burger Burger, 77 Pearl St., Manhattan

Pat picked up burgers for us yesterday from Burger Burger, in the Financial District. Mine was just a plain burger on brioche with a slice of tomato, to which I added my own avocado. It was fine. The fries, however, were excellent - crispy on the outside despite being quite long and fat.

David Burke Kitchen, 23 Grand St., Manhattan

It is always a delight to reunite with our friend Rob, visiting from Washington, with whom I suffered through a long study abroad year in Salzburg, Austria, viele Jahren vor. Rob is fun and hilarious, in multiple languages (though I only understand him in two or so....I cannot pretend to still remember more than a few words of Italian).

I believe that if you scroll down this blog far enough, you will come to the source of my choosing David Burke Kitchen, in lower SoHo, as our meeting place. I think that someone from Daily Candy recommended it, and the Yelp/Google reviews I looked up were uncharacteristically positive (it seems like people usually turn to Yelp when they want to unleash some hell).

We were very happy with the experience. The place did not fill up on this Saturday at lunch, so we were probably there about 2.5 hours, with no sense of being rushed. We were presented with popovers with marmalade, jam, and/or butter upon arrival, and then we ordered an appetizer of skewers with bacon and peanut butter and some sort of cherries or something? Whatever, it was quite tasty. I had stuffed french toast that was neither dry, nor what you might think of as gooey - it was somehow a perfectly moist yet light consistency. Pat had scrambled eggs with lobster that came in an impressive, eye-opening presentation, inside half an ostrich egg atop a bed of salt, with two lobster antennae sticking up. Rob, insisting all the while that he is not cheap, ordered a yogurt and granola mix with honeycomb on top.

It being Restaurant "Week," which seems to last for months nowadays, Pat added a dessert to his order that we all shared. We got carrot cake with coconut ice cream. The cake was crumbly and interesting, not overly sweet, with pistachios mixed in, and a decadent yet untraditional frosting. It paired beautifully with the ice cream.

Just to reiterate, Rob is *NOT* a cheapskate.

The artwork in the men's room was racy in a vegetal sort of way, prompting a stir among us. It was four close-up photos of a tomato with a protrusion appearing to be on the verge of penetrating another tomato. You don't really see tomatoes depicted pornographically very often. Or ever. It was salacious enough that I was secreted into the men's room to view it with my own eyes, which will be forever burned with the images.

Rob would like it to be known that he generously paid a third of the bill even though he ate practically the cheapest item on the menu.

Fino, 1 Wall Street Ct., Manhattan

Pat and I ordered from Fino a couple nights ago, armed with a 20% off Seamless coupon. It was a mixed bag. Both our entrees were big enough for two meals, which is a real plus, and they were good: Pat got veal and I got angel hair pasta with a tomato sauce and mixed seafood. The mixed seafood consists only of clams, mussels, and  squid, by the way. Surprising not to get any shrimp in there. But it was good.

The fried mozzarella appetizer turned out to be aged, not fresh, mozzarella, and it was not good. It was congealed and the breading was soggy.

Delivery time was as promised, around 40 minutes. I'm not sure we'd order from there again, given that it is a little pricey. Fino is in the Financial District.

Trinity Place, 115 Broadway, Manhattan

Trinity Place is just a couple blocks from us in the Financial District, and someone on the Herpes Mamas list recommended it. Pat and I went last night. The best thing about the place is that the bar through which you walk to get to the restaurant is an old bank vault, with ENORMOUS bank vault doors on either side. These are fantastic. The bar at 7:00 was raucous with libidinous Wall Streeters on the prowl for other libidinous Wall Streeters. We passed through the vault into the quiet restaurant.

Alas, the food was mediocre. We each had lobster bisque that was a little thin and lean on the lobster. My entree with duck confit and mushroom risotto was good, but nothing memorable, and a little too smoky for my taste in any case. Pat was similarly unremarkably placated by his gorgonzola ravioli.

We have decided to move, as outlined in my Jan. 9 post. We squirm when we think about trading in Manhattan for Jersey City, but I am going to have "4 minutes" tattooed onto my forehead, because that is only how far away Manhattan will be on the PATH train, which has a stop very close to our new apartment. 4 minutes is NOTHING! It will probably take me another 5 minutes just to wrap up this post! We have also pledged that we will take some of the vast amounts of money we'll be saving by making this move, and apply it to a regular (bi-weekly?) babysitter so that we will have nothing stopping us from making frequent 4-minute trips back in for a night on the town. We are not resigning ourselves to gaze longingly across the Hudson to our glittering former home (we are, however, looking forward to the OPPORTUNITY to gaze across the Hudson at the Manhattan skyline, a very nice feature of the new digs).

35 Thai, 35 Lispenard St., Manhattan

I had a hankering yesterday for pad thai, so Pat and I picked a place on Seamless that we had not yet tried, 35 Thai in Tribeca. The food came in around half an hour. Both my pad thai with chicken and the gang mussa-muhn (peanut curry) with chicken ordered by Pat were perfectly adequate but nothing remarkable. We wish we could find a truly great Thai restaurant within our delivery area! Thai restaurants may be one category where the Washington DC area actually has an advantage, although you can't get it to show up at your doorstep with dazzling speed the way you can here.

