A rare thing, I went to the Farmer’s Market at Grand Army Plaza on an early Saturday morning with Howard. There wasn’t anything particular that I wanted to buy but I ended up getting leeks, kale flowers, fresh eggs, bacon and a baguette. So then on Sunday night I was thinking about what to eat for dinner and this is what I came up with. I just cooked the bacon first then added the kale flowers. Once the orzo was done cooking I added to the bacon and kale and added a good amount of parmesan cheese. And because I love eating more carbs I ate the orzo with some baguette.

Howard: I first heard from Paulie Gee after I wrote a post about Lucali’s. He suggested a few places for pizza, including Roberta’s in Bushwick. Roberta’s quickly became my favorite pizza place in the city. In the meantime, I started seeing Paulie Gee’s name pop up all over the food blog-o-sphere. He seemed to be obsessed with pizza, to the point of building a pizza oven in his back yard and hosting tastings there. I kept in occasional contact with him over the past year or so, and I even tried to finagle an invitation to one of those pizza tastings, to no avail. But then came some interesting news — Paulie Gee was going to open an actual pizzeria, here in Brooklyn.

We walked in through the enormous wooden doors into the comfortable, exposed wood interior. At the far end of the restaurant was the pizza oven, and standing in front of it was Paulie Gee himself. He looked a bit overwhelmed but quite happy, and he seemed glad to see us there. We took up a big table right in front of the kitchen space, and while we ate the restaurant very quickly filled up with other diners.

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I love it when I see something at the Farmer’s Market that I’ve never seen before. At first glance I thought this was just young broccoli rabe, but then I noticed the sign identifying them as kale flowers (it also said that you should cook them like you would broccoli rabe). I suppose this means we are nearing the end of kale season, which means that Spring really is around the corner.

Meat and whiskey! Thats all you need to know about Char No.4. Oh and I guess their shrimp and grits are pretty good too oh and fried cheese curds. And that pretty much the reasons what brought me, Howard, Matt and Anh to Char No.4 or at least for me. I have heard many good things about their shrimp and grits but what I really wanted was MEAT. Howard showed interest when he found out they served fried cheese curds. He had some amazing ones in his Wisconsin trip.

So we went on a Thursday night and surprisingly we were all on time! Really rare that happens, eh I guess I’m always 30mins late to everything. We went in and got seated right away. The waiter quickly told us that they were out of the smoked half chicken and it was only 8:15pm. I took a lot longer than usual to finally decide what I wanted. But here’s what we all got.

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Besides the Buttermilk Truck, another truck I just had to go was the Gastrobus. Yes I have been to the Gastrobus twice (here and here) but well Antonio and Lana are just such great people. I just had to give them a visit and so should everyone! I wanted my whole family to try so I brought them along. Which also mean I would be able to try a lot of the dishes that day heehee.

It was their organic Sunday menu so they were parked at the Los Feliz farmers market at the post office parking lot. Last time I saw Antonio and Lana it was in September so I was glad that they still remembered me when I arrived at the truck. Lana and I chatted a bit before I placed my order. Well I pretty much ordered everything off the menu, like I said I wanted to try them all!

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If I have to sum up 2009, I would say that this year was filled with street food and pizza. We attempted to make our own, Howard practically tried almost all of the pizza places, Wisconsin pizza, and then there was our semi-failed Brooklyn pizza tour. During our mini Brooklyn pizza tour I got the chance to go to Roberta’s. Currently it’s Howard’s favorite place.

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