Champagne Cart, Maria, and Maybe the 3rd bottle IS a Mistake... (or NY Winter Adventure pt. 5)

We knew our Tuesday lunch was going to be a doozy but I don't think we knew knew...

We had wanted to do a splurge meal, and since Colleen said that when she was in town last spring the best meal she had was at Eleven Madison Park, we decided a lunch there would be a good treat.  The lunch menu is actually pretty reasonable priced (especially considering the real estate, as Megan pointed out in a whisper about a half dozen times) so with Christmas money in hand we were ready to be dazzled.

Within three minutes of entering the restaurant four people had already attended to us, and that was a pretty good indicator of what we were in for.  I fell a little bit in love with the place as soon as our waiter asked if he should bring over the champagne cart.  (Champagne cart?!  A cart that exists for the sole purpose of getting a selection of cold champagne closer to me?!  Ummm Yes.)  He should.  He did.  We toasted.  Then we ate, and drank, and repeated.  There was an amuse-bouche followed by three courses each of intricate, beautiful, technically perfect and most importantly delicious food.  The highlights:a veloute (that means velvet I learned!) of butternut squash being poured around a plate already in front of me; Megan's face when the waiter showed her what to do with the bowl of bone marrow covered in some sort of light creamy stuff served with her beef tenderloin; our waiter bringing us a dish of macaroons with our coffee and promised it wouldn't be at all filling but wanted us to have something sweet to finish even though we hadn't ordered dessert (way too full).

So what is so special about it?  It is not just the food, or the wine, or the dessert, or the environment.  I think in this situation the whole was much greater than the sum of its parts.  We easily could have been attended on less than we were, but they went above and beyond with everything they did.  I guess this is standard for four-star dining, but it was new to us.  What I was probably most impressed with (aside from the food and the wine list. which was so beautiful and extensive that I wanted to take it with me and read it like a novel) was how good-humored everyone was as they went about their jobs.  From the sommelier to the man refilling our water to the chef to the woman who took our coats - everyone not only seemed happy to do what they were doing, but to do it for us.  Seamlessly.

Ideally after this lunch we would have had a bed or a couch in a quiet dark place to lie down on for a few hours, but we had planned on staying out through West Side Story that was a gift from our parents for that night so we bundled up and off we went.

We tried to do some shopping but other than finally finding the boots I had been searching for, we probably had the most fun when we finally decided we could quit and stood in front of the store windows with a view of Union Square taking pictures of each others reflection for twenty minutes.

We headed uptown to Times Square to take some jump shots and then get cozy with the tourists at Junior's waiting to go to the 7:00 shows.  Still being full from lunch we ordered drinks to tide us over and I enjoyed the best martini I've had in months.  This was also the location of that days reality check from Megan:  When I commented on how many good looking men I'd seen at every establishment we'd been to that week and that I felt like I was in a candy store she reminded me that there was such a disproportionate number of them because most of them were probably trying to be in the entertainment business.  Entertainers that make a damn good martini anyway.

West Side Story was wonderful because we grew up watching nothing but musicals on TV and have probably seen the movie two dozen times.  (I was shocked and disturbed when I found out Natalie Wood wasn't Latina.  Not so much that they would have a white actress play that role but more because it ruined the fantasy for me.)  It was also a good contrast to Fela from a couple nights before, WSS being very much the standard song and dance number you expect from Broadway.  This version does have a lot of Spanish mixed in which I think made the story, which I realize now is pretty over-the-top, that much easier to get carried away by.

After the show we skipped outta there to head north to meet my Binty, who met us at our subway stop to come have lots of wine and a sleepover.  She's been one of my besties since I met her in health class freshman year in high school, and the three of us definitely solved some of the worlds problems by the end of our second bottle of wine that night.

Coming up the next day was treats in Soho and fun in Brooklyn - a pretty darn good way to spend my last day in New York.

Sake It To Me, or Fela + Pork Buns = Happy Soul (or NY Winter Adventure pt. 3)

After waking up mid-afternoon yesterday, we drank coffee and did dishes and just putzed around for a few hours until realizing we needed to leave the house relatively shortly to make it to the show.  So we ordered in (having food delivered to my door is one of the top three things I miss about living in a city) Vietnamese food, switched from coffee to wine, and started to get pretty for our night out.

Our aunt and uncle Colleen and Ridge got us tickets for Fela last night.  (Read this if you're lost like I was when I first heard of the show.)  One of the reviews I read of it before summed it up pretty well - not much of a plot, but the most entertaining two and a half hours you'll have all year.  The entire theater was transformed, and I can't remember being in a happier crowd.  They had us shouting and singing and dancing... oh the dancing.  I don't know if I've ever seen so many beautiful abdominal muscles in one place either.  (The couple to my left may have been the whitest people in New York, but even they seemed to have fun.  That's what polite applause as you sit with your legs crossed means, right?)



