Lovely Lunch in the 'Hood

Like many New Yorkers I've fallen into a restaurant rut in my neighborhood. Mind you I live in the West Village, so my choices aren't exactly hard to bear, but after a while you start to want a little more variety in your life. And as a cook, it really would benefit me to venture outside of my comfort zone. Today my friend Maria, who also lives in the neighborhood, introduced me to a couple of new eateries just a few blocks within radius. Yes, she's an enabler.


Keste
271 Bleecker Street, New York City

As you can see here, Keste produces beautiful brick oven pizzas. I had to take a bite before taking a picture. I was super impressed, and believe me, I am a pizza snob. There's a number of interesting choices for toppings - such as butternut cream and rapini - but we chose the classic Margherita pie. The crust is both crisp and chewy with a wonderful smokey flavor from the oven. I didn't get the full scoop on their special imported buffalo mozzeralla, but supposedly there's a story there. Regardless, the mozzarella is a creamy and buttery complement to their not-too-acidic tomato sauce. Keste will undoubtedly give John's (across the street) a run for it's money.



Berimbau
43 Carmine Street, New York City

Another recent addition is Berimbau, an upbeat Brazillian restaurant taking over the space previously used by Deborah. It's has a petite menu, but seemed to provide a number of interesting options. The vegetarian plate is the chef's option - whatever that means. Hoping for a light lunch, we ordered two salads off the appetizer menu - the Salpicao - a tossed salad with chicken, ham and vegetables - and the Tuna Salad - a mixture of rare tuna with potato sticks, greens and belgian endive. I wasn't quite wowed with either salad, and must admit to using the salt shaker a few times. Though I am giving this place another chance and ordering from the main dishes. Seeing as we did just have salad, we ordered the passion fruit mousse for dessert. It's both intensely passion fruit and intensely sweet, though not cloying. For this, we will absolutely come back. Front of the house is quite attentive, and as the only customers for lunch, our chatty waiter gave us complementary passion fruit caparainha shots. Not a bad afternoon.