Holiday Foodsteps: Serendipity 3, NYC

If you have a sweet tooth, there's a street in New York City just for you. Armed with a trusty little (free) city guide, decided to spend our very last day in the city going on a bit of a food hunt. We'd all watched Serendipity at some point in our lives so we thought it would be a shame not to pay the iconic little restaurant a visit. To say that it is popular is a bit of an understatement - trying to get into Serendipity 3 involves a registration process in which you queue to get your name put down on the waiting list after which you are assigned a time (ours involved a wait of an hour and a half) to come back. The restaurant is surprisingly tiny and trying to get onto the right queue in the narrow space at the entrance involves some maneuvering.

Serendipity 3
225 East 60th Street
NYC 10022

The place has a bit of an eclectic feel to it - funky lampshades, an assortment of picture frames and other little quirky knick knacks make up the interior. The menus are playful as well, with their little illustrations and larger-than-normal sizes. On hindsight, the huge menus should have been the first clue to how big the portions at Serendipity 3 are.

We knew that we absolutely had to have their signature drink, the oxymoronic Frrrozen Hot Chocolate. This is one serving of (frozen) hot chocolate that comes not in a mug but in a bowl and is really more of a dessert than a drink.

After taking a quick look around at the other tables, we made the (wise, wise) choice of ordering just one other thing to be shared. We couldn't decide on whether we wanted pie or ice cream so we did the best thing we could - we ordered one of their sundaes, a huge serving of ice cream, fruits and delicious lemon box pie.

There's a type of warmth that comes from quirky little dessert places like these - they provide little pockets of happiness in your day. There are probably a couple of things worth keeping in mind when visiting Serendipity 3, though:

1. There's probably always going to be a queue so go a little earlier to get your name registered for a time slot (or just make a booking)
   
2. Don't bother with dinner if you want to have dessert. (Who says you can't have just dessert for dinner, anyway?)
3. Share, share, share.
   

On the whole, Serendipity 3 is a lot of fun. The keyword here seems to be indulgence - it's probably not the type of place you'd want to go to on a daily basis but it's definitely good for when you want to just let yourself go and be a kid again.