Crocodile Lounge, Vanessa’s Dumplings, Led Zeppole

One more Midtown Lunch Happy Hour planned, one more attended, this time at Crocodile Lounge on 14th Street.  The draw?  With every drink purchase, you receive a ticket good for a free personal pizza.  You can add toppings for an additional charge, but why bother? 

I ordered some random beer, trying to fit in with the others since I was the only girl to show up.  Again.  It was a bad choice.  Peak Organic or something – so not to my liking!  Of course, the Beer Boor wasn’t there to try to help me pick a beer that would suit my tastes.  Whatever, I nursed that – I only ordered it for the pizza, really, only I found out later I didn’t have to bother…

So here’s the pizza.  Considering it’s free – or even if it was $5 (cost of drink) - it was really a decent size, and the crust was thin, with a decent sauce and cheese.  Someone else said the cheese was skimpy, but I thought it was fine… and I appreciated that the sauce wasn’t gloppy sweet! 

Blurry upskirt.  Slightest of char, but I assure you that the crust was pretty crisp.  They give you tickets with each drink purchase, and if you know the ML HH crowd, you know that there’s no way we ate one pizza per drink consumed.  So in my desk drawer, I have an extra four pizza tickets that I’m going to bring the next time we go and see if they’ll redeem those for us as well.  Ha. 

By the time Beer Boor was on his way from a prior engagement, I was done with pizza and suggested he pick up dumplings from the nearby Vanessa’s Dumplings, since it was along the way.  He obliged by picking up some fried ones, which I liked well enough, though others didn’t like them as much, and

and order of steamed dumplings, which they liked better.  It was only a few bucks for each order, so not bad at all, but I don’t get the hype.  Not the best dumplings I’ve had by a long shot. 

(I’m just sticking this in wherever – afterwards, we walked across 14th Street to Led Zeppole, paid $3 for 3 zeppoles each and discovered unanimously that their zeppoles suck, suck, suck.  Horrible leaden balls of oil.  Gross.  Overpriced.  TERRIBLE.) 

Yvo says: An excellent happy hour, if a bit low key on this low-turn out, freezing cold night.  Free pizza with each drink – I will definitely be back to Crocodile Lounge, excellent deal!  Vanessa’s is alright, I’ll have to go back and check out more things and really look at the menu. 
recommended HH location, recommended snack location