I’m not a foodie. I–as a rule–don’t take pictures of my food and post it to Pinterest or Instagram. I like food, though. At least the food I like. I’m not big on trying unknown foods, partly due to food allergies and partly due to weird taste buds. For instance, I like fried okra. Stewed okra? Not only no, but HELL NO!!!

So, I go to New York City every 4 years for the Romance Writers of America conference. There’s hotel food. There’s Times Square food. There’s sightseeing food. Occasionally, I get lucky. Junior’s, an iconic NYC restaurant and bakery, is across the street from the Marriott Marquis Times Square where the conference is held. It’s got a large variety of entres, sandwiches, salads, and desserts. Cheesecake. Just sayin’! And their bacon cheese burger with steak fries (frites) and fried onion rings is awesome. So is their breakfast. Tradition is to eat at Junior’s at least once. This trip, Only and I had dinner there our first night and then we joined friends (waves at Ev and Mairi) who came down for the day and a couple of days respectively there for lunch.

Only and I had a cheese pretzel in Battery Park after touring both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was a giant hot pretzel with cheese inside, rather than a cup of cheesy-whiz stuff to dip it in. Pretty yummy. Then my editor took us, after a tour of the Harper-Collins/Harlequin offices, to a place called Eatalia (I think that’s the name/spelling), which is an up-scale Italian grocery with little “kitchens” scattered around serving all sorts of foods, coffees, and desserts. It’s in this really cool mall place that also has subway stops and is across the street from the 9-11 Memorial. We had espresso and Italian desserts. Mine was sort of like a cream puff but fancier. It was totally yummy.

The other place of note we discovered was a little hole in the wall pizzaria called Patzeria, that was across the street and down the block on the other side of the hotel. You walk in, grab a drink from the cooler, pick a slice or two (New York style) of whatever selection of pizzas they have in the display case, pay, and go outside to stand on the sidwalk and grab your box from the window. Awesome pizza!

Our last night there, we had dinner in the Broadway Lounge at the hotel with our friends. I had the cheese burger and fries.

I did mention that I’m not a foodie, right? I also don’t travel as well as I did when I was younger. It takes longer to recover from the Travel Tireds and to get back into the swing of normal life and routine. I’ll get back to the posting schedule soon. In the meantime, when you travel, do you like to try new foods/local delicacies or are you unadventurous like me? 😉