Oyster Bar, Urena and MI3

This past Monday was the Boy's birthday, so for the past week, we've met up with a couple of the Boy's friends for dinner.

First off was last Thursday where we had dinner at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central with one of the Boy's old coworkers ('The Greek'). Because of my newfound love for oysters, I'd been meaning to go and was finally there. The Greek's a funny guy. He says exactly what's on his mind and doesn't hold back. Once, we went to the Pearl Oyster Bar, and the waitress took forever to come and take our order. When she finally got to us and asked, "Can I get you something?", the Greek replied with "You can get me a lot of things." We ordered a dozen different oysters to share. I loved them all! Then I had a clam chowder while the guys each ordered fish entrees. My clam chowder was cold and not as good as the ones I'd tasted in SF. The Greek was pissed off because the waiter forgot about his order and didn't bring it for a really long time.

Next, we had dinner with another of the Boy's friends ('The Russian') on Saturday at a Spanish restaurant called Urena. The food there was wonderful! Like, iron chef wonderful! The chef there is very creative with food and likes to play with your senses by mixing opposite tastes together. We ordered three appetizers to start: sweetbreads, grilled shrimp over risotto and a trio of fois gras. Normally, I hate fois gras. But the way it was prepared here, you wouldn't know that it was fois gras at all. The first preparation was a fried ball with fois gras in it. The second was a fois gras terrine with cocoa nibs and chocolate on the outside. The third preparation was like a fois gras yogurt cup. It was so pretty and fun to eat! The shrimp and sweetbreads looked normal and tasted really good. I'd never eaten sweetbreads before, and the Boy insisted I not tell the Russian what sweetbreads are until he'd eaten it or else he might not eat it (it's a thyroid membrane). I knew what I was eating was disgusting, but it was flavored so well that I liked it. For the main, we ordered pork bellies, braised short ribs and seared sesame crusted tuna. Everything tasted great. When it came time to order dessert, the Russian distracted the Boy with work talk while I asked the waiter to add candles to our dessert. He decided to do better and brought out a mini cake with candles in addition to our dessert. So, the Boy got a nice little surprise. For dessert, we ordered the coffee and donuts. The plate came with a gourmet donut, cream flavored ice cream, a small cube of strong coffee jelly, coffee foam smeared across the plate and a crunchy topping thing. If you mixed all of the ice cream, coffee jelly, foam and nutty stuff together, it tasted like you were drinking a real cup of coffee. Yes, I know-why not just get a real cup of coffee then?! Because that just wouldn't be as fun!

Finally, on the Boy's actual birthday, we made dinner together and went out to see MI3. Because of the convenience of Netflix, it was the first time that the Boy and I had gone to the movie theater together since I moved to New York.