The heat broke today for restaurant week, and P and I tried out Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio’s restaurant Gramercy Tavern. We were in the Main Room, where you have the choice of a regular, veggie, or premium prix fixe. On the regular prix fixe, which is not part of restaurant week, you have the choice of a dozen appertizers, and a choice of 6 fish dishes and 6 meat dishes. P had sea scallops and the lamb dish, while I had fried oysters in a fava soup and the sirloin with marrow and spätzle. We had fresh lemonade and limeade, accompanied with a small pitcher of simple syrup for sweetener. There were two free micro appertizers, a bean dip on crouton, and a cube of watermelon with micro feta cubes and aged balsamic vinegar. Afterwards, we had a free micro dose of berry sorbet on a custard, that was included. We ordered for dessert was a blueberry panecotta with a dose of lavender honey ice cream with chinese-style micro egg cakes, while P had a dark chocolate confection. The other novelty was the chance to try real English mead – which had a wheat ale flavor with high notes of honey. Everything seemed not so big, but the waves of dishes caught up with us. It was a very remarkable meal with immpeccable service.
Category: Manhattan
Last Suppers and the Gospel According to Ghengis
This weekend was a variety of free and cheap meals curtesy of work, events and Brooklyn Restaurant Week (which goes on until Tuesday, so catch up!). Atlantic ChipShop has a three course meal for 2 for 20.06. Blue Ribbon Sushi has a magnificient sushi/shashimi combo for the 20.06 (get the combo, not the sushi alone or the shashimi alone – they are all regular portions). Free work food at Tavern on the Green – can’t complain about the rare tuna, the shrimp cocktail or the desserts. Fine food and drink at Southwest NY at AS’s Baptism party for Ghengis, aka Mini-AS.
The baptism was held at St. Joseph’s Chapel, which is also the Catholic 9/11 memorial. Haunting cast statues of the site’s patron saints take up most of the left side of the chapel. New life is represented by the gurguling baptismal font, whose moving water represents cleaning and renewal. AS’s cousin performed the ceremony, which was nice and furfilling.
Saturday!
One of the rare instances in which I post from Manhattan – at Alma Mater Undergrad for Dean’s Day – great lectures, and the wonderful easy access to the Internet that only higher institutions offer. Aah.
Watched Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet” on DVD last night – his gay movie w/o the cowboys (I may not watch “Brokeback Mountain” more because it’s a Western than anything else; I’m not as conservative as my folks, and… well, I aim to be open-minded, that’s all good, right?). Anyway, an Asian American NYC story – with the World Trade Center skyline and lower Manhattan outlook (so pre-2001); Taiwanese culture; about family and love and friendship, even the pre-Brokeback era (the special features on the DVD has Ang Lee and co-writer/co-producer James Shamus talking so freely and relating to how the Ang Lee movies are really about universal stuff than anything else, if not also touching on Lee’s being inspired from his own life).
Yesterday: reading the NY Times articles by Jim Dwyer or watching the news on the release of the audiotapes of the 911 calls on 9/11. The historian in me understands the importance of such materials and how we cannot forget the past (and we better learn something from it). But, the human being in me feels such heartbreak – recalling that horrible morning and remembering that fellow human beings – there for work or what – were there in the towers and fate or other came in. I felt no less pained for the emergency operators – the helplessness, and the sadness they must have felt in wondering and fearing what was going on the other end of that telephone line. I wonder if it feels worse because it was here in the hometown. I wonder how, after almost five years later, it suddenly didn’t feel that long ago.