NY to the C
(so this post is horribly out of date but thought it might amuse anyway). (just imagine it's the middle of November). (thanks for your indulgence).
Two days in the city that never sleeps with the Brits -- my dear friend Tanya and her gentleman friend Adam, who both make googobs of the cold hard at a 1.85 dollar to 1 pound sterling exchange rate in the LDN, as chronicled through the food we ate:
-Monday morning at their hotel (the Helmsley no less) -- Tanya and I had corned beef hash with poached eggs (delicious!), Adam had granola with raspberries, then bacon and eggs. Coffee, oj, brown toast.
-Lunch: first, a round of hot dogs from a vendor on Park Ave (mustard, ketchup, onions), then on to a lovely Italian hole in the W 73rd St wall ("Let's have a lovely boozy lunch!" said Tans -- so we did). A bottle of Pinot Grigio. Cold asparagus dressed in a vinaigrette and chopped hardboiled eggs. Prosciutto that could serve as butter -- that creamy and fantabulous, with mozzarella di buffalo and a little oil & balsamico. Adam had veal carpaccio (I shuddered, and then tried it -- it tasted like dry roast turkey) with a nice tuna & caper sauce. Then dessert -- a not-too-sweet, not-too-coffee tiramisu, and pistachio gelato with tiny little bits of nuts. La, la.
-a campari and soda in the hotel bar before it was off to Soho to dine with Adam's mate from Oxbridge, Dan. Now, Dan, bless him, in that balding, roundish Anglo-male way, can never look anything but a bit rumpley, and has a lovely smile. Then I found out he writes the scripts for Grand Theft Auto ("Bitch, gimme my money!!" wtf?). We ate at a Korean/Japanese restaurant. It was a relatively slow night, and the owner, or somebody else important, waited on us and we had an AMAZING meal.
When English people of reasonable (or drunken) means, in my limited experience, "go for an Indian," or any other non-English, non-Continental meal, tend to order pretty much anywhere between two-thirds to three-quarters of what is on the menu. The number of people you are dining with is irrelevant. None of this wimpy American each-person-gets-one-thing-
and-maybe-you-share nonsense. You might talk about what looks good before you place the order, you might say what you will or won't eat depending on your dietary needs, but it all goes out the window as soon as the server approaches your table.
"We'll start off with some ...
oh, and we'd better get some of that...
and let's not forget that ...." etc etc etc
Unbelievable. T and I shared a bottle of white (well, Dan had one glass, but otherwise the boys drank beer).
We had: Grilled eel (takes me back to Tokyo) on skewers. Spicy tuna roll (& spicy it was!). steak tartare with a raw egg -- the steak so cold you could almost crunch the ice crystals with your teeth. Crispy sauteed beef. Mountains upon mountains of yummy sushi and sashimi of every kind -- a veritable rainbow of pouisson. Cold spinach arranged into wee little mounds with a tangy sesame dressing ("Oh, there's our greens, then," sighed Dan). Luckily no miso soup, since it tastes like old socks to me (I really want to like it, I really do, but it tastes like old socks).
And the awesome thing about it was that I took Tanya's lead and just had little bites of everything -- she looks like a bird and she eats like one too, except for breakfast, bless her heart -- so I tasted everything but I didn't eat mountains of food like the boys, which would have made me feel quite ill. They can really put it away though -- reminds me of my father in his prime. Gotta love some rangy tall metabolism.
Tuesday morning we got bagels & lox -- yum.
Then we went to sushi -- again. Bear with me. "We can't get good sushi in London," they said. "We're going to some odd Mexican/Thai restaurant tonight," they said (the name of the restaurant was Blue Chilli -- what else could it be?). So we had some more -- admittedly, incredible -- sushi. Tuna tartare with a raw quail egg on top. Spicy tuna roll. Rock shrimp tempura. Salmon skin roll -- that was brilliant. More of that lovely cold spinach thing. A sashimi platter -- salmon, yellowtail, mackerel, prawn. Gorgeous.
