pain francais

And I'm back. If anyone even noticed I was gone. Things were a little quiet on *the passionfruit* last week, due in part to the computer being out for repairs. But alas, he is back and ready to gobble up endless food photos. There is, however, another reason I have been a little scarce on here. I haven't been cooking. Shhhh. I mean, I've been cooking here and there, but nothing much of interest. Basically, J-Cat and I had use of a car two weekends in a row, and that resulted in driving all over the city and eating everything that we're normally too lazy to drag our asses out to on the subway. The list includes Uighur food in Brighton Beach, Uzbek food in Rego Park, Ukrainian food also in Brighton Beach, Italian in Tudor City, Banh Mi in our own neighborhood, and a failed attempt at IHOP in Jackson Heights. Yeah, we tried to go to IHOP. Give me a break, we never get crap like that in the city, as evidenced by the enormously huge line trying to get a table on a Saturday morning.

Anyway, yesterday was J-Cat's birthday(yay!). We celebrated on Saturday with a trip to the famous Mandolin Bros. shop in Staten Island for his brand new Collings MT A-Style Mandolin. He's in heaven. For dinner that night, we went to the fantastic Convivio in Tudor City. Four courses for $59, and some of the best pasta I have ever had. This place is a true gem. We struck out yesterday by going to a supposed bluegrass brunch at Superfine in Dumbo. It was both not bluegrass music and not super fine. But he was happy nonetheless because our Convivio dinner more than made up for it. In fact, all of our awesome food adventures over the last couple of weeks were more than enough to satisfy us for a while. At least, until we buy a car of our own, which we are now determined to do because it is just too much fun motoring around to the far corners of the city for the best food it has to offer.

So I don't have any good recipe for you today. I have a pretty picture of some delicious french toast I made a while back, but it's not really a recipe. It's just some great brioche from Amy's bread, dipped in an egg and cream mixture. Can't beat that. It prompted J-Cat to ask if they will have french toast in Paris, which, actually, I don't know the answer to, but am excitedly looking forward to finding out.