New York Musical Trip: Surprise Street Fair

Over the third weekend in September, a friend and I went on a day trip to New York to see the musical Once, which was currently starring one of our favorite Doctor Who stars Arthur Darvill. On Doctor Who, he plays a pretty adorable character named Rory whose undying devotion and dry, self-deprecating humor gives me unrealistic expectation about the real world. You know, because the whole space and time traveling thing doesn't already. He essentially played the exact same character in the musical--minus the space, time traveling, plus some singing.

I know this is a food blog, but the musical was really really quite beautiful. It's based off of the movie, which I have never seen but if its anything like the musical it'll be great. One of my favorite things about the musical was that they used a fixed set which was this gorgeous old fashioned looking bar (they actually sold drinks from it!). For each setting/scene they would move around chairs and change the lighting to make a bedroom, a recording studio, ect ect. It was a story about love and how love pushes our lives forward (and a little backwards), so the use of a static set as a sort of reference and grounding point really resonated (I think). We all want that great adventure, that great love in our lives, and yet there is always something static we can return to. Seriously, go see it if you have a chance.

Musical aside, we had some time to kill before the musical started so given my obsession with food, I was given the job of finding us a restaurant near Times Square to get lunch. I almost resorted to Yelp before I remembered that Serious Eats is located in NY and surely they must have a best-of NY guide, which, yup, they did. After picking out Piccolo Cafe, we--this being New York--ran into a street fair along I think 8th Avenue and decided to stop and browse for a while. Along with the repeating pattern of stalls that were selling 5 for $20 scarves, pocket watches, ect ect, there was a number of repeating stalls selling some really tantalizing street food such as corn, arepas, smoothies, even fried oreos. We stopped for some corn which was so delicious I failed to stop to snap a picture.

When we finally arrived to Piccolo Cafe, we ordered and sat in the cafe to eat. It was pretty small, but we found some seats by the window and chilled for a while. I got the turkey signature sandwich, which I didn't think would be particularly special, but it was really quite delicious, filling and for a very reasonable price considering it was New York. Something about the slices of real turkey breast, the slightly toasted yet pillow-soft bread smeared with aioli gave it the perfect combination of flavors. The cafe is apparently known for its egg sandwiches (according to Serious Eats), so I'll have to come back again for those! (yea, for being a food blog, I'm pretty terrible about writing about actual food)

The plain plate made it even more rustic and charming.

We ended up chilling in the cafe for a while people watching. It was super hipster-style decorated with really worn down wood (in that cute way) and faux-newspaper tiled walls. Their music playlist was also pretty great as well, though clearly not hipster enough since Adele was on it.

Also! For those interested in music, here's a video of Arthur Darvill singing Falling Slowly. He's not the best singer in the world, but given that he essentially played Rory in the musical and and sang, I'd have to say, I'd wait a 1000 years for a guy like that.