And why not? After all, it's summertime, and you're in New York City. Your resident friend tells you about a tiny, almost-hidden bakery down the street and around the corner that has unbelieveable, huge chocolate chip cookies that you MUST try if you're in the area. Also, Husband hears of a new gelato place that's everyone's saying is just amazing (an over-used word, to be sure, but it works here), and it's right down the street, too! Your dilemma: you're down to one day in NYC, and you're spending the second half of that day in Brooklyn, from lunch on. There will be no huge cookie and amazing gelato for you, should you not go in the morning. You ponder this for a moment, then decide it's okay since you don't manage to leave the apartment until 10:30 or so, making it technically more of a brunch, and a cookie-and-gelato brunch sounds somewhat better than a cookie-and-gelato breakfast. And you also decide that it's okay, anyway, to have dessert before lunch (never mind that you end up having dessert after lunch as well).
So you go, to both places, and you eat. Because you're frugal and because you want to hang on to a shred of virtuosity, you share one gelato (the famed pistachio) between you, and you share one cookie (the famed chocolate chip, big as a salad plate)--AND, there's enough cookie left over to soak through a napkin and leave a grease spot in your Lotta Jansdotter cloth purse before you can get it to the office of your friend, whom you know will devour it. Unfortunately, you forget to take pictures of your "brunch" because you are too busy oohing and ahhing and rolling your eyes in heavenly wonder to pull out the camera. But at least you can tell your friends that if they're in NYC on the Upper West Side anytime soon, they MUST visit Levain and Grom. But maybe not on the same morning.