Then it's off to the shops -- Tans was on a mission to buy Seven jeans (lord forgive me) so we went to the Barneys co-op, and then to Diane Von Furstenberg's boutique, where she paid -- I kid you not -- two hundred dollars for a SHRUG (it looks stunning, & I'll be the first to admit that, but come on) and then I took her to the Strand, which is my particular shopping mecca. We bought de Bernieres and Frayn and Lethem and Ridley and Butler and Alexie, and then cabbed it back to the Helmsley for a restorative Baileys.
Blue Chilli was not, as we had thought, a godawful Thai/Mexican fusion catastrophe. It was, rather, a very swank Japanese restaurant (!!! I haven't eaten this much raw fish since Tokyo!). We were joined for dinner by the aforementioned rumpley Dan (who's name, when pronounced in Adam's accent, sounds like "Diane", which was the cause of quite a bit of personal confusion for yours truly), and their mates from college Rowan ("Rone"), India ("Ind-ya") and Yen ("Yen"). India has Barbie's body (sized down -- she's only about five feet tall) and Barbie's long blonde hair and Patsy from AbFab's bangs, poochy-out lips, voice, and mannerisms. Needless to say I couldn't get enough. She'd already drunk two saketini's by the time we arrived and spent most of the night standing up, making her chair fall over, striding about, interrogating Tanya and Adam about their relationship, and making pronouncements such as "I never drank when I was married, but now I'm divorced, and I drink all the time, and it's lovely." Bless.
A repeat of the amazing food from before -- only now with a plateful of raw oysters as well, plus steak, plus some sort of fish, which was lovely. Thoroughly stuffed and watered (three or four cocktails I believe -- which would not have been a problem had I been in practice as I was living in London or Ireland, but here -- jeez), I cabbed it waaaaay uptown for a quick glass of wine with L and new new beau, who I thoroughly approve of, before nodding off.
(Fast forward to tonight when Dore wants to go to dinner and suggests Japanese (she's pining, poor girl) and I really, really want to do this thing for her, but I. Just. Can't. So I suggest Whole Foods. Why not, really? She can get her california roll on and I can go buckwild with some latkes. Yum, yum, yum).
Two days in the city that never sleeps with the Brits -- my dear friend Tanya and her gentleman friend Adam, who both make googobs of the cold hard at a 1.85 dollar to 1 pound sterling exchange rate in the LDN, as chronicled through the food we ate:
-Monday morning at their hotel (the Helmsley no less) -- Tanya and I had corned beef hash with poached eggs (delicious!), Adam had granola with raspberries, then bacon and eggs. Coffee, oj, brown toast.
-Lunch: first, a round of hot dogs from a vendor on Park Ave (mustard, ketchup, onions), then on to a lovely Italian hole in the W 73rd St wall ("Let's have a lovely boozy lunch!" said Tans -- so we did). A bottle of Pinot Grigio. Cold asparagus dressed in a vinaigrette and chopped hardboiled eggs. Prosciutto that could serve as butter -- that creamy and fantabulous, with mozzarella di buffalo and a little oil & balsamico. Adam had veal carpaccio (I shuddered, and then tried it -- it tasted like dry roast turkey) with a nice tuna & caper sauce. Then dessert -- a not-too-sweet, not-too-coffee tiramisu, and pistachio gelato with tiny little bits of nuts. La, la.
-a campari and soda in the hotel bar before it was off to Soho to dine with Adam's mate from Oxbridge, Dan. Now, Dan, bless him, in that balding, roundish Anglo-male way, can never look anything but a bit rumpley, and has a lovely smile. Then I found out he writes the scripts for Grand Theft Auto ("Bitch, gimme my money!!" wtf?). We ate at a Korean/Japanese restaurant. It was a relatively slow night, and the owner, or somebody else important, waited on us and we had an AMAZING meal.
When English people of reasonable (or drunken) means, in my limited experience, "go for an Indian," or any other non-English, non-Continental meal, tend to order pretty much anywhere between two-thirds to three-quarters of what is on the menu. The number of people you are dining with is irrelevant. None of this wimpy American each-person-gets-one-thing-
and-maybe-you-share nonsense. You might talk about what looks good before you place the order, you might say what you will or won't eat depending on your dietary needs, but it all goes out the window as soon as the server approaches your table.
