Sample Mac N Cheese for Free at the Great Greenpoint Mac Off

If you love mac 'n cheese (and who doesn't), you may want to check out The Great Greenpoint Mac Off this weekend, a competition among four Brooklyn bars to win "the highly coveted title of 'Greenpoint’s Best Mac & Cheese'."

The event, which is free and open to the public, takes on the form of a bar crawl, and participants get to sample mac 'n cheese from each bar (in addition to enjoying bar specials) to help determine the winner at the end of the night. A separate judging will also take place at 8 pm by local "celebrities" to determine the best bar fare. An after party tops off the festivities. Here are the details:

"Starting at 4pm at Red Star, chef, John Manzo serves up his menu’s Mac ‘N Cheese the day. At its own pace, the crawl moves to The Habitat where chef/owner Ashley Engmann offers samples from their standard menu. Participants then cross the road to The Mark Bar, the tried and true Greenpoint watering hole celebrating its 5th year, where Chef Michael Diprima of Lamb and Jaffee...serves the group from their all day menu. The crawl moves one block to t.b.d. Brooklyn to receive a final sample prepared by chef Cody Utzman, owner of local Cali-Mex eatery Papacitos and the soon to open Brooklyn Standard."

And the contenders are:

Red Star
37 Greenpoint Ave

The Habitat
988 Manhattan Ave

The Mark Bar
1025 Manhattan Ave

t.b.d. Brooklyn
244 Franklin St.

Pretzel Croissants: A Must-Try New York Treat

The other day at work we got these pretzel croissants from The City Bakery, a hot spot in the Flat Iron district known for their baked goods (they make a fresh batch of cookies every 30 minutes) and bustling lunch crowd (their atypical salad bar features farmer's market produce and sophisticated munchies like smoked tofu with chili garlic sauce and Bulgar with feta, parsley, and chopped bell peppers).

The pretzel croissant is City Bakery's "in between" specialty. What the French may find as blasphemous, New Yorkers have widely embraced; this Americanized classic pastry has attracted such a following that City Bakery made a website devoted exclusively to this "sweet & salty, flaky & rich, weird and wonderful," concoction, and various bloggers have elevated the baked good to god-like proportions. As Andrea Strong of The Strong Buzz noted, "Maury Rubin, the owner and creator of City Bakery, would probably have a warrant taken out on him if he ever closed City Bakery."

If you haven't yet experienced the buzz surrounding this trendy joint, I can vouch--at least for the hype surrounding the pretzel croissant. It's one of those unique "only in New York" things that everyone should get to try at some point or other. And while it's not necessarily "cheap," it will only set you back about $4, and it's so rich and satisfying it's worth every penny.

The pretzel croissant tastes exactly how you would expect a salty pretzel and a buttery, flaky croissant to taste if melded together. The bite starts out crunchy, as your teeth break into the buttery, flaky top layers. About mid-chew, your pearly whites begin to sink into the soft, moist, and chewy interior; the pretzel croissants we got were still warm, and they had that right-out-of-the-oven taste. While many things in New York are just short-lived fads, the legacy of the pretzel croissant is sure to last for many years to come. Isn't it about time you treat yourself to a sweet and salty treat?

Location: 3 W 18th St (btw 5th and 6th)

Search for local deals on 8Coupons.com

I found out via a Grub Street post the other day about a useful little site called 8coupons.com which allows users to search for local deals, from spa treatments to dental treatments and everything in between:

"8coupons is a fun and easy way to save time, money, and trees by getting the best, up-to-the-minute deals on your phone. Get FREE printable and text message coupons that you can redeem by just showing the cashier. Yes, it really works! You can also sign up for deal alerts (e-mail and text message) from your favorite neighborhood restaurants and shops so you never miss a deal!"

The site recently launched an NYC Money Map which now allows users to search for deals by zip code. I did a couple food-related searches in my area, and the results were a little mixed: As NY Magazine said, "there's a lot of filler" but also "some genuine deals." I did discover some good deals right in my neighborhood:

- A sketchy looking bar that I frequently pass called The Underground has $1 Beers and $3 Drinks during Happy Hour
- The ever-popular Tonic East lets ladies drink for free on Wednesday nights from 8 to 9 PM
- Grand Sichuan NY, a Chinese restaurant chain with a poorly designed website, has $6.25 lunch specials during the week

Since the site allows both businesses and regular web users to post deals, it relies on a user-generated rating system to vet out the real deals from the impostors. And the rating system also helps determine the Top 8 NYC Deals (just in case you were wondering what the whole "8" thing was about). Though I wouldn't rely on the site exclusively, 8coupons will be a welcomed addition to my "Cheap NYC" bookmarks folder.

A 10-Minute Recipe that Actually Takes 10 Minutes to Cook!

In my latest quest to find quick and simple meals, I found one in the most unsuspecting of places: The Food Network. I say "unsuspecting," because let's face it, many of us tune into cooking shows, not to replicate the signature dishes of our favorite celebrity chefs, but for the simple pleasure of watching an attractive and charismatic teacher guide us through his/her mouth-watering creations--and hopefully we'll pick up one or two tricks along the way.

But the other day, Giada De Laurentiis, the petite, bubbly host of my favorite cooking show, "Everyday Italian," featured a simple, easy dish which I whipped up the other night in literally a matter of minutes. Born in Rome and trained in Paris, Giada is a master at putting new and creative twists on classic Mediterranean cooking. Yet normally I appreciate her creations vicariously, when she samples everything at the end of the show.

Fortunately, Giada balances her inventive meals with dishes like the Orecchiette with Mixed Greens and Goat Cheese, a fusion of salad and pasta that's simple, quick, and cheap to recreate. Gus and I made it the other night with just a few minor alterations to the original recipe, costing us less than $15. Here is the "Gus and Emily" version:

1/3 box orchiette pasta (we used gemelli pasta because it happened to be the cheapest)
4 cups mixed salad greens
1/2 jar roasted red peppers, chopped
1 small jar artichoke hearts, halved
half pint cherry tomatoes, halved
feta cheese
salt and pepper

*Makes 2 very generous servings

Cook the pasta according to the box directions. Meanwhile, toss the remaining ingredients together. Drain the pasta, reserving approximately 1 cup of the pasta water. Combine the salad and the pasta in the pasta pot, adding in the reserved pasta water until the greens are just wilted. And voila, your meal is finished! The wonderful thing about this dish is that it requires no dressing and very little seasoning. Instead, the starchy pasta water fuses the flavors together, resulting in a healthy yet filling dish. Here's a picture, pre-toss: