The Ottimo™ Ciao Bella® Ice Cream Sandwich at Eleni's®

It was Debbie and her daughters who first discovered these beauties, tucked away inside the Chelsea Market, and later she brought a bagfull over to my place for me, Bo, and Co. Since then I've gone out of my way twice for more, a sure sign that, even in a town packed with excellent on-the-go treats, these sweets—basically, intense Ciao Bella gelato sandwiched between soft Eleni's cookies—will remain in our steady dessert rotation for some time to come.

The multi-branded Ottimos come in four flavors, the best a toss up between the refreshing Strawberry—the fruity filling an unexpectedly perfect pairing for the cinnamony Snickerdoodles—and the rich, aromatic Espresso, nicely complemented by Chocolate "Neat" Cookies, which I guess means "studded with cakey bits and white chocolate chunks." Really, both of these are pretty much ice-cream-sandwich heaven; choose to suit your mood.

Also good, if much less crave-able, are the super-sweet Chocolate/Chocolate Chip, and the somewhat blandly sophisticated Lemon/Lemon Poppy. These will do in a pinch, but are definitely second tier.

Eleni's is located in the Chelsea Market, which can be entered on either Ninth or Tenth Avenues, between 15th and 16th streets. Eleni's is probably best known for its impressive selection of creatively, temptingly decorated cookies and cupcakes, though I've found these to be only serviceable.

Supermac

The early reviews were mostly pretty tepid, and it's not really in a neighborhood I get to, well... ever, so although they specialize in one of the all-time great foodstuffs, I had never been to Supermac in the year or so since it opened its doors. Until, that is, last night, when a weird confluence of events put me right smack in front of this tiny, mod, supremely orange and bright spot, right when I was in the middle of starving to death. And I must say I was impressed.

I ate two things, both totally satisfying. First, if someone offers you something called Mac & Cheese Nuggets, you're sort of morally obligated to try it, right? So I did, and these deep-fried delights—served with standard-issue barbecue and ranch dips—were crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside, fun, flavorful and filling, which is about all you could ask of such a thing.

Like its great East Village counterpart S'Mac, the heart of the Supermac meal lies in the many varieties of Macaroni and Cheese, here offered in two sizes, all served in a hot ceramic skillet. The Mac Cheesesteak looked appealing, as did the Chipotle Shrimp, and the Ala Carbona, but in the end I opted for the B & G mini mac (which was plenty), a toothsome platter of firm pasta, smoky chunks of Applewood Bacon, plenty of salty Mozzarella, and a deftly delivered hit of rich Gorgonzola. Fresh, lively ingredients, thoughtfully combined and balanced well: someone back there in that minuscule kitchen clearly knows what they're doing.

Supermac is located on Seventh Avenue between 30th and 29th Streets. The beverage selection is small but interesting (Teany teas, for example), and for dessert, your choice of higher-end sugarbombs: Crumbs cupcakes or Rice to Riches pudding. There are only about ten seats—obviously they've geared up more for take out/delivery—but the young man working behind the counter understands that the more enthusiastically you engage with your customers, the more pleasant and entertaining your own workday experience.

Ronnybrook Milk Bar

Call it, not haute barnyard, but wholesome barnyard food... what the farmer's wife would have served her hungry field workers in some never-existent idyll, and entirely fitting for a company whose signature product is, after all, milk.

Bo, Co and I answered the clang of Ma's triangle yesterday and went to the Chelsea Market for a farmhand's feast at the new Ronnybrook Milk Bar. And while the overall experience was a bit mixed—loved the decor and desserts; loved the lunch a good deal less—the large menu of savories and sweets will definitely have us coming back for more.

What impressed us most about the interior is how they resisted the cliché "general store" look (think Good Enough to Eat on the Upper West Side, or Grey Dog in the Village) and instead nicely combined the rustic and rough-hewn with a contemporary cleverness (the hidden door in the back, the milk-crate walls with embedded refrigerators, the milk-bottle glasses) as well as a sleek island kitchen and wrap-around counter.

