Long Weekend Re-Cap: NYC, Baby!

April 9, 2007

I just got back from a sweet long weekend in NYC with my buds, Sonia, Sarah, and Blake. We squeezed as much as we could into 3.5 days, and it culminated with some flight delays (flying out of JFK is no fun) and getting off the plane around 1 AM. Ick.

I used to geek out with Sarah at U of C in the mid 90's, and met Sonia through Sarah around then. Sarah and Blake moved from Vancouver to Manhattan last year, so Sonia and I finally managed to get our act together and visit them. I took over 100 pictures, and at least 80 of them are featuring food. And now, here is quite possibly the longest blogspot I've ever done...

THURSDAY

I owe Will a biggie, as he woke up really really early to take me to the airport for my 6 AM flight. Ick. I normally would never book such an early flight, but I wanted to get as much into a 4-day weekend as I could. I flew into JFK and opted for the transit route (AirTrain from JFK to Jamaica --> LIRR from Jamaica to Penn Station in Manhattan --> Subway from Penn Station to 72nd Street) to get to Sarah & Blake's neighborhood (Upper West Side).

In all, it took me about an hour from walking off the plane to get to the Upper West Side (well, this is minus the extra 15 minutes I took after I realized that I got on the downtown train instead of the uptown train at Penn Station and had to loop back...). The total cost was:

• $5 for the AirTrain
• $3 for the LIRR
• $2 for the subway

Not bad, $10 vs. the typical $45 flat rate taxi ride (not including tolls or tips). Main downfall is that you have your luggage with you, so this would not work well with lots of bags.

The first thing I noticed about New York was how damn cold it was. Everyone kept saying how nice it was a couple weeks ago...great.

I met up with Sarah and Sonia, and we headed back to Sarah's place to chill out. They have a great place, with brick, nice hardwood, two bathrooms and laundry (very big for New Yorkers, I hear).

We headed out to meet up with Blake for dinner in the Nolita/Chinatown area. Sarah had gotten us reservations at La Esquina, a hip spot that requires you to call exactly three weeks ahead from the day you want to dine starting at 10 am. We walk up to this restaurant that looks like a street corner diner and I'm a little confused.

Sarah walks right up to an "Employees Only" door where a big bouncer is standing guard next to a girl sitting on a stool with a pixie haircut, a clipboard and a walkie-talkie. Sarah gives her name and the girl radios to someone and the bouncer lets us through the door. We walk down a flight of stairs to a hostess stand, from where the hostess leads us through the kitchen and finally to a cool, underground space that has a funky lounge, bar, and dining area. A secret restaurant!

This underground space is beneath the subway system, and you feel occasional rumbles. We had an early reservation, so the room wasn't full yet.
As with most restaurants in NYC, they don't like to seat parties that are missing people. We were missing Blake, but we assured our server that we would order for the whole table. She kept checking in on us, as we were busy visiting, we ask questions, we try to order just appetizers, but the server finally tells us that we have to order all at the same time. Okay then.

We started with some cocktails (I tried one called the Buena Vista), and Blake showed up a little later.

The Quesadilla De Chorizo (traditional corn masa filled with chorizo queso and pico de gallo), which was really tasty, accompanied with some pickled onions.

They offered little tacos, and we chose the Tinga De Pollo (slow cooked chicken, avocado, chipotle pepper) and the Contramar (tuna, smoked chili, aioli, pepino).

The fresh Ceviche Estilo Acapulco (line caught market fish, fresh lime, avocado, tomato, jalapeno) of the day featured wahoo as the main ingredient.
Some of the taquitos looked interesting, so we went for the Lengua (veal tongue a la plancha, avocado crema, black beans) and the Bistec (grilled and marinated steak, charred onions, salsa roja), fully satisfying the meat-lover in me.
The Ensalata Mixta with cabbage, string beans, cucumber, red onions, tomato, queso fresco, mustard vinaigrette, was amazing. They also added some fresh corn, and I'm such a sucker for fresh corn in the salad.
We chose the Pescado a Las Bresas (grilled fish of the day) which was the dorado, with some grilled onions. The fish was delicious, I was really happy that we chose to try the dorado.

I was cracking up at all the references to mexican wrestling (lucha libre!), as a few years ago, Katharine, Wendy and I dressed up as mexican wrestlers for Hallowe'en.


From La Esquina, we walked a couple blocks over to SoHo and to a little tapas/wine bar called "N". (Pretend there's a little squiggle on top of the N and pronounce it en-yay).


