Being a graduate student and a full-time, nine-to-seven web editor is exhausting. Between the one-hour train commute, both to-and-from my apartment in Crown Heights, and my never-ending list of things to do, I rarely have time to sit down for lunch.
Don’t get me wrong, I love New York City more than anything, but it was refreshing to get away from it all for a weekend during a trip to Farmingdale, NY.
The Food
I’d never heard of Framingdale (even though it’s only one hour away from my apartment in Brooklyn), but I was determined on leaving the city last weekend. In hopes of finding a quick-and-easy getaway, I pulled up Google maps, looked for The Melting Pot, and booked a 9:45 p.m. reservation for Saturday night.
Why The Melting Pot? I’d ventured out into SoHo a few weeks ago in search of a cute fondue place. Though I found a small French place that had the ~ambiance~ I was looking for, the fondue wasn’t very good. I was appalled — it was my fiancé’s first time having fondue, so I figured this place pretty much blew it for us ever having fondue together again.
It was also a cash-only restaurant and the fondue was based on a prix-fixe menu (which would’ve been fine, had the food of been good).
Since then, I’ve been craving good fondue. When I lived in Wilmington, NC, I went to The Melting Pot often. I knew it was something I liked and I wanted to repair Joe’s new-found hatred of fondue. I looked up the nearest location, and Farmingdale it was.
Disclaimer: I’m a total foodie and NYC has some of the best food I’ve ever had, but going out into the “country” gave me a chance to sit in a quiet, uncrowded booth. Joe and I stayed late into the night sans dinner rush. Bonus, our waitress Lauren was an absolute delight.
The Shopping
Shopping in the city is miserable at best (after-work grocery runs are THE WORST). In Farmingdale, however, there’s a huge Simon mall with every store you can think of, from Chanel to Louis Vuitton to Coach. We literally spent hours just walking around looking at all of the new holiday merchandise.
Tip: We went to the mall at 11 a.m. on a Sunday. No one was there, the food court had fresh food, and we could actually look around without being pushed or shoved.
The Foliage
While there’s plenty of “getaways” in the city, I haven’t quite felt the same amount of peace here as I did while riding through the fall foliage towards my quick weekend trip destination. If you have a car, or you’re not opposed to taking an Uber or cab to Long Island, you should make a quick getaway trip yourself.
We stayed at a Hilton Long Island/Huntington, which was 10 minutes from the mall and three minutes from The Melting Pot.
[Feature Image by Pexels]