Little Italy II

Who’d have thought there’d be a Little Italy in the Bronx? Not me, that’s for sure! But Jurgen has these “explore New York” type of cards (different to the ones we have) which told us otherwise, so yesterday we headed out with him and Sibylle to see if it was true.

Turns out that it is true! Actually the tour turned out to only be about two streets long, which was lucky for me because unlike our Austrian friends, I wasn’t dressed entirely well for the bitter cold. (Though in my defense, stupid weather.com told me it was only -4C, but it was way colder than that!) Note for next time: wear thermals.

Anyway, it was a very quiet day in Little Italy, either because people wiser than I stayed out of the cold, or because it’s kind-of in the middle of nowhere. Still, Sibylle managed to make herself a friend by asking for directions to a particular restaurant from a guy on the street. Of course, he turned out to somehow be related to the family that ran the restaurant, and then he insisted on actually walking us inside and telling the maitre d’ to “take care of us”. I guess it could have gone two ways – either he was going to top us or feed us; thankfully it was the latter, and we enjoyed a killer (no pun intended) lunch of pasta, calamari, and antipasto.

Being an Italy of some calibre, there was a bundle of pasty shops which we felt we should browse through simply to support the locals. We even made some pity purchases to keep them in business – despite the fact it would be sending us to the gym afterwards to work off the calories! How selfless we all are…

Overall, we were a bit disappointed that the shop which sells the fresh rabbit wasn’t trading yesterday, and that the place with the home-made pasta closes early on a Sunday. So we may have to head back if we ever want to cook that fresh rabbit pasta that we’ve been craving, but otherwise I think we can successfully cross “Little Italy in the Bronx” off the list (after first adding it to the list, that is).