Blake wanted to take us to this because it's a great little space and so that we could have their amazing "chocolate toast".
Fresh bread toasted with dark chocolate and rock salt, it was a surprisingly nice combination.
We had a few drinks at the bar, they were going down so smooth.

From N, we trudged in the chilly weather to the Lower East Side to the Mercury Lounge on Houston Street to check out some music. Did I mention how cold out it was?



We checked out Mahogany, whose music sounded decent, with an alternative pop sound. To be honest, I may have been too busy drinking ciders to really listen. One of Blake's co-workers, Holly, joined us for drinks and music.
The headliner was a band from Montreal called Land of Talk. This band had recently traveled to SXSW and like many bands, was going through New York after. They were really fun and the female lead singer's voice was intriguing, and I still can't quite pin whose voice she reminds me of.

After we had enjoyed some tunes and a couple ciders (on my part), we were off to find some food. Blake really wanted to go to Katz's, just down the street on Houston, and the idea appealed to my "When Harry Met Sally" fan side (they filmed the Meg Ryan orgasm scene there). But alas, it was closed (apparently they don't serve great deli meats past midnight on a Thursday...). From there, we hailed a cab to Union Square to go to Max Brenner, a big favorite of choco-holic Sarah, but it too, had closed it's kitchen. Thankfully, just down the street, was the 24-hour Coffee Shop.

Apparently, we didn't look cool enough to sit in the front room (or we were a little tipsy?), so they sat us in the back room.
So, of course, I just had to get another drink, this time a mango mojito. It was wonderful.
We ended up noshing on chicken satay, mac n' cheese, corned beef hash, meat loaf and I think Blake had a sandwich. I can't remember. There may have been alcohol involved.

FRIDAY

On Friday morning, we slept in (thank goodness). I may or may not have had a decent headache in the morning due to the alcohol the night before. By the time we all awoke, showered, and got ready, we were on the subway around noon. We headed back to Nolita, initially intending to go to the Public Restaurant, but we found that they only serve brunch on weekends.

Thankfully, right down the street is Cafe Habana, a popular cuban restaurant. There was a slight wait, so the girls went down the street to some cute little shops while Blake graciously offered to wait for the table for us. Aww....

Proof that I'm not the only one who takes pictures of food....:

The Mexican-style grilled corn was a must-order, served with chili powder, lime and cheese. It was amazing. You all know how much I love corn. This was my heaven.
I ordered the Grilled Steak Sandwich with onions, peppers and chipolte mayonnaise. Fantastic. This was one of the only meals where the four of us didn't completely share our meals. That would change. We were eating off each other's plates the rest of the weekend.

Blake went off on his own to have some down time and the girls spent the afternoon shopping in Nolita, and we tried to hit a couple stores in SoHo too, but we ran out of time. I bought some run shoes at Terra Plana. I got some good stuff (including cute onesies for the twins, t-shirt for Olivia) at Brooklyn Industries.



From SoHo/Nolita, we hit the subway back to Sarah's place to drop off our goodies and get ready for the evening. Sarah had gotten the girls tix to go see the Broadway musical "Avenue Q" at the Golden Theatre. Blake had already seen it, so he planned to meet us at dinner afterwards. We grabbed a cab and headed to the madness of Times Square.


Times Square was madness, with people everywhere. I never realized that slow-walking-oblivious people are a major pet peeve of mine...

Sarah got us incredible seats (2nd row balcony) so we were in for a great show. Avenue Q was guffawingly hilarious. I was thoroughly surprised how bowled over I was. There are puppets involved and it is definitely risque as there are some moments where I was questioning how appropriate some things were, but they were damn funny nonetheless. I feel sorry for those familes who think it would be great to take their kids to a Broadway musical with puppets and then they endure the mental battle of whether their kid should see it or not. Those songs are so damn catchy too.

After the show got out around 10 pm, we had to hightail it on the subway to the West Village, where we had to meet up with Blake for a 10:30 reservation at Po, a little Italian restaurant that Blake was waiting for us at. It was a gem of a place, small, cozy, warm, inviting, with great service.

The server brought us a little snack to start, a white bean "bruschetta" on fresh bread. Yum!

We decided to do our own little tasting menu, so we ordered two salads, two pastas, and two entrees to split between the four of us.
The Roasted Beets salad with endive, sliced baby artichokes, watercress, Taleggio crostino.
I've seen a lot of beet salads on menus lately, but this one may be the best one I've had. The crostino was covered in wonderful soft Taleggio cheese, and we were all surprisingly civil and didn't fight eachother for bigger portions of the crostino.
Organic Mixed Greens salad with fresh lemon thyme vinaigrette, roasted red peppers, and a massive piece of shaved parmesan that melted in your mouth.

