Exciting Day! Risotteria and Amorino

It doesn’t get any better than this: trying two delicious new places (okay, one of them is just new to me), during a BEAUTIFUL sunny day that was as cool and breezy as any September Friday in my rosy Vermont memories.  And I was lucky enough to be accompanied by my wonderful AUNTIE JOYCE at two of these establishments.

Number one: RISOTTERIA.

It’s an ALL GLUTEN FREE restaurant.  Seriously!  And not only that–it’s actually cute inside. And the food is good.  And the menu is HUGE.  So huge that I had no idea what to order and had to ask the waitress what she recommended–and then she recited so many customer favorites that I lost track after truffle oil.  So truffle oil it was– porcini mushroom, sweet corn, and truffle oil risotto, that is.  The risotto list was super long and included ingredients like zucchini, shrimp, mozzarella, fontina, and portabella mushrooms, all in different mouth-watering combinations.  We also selected a panini from a similarly long list including various combinations of arugula, sun-dried tomatoes, prosicutto, prosciutto cotto, soppressata, coppa, mozzarella, and fontina.  We chose the prosciutto and fontina panini on gluten-free bread.

Both options were outstanding.  I’ve sampled other gluten-free products around the city, and this was by far the best.  (Specifically, the pizza crust at L’asso left a LOT to be desired.  Honestly, you almost can’t tell it’s not gluten-free.

Stop Number Two: AMORINO.

This gelato chain (location in Italy: Milan) is famous for shaping its many flavors of gelato into flowers with different-flavored petals.  I’m all for it.  Today was their first day in America (welcome to America!! Yay!) and they treated New Yorkers to free cones and cups from 4-7pm.  Joyce and I debated waiting in line (well, I knew we were going to do it, but I pretended to debate), which looked intimidatingly long, but a friendly pregnant woman emerged with her friends, happily licking a cone, and assured us that the wait was only 20 minutes and so worth it.  Another friendly onlooker urged us to wait in line while we considered it, especially since it was the best spring day New York’s had so far.

Yes, it WAS worth it.  And the line moved really fast (probably because no one had to pay.)  I had caramello con burro salato, cioccolato amorino, frutta della passione, and vaniglia bourbon.  All of the flavors were excellent, except for the chocolate, which was not good.  I thought it would be special because it had their name on it, but no.  Anyway they have a bunch of other flavors I wanted to try like the Cioccolato di Ecuador, Amarena, Pistacchio, and Crema.

What a yummy day!