sweet cara had us over for a light brunch meal of lemon zest pancakes!

we brought some fruit salad to go along with it (albeit accidentally, but perfect), and all these yummy condiments to go with the roasted fingerling potatoes. the pancakes were so delicious!!

 then after biking down all the way along the east river greenway from midtown to chinatown, we soon got hungry again. we went to shanghai café deluxe for our good ol' xlb's (soup dumplings), squid with pickled veggies over rice, and something new to us, baby bok choy with garlic. something must've been in the air in their kitchen, because they were all amazing and we weren't too full or sick of the flavors at all until the end.

after searching for some shaved ice, we only ended up with these red bean & ice cream drink and tiramisu at cutting board, a new-ish restaurant i'd been keeping my eye out on for their yoshoku-like japanese influenced menu (uni pasta, ton-katsu, hamburg steak, etc). we were too full by now, and weren't able to actually finish these things. yikes, what's become of me!!