Food Crawls
Why go to 1 restaurant when you can go to 4? I started food crawling in 2012 with my Mom. When we started our annual Mother-Daughter trip to Aruba in 2007, we ate Subway sandwiches for lunch and went out to dinner. Like normal people, we ordered 2 appetizers and 2 entrees. We soon realized that we were not hungry enough for such a full meal so we gradually transitioned to 2 entrees and 1 appetizer, then 2 appetizers and 1 entree, graduating all of the way up to just 2 apps. Seeing as 2 apps at a restaurant would hardly pass 30 minutes of time, we started restaurant hopping around Aruba, dining at bars, ordering 1 app to share and a drink each and then heading to another restaurant bar to do the same!
For the first birthday I celebrated with Sung, I planned a 2 day pizza crawl for us, 3 spots each day. We kept talking about the top pizza places in NY so I figured we should sprint to some notable pizza joins on a quest to find the best pizza. The pizza quest never ends, seeing as there is always more great pizza to be consumed. And for all of you NYC pizza snobs like me, come back to me when you’ve had pizza in Naples, Italy and Portland, Oregon. You need those experiences to really round out your pizza pie personality.
Over 10 years since my first crawl and 8 years since my pizza tour, the food crawl life is my main hustle. We gather with a group of friends often to explore NYC neighborhoods and sample the local cuisines. Sung and I will hit 3 restaurants on a Friday night, with one dish at each. And Eileen and I are the most infamous Aruba food crawlers that one happy island has ever seen. In 2022 though, a few crawls really stood out that make food crawling a top moment of the year.
When omicron hit in December, we kissed my Mom goodbye on Christmas morning and didn’t see anyone else until February 6. No fitness class, no outdoor dining, no social distance backyard hangs. We did Peloton, drove for takeout, and stayed home watching historical movies. Our biggest outings were our pizza crawl and taco crawl which we did by Volvo. We drove to 10 pizza joints across all 5 boroughs. We only sampled 2 bites each and froze the rest. The next weekend, we swapped pizza for tacos. Boy was it fun bringing home leftover half eaten tacos and turning the shells into chips (delicious!) and the fillings into a mixed meat platter (disgusting!).
Another epic crawl was our 5th annual 5 borough crawl done mostly via Citibike, with a ferry and uber thrown in there too. Our theme was sandwiches with the goal of trying 5 different types of sandwiches. We had a PEC (swap bacon for pastrami) at Frankel’s in Brooklyn, a Banh Mi at District Saigon in Queens, a chopped cheese at Blue Sky Deli in Harlem, a Cemita at La Cueva Fonda in the Bronx and an Italian Sandwich at Royal Crown Bakery in Staten Island. All 5 sandwiches were love its on my rating system (read more about my system here).
Lastly, we did a few tourist days, where we pretend we are not from NY and lean into all things NYC. On our tourist days this year, we visited Little Italy for lunch (pretty tasty!), the Morgan Library (amazing), the Only Murders in the Building apartment building (SO cool to see), Dave & Buster’s (ew, gross), Junior’s cheesecake and so much more. So many people visit NYC to see these sites and its fun to view the city through their eyes. On another tourist day, we visited The Transit Museum and the Museum of the City of New York.
If you want to surprise a loved one with a fun themed crawl as a gift, please hit me up here. I’d love to help you plan your next adventure!
