Last night, a few girl friends went out in TriBeCa. I rarely ever get to hang out in this area, but plan to a lot more in the coming months!

TriBeCa is an area in lower west Manhattan and is given this unique name like many other areas of Manhattan -- it has a meaning related to the streets! This area is defined as the

Triangle

Below

Canal (Street).

It used to be an area with lots of commercial and industrial buildings related to the textile trade, but by the 60's became mostly empty and abandoned buildings. Since then, many were converted into artists' live/work lofts, but has more recently been converted into a (very wealthy) residential area. Apparently, many celebrities live here, and once I saw Leelee Sobieski going into her apartment with her baby!

The area is also known for the Tribeca Film Festival (happening right now!). This was one of many programs that tried to help Tribeca recover economically after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I am actually going to see a film festival movie tomorrow night, so more on that later =)

I am going to split up my posts about this area over the next couple of weeks -- highlights include restaurants like Greenwich Grill (below), Sushi Azabu (some say the best sushi place in Manhattan), Tribeca Grill (co-owned by Robert Deniro), a cute wine bar called Terroir and my first Tribeca Film Festival experience!

Anyway, on this night, my friends and I had a wonderful dinner at Greenwich Grill, an Italian and Japanese fusion restaurant (interesting mix right?). The food was delicious and interesting, service was great and prices were reasonable for the area / New York =P

Bar/Restaurant Area - we were seated near the front of the restaurant

Before our food came out, they brought out some bread with some kind of pork spread, which they described as ground pork with caramelized onions. We couldn't catch what it was called even after asking 3 times =T. Delicious though!

On our waitresses recommendation, we started with the fish carpaccio, which was seasoned raw fish over lettuce. Very delicious and tasted almost like a sashimi salad!

We also tried two pastas, the Zuwai Crab Pasta and the Mixed Mushroom Risotto. Both were great! Our server was super nice and split all our dishes in 3's even though we didn't really ask. The risotto portion was a bit small since we split the regular size 3 ways.

For our last entree, we got the lobster and uni dish. The uni was baked into the top of the lobster and created this creamy sauce. It was SO delicious and I wish we had more! We got the regular + one extra lobster tail so that it was enough for all three of us.