This past weekend I was in NYC again. Ha, I know ... I am there all the time basically but I mainly went to celebrate my birthday with Tom, and Jerry, in the only city worth doing so. After driving down (which possibly might be my last time driving to NYC) we headed to see Favela Rising in a funky theater on the East Village. Only in NYC would the director of the Tribeca Film Festival award winning movie be there to discuss the film with you afterwards. The movie was incredible. Though it changes my mind on Brazil. With its statistics flying around as they do, I now feel like I understand why Brazilians flock here in the masses they do. Review shortly. Afterwards we wandered arond the E.Village, the Cock, and the Lower East Side looking at the neighborhood before eating dinner at Suba, which was very good. I was thinking it was going to be more in the lines of tapas but it turned out to have excellent classic mojitos and a great piece of jazzed up pork shoulder. The place was hip and fun, yet slightly quiet.
I woke up Saturday morning to meet Tom in Hell's Kitchen and after getting a SBux, we were off to Williamsburg. WBurg is a neighborhood in Brooklyn that was supposed to be funky, trendy, artsy, hip, and cheaper. I didn't fall in love. In fact, I kinda thought Wburg felt like some of the near burbs of Boston. So, after writing it off the list for places I might be renting in but deciding that I need to beg to get into one of its art galleries, we had lunch. Strawberry Banana pancakes. Mmm.. We headed back into Manhattan, which is when I kissed the ground, and did a little shopping in Bloomies, Tiffany's ( i sorta wanted a Gehry bracelet that he is doing for them), Levi, Diesel and the new Apple. The new Apple store on Fifth was having some bad design issues since their oh so hot stairs turned lethal when wet. Since it was pouring on Saturday, people had to have their umbrella's dried at the door before stepping onto the stairs down into the store, and the stairs were still a wet lawsuit waiting to happen. Small nap and then we were all off to see the movie Russian Dolls in the W.Village IFC theater (which rocks). I had to ask directions from some fireman since we couldn't find the place, sadly. As I entered the firehouse and headed towards the group or swarthy men, the one who answered my directional question was a total Italian ripped up stud. OMG, he was hot, lol. Anyways, the movie was fantastic, check out the trailer. It was so purely French. It was romantic and full of love yet went entirely no where. As I said, purely French, lol. Hysterically I took Tom to see this movie, having no idea, that it was about a thirty something year old lost in life and finally realizing that you will never find a perfect princess (or prince in his case, lol). I laughed out loud. It is absolutely great and not just because of the hot French boys accent when he speaks English, or him running naked down some main street in Paris, lol.
Afterwards we headed to the Meatpacking area ( i so want to live here) to dine at Morimoto. I thought it was great. It was incredibly clever and extremely centered around fish, unlike most Japanese restaurants now overtaking NYC like Godzilla. The service, however, was attrocious. They actually dropped a piece of my sushi onto the floor and I had to wait nearly 15 minutes to get another. We each had the near death tasting menu with a bottle of sake that tasted like tangerine juice. I loved that half way through the tasting menu which is mostly a blur at this point, they gave a cup of green tea and a macaroon. It was basically to mind fuck you into thinking it was over and that this is dessert. Right after, lobster with 12 spices showed up, lol. We unfortunately missed the nitrogen frozen persmmon but I guess you can't have everything. New York Magazine raved and says:
Masaharu Morimoto, whose eponymous establishment opened six weeks ago on the fringes of the meatpacking district, brings a formidable array of weapons to this titanic struggle. A stocky
gentleman from Hiroshima, he is one of the reigning Iron Chefs from the original cult-hit Japanese television show and was the original executive chef at Nobu when it opened in New York. For this, his personal New York debut (he already has restaurants in such disparate locations as Philadelphia and Mumbai), he and his co-owners have contracted the cutting-edge Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who has sprinkled the room with all sorts of esoteric touches. The curved, low-slung entrance is hung with a giant red curtain, making it look like the maw of a whale. There’s a hectic, perpetually crowded lounge area downstairs, and the walls and ceilings of the main dining room upstairs are covered with sheets of rippled white plaster, which give the room a strangely soothing effect. In the back of the room is a sushi bar made of Douglas fir, and behind it is Morimoto himself, dressed in his flowing robes, uttering commands to his minions like an admiral on the deck of his ship. Morimoto is an Iron Chef for good reason. He trained originally as a sushi chef and is a master of the sophisticated Japanese dining genre called kaiseki. These varied talents are all on display at Morimoto, which seems to have been conceived as several restaurants in one. There is the obligatory subterranean lounge area mobbed with meatpacking-district regulars swilling sugary, aggressively priced cocktails. There is the varied sushi menu (the fish is flown in four times weekly from the Tsukiji market in Tokyo), which even my most effete sushi-snob friends conceded was irreproachable. There is the main menu, which is filled with clunky but often enjoyable riffs on simple Asian dishes (Korean bibimbap made with yellowtail tuna, pork gyoza dunked in crème fraîche). And there is the chef’s special omakase menu, which features Japanese fusion cooking of the highest kind, designed to be enjoyed while sitting in zaisu chairs with your shoes off, at the elite “omakase bar.”
Sunday morning we all ate ate Pastis in Meatpacking before heading for a nice walk around the W.Village, the piers, and then up through Chelsea to look for my Pride outfits. I had no luck. When I got back to shitty Boston ( i swear you could see a dark swirling vortex over it ) I was taken to Marco in the North End (the uber Italiano section of Boston) for dinner by Brian to end my week of birthday festivities. He also gave me a book on how to truly understand how to be a foodie titled Simple French Food. Super cool. After sitting in the Italian cafe downstairs where we waited for our table drinking fire red "Ferrari" martinis, watching everyone go GaGa over the World Cup, and nearly feeling the need to smoke myself, we got to sit down... upstairs. We had a bunch of delicious
things and some great Italian red wine to wash it all down. Marco is adorable and quaint. It has also gotten noticed by Gourmet as one of the better dining spots in Boston. It is upstairs in the brownstone and feels like an old Italian grandmothers kitchen. Once the plates start coming out, family style, you really feel like your in a grandmothers kitchen. The meats were amazing as was the Tagliatelle Bolagnese. The eggplant lasagna tasted like my mothers though. Which is great because she is a great cook but if you are getting attention in Food and Wine and Gourmet, you might want to turn up the ante a bit. The logo to the left is the restaurants but it has given me my next idea for my tattoo. I want the city-state flag from the Italian town/city that my grandparents grew up in, tattooed somewhere. After the great dinner, I stumbled home with the hiccups (to the point I nearly got sick from them and the wine, lol), pissed in an alley, and then passed out on my bed with everything in my apt on (tv, computer, lights, lol.. it was a mess).
And then Monday morning I jumped off the cliff into my new world. I am officially moving to NYC. I have hired movers, quit my job, told my best friends, have started to look at apartments, etc et all. I am nearly now.. floating off the cliff.
A tip from me, a Morimoto fan: I always get better bar AND table service downstairs in the lounge. No waiting for a table, and the servers and bartenders are more attentive. However, I'm still a little thrown by spending $8 for ONE piece of sushi. It is quite good though. LOL!
Posted by: Gary | June 15, 2006 at 12:49 AM
It's not floating off a cliff. It's defying gravity.
Posted by: Tom Gerace | June 08, 2006 at 12:13 AM