We were served two pasta dishes that were so consuming, that we were almost done the dishes when I realized I had missed my photo op. Oops. They were the Orecchiette with sweet sausage ragu & broccoli rabe (zowee!) and the Black Fettuccine with fresh mussels, sun dried tomatoes, scallions & green chilies (double zowee!). Amazing dishes. The sweet sausage ragu with the orecchiete made me crave more and the black fettucine had a peppery zest that was unexpected by lovely.

Grilled Guinea Hen with butternut squash & scallion fregula with saba. The hen was wonderfully cooked and tender, falling off the bone, and we were so surprised how much meat there was on the little hen. Yum!
Grilled Pork Tenderloin, which I can't remember the accompaniments, but was very tasty. I still think that the Guinea hen and the Orecchiete were the winners for me this evening.

We closed out the restaurant around 12:30 am, being one of two last tables to leave the restaurant. We weren't quite ready to go home yet, so we walked a couple blocks to a bar close to La Lanterna di Vittorio, which has good desserts. We were also hoping to catch some live jazz music, but the music had just finished when we arrived. Boo. So, we settled for some dessert or coffee drinks. Sarah and I had the "Hot Irish Nut" (with decaf!), Blake had some gelato/coffee dessert magnificance (see below), and we all shared the Truffle Vanilla/Chocolate gelato dessert.
We were tuckered after the warm and cozy coffees, so we grabbed a taxi and headed back to crash. But, as soon as we got home, Sonia and I weren't so tired after all and chatterboxed until 4:30 am...oy...


SATURDAY

On Saturday morning, the girls got up, grabbed coffees/light bites and took the subway to the Meat Packing District, (also known as the Gansevoort Market) to do some more damage to the Visa card.

We hit a shoe jackpot minutes away from the subway, as well as some good clothing at Girlshop and Trina Turk. While the girls were shopping and spending far too much money, Blake was a sweetie and headed to the Theater District to get some tickets for an Off-Broadway show matinee. So, we headed over there for the 4 PM show of "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" at the Westside Theatre. The musical was pretty funny and entertaining, but I was still reeling from the hilarity of Avenue Q the night before, so Avenue Q is still the best in my books.

The show let out after 6 pm, so we jetted back to Sarah and Blake's to get ready for dinner. We had a 9 PM reservation at WD-50 in the East Village. I had seen WD-50 listed on the New York Times list of best restaurants and is the baby of Chef Wylie Dufresne, who is known for his culinary experiments and artful displays. We were meeting my buddy, Mike Margulies for dinner as well, who's currently in law school at NYU. We go there a little early, so we were greeted with the slightly pretentious hostess who, of course, gave us a little 'tude when we didn't have our entire party. So, we had a drink at the bar and met a little 'tude at the bar. Okay then. Even after Mike arrived, we had to wait 20 minutes or so for our table.

Finally, we were seated, and our enthusiastic and extremely knowledgeable server completely broke down the menu for us. Turns out there's a "proper" way to eat some of the dishes. On par with our dining adventures the rest of the weekend, we decided to create our own tasting menu, with three appetizers and five entrees.

The delicious sesame "carbs" to tide us over until we had our food...

I didn't bother posting the pics of the appetizers, because I took them without the flash and I was too anxious to try the food. So, for appies, we had:

• Hangar tartare with pickled Asian pear, amaro, and bearnaise ice cream, which was absolutely wonderful. The bernaise ice cream was a nice compliment to the hangar tartare. The tartare was also very clean-tasting.
• Smoked eel with blood orange zest, black radish, and chicken skin. Sounds interesting, right? Well, it was tasty too.
• Malted chestnut soup with salmon threads and celery root. The server highly recommended this soup, and we were persuaded, and thankfully so.
  

Skate with parsley root, swiss chard, hops, and spice bread. This was one of those dishes that the server had to give us distinct instructions on how to eat. He instructed us to eat the parsely root (sweet) with the hops (bitter), otherwise the dish would not be fully understood as the tastes on their own would not be ideal. What? Should I have to work this hard? Well, he was right, they tasted nasty alone, but prety good together.

