vip in the city

Winter’s Eve at Lincoln Square

On Monday, the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District hosted the 7th Annual Winter’s Eve at Lincoln Square. The evening kicked-off with the official tree lighting ceremony at Lincoln Center. This year’s tree, a 50-foot Colorado Blue Spruce — which was delivered to Lincoln Center on November 15 — was decorated by Wedgwood with specially-designed performing arts-themed ornaments. Thankfully, this night was not the insane media circus that the Rockefeller Center tree-lighting event has become. At precisely 5:56 pm, the tree was formally lit, casting its bright blue glow over the Plaza.

And then the festival! According to the website, Winter’s Eve is the city’s largest holiday festival: a giant neighborhood celebration during which the sidewalks along Broadway from Columbus Circle through the West 60’s come alive with performers, street musicians, children’s activities, demonstrations, and food vendors offering free or nominally priced tastings. The streets were teeming with revelers who were out on this balmy night to welcome in the holiday season.

As soon as I emerged from the subway at 66th Street, I was greeted by the sounds of the Gramercy Brass Orchestra playing holiday tunes in Tucker Square for the crowds gathered around the restaurant stalls.

So much music in the air!

Tempting to linger, but we had other tasks on the agenda. At Dante Park, we collected our entry form for the main event: a Lincoln Square area scavenger hunt, organized by Watson Adventures. The company hosts both private and public scavenger hunts; their NYC-themed events include a Grand Central hunt, a Midtown Holiday Movie Locations hunt, and other hunts named Met Madness, MoMA Mania and Art Attack. Our entry this night had a list of 14 questions, to which we were to hunt down answers, with clues to be discovered along the festival streets.

We were off — with occasional brief stops for photo opportunities. Questions about the Kiehl’s store, the Gracious Home window display, the Commerce Bank… even the Lincoln Square Veterinary Hospital. Go, go, go!

Here, ice sculpting demonstrations in front the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Question #9: At the American Folk Art Museum, find a comforter that is meant to comfort and honor. How many people made it? Answer: 500!

Keep going…!

More performers in front of the The Museum of Biblical Art.

Off to the YMCA (according to Question #8, the largest of its kind in the world) and for Question #5, to count the check-out registers at Bed Bath & Beyond. (28! A kind employee gave us that one.) Time was running out, so we split up to hit all the clues inside the Time Warner Center.

Question #12: Which Borders’ staff member likes a fruity book? Nikki recommends A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass.

Question #11: At Aveda, how much does Happiness Happiness Happiness cost this holiday season? The Triple Happiness gift set costs $29. (One can assume that this would be superior to mere double happiness.)

Some confusing questions about Inside CNN and the Esprit store…. Just keep going…

Inside Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall: Name five jazz artists honored at the Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame. I probably could have done this without trekking up to the fifth floor by just naming any five jazz artists.

More music — jazz, of course:

The deadline was upon us, so we made educated guesses on the rest — no time to hit the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle on 60th — and raced back to Dante Park to turn in our entry.

And then the answers…

Let’s see: we needed 10 correct answers to win one of the “amazing prizes provided by the retailers and restaurants of Lincoln Square”… and it looked like after racing around like maniacs, we had… 9. 9!!! Gah!

For this travesty, I blame the in-retrospect-not-so-kind BB&B employee, who totally lied about the store’s 18, not 28, check-out registers.

We wallowed in our defeat over tea and swanky Chinese food at Shun Lee Cafe. Later still, CS lifted our spirits further over glasses of wine and rainbow-hued cocktails at Cafe Ronda.

Ah well, you can’t win ’em all.

Spicy, Tasty, Sweet, Tart

B’s family’s final full day in New York City. He had arranged for the five lovely ladies to stay at the Sheraton LaGuardia their last night in town, which made for an excellent excuse to explore the Queens Chinatown scene.

After spending most of the day with Mom, I met the M crew at their hotel, and together we rounded the corner for dinner at Flushing’s Spicy & Tasty on Prince Street.

The restaurant created a sensation on the NYC foodie boards when it first opened a few years ago, generating a blip on the mainstream food journalism radar. Eric Asimov of The New York Times reviewed the restaurant in 2002 when it was still housed in the original seedy, basement space on Roosevelt Avenue, as did Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice.  Quite an accomplishment for a hole-in-the-wall that one could then generously describe as “humble,” more accurately, as “divey,” far off the beaten path at the terminus of the 7 line in Queens.

Three years ago, the restaurant relocated to somewhat swankier digs in a new marble-fronted construction that houses a few tea parlors and notable Manhattan transplant, Sentosa — yet another Malaysian restaurant on the vipnyc “To Eat” list.

By most accounts, Spicy & Tasty’s move has only improved the restaurant: the owners succeeeded in sprucing up the décor (adding thick carpet, brocade chairs, glass display cases, lots of gold) while still preserving the brash, tastebud-grabbing flavors characteristic of native Sichuan cuisine. The layered combinations of chili oil, multi-hued chili peppers, those infamous Sichuan peppercorns, and copious amounts of garlic continue to draw (still predominantly Asian) crowds.

After briefly examining the tempting array of chilled appetizers in the glass display cases up front, we were shown to a large round table upstairs.  SC and JG joined us soon afterwards, and our group began to peruse the extensive menu.  The offerings certainly looked authentic — or for the uninitiated, off-putting: tendon, tongue, tripe, pig blood, jellyfish, stinky tofu, eel… — but the true taste adventure would have to wait for another night.  We settled mostly upon the more universally appealing Chinese, if not particularly Sichuan, dishes — lo mein, chicken with broccoli and such — mixing it up with some less standard fare, which true to the restaurant name, packed quite a heat wollop. My favorite dish of the evening was a heaping platter of savory Home Style Crabs.  So messy, but so good!

Three days after our meal there, Frank Bruni of the New York Times called Spicy & Tasty 2.0 “perhaps the most aptly named restaurant in the city” in his two-star review.  So next time: Dan-Dan Noodles, Bamboo in Hot-Spicy Sauce, Enhanced Pork, Smoked Tea Duck, Ma-Po Bean Curd, Pork Belly with Leeks and, and, and…!

Afterwards, SC and JG treated us all to dessert at nearby Sweