Grandaisy and Gravel

The girls and I found another winner this week. I had Friday off of work, so I loaded the kids up for a morning of running errands. We planned to cover a lot of territory, so the buggy board was strapped to the stroller in hopes of avoiding the dawdling feet of my 3-year-old. It seemed like a great idea, but there were two major drawbacks: 1) the uncoordinated feet of that 3-year-old's mother kicked the buggy board so many times that I broke my big toenail and bled all over the sidewalks of downtown; 2) with a baby in the stroller, a preschooler on the buggy board, "I just worked four 12-hour shifts this week" hair, and all sorts of bags draped from the stroller, I became a true "shlepper" and earned many interesting looks. But all of that aside, we accomplished a lot, found a great bakery along the way, and hit up one of our favorite parks.

The bakery: Grandaisy is a quaint little bakery in upper TriBeCa. When I got over my initial disappointment that they didn't have chocolate chip cookies, I decided 11:00am was late enough for lunch and we ordered two of their Roman-style pizzas and a panini dolce.

The pizza was incredible! I tried the zucco, a thin-crust pizza (served unheated, which worked well and didn't taste like the hardened piece of pizza sitting in a take-out box in the fridge (which I actually don't mind at all!)). It was topped with butternut squash, onions, gruyere cheese, and sea salt. Bursting with flavor and delicious! My picky eater had the plain pomodoro, which was simply crust and sauce, but also very tasty.

When I ordered the chocolate with cream cheese panini dolce, I thought it was a macaron-style cookie. So I initially felt that it was way too dry and crumbly. However, I quickly realized it was a chocolate shortbread cookie, and my opinion softened (though the cookie didn't). The shortbread had a deep chocolate flavor and the cream cheese had a yummy sourness to it. Not my favorite treat ever, but I was very satisfied.

To relax for a minute before trekking home, we stopped to play at Washington Market Park on Greenwich Street. Hannah adores the train and settled right in. And Abbie was so satisfied, after watching Hannah and me devour our delicious pizza and cookies, to sit in the dirt and eat some rocks.

Note: Grandaisy also has a location on the Upper West Side at 176 West 72nd St #2, New York, NY.