Good eats in Chelsea

After our busy day doing the Charleston, we headed back to Chelsea for dinner at a local tapas place, Tía Pol.  While a bit on the loud side, we lucked out an ended up in the back room, both lighter and quieter than the front! 

We tried the ensalada de alcachofa, a tasty salad with fried artichoke bits, something I spied on a review in Serious Eats (a favorite place to look for recommendations, honest reviews lacking in pretension).  We also had the pinchos morunos (lamb meatballs), pan con tomate (bread with tomato, but so good!), huevos rellenos al pimentón de la vera (hard boiled eggs), and motadita de creaman de habitas con beyos (bread with three spreads, including a guacamole-like fava bean hummus), and one of the specials, a scallop dish.  

And of course---the sangria!

 

 
They say that New York City never sleeps, but I have to say that's not quite accurate...Chelsea was deserted on Sunday morning at 10:30 am.  We were slightly worried about not having brunch reservations, but we were the only people at the restaurant just as it opened at 11 am.  So strange.  Here in Cambridge, there's quite the line outside of Cafe Luna at 10 am when it opens, and Flour/Area Four are also packed early in the morning.  Obviously, we here in Boston don't stay up so late...

Brunch at La Promenade des Anglais turned out lovely, my fellow traveler had crepes, and I enjoyed
the poached eggs with their salad and fancified homefries.  But the panisse was kind of odd...it's not a food I'd ever had before.  It's a fried chickpea flour cake.  Frankly, I'd save my for-fried-foods calories for many, many, other things...Dixie Crossroads fritters, anyone?  But perfect poached eggs, love.

The last food of the days was bagels at Murry's (baygulls, not baeglls a la Minnesota).  The best part of the whole experience was asking the guy behind the counter for toasted bagels.

"Oh we don't do that here."

I'm sure he's asked that at least ten times a day by tourists, and he must live for the moments of being a smarmy and contrarian New Yorker.