Eataly's Nutella Bar

Nutella is one of my very favorite things in life.  In my opinion, Pietro Ferrero, its inventor, was the genius to rule all geniuses, because the chocolatey hazelnut goodness is a combination that just never disappoints.  With such strong feelings on the subject, you can imagine my glee, when I received an email from Eataly last week, inviting me to the grand opening of their new Nutella Bar.  There was absolutely no way that I was going to miss this.  I did a little happy dance, texted my friend S, and we met up at Eataly after she got off work. 

I had expected a bit of a line, but was flabbergasted to see that it was enormous and stretched all the way down the block.  Apparently, S and I weren't the only ones in New York with a serious love of nutella.  So we joined the queue and got some very odd looks and confused questions from passersby who couldn't understand why anyone would wait in such a line for such a thing.  Clearly, they didn't know what they were missing.  Luckily, the line did move fairly quickly and it didn't take us too long to reach the entrance.

Once inside, a server immediately greeted us and offered us a complimentary piece of pane that was covered in nutella.

 

Apologies for the fuzzy picture quality.  I think that it was probably due to the fact that I was shaking with excitement.

As we munched on the gloriousness of free nutella, we looked around and felt as though we had died and gone to heaven, for the walls were covered in jar after jar of the good stuff.  

The jars were interspersed with chocolates, nutella and chocolate centric cookbooks, giant posters proclaiming factoids about the spread as well as recipes to make at home, crepe-making tools, and lots of delicious-looking baguettes.

It was nearly enough to make us weep with joy, but we had some more nutella devouring to do.  We joined the line and made our way up to the front counter, which had a number of nutella-filled pastries on offer.

Everything sounded and looked amazing, but after much deliberation, I chose the saccottino con nutella, a square, croissant-esque pastry, while S opted for the crepe con nutella.

The crepe was piping hot and filled with a generous portion of nutella, as was the saccottino.  I had been a bit worried that, like so many filled croissants/pan au chocolats that I've had before, that the pastry would be dry and that they'd skimp on the filling.  I was pleasantly surprised though to find that Eataly's pastries are of a higher caliber.  The pastry was perfectly buttery and flaky and there was just enough nutella to strike a balance between bread and filling.

I plan on going back very soon to try everything else on the menu. 

Happy and full of nutella cheer, S and I left the bar area and wandered around the rest of Eataly for a bit, drinking wine and admiring all the amazing food on offer.

But Eataly is such a wonderful place that it deserves its very own blog post, which I promise that I will write the next time that I visit, which I hope will be soon. 

I hope that you enjoyed our jaunt to the Nutella Bar.  But now I've got to go....a jar and a spoon seem to be calling my name. 

Pin It Now!