From the Eugene O'Neill Theater we hopped on the R and headed downtown for one of the most anticipated stops of my trip:  Momofuku Ssam.  Colleen, Ridge, and Megan had all regaled me with various stories of the pork buns, the beautiful space, the pork butt.... Megan practically had tears in her eyes for that one.  We hopped in, sat at the gorgeous bar and proceeded to be waited on by what seemed like an endless string of very attractive, very tattooed young men.  I had the Momofuku sake, Megan had some viognier, and we ordered simply:  the pork buns and the "bread and butter".   Their version included not only a dish of whipped cows milk butter, but whipped lardo.  Lardo.  I'll say it again:  Lardo.  Pork fat.  It was pillowey and creamy somehow, and had just enough chili flakes sprinkled on top to balance out the smokey savoriness of the lardo.

The pork buns were...  They were amazing.  Steamed, sticky chewy bread folded over to envelop hoisin sauce, thinly sliced vinegary cucumbers, and a few strips of pork with layers of fat that were so delicious, so moist, and so so perfectly prepared that it felt like they literally melted in my mouth..

Everything about this dish was perfect.  The gentle heat and tanginess of the hoisin sauce; the thin crunch of the cucumber, and the nirvana that was the pork combined for a little piece of heaven in my mouth.  I know I'm veering really close to floweriness here, but oh...  Oh. Also, as if I wasn't already falling in love with this little nugget of a place, Megan noticed that at the bottom of the menu they had an advisory reading "We do not serve vegetarian friendly items."  The kitchen was open in the back part of the restaurant and after all of this I almost walked back to hug the staff in there.  I don't imagine it'd be the first time.

Today we slept in (again) and are lounging before we head to get our nails did, make some Columbia stops, and maybe do a little shopping.  Tonight is a classical music recital (Culture?  Yes please.) with some dear old friends, and more eating and drinking.  Tomorrow we have Guggenheim, 11 Madison Park, and West Side Story.  My tail is a' waggin. 

Hang On Little Tomato

This  morning I was in a great mood.  Slept in, read a book, went for coffee, and when I came back to the farm to start my work day I searched through a box to look for an Emmylou Harris CD I thought I had in there, because I saw her perform last night and was inspired to dig it out.

Instead I found, almost immediately, a cd my bother Brendan made for me.  I'm pretty sure it was Christmas either 2006 or 2007, because the color theme was as such.  

It is a thin cd case with a red square insert and CAITLIN written out on the top in a slightly darker red.  Inside the blank cd has my name scrawled on it what I'm pretty sure was a well used sharpie in Brendan's distinctive handwriting.  On the inside face of the cover sheet is the track list, as follows...

1     Think I'm in Love - Beck

2     Hang on Little Tomato - Pink Martini

3     Over and Over Again - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

4     Wildcat - Ratatat

5     Ciagarettes and Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright

6     Dois Rios - Skank

7     Nausea - Beck

8     Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight - Rilo Kiley

9     Amando Mio - Pink Martini 

10   The Skin of my Country Yellow Teeth - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

11   Loud Pipes - Ratatat

12   Electrik Boogie - Ursula 1000

13   She Crys Your Name - Beth Orton

14   Crips - Ratatat

15   Le Plus - Carla Bruni

16   Soldier Jane - Beck

17   Superrob - Tosca

I didn't know what to do but really wanted to put the cd back in the box and not to have found it, and not to have to feel the way about it that I do because he's dead.  I think I gasped (in my head I did anyway) and then started crying and sat down where I was, between my bed and my dresser.  I was left there for a while wondering if anything I could wipe my face off was within arms reach and if I was going to dry up and be able to have a good day, or if this one was going to change it.  Luckily it was the former, and eventually I climbed up off the floor and put the cd down on some pads of paper I had also pulled out, wiped off my face and went to work.

At point this afternoon I opened up my personal email along with my work one, and I saw I had a message from Corporate Perks.  I'm not totally sure what Corporate Perks is, but Brendan signed Megan and me up for it when he officially got his job in the spring of '08 and I think it gives you discounts on a bunch of stuff.  I remember him emailing us to let us know it wasn't spam, it was legitimately from him and valid.  I never got around to doing anything with it beyond not deleting the emails.  I get them every once in a while still, but I usually open them briefly so they're not marked as 'new' but don't want to read them and can't delete them.

I opened this one and read: 

Dear Caitlin,

Brendan Scanlon has invited you to have guest access to Corporate Perks, an exclusive benefit for Corporate Perks employees. Your guest account expires in 30 days unless you register, and so please act now. Corporate Perks can help you save money on everything from groceries, cell phone bills, movie tickets, clothes and accessories to electronics, vacations and personal care items.

To access your guest account simply login to Corporate Perks by using the information below:  

This thankfully didn't reduce me to a soggy mess but rather made me smile as my gut ached.  "Oh Corporate Perks...", I thought, "If only you knew who you were talking to about expiring..."

 It was a good day today.  It was full of reminders that things Brendan touched are limited - finite.  But I got off the floor and and smiled more than a few times so it was a good day.