We just spent a long, perfect weekend in NYC. We ate, drank and did too much to detail here (and more than anyone wants to read about), but here are the highlights:
The Restaurant Royal Treatment. Megan and Andy made friends with restaurant royalty when they lived in New York, and we were lucky enough to ride their coattails through extra special tasting menus at both Spice Market and Esca. Good. Lord. Better food than we deserved. I had always considered myself, you know, a foodie, a wannabe cook, a gourmand, even. Andy clarified it for me the way it was once clarified for him, "You're an eater." And eat we did, not to mention the great swath of cocktails we cut throughout Manhattan.
Remixing the Ordinary.This exhibit at the new Museum of Arts and Design was among the most accessible and intriguiguing shows I've seen, though my art muscle is admittedly feeble. A chandelier of eyeglasses? A wedding dress of rubber gloves? A tsunami of melted vinyl records? Tribal art carved from phonebooks? Strange and lovely.
An Evening with Ernest. I've known him since we were 11 — he was my friend, brother and frequent accomplice. This evening was markedly more tame than others we've had, but did not end any earlier. It's great to know that 20 years later, we can still have just as much fun.
Upper East Side Families vs. West Village Families. In the course of a day we saw (uptown) daddy-mommy-and-me matching argyles, polos and twinsets pulling up to fancy awnings in town cars and pedi-cabs and (downtown) converse-wearing, hipster pre-schoolers on the shoulders of rocker dads carrying high-end pizza home.
Jeremy Piven Knows My Name. We saw the revival of David Mamet's Speed the Plow and I was in the same (big) room with Jeremy Piven. His costar Raul Esparza stole the show. As Raul was collecting money for a good cause after the show, we had a meaningful exchange about our hangovers. I touched his bicep. I wasn't all, "Look, Raul, I'm married," but I know we had a moment. For real.
The Inside Track. Sudhir has been in NYC less than a year and, true to form, he's infiltrated the food mafia. We actually went to a bar we had to enter through a phone both (absinthe, anyone?) and got a choice lunch table at the NYTimes food critic's new darling, Market Table.
To say it was a good time is an understatement. New York never stops impressing me.