As for the food, the best savory dish we ordered was a Golden Beet Salad, which came with fennel, radishes and some first-rate Sprout Creek goat cheese. It was all very bright and refreshing, and the proportions within the salad were heavy with goodies, but you should know that this $7.50 plate is very much a side dish. Also good—juicy and full-flavored—was Bo's Berkshire County Ham and Gruyere on Pressed Rye, a solid entry into the grilled cheese genre.

Less successful was my Free Range Roast Chicken Sandwich, with Grafton cheddar, avocado and bacon: far too dry, and, especially considering all the ingredients, sadly flavorless. Co's Baked Country Mac and 3 Cheeses was even more dry and bland... so much so that she couldn't even bring herself to finish the small crock.

But if the meal was inconsistent (and, I must say, overpriced) the desserts sent us out the door with a sugar-induced stagger and a smile. They were out of Doughnut Bowls in which to serve their ice cream, so Bo went for the Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich, opting for a huge scoop of lively mint chocolate chip between two sweet and crunchy chocolate chip cookies. This was excellent, easily split-able (had we been so inclined) and, at $3, a real sweet-treat bargain.

I had a Sundae, hot fudge over two scoops of coconut ice cream with a generous dollop of thick, homemade cream.... all of which made for a total sugar bomb, and a ridiculous, though admittedly delicious, thing to eat at 1:30 in the afternoon. The biggest dessert winner was Co's vanilla and strawberry shake, light and fresh and frothy with a wonderfully intense berryness at its core.

Ronnybrook Milk Bar is located within the Chelsea Market, which has entrances on both Ninth and Tenth Avenues, between 15th and 16th Streets. Hours are 8:30am to 7pm during the week; 10:00 to 6:00 on Saturday and Sunday. We were disappointed to discover that they stop serving their egg dishes (read: breakfast) at 11:45 on weekdays.

Tia Pol

Another point in favor of the tapas format, besides the whole "make your own tasting menu" thing? They make for an ideal excuse to hold a table (or a bar stool) for an extra-long dinner. You can order some plates, eat some plates, chat for a bit, order some plates, eat some plates, chat some more, order some more plates...

That's one of the reasons I had such a good time at Tia Pol the other night, dining and talking and dining and talking and reconnecting with my old friend Nanna. The other source of pleasure was Tia Pol's food. Or I should say, two-thirds of Tia Pol's food.

Nanna and I wound up getting eight different items from the menu, including dessert, five of which I enjoyed very much, three of which were essentially ruined by a heavy hand in the kitchen. Take the Huevos Rellenos (please!): three creamy deviled eggs "al pimentón de la vera" (basically chili powder), which would have been more than enough flavor as is, but then someone in the kitchen added so much dijon mustard to the mix that that's all we could taste.

Or the Laminas de Setas special, a potentially delicious oyster-mushroom carpaccio topped with manchego and marconas... and so much raw garlic that we couldn't even finish the plate. Our other special, the Chopitos, or fried baby squid with sea salt, also had potential—and, in fact, several pieces were exceptionally oceanic and tender—but as Nanna pointed out, the dish felt like it had been cooked sometime before, then reheated, which only emphasized the blandness of the batter.

But there were excellent plates to be had here, too. We both found the Garbanzos Fritos totally addictive: salty, warm, spicy and with a surprisingly airy crunch. The best dish of the night might have been the Montadito de Crema, a wonderfully intense fava bean puree sprinkled with buttery beyos cheese on two slices of toast.

Also first-rate was the Pinchos Morunos, two rich and juicy lamb skewers jutting from a hunk of bread. And the tender Txipirones en su Tinta—squid in its ink with a small mound of lemony, parsleyed rice—is definitely worth a try if only for the black, briney sauce, which we greedily sopped up with a requested basket of bread. The dessert, too, I would consider a success: a moist and crunchy almond torte (Torta de Santiago) in a swath of dulce de leche and partnered with a scoop of mystery flavor ice cream which, frankly, contributed not much more than "cold" to the dish.

