We went to New York this weekend for the Navy-Notre Dame game at the new Meadowlands stadium. Well, actually we went to New Jersey for the game. But we took the train in to NYC on Saturday evening and again Sunday morning so we could eat lots of fabulous food and shop (just a little).

Saturday night, we went to the Spotted Pig in the West Village. It is crazy packed and loud in there (apparently at all times), but we loved the food.

We had deviled eggs and devils on horseback for appetizers. The eggs were spicy and different than most I’ve had; I think they had horseradish in them. Devils on horseback is/are apparently an English classic, according to the Internet. But I didn’t eat much English food when I lived in England, so I missed these. They are dates or prunes stuffed with pears and wrapped in bacon. Yum. (Sorry the photo is blurry!)

For dinner, Toby had a burger with roquefort cheese and shoestring garlic fries (which were ridiculously good). I had a pumpkin salad with pecorino cheese and pine nuts…

…and ricotta gnudi with fried sage and brown butter. I’ll confess I didn’t actually know what “gnudi” was, I just assumed it was similar to gnocchi. And it was. So I was extra excited to see this article in the New York Times with a pretty simple recipe for ricotta gnocchi. Toby is in Georgia training for the all-Marine rugby team right now, but when he returns I will have to try that.

Sunday we went to brunch at Bar Americain, which is one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants. My mom and her friend Laura ate there a while ago, and ever since she has been telling me we need to have brunch there.

We started with these potato chips and blue cheese sauce, which were quite good except the sauce was an odd temperature — it needed to be hotter or colder.

Toby had the eggs-benedict-looking thing above, which was described as “poached eggs, tasso ham, griddled tomatoes, cajun hollandaise.” He also had something called “Brooklyn hash browns,” which had bacon and onions and something spicy in them. He loved both.

I ordered the “buttermilk flapjacks” which were supposed to have roasted apricots, pecans and maple syrup.

As you can probably tell, I got about five small pieces of apricot and six pecans. And while these pancakes were extremely fluffy, they were also kind of dry. I could definitely beat whoever made these in a pancake throwdown. Oh well. At least the bread basket was awesome.