Light Horse Tavern, 199 Washington St., Jersey City

Pat and I have lived in our current apartment for almost a whole ten months, so clearly it is time to think about moving, right? SIGH. I never set out to be a drifter. Before Pat and I moved in together, I owned my house in the 'hood in DC for seven years. Then I moved four times in six months. Now we're considering moving again.

And we really like our current apartment. It is marvelous, with high ceilings and huge windows, in a building with character and nice staff, in a great location convenient to 4 subway lines, and it is plenty spacious for two people. But of course, in a couple months we'll be three people. And we could save a boatload of money by heading across the Hudson. And there are the darned boiler noises which wake me up usually several times a night, and the maintenance staff seems confounded by this.

We spent Saturday touring four apartment buildings in Jersey City, and particularly liked one called The Pier, which sits, go figure, on a pier. Being in the building was very much like being on a cruise boat. It is hard to weigh the trade-offs of moving there. Pluses include saving money, getting more space (and excellent views, by the way), and being more convenient to Pat's family. Minuses include negative reviews of the building online (it is hard to know how much weight to give those), moving at all, trading known problems (boiler) for unknown ones, and being in totally lame, boring Jersey City rather than Manhattan. We would still be just a four-minute PATH ride or eight-minute ferry ride from Manhattan, and we can't expect to take much advantage of being inside the city anyway once the baby arrives, but as Pat points out, it will be that much more of a challenge when we do want to take advantage, if we're across the river.

I don't know.

Anyway, in the course of our exploration, we had dinner at the Light Horse Tavern, and it was great. Pat had actually been to this place once before, for a work dinner. Our very friendly waiter told us that the new chef had been there just 2 days and was quite ambitious, including offering a special of lobster tempura atop duck l'orange atop a....heck, I can't even remember anymore -some sort of mushroomy pancake-type thing. I was willing to give it a whirl and was relieved that it was not as over-the-top as it sounded - just a great (basically non-orangey) leg of duck under a welcome chunk of battered lobster and atop a tasty carb base, also with some sautéed spinach. Yummmmmm. Pat was also pleased with his meatloaf and mashed potatoes. He also had a great parsnip soup that I ate a lot of, although the shrimps in his shrimp cocktail were fairly measly - the only negative worth noting.

I'm not ready to give Jersey City a rating yet but the Light Horse Tavern gets two thumbs up.

Kaffe 1668, 275 Greenwich St # 4, Manhattan

Kaffe 1668 in Tribeca was the site of my meeting with yet another of the Herpes Mamas, Sonja. She is new to the list and due in February, and lovely as all the rest. Joining this group was such a coup for me.

Unfortunately I wasn't impressed with the cafe. I got a hot chocolate and it was kind of on the small side, and barely chocolatey at all. Booooo. And Sonja had managed to snag us a table, but the place was overcrowded.

Walter Foods, 253 Grand St., Brooklyn

Pregnancy makes me cranky, so I regret that I was not in the best mood when Matt P. introduced Pat and me to Walter Foods, in Williamsburg. But it was nonetheless very likable.

There was a wait for a table, but the boys were pleased with their cocktails (and I with my ginger beer) at the bar. I got fried chicken as an entree, and it was great. It came with mashed potatoes and a spicy honey dip. I polished it off.

One downside to visiting this part of town in winter: the subway stop is outside! Elevated! In the cold wind! Brrrrrr.

The Bourgeois Pig, 111 E. 7th St., Manhattan

New Year's in NYC? Forget Times Square - our friends Marc, Yulia, Alex and James drove four hours up here to ring in 2012 at our apartment, while playing Rock Band. It was a great time!

The night prior, with no room at the inn at our intended East Village destination (Cienfuegos), we settled instead for the Bourgeois Pig, which as it turns out is a fondue spot. We got the rarebit fondue (excellent) and the mushroom fondue (good) and had a good night lounging on the couches, bathed in the red light of the place. It was a fine experience.

McNally Jackson Cafe, 52 Prince St., Manhattan

My latest career networking target suggested we meet in SoHo, at the cafe in the McNally Jackson bookstore. This bookstore is of the sort that makes you never want to enter a Barnes & Noble again. Yes, it loves itself, as independent bookstores often do, but you will love it too.

On this Thursday morning I was there for a couple hours and there was always at least one table available at the cafe. The hot chocolate was excellent (it was explained to me that they offer dark and milk, but my barista--Jerry--had blended them because the milk is too sweet and the dark is too bitter), although the raspberry scone was a little salty.

You have to insert a quarter to use the bathroom in the bookstore, and when you do, you are treated to a sign that says they're not engaged in a pathetic attempt to get another 25 cents out of you, but rather are trying to discourage use of the bathroom by intravenous drug users, whose needles apparently do horrible things to the plumbing. This is not, to be clear, a place I would picture drug users shooting up. It was amusing.

All this to say, if you need a book or a hot chocolate or a bathroom in SoHo, don't hesitate to visit McNally Jackson.