Tia Pol is a sliver of a place in Chelsea, on Tenth Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets, and it gets crowded. When I arrived at 6:15 on a Monday evening, two bar stools were the only seats to be had. When we left at 9:00, the wait for a table had to have been 45 minutes.

Swich

It seemed like Bo and Co had a hundred days off in January (ok, it was seven, but still...), and so on one of those days I decided: we're going out to lunch. Which is why on a recent freezing Monday afternoon the three of us found ourselves tucking into a delicious hot sandwich-y feast at the Swich, a new, cool place on 8th Avenue, right up from 15th Street.

Swich serves creative, hot-pressed sandwiches (or "deconstructed" salad versions thereof) and that's pretty much it. I had the Trojan Horse: rosemary focaccia filled with ground lamb, tomato, tzatziki, and fresh mint. It was juicy, hearty, full-flavored, as tasty a sandwich as I've had in a long time. Co played it safe with the Cuban, and was rewarded with a well-made version of the classic: marinated pork, swiss cheese, boiled ham and pickle chips on fresh french bread. Bo devoured her Tuna-na-na, starring white albacore with marinated artichokes and olive tapenade on crunchy 7-grain bread. I had bites of both, and both were terrific. We all split a bag of Swich's "Internationally Famous Potato Chips", which are made on premises, and are thin, crunchy, a delight. We also shared a Homemade Banana Lemonade, which was less interesting than it sounds, and not really worth the $3 price tag. For dessert? A totally unecessary but nonethless scrumptious something called Edible Happiness: basically a grilled dark chocolate, white chocolate and Nutella sandwich.

The atmosphere here friendly-hipster, there's one big communal table, the music is loud and pretty good, and one of the flat screen monitors plays SwichTV, which seems to be devoted solely to staffers doing goofy things. Bo and Co liked the place a lot, and we all agreed that it's a welcome, inexpensive, quick-bite addition to that neighborhood.

R.U.B.

Scoboco had a kind of group epiphany tonight, about a third of the way through our dinner at Righteous Urban BBQ, and it was this: in theory, we love barbecue, and get a craving for it every few months; in reality, the first maybe six or seven bites are amazing... and then it all sort of starts to taste the same, and that smoky sweetness (sweet smokiness?) frankly gets a little sickening. Or maybe not. After all, I loved my lunch this fall at Blue Smoke: the deviled eggs and saucy Kansas City Ribs and macaroni and cheese were all excellent. And the three of us have had several delicious meals at Rack and Soul (though mostly due to the fried chicken). So maybe we do like this stuff... just not the sort they serve at R.U.B..

Anyway, our dinner last night definitely had it good moments. The French Fries were nicely dense and potatoey and totally addictive, especially after we salt- and peppered the heck out of them. Our other side dish—Barbecued Baked Beans, chewy with chunks of pork—was also well done. For our main course, the three of us split the Taste of the Baron, an over-the-top platter of beef brisket, ham, pulled pork, a quarter chicken, turkey, pastrami, spicy sausage and a quarter rack of (dry-rubbed) ribs, all piled high on soggy white bread and finished with sweet pickle slices. The pulled pork was the best thing here, all tender and fatty and full-flavored. The ham, turkey and pastrami... were ham, turkey and pastrami: Bo and Co just finished a lunch of leftover sandwiches, and gave it two thunbs up, but none of us were too excited by these last night. Worse, the chicken, ribs and brisket—the heart and soul of the platter—were almost completely tasteless, and so needed lots of the sweet (garlicky?) table sauce, which is maybe what did us in. Did we just order wrong? Possibly. I have heard raves about R.U.B., but the next time Scoboco gets a hankering for some BBQ, we're going somewhere else.

Righteous Urban BBQ is on 23rd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues.