I have been lucky enough to snag a new job at Booking.com and one of the first things my new boss told me was to go "bond" with my team aka have a team outing. Luckily, my team is super into food (I already know I'm on a great team) so the easiest thing to do is to go have a team lunch. Although I have worked downtown almost my entire career in NYC, I've never really worked in this specific part of the Financial District. Despite it's not so pretty exterior, this part of the city has a LOT of lunch places given the high concentration of corporate offices.
I asked my team to pick a spot for lunch since I didn't really know the area well and one of my managers chose this place since it was close to the office. I had never heard of it and it's actually in the lobby of the Gild Hotel which I had never been to before but had heard of. It's a pretty nice hotel for the area, although not at the caliber of The Beekman or Four Seasons nearby, but it's a cute boutique right in the middle of it all.
The restaurant is Italian with a focus on Tuscan flavors. While I love Italian food, it's hard to eat it for lunch because it's usually so heavy, so I opted for a salad. They actually have a pretty good salad selection and I got the Carciofi ($17) which came with thinly sliced raw artichokes, arugula, shaved parm, hearts of palm, cherry tomatoes and Dijon mustard. I added chicken as a protein and I was super excited because this is a combination of really yummy vegetables that you don't really see together too often. The rest of my team got a combination of salads, pastas and other dishes.
The salad was a pretty big size and my first few bites were wonderful. I love the combination of the raw artichoke with the cheese and arugula, plus I felt super healthy eating it. If I had given my review based on my first few bites, I would give it 4 forks hands down. But what did this review in is that I was almost half way through my salad when I saw a huge bug in it - it made my stomach churn when I saw it. I'm usually someone who can deal with a hair in my food or even a slightly dirty restaurant but when there is a full on bug in my salad, I do not stand for it. Unfortunately, I had eaten most of my food before I saw it, so I didn't feel like I could send it back (although now thinking about it, I probably should). Despite all this, I'm still willing to give this place another try but it was definitely not a very pleasant first impression, although the rest of my team seemed to really like their food and was in total food coma when we got back to the office. Total bill: $292 for 8 people
Photo Credit: Yelp
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