New York City’s Madison Square Park is filled with musicians, street performers, beautiful sights of the Flatiron Building, and food festivals. Yeah, you heard that right—food festivals.
If you’re not already familiar with Mad Sq Eats, it is a bi-annual food festival occurring once in the spring and once in the fall. Although the festival is located in Worth Park between 25 and 26th and 5th, it features 30 unique vendors serving cuisines from all over the world. With endless amount of food options that remain for only another week, here’s a roundup of the best available:
Roberta’s
Roberta’s serves homemade, thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas, and it is considered some of the best in the city. They are famous for their bee-sting pizza (featured above), which pairs together spicy soppressata sausage and sweet honey, but you can’t go wrong with any of their unique and perfectly crafted pizzas.
Gotham Poké
The poké bowl trend is a new food craze, and Gotham is one of its pioneers. Gotham serves both customizable and pre-curated poké bowls for any occasion, whether it be a small one to snack on or a large to share with a group of friends. They serve also delicious side dishes such as wonton chips and guac and seaweed salad. So, it’s a win-win situation.
Red Hook Lobster Pound
Eating a lobster roll from Red Hook is the best way to close out Mad Sq Eats and to reminisce on summer 2016. Although lobster rolls are some of the pricier things served at the festival, Red Hook supplies its lobster straight from Maine, so you know it’s really good quality.
Besides a variety of different lobster rolls, they also have mac and cheese and grilled cheese, with and without lobster. Come to Red Hook and I guarantee there will be something that everyone will like, lobster lovers or not.
MeltKraft
Melt Kraft is an artisanal grilled cheesery with locations throughout NYC and Philly. All of the ingredients used to create their drool-worthy grilled cheeses are farm to table, and they even use their own handmade cheese.
Whether you’re in the mood for a three cheese, classic grilled cheese or a more creative one, such as their cheddar, brisket, and macaroni grilled cheese, Melt Kraft has got you covered at Mad Sq Eats.
Ice and Vice
Ice and Vice is an experimental ice cream shop, which basically means there is a 99% chance you will have no idea what you are eating. But trust me, the ambiguity of flavors like “bath salts” and “happy panda” makes the ice cream that much more delicious. And, if you’re not already sold, you have the option to top your ice cream with a Squish Marshmellow and/or eat it with a cone from The Konery.
Melt Bakery
Melt Bakery is not to be confused with MeltKraft, although the two both serve sandwiches. Melt Bakery, in my opinion, serves the best kind of sandwiches, and that is ice cream sandwiches.
Melt Bakery has unique ice cream sandwiches with a variety of different cookie and ice cream options such as red velvet with cream cheese icing and crackly chocolate cookies with malted chocolate rum ice cream. There is no better way to end your food journey at Mad Sq Eats than with a Melt ice cream sandwich.
Address: General Worth Square, 5th Ave, New York, NY 10010
Times: Daily from 11 am-9 pm, now through October 7th