Dessert meals in NYC

Sometimes when I'm grazing solo in NYC, I just eat what I want to and end up having dessert meals. Yesterday, after seeing the Anglomania exhibit at the Met, I head down 2 blocks to the Lady M Cake Boutique at 78th and Madison. My parents discovered the original Lady M in Tokyo and fell in love with their signature dessert: the milles-crepe, 20 crepes layered with "ethereally light and creamy custard." The hint of burnt caramelized sugar blowtorched on the top is divine. My dad has been trying for years to recreate this -- his personal spin on it is mixing matcha (green tea powder) into the cream.

I then head down to Union Square where I was going to eventually meet my friend, but in the chow tour, the destination was The City Bakery. I love love love the pretzel croissants -- a perfect hybrid: denser and chewier than regular croissants, but still with all those buttery layers; salted on top like a pretzel, but flaky like a croissant. The pretzel croissant inspires such devotion, that it actually has it's own website.

So feeling a bit more in the mood for actual food food, I did actually get a small plate from the salad bar -- for a white establishment they do tofu alright there, not bland like white people usually do, for one thing they use the dried smoked tofu that i like better. Then I got a 1/2 dozen of the melt-in-your-mouth mini peanut butter cookies to bring over to my friend's place.

And this was from NYC earlier in summer, though I never blogged about it. Another grazing lunch where we split a sandwich, so that we could get dessert (the dessert and coffee cost more than our actual lunch): blueberry pie with an oh-so-flaky crust and super-gingery ginger sandwich cookies with hazelnut cream from some place on 10th Street who's name escapes me. Irene if you read this, please help me out.