"We'll start off with some ...
oh, and we'd better get some of that...
and let's not forget that ...." etc etc etc
Unbelievable. T and I shared a bottle of white (well, Dan had one glass, but otherwise the boys drank beer).
We had: Grilled eel (takes me back to Tokyo) on skewers. Spicy tuna roll (& spicy it was!). steak tartare with a raw egg -- the steak so cold you could almost crunch the ice crystals with your teeth. Crispy sauteed beef. Mountains upon mountains of yummy sushi and sashimi of every kind -- a veritable rainbow of pouisson. Cold spinach arranged into wee little mounds with a tangy sesame dressing ("Oh, there's our greens, then," sighed Dan). Luckily no miso soup, since it tastes like old socks to me (I really want to like it, I really do, but it tastes like old socks).
And the awesome thing about it was that I took Tanya's lead and just had little bites of everything -- she looks like a bird and she eats like one too, except for breakfast, bless her heart -- so I tasted everything but I didn't eat mountains of food like the boys, which would have made me feel quite ill. They can really put it away though -- reminds me of my father in his prime. Gotta love some rangy tall metabolism.
Tuesday morning we got bagels & lox -- yum.
Then we went to sushi -- again. Bear with me. "We can't get good sushi in London," they said. "We're going to some odd Mexican/Thai restaurant tonight," they said (the name of the restaurant was Blue Chilli -- what else could it be?). So we had some more -- admittedly, incredible -- sushi. Tuna tartare with a raw quail egg on top. Spicy tuna roll. Rock shrimp tempura. Salmon skin roll -- that was brilliant. More of that lovely cold spinach thing. A sashimi platter -- salmon, yellowtail, mackerel, prawn. Gorgeous.
Then it's off to the shops -- Tans was on a mission to buy Seven jeans (lord forgive me) so we went to the Barneys co-op, and then to Diane Von Furstenberg's boutique, where she paid -- I kid you not -- two hundred dollars for a SHRUG (it looks stunning, & I'll be the first to admit that, but come on) and then I took her to the Strand, which is my particular shopping mecca. We bought de Bernieres and Frayn and Lethem and Ridley and Butler and Alexie, and then cabbed it back to the Helmsley for a restorative Baileys.
Blue Chilli was not, as we had thought, a godawful Thai/Mexican fusion catastrophe. It was, rather, a very swank Japanese restaurant (!!! I haven't eaten this much raw fish since Tokyo!). We were joined for dinner by the aforementioned rumpley Dan (who's name, when pronounced in Adam's accent, sounds like "Diane", which was the cause of quite a bit of personal confusion for yours truly), and their mates from college Rowan ("Rone"), India ("Ind-ya") and Yen ("Yen"). India has Barbie's body (sized down -- she's only about five feet tall) and Barbie's long blonde hair and Patsy from AbFab's bangs, poochy-out lips, voice, and mannerisms. Needless to say I couldn't get enough. She'd already drunk two saketini's by the time we arrived and spent most of the night standing up, making her chair fall over, striding about, interrogating Tanya and Adam about their relationship, and making pronouncements such as "I never drank when I was married, but now I'm divorced, and I drink all the time, and it's lovely." Bless.
A repeat of the amazing food from before -- only now with a plateful of raw oysters as well, plus steak, plus some sort of fish, which was lovely. Thoroughly stuffed and watered (three or four cocktails I believe -- which would not have been a problem had I been in practice as I was living in London or Ireland, but here -- jeez), I cabbed it waaaaay uptown for a quick glass of wine with L and new new beau, who I thoroughly approve of, before nodding off.
(Fast forward to tonight when Dore wants to go to dinner and suggests Japanese (she's pining, poor girl) and I really, really want to do this thing for her, but I. Just. Can't. So I suggest Whole Foods. Why not, really? She can get her california roll on and I can go buckwild with some latkes. Yum, yum, yum).
posted by Hannah at 5:39 PM
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