Eleven Madison Park and My Weekend

The weather last Friday was unusually warm at 70 degrees. I was overdressed in my wool jacket and dressy sweater with a fur lined collar. All day people had been teasing me about my sweater. My boss laughed at me for wearing fur on such a warm day. A manager asked how I liked walking around with a cat around my neck. I always get funny reactions from people when I wear that sweater. Girls think it's cute and even call it gorgeous. Some guys think it looks nice, while the animal lover guys give me that "and I thought you were such a nice girl" look. It's faux fur! It's not real!

Anyway, I wore the nicer sweater because I was going out to dinner later that night with the Boy at Eleven Madison Park. I showed up way too early for our 7PM reservation and waited in the lobby for the Boy who had a rough time getting into the city from Connecticut. Dinner was nice, but the Boy was disappointed because nothing he ate was that mind blowing. We started out with an appetizer of raw oysters. I thought they tasted fine, but the Boy detected a slightly fishy taste to it and didn't like the fact that he was paying a good price for something that wasn't fresh. I ordered the lobster for dinner, while the Boy ordered lamb. Before the main dishes came, the Boy kept muttering under his breath for me to stop eating so much bread before the main came. I love bread and will knowingly ruin my appetite with it. But when my lobster came out, the plate was so shockingly bare (the lobster was about the size of my thumb, and there was nothing else except for a lot of white space on my plate) that the Boy encouraged me to eat more bread. His plate wasn't quite as empty as mine, but there still wasn't much on it. The food wasn't bad. I enjoyed my little bite of lobster. For dessert we ordered the chocolate lover's tasting menu for two. That was good and filling! My fave was the little shot of rich hot chocolate, and I loved all of the ice creams and tarts.

On Saturday we walked around Union Square and Astor Place during the day since the weather was so nice and then watched the 40 Year Old Virgin from Netflix at night.

For the rest of the weekend, I got my federal taxes done. I'm getting a little bit of money back, so I'm happy.

Waitin' For My Grub

I'm sitting here at work hanging out for a bit before meeting the Boy for a 7PM dinner at Eleven Madison Park. I've been excited about this all week since it's the first time since I've moved here that we're doing one of the fine dining experiences that we used to do every time I came to visit. Unfortunately, I'm going straight from work, so I won't be able to dress up as much as I'd like to, and I still have a bit of a sneezy, runny nose cold. Hopefully afterwards, we'll be able to waddle ourselves over to the Russian Vodka Room to have a drink with some of the Boy's friends. We'll see. The Boy's a total food connoisseur and recently compiled quite an ambitious fine dining plan for the rest of the year. He posted the list of restaurants on the fridge as a reminder. Just one of the benefits of dating a guy who really knows how to eat! Can't wait for dessert!

Out of Town Friend

On Monday night, I met up with a couple of grad school friends, one of which flew in from LA on Sunday night to work in New York for the rest of the week. The night started out a bit later than planned, as I got stuck on a relatively demanding project at work which kept me about an hour later than usual. We all met up at the Mercer Hotel in Soho for a drink at the bar before heading off to dinner. My friend wanted to check out Spice Market, and snagged a last minute reservation at 9PM. After chatting and catching up with what everyone was up to for a bit, we took a short cab ride over to Spice Market.

The decor of the restaurant was nice - dimly lit with a very Southeast Asian jungle-like feel to it. We started out with cocktails at the bar while we waited for our table to be ready. Dinner at the Spice Market was family style, so we ordered about five small plates and a bottle of wine to share between the three of us. The food was nicely presented and very tasty! Although both of my friends thought that the crab sesame balls were overdone and maybe even slightly burnt, I really liked it. We ate and talked for a long time, and when dinner was over, we ordered dessert, coffee and an after dinner drink to hang out and talk some more. We left the restaurant in separate cabs at around midnight. Although I can't say that I miss grad school, I definitely miss hanging out with all of the cool people that I met there.

The Real Winter Weather

It was freezing last week! It was the coldest it's been since I moved out here. Last Friday after work I met the Boy and his friend at the Wasabi Lobby in the Upper East Side. I didn't know I was going out to dinner until I got back to the apartment, and the Boy called me and told me to meet him at the restaurant. It was a short walk from the apartment, but between the apartment and the restaurant, my ears froze over to the point where I couldn't feel my hands tucking my hair behind my ears. The sushi there was a fusion creation and tasted pretty good if you were in the mood to eat something pretty, but not authentically Japanese. I was satisfied, as I felt the beginnings of a nasty cold brewing and was really not in the mood for some serious raw stuff.

It warmed up a bit on Saturday when I headed down to Chinatown to have dimsum with my friend and her visiting family. I took the 4,5 express train and got off at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall exit which was supposed to be a short walk over to East Broadway. I couldn't find my way out of the city hall square/circle area and ended up walking about aimlessly until I found a security guard's booth and asked for directions. Initially, the security guard scolded me for not wearing a warm hat or beanie, but cut the lecture short after he noticed that my jacket had a furry hood on it. He then gave me very clear, easy directions before yelling at me to put my hood on. I thought it was very nice and grandfatherly of him to care, so I smiled and put my hood up as I walked away, but tossed it off the second I was out of the security guard's sight. The hood on that jacket makes me look and feel like a South Park character.

The dimsum place, DimSum Go Go, was surprisingly good. It wasn't a typical dimsum house (no carts being circled around by pissed off Chinese ladies) and had a lot of different, creative, delicious dumplings. I met my friend's sister, brother in law and their two adorable munchkins for the first time, and then later, her parents when they finally managed to make it into the city after their train got delayed. So, dimsum was pretty good.

I spent the rest of the weekend lounging around in my warm apartment, watching Wedding Crashers and cooking a nice dinner with the Boy.