WHAT WE LIKE El Greco lamb burger, Tex-Mex burger and Farmhouse burger; grilled chicken with pasta cake, chicken Palermo with prosciutto and Jersey cheese, Jersey green beans, Jersey zucchini, Key lime pie, banana cream pie, blueberry bread pudding, blueberry milkshake.
Sugar Sweet Sunshine, a nook of a spot on the Lower East Side with cartoonish animal paintings and community notices that scream, "We're gentrifying, but in a good way," has one heck of a banana pudding, blueberry crumble, "ooey-gooey" chocolate cake and some good espresso (perhaps with Splenda?).
For lighter bites, snack on a bagel from one of the many street stands, or try Poland's national dish, pierogi at Zapiecek (ul.Slawkowska 32), a tiny bar specialising in sweet and savoury varieties of these tasty dumplings, stuffed with cabbage and mushroom, sheep's cheese, black pudding, blueberry or cherry.
Maye's friends, family and supporters cheer, applaud and cry between bites of cake, corn pudding and blueberry crunch.
The day's menu at the restaurant included fried chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, creamed corn, biscuits, corn bread, macaroni salad, turnips, green beans, pulled pork, blueberry pudding and banana pudding.
DEAR SOS: There was a recipe for a blueberry pudding from former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt sometime in the distant past.
Desserts were delightful: the tangy steamed lemon pudding garnished with blueberries, the strawberry shortcake under its warm flaky biscuit, the moist and gooey banana upside-down cake topped with chocolate ice cream and the warm peach and blueberry cobbler with old-fashioned biscuit crust.
Beyond the Key lime pie, there was a banana cream variety so fresh that the bananas were still the same off-white hue as the rest of the filling; a Jersey blueberry bread pudding that, true to its name, was more pudding than cake, and a blueberry pie that, despite its two-crust construction, was overfilled with berries, throwing the ratio off.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Fried calamari, broccoli rape, crab cakes, ravioli veal with wild mushrooms, shrimp with roasted peppers over broccoli rape, any seafood combination, blueberry bread pudding.
Later, I discover that everyone at the table thought he had locked eyes with them and spoken only to them of the feather-light house-made gnocchi, the smoked salmon napoleon, the celestial blueberry bread pudding.
Also first-rate were a moist blueberry bread pudding with crème anglaise, berries and whipped cream served in a tall jelly jar, and the cookie dough skillet: a giant, just-baked and soft chocolate chip cookie topped with ice cream and whipped cream, served in a small black skillet.
