Ladies Who Lunch: Mary Ann Pants at Campo

Miss Pants, as I have come to know her (referred to after refusing our internship director's comments on why wearing skirts was preferred for us during orientation), is one of my first minxes. She and I are closer in age than the others (yes, 25) and so we have more things in common having left our initial undergrad days behind a few years sooner than our fellow interns. However, I miss seeing her daily and have lunches of bad and worse hospital food. It is rare that she ventures out of her native Queens so I have to lure her with the promise of potential Italian eats.

We chose to meet at Campo, a "Rustic Tuscan Gathering Place" which had opened on Broadway at 113th Street in early May. Despite the item of hype, the Fried Green Tomato Caprese, there was little other reason for us to go there besides logistics. Needless to say, with our luck working for us as usual, that day they had not placed them on the menu. So we each had some overly priced underwhelming salads, hers of arugula and chicken and mine a version of a Cobb. Also, due to their positioning in the neighborhood of Columbia they had their drink menu named closely to entice young alcoholics with daddy's credit card; we chose to try the Barnard.

Basically, even a nice sunny day could not save this restaurant's boring food, organic hypocracy (breaded monkfish and organic ethics do not mix!), and high prices, however, I was still lucky to have lunch with the very photogenic Miss Pants!

above: The Barnard
above: Chicken and arugula salad
above: Italian dough balls...with honey?

~beth (Who also refused to wear anything but pants! Viva la revolucion!)

Ladies Who Lunch: Ellen at Candle 79

During a yearlong unpaid dietetic internship you will actually find yourself becoming more conservative by the day. This is why I loved having rotations with Ellen, because she was the one person who might actually have been more conservative than me at any give moment. She totally understood every single thing I would say and she made the best faces when someone was being completely ridiculous. I miss her facial judgments on a daily basis.

We are both in flux between that soul-sucking internship and grad school so we have time to lunch and discuss our very important social lives and such. We decided to go to Candle 79 as it had been voted the Vegetarian Restaurant of 2007 by just about everyone who was deciding such things. Also, it is a Green Certified Restaurant, and since I am going to grad school for this...it seemed right up our alley. The menu was kind of like that of many Southern California places with raw items. After a precise eye roll from Ellen towards our new wavey server, we decided on some drinks, a lunch entrée, and Ellen had some dessert.

The food was interesting...the salad was divine, and I love Ellen's scrowl face!

above: Ginger Rush sake, plum nectar, ginger

above: Wild Fiddlehead Salad

above: Live Zucchini Enchiladas cashew cheese, spinach, guacamole, chipotle tomato sauce, cashew sour cream, pumpkin seeds, baby romaine, tomato-corn salsa

above: Some Special Ice Cream Thing

~beth