Wed, May 28 - Little Next Door

10.59am - Totally overslept today and didn't have time to eat breakfast. Now the problem with skipping breakfast is that you end up wolfing down this kind of stuff as a snack before lunch: croissant and hot chocolate from Breadbar, outside work. 13.14h - This is the Little Next Door, a charming French Deli that I've been trying to push on Nadya for one of our lunch dates, without much success (It's really not that far, Nadya! See how pretty it is??).

Since this is a very authentic French cafe, with wait staff hailing from France and all, said wait staff is endowed with an enormous attitude and an uncanny ability to make you wait for literally everything. For some reason though, it totally matched my mood today. Been feeling all day like I'm on vacation, so taking a leisurely 2h lunch felt like just the right thing to do (especially after showing up late this morning...). So I just sat around in a happy daze and waited...

13.37h - until things finally started materializing on my table - first the passion fruit lemonade...

13.40h - and then this croque monsieur - a croque monsieur, I might add, to put all croque messieurs to shame. Delicieux. (As an aside though, don't think it didn't occur to me that this is pretty much the French version of yesterday's panino prosciutto caprese.)

13.56h - and then these little guys, the house macarons. Oh. My. God. I concede they look all frou-frou and cutesy in a little girl's birthday party kind of way. But they are seriously delicious. All puffy-crunchy almond-paste-meringue on the outside and soft, melt-in-your-mouth flavored cream on the inside (except the raspberry ones had raspberry jam, my least favorite). Vanilla and lemon are the best. I really tried to save some to take home to Ritesh, but failed miserably. All I can say in my defense is that they are tiny - shouldn't have zoomed in so much...

19.15h - well, and this is what I did bring home for Ritesh, and did he want it? Nope. So I sacrificed myself ... Pistachio-goat cheese quiche w/ side salad from Little Next Door, at home.