Day 2 of Maya and Hirono’s NYC adventures began with lunch at Eataly, in the lovely Gramercy neighborhood.

When you walk into this place — a food court meets grocery shop (on steroid) — you instantly feel like you have stepped into Italy. There are eateries stationed in each corner of the warehouse-like building, each serving up different dishes, from seafood, to steak, to pasta, to wine / cheese, to desserts.

Maya and I ended up at the Pasta section and had one the best. pasta. dishes. ever.  Our server was a handsome Italian guy with a full-on Italian accent … so we decided to call him Mossimo.  The place felt completely authentic (unless, of course, Mossimo was really from Nebraska).

This was spaghetti with simple tomato sauce. The menu had this dish served with penne but I changed it up to my favorite pasta. It was seriously amazing – simple but an absolute perfect meal.

Maya’s ravioli dish was pretty darn amazing too.

After lunch, we walked across 23rd Street to Chelsea Market. We walked by Shake Shack on the way, which has always been one of the places that I wanted go, but now that I don’t eat meat, the burger didn’t appealed to me all that much … but I took a picture of it anyway.

When we arrived to Chelsea Market, the home of Food Network, we made a beeline to Jacques Torres for a cup of hot chocolate. It was nice to relax a bit over a nice cup of Wicked (spicy hot chocolate, aka liquid crack). Maya and I shared a delicious piece of Earl Gray chocolate.

We weren’t particular hungry but we saw a bunch of people eating whole lobsters so we HAD to try it too (we are a total culinary ambulance chasers and we get so curious as to what others are eating) ! We got to choose our lobster from the fish monger who cooked it and cracked the shells for us.  We were glad that the lobsters were already dead … otherwise, we would have felt super guilty, knowing that we were directly responsible for the poor crustacean’s destiny.

We named the lobster Oscar … and he was delicious.

Chelsea Market was jam packed with a Saturday tourist crowd, with barely a room to walk, so we didn’t get to explore all that much, but we made sure to stop by Fat Witch for some yummy brownies.

We spent a few good hours shopping at SoHo, after we left Chelsea Market. We went to Purl SoHo (aka mecca) and picked up some new fabrics, and bought the entire Uniqlo store. After we dropped off our stuff and relaxed for a few minutes at the hotel, we were off to see the Broadway musical, Anything Goes, which turned to be one of the most entertaining shows I’ve seen, on Broadway AND elsewhere!  We seriously spent two hours laughing.  I was a bit disappointed at first that Sutton Foster was no longer on the show, but It was still amazing nonetheless.

Then, it was time for late dinner at Gam Mi Oak in Koreatown for some ox tail soup and kimchi. Maya ordered cow’s knees (yep, I guess they’re edible). I didn’t eat the knees but I had some vegetables in the dish and they were awesome.

Ready to go to sleep — it’s almost 3:00 a.m. and we have another busy day tomorrow!