Beef shortrib with brussels sprouts, cheddar, and Pink Lady apple. Okay, this picture sucks, but damn, this was my favorite entree. The server pointed out that it's not a typical presentation of the beef short rib, which is usually braised until the meat falls off the bone. Well, this short rib was braised, the meat was pressed with some goodies and then served. So wonderful. And the Pink Lady apple was slightly dried, with a melt-in-your mouth consistency.

Cod with baby fennel, black eyed peas and espelette yogurt. The cod was nice, and all the accompaniments went well, but it was not as memorable as the other dishes.

Lamb loin with potato noodles, mustard crumbs, and pretzel consomme. This lamb loin was cooked perfectly and the consomme was lovely. The potato noodles were also really interesting. While I was eating, I couldn't recall what the noodles were made of and couldn't figure it out. Ahh...pototoes...

Scallops with king oyster mushroom, dried apricot and tagine broth . This was also a wonderful dish, with a really nice portion of king scallops. The oyster mushrooms were presented like noodles (awesome!) and the Israeli and cilantro cous cous was fantastic. This was my second favorite dish.

We passed on the dessert with the intention to get to Max Brenner. The server brought us a little palate of sweets for the road, and I can only recall that they were some type of marshmallow with coconut and parsley? This was in alignment with the gastronomical surprises that the restaurant was serving up all night.

And as we were settling up our bill, the server brought us some additional sweet tasters that the chef was trying out. The red envelopes on the left are rhubarb paper envelopes filled with caramel toffee and rose meringue. They were amazingly good and I was surprised how well the toffee and rose meringue went together. On the right are corn nougat, which sounded good, but wasn't anything spectacular. Especially in comparison to the rhubarb paper surprises.

WD-50 was good, and I'm glad we tried it. I got the impression that the restaurant takes itself pretty seriously, so it's hard to really let loose and have fun. There are so many places in NY that serve food and still have fun, so I'm glad that our weekend had included many places that fell into that category.

And finally, we headed to Max Brenner, the chocolate mecca of NY, this time the Lower East Side location.

We waited for a table for only 15 minutes or so, which gave Sonia and I plenty of time to peruse the chocolate store.


I ordered the Choco-Pops hot chocolate (on the left; classic milk hot chocolate with crunchy chocolate waffle balls) and Mike ordered the Italian Thick Hot Chocolate (on the right; thick dark chocolate with vanilla cream). They were amazing, and so filling. Thank goodness we skipped dessert at WD-50!

Sarah and Sonia shared the Hazelnut Praline Crepe (melted chocolate chunks and hazelnut praline, toffee bananas, vanilla ice cream, warm toffee cream and crunchy bits).

Blake had the Warm Chocolate Soup (Dark chocolate soup with crunchy chocolate waffle balls, berries and marshmallows).

Sonia and raided the chocolate shop and I got some waffle balls and chocolate covered nuts to bring home. We were in major chocolate coma after Max Brenner, and we couldn't fathom going anywhere else.

SUNDAY

It was my last day in New York and I was definitely starting feel a little tired. We woke up and walked further west from Sarah & Blake's pad, en route to a place called Barney Greengrass, a good place for brunch recommended by my co-worker Todd. But, of course, we didn't even realize that it was Easter Sunday, and the place was closed for Passover.

So, we walked a block back on Amsterdam and went for brunch at Le Pain Quotidien, one of Sarah's favorite places for fresh bread and sandwiches. We found four spots at the communal table.

I ordered a cup of the featured soup, a squash soup. It was really clean and tasty, with a slight peppery taste, and it was nice that it was non-dairy and vegan.

I also ordered the open face grilled chicken sandwich with pesto, mozzarella and veggies. It was delicious but I could barely eat half of it.

After brunch, we met up with my old buddy/co-worker, Karim, who is now at med school at UMDNJ in Newark. We all wandered around Central Park, amidst some light snow flurries and some music in the park.




It was great catching up with Karim, we hadn't caught up since last fall when he had left San Francisco for med school.

The rest of the afternoon was really low-key, and I caught a car service to JFK around 6 pm (there was no way I was going to tackle transit with my expanded-ready-to-explode suitcase and a long weekend of little rest on me).

Thanks again to Sarah and Blake for hosting us, it was so much fun, I can definitely see myself traveling to New York more often. It was awesome to catch up with Sonia, Mike and Karim, great to see you guys!

I'm back in SF for four days and then heading back home to Vulcan/Calgary for my dad's 60th birthday soiree/family reunion. You can count on a much smaller (if not miniscule) blog update next week after this prolific monster.

Have a good week!