Mothers Day 2013 Part 1

Our family has come to a mutual understanding that for major holidays and events (e.g. Christmas, birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc.), physical presents are unnecessary...an added bonus, if you will, given by those that are feeling particularly generous. We all agree that the best gift is a delicious meal and some quality time with the family. Whether we have a home-cooked meal or eat out is dependent on the circumstance; sometimes, we do both. Thus was the case for Mother's Day 2013, which we started celebrating on Saturday night. I've been pretty worn out and haven't really cooked recently, and so my gift to my mom (in addition to QT with me) was a meal at Wild Fig, a Mediterranean restaurant that has delicious flatbread, among other things.

We started out with a platter of spreads, which is why I picked this restaurant in the first place-my sister had ordered the tarama spread a few weeks ago and I had been craving it for days.

White bean salad, tarama spread (roe), babaganoush (eggplant) and hummus

Second course-some pide (still have no idea how to pronounce this!). See an explanation of pide below, as extracted from wikipedia:

In Turkey, local pita is called pide which also refers to another pizza-like food made of pide dough topped with different ingredients. Regional variations in the shape, baking technique, and topped materials create distinctive styles for each region. Such pides may include pastırma, sucuk, chicken, chopped or ground beef, kavurma (meat, generally mutton or beef, fried with suet and salt and kept for later use), cheese, potatoes, mushrooms and many other ingredients.

Pide 

Next up, some Iskender kebabs; kebabs are just a must when at a Mediterranean restaurant, in my opinion. This was absolutely delicious. There was some tzatziki sauce, lamb and beef gyro, topped on diced flatbread, with some tomato garlic sauce. Served with rice!

Iskender kebab

A simple salad with calamari. Who doesn't love calamari?

Calamari salad

Wurst in NYC

Winner of the first Vendy Award in 2005, and beating out the renowned Halal Guys on 53rd and 6th, Hallo Berlin offers tourists and natives some tasty German sausages. Located in midtown right off 5th Ave., this food cart was swarming with men in suits (I'm sure it also attracts other people, but such was the case when I arrived). Your Foursquare tips and Yelp reviews will warn you that there is quite a bit of a wait, particularly during rush hour. I arrived at 12:30, thus experiencing this lunch-hour rush (apparently, just because I'm on spring break does not mean that everyone else is too). 35 minutes later, I still wasn't sure what I was going to order-there are so many choices, unless you opt for the dictator special, shown below:

The two specials-the dictator special (no choice of wursts) and the democracy special (choice of 2 wursts)

Despite my extreme indecisiveness when it comes to ordering (unless I've researched the menu in advance), I went with the democracy special, with a currywurst (as advised by my fellow Foursquarers) and knockwurst, accompanied by the works (all toppings-red and white cabbage, sauteed onion), some potato salad, and a meatball on top.

Democracy special

Not exactly the most photogenic meal, but little matter when it tastes DELICIOUS! Halfway through, my stomach, which I'm pretty sure is shrinking despite what you might think when eating with me, told me I was done but I kept going just because...

Particularly now that the weather is quite nice, I recommend eating at the Grand Army Plaza, Manhattan edition on 59th street and 5th. You might want to plan for a stroll in Central Park after to burn off all the calories! 

Be forewarned, you'll have to fight through hordes of business people and tourists stopping and taking pictures in front of Abercrombie and Hollister (which I still don't really get) to hit up this joint.