A Country Mouse Goes to the City: Macy's -- And My Discovery

It was so hot yesterday, and after all, I was still exhausted from making such a fantastic first impression on the nice people at Grace Hats, that I decided to stay close to home. I found this great book in the apartment about New York. It mentioned a NYC must-do experience was the wooden elevators in the Herald Square Macy's. So off I went to discover this treasure.
This is the largest Macy's in the world, 9 floors plus a cellar (rather than a basement -- our building has one too, and it is the "C" button on the panel -- it took this country mouse a while to figure the C out). It also has floor 1 1/2, which is a balcony overlooking the first floor. Along one entire side of the balcony is a Starbucks and along the other sides are shopping areas. This is the Macy's you see every year on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, usually with the balloons in front of it. It was also "Gimbels" in the old black & white Miracle on 34th Street.
I entered through the Broadway entrance and the sight that greeted me was amazing. It looked like the department stores look in the old movies. It still has its original character and looked so elegant and sophisticated (not our typical mall department store look). I found a store directory and was studying it, when an extremely nice young gentleman asked me if he could help me find something. I told him that I was looking for a closet organizer, and he said that I should go down the escalator to the cellar. (Mama K-T, all the employees are dressed in all black and he had a name tag on, so it was perfectly safe to be talking to him -- just so you know.)
I believe what the book was calling wooden elevators is actually wooden escalators. And what a gem they were. Rather than the steel sides and hand rails, these escalators had antique wooden ones polished to a nice patina from years of use. The steps even had wooden slats rather than the steel ones. To me, it was an absolutely amazing sight.
When I arrived in the basement, I found it filled with all manner of cooking ware. So much fun to wander through. Back in the country, I'm not much of a shopper. My motto is, if you can't find it at Wal-Mart before daylight, then you don't need it. So we may have these things in the country, but I haven't seen them. I believe my favorite find was a Martha Stewart banana slicer, you know, like an egg slicer, but it sliced a banana into perfectly even slices -- too cool. It's something that Ms. Louise and I would have.
As I explored the basement, I found a place called Cucina & Co. It had arched entrances and was like a world market. There was a pasta bar, where one could get pasta to order. This made the whole place have the wonderful aroma of roasted garlic. There was a pizza and pasta bar with 2 brick ovens. There was also like a Chef's Kitchen, which was serving roasted chicken halves and biscuits. It had a wonderful bakery with all kinds of breads and muffins. And, of course, any good market wouldn't be complete without a dessert bar. My favorite was the salad and fruit bar. There were so many things that I had never tasted before. You paid by the pound, so you could make your salad with anything you desired.
I decided on what else, but the salad. For my base, I chose baby spinach, romaine, and baby arugula. For toppings, I chose tuna salad, an asian sesame noodle salad, edamame, roasted tofu, roasted salmon with dill, sweet and sour eggplant, roasted parsnip, beet salad, french olive, mushroom salad, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh Chinese noodles, and a bagel crisp. Russian dressing was my choice. Both of the times I have had tuna salad in NYC, it has contained carrots and no pickles or eggs. The carrots add a very nice crunchy touch, and it is a bit of an unexpected taste for me in tuna salad. I have always been intrigued by tofu and have had it once or twice, but the roasted tofu was a standout for me. It had an unusual but pleasing texture. The salmon was delicious and moist. The roasted parsnip was another of my favorites. I can't exactly describe the taste, but I especially liked the texture. The sun-dried tomatoes were sweet chewy and almost candy like. And the Chinese noodles that I topped my salad with were not the kind we buy in the Chinese section at the grocery store, these were very light and flat, almost flaky. And the bagel crisps were actual extremely thin slices of bagel buttered and toasted until very crisp. The Russian dressing that I'm familiar with in the bottles at Wal-Mart is a sweet red French-type dressing, but this was more on the order of Thousand Island without pickles. It was totally smooth and quite tasty.
I also found out that Macy's has the real Santa Claus at Christmas -- you know, you saw it on Miracle on 34th Street. He travels from the North Pole each year to be in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and then makes his way to the 8th floor Santa Land, where he resides until Christmas Eve. Now when you see Santa every year in the parade, you will know the rest of the story.
I didn't go to Macy's even expecting to eat lunch, but eat I did and thoroughly enjoyed it. And I am still just as thrilled with the wooden escalator and the elegant movie-type look of the store. I will be back to explore more.
UPDATE: Kelsey is off on Fridays and she read my blog before I posted it and wanted to check it out for lunch. She agreed that it was so much fun. Her favorites were the New York decorated cookies. We even got to sample the decadent Godiva chocolate milkshake topped with whipped cream. A perfect ending to our brunch.