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Zagat's Tiny Cafe pop-up serves delightfully tiny versions of New York's best eats

Zagat's Tiny Cafe pop-up serves delightfully tiny versions of New York's best eats

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Lil' bits!

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In an incredibly well-planned and executed move demonstrating a deep understanding of my personal interests, Zagat has set up a Tiny Cafe pop-up shop in New York City. The pop-up is to celebrate the new 2017 New York City Restaurants Guidebook and the relaunch of the restaurant review iOS app from the Google-owned company. The app offers restaurant guidance from editors who curate snippets from user reviews, with the data coming from Google's Local Guides program. Using that same concept — "small reviews are easier to digest" — the pop-up offers free, tiny versions of food from the top-rated restaurants on the app.

I'm a long-time lover of tiny food, so nothing was going to keep me away from my chance to eat microscopic versions of New York's best-rated, most Instagrammed meals. Standing around the outdoor pop-up in 40-degree weather, I waited for my food amid the deafening sounds of ambulance sirens and construction. My phone eventually shut down from the cold, and I anxiously waited for it to turn back on, using my own body heat to warm it. Yet I persisted; I had to do it for the 'gram.

After I finally received my food, I had my back turned for one second when disaster struck. A sharp gust of wind blew the tiny portions of tiny food away, shattering the doll-furniture plates and sending miniscule hamburger buns flying across the sidewalk. I laughed at the disaster and internally cried from the cuteness of it all, then patiently waited for another batch of tiny food to come out. Three bites and approximately 45 calories' worth of food later, it was over. Taste-wise, it was about the same as the originals. I'd had the $19 full-sized version of the burger from Emily before, and the experience was like taking an extremely small, crumb-sized bite out of it. But I wasn't there for the food, of course. Like any self-respecting millennial, I was there to be able to say I was there. I wiped my nose, and left to go get regular-sized lunch.

Zagat Tiny Cafe is located at Astor Place, New York and is open 11am-7pm until Saturday, Oct 29.