El Quinto Pino

Ok, so I have somewhat recovered from a whirlwind eating-playing-shopping weekend in NYC, and just getting back to blogging. With a the help of a diehard foodie friend and native New Yorker, I was clued in to a few random, but totally delicious items hidden around town, and we made a weekend of trying to stuff as much as we could in without getting kicked out for ordering just one dish (no lie, it happened). So the next few posts will reveal just a few of our best bites. I adore the lighting in pretty much every NYC restaurant, deli or cafe, but it’s not totally conducive to food photography, so bear with the mood-setting glow on some of these..anyway, we start with the uni panini at El Quinto Pino…

It’s not a new dish, but intriguing all the same, an uni sandwich, can you go wrong? I’ll admit, I had never had uni (sea urchin), and was told it was a love-it-or-hate it situation. I loved it, soft, almost mousse-like texture and all, but this sandwich? Not as amazing as it sounded. I did like the presentation, and the skinny baguette was cute, crunchy on the outside and chewy inside, and appropriately buttered. But it almost overpowered the somewhat sparse spread of uni inside. Did it need more heat? Something green? I didn’t know. But what did save our trip to this adorable little hole-in-the-wall restaurant was this..

Written cleverly on a round pole that held the place up was a list of frozen drinks spiked with gin, basil, lemon and I had to have one. It was sweet, tart, refreshing and went down a little too easily. It was the highlight of our two-item stop, but the rest of the menu looked more enticing, from Castilian Cracklin’s to house-cured pork loin with cheese and piquillo peppers. But alas, we had to save room for more stops… El Quinto Pino 401 W. 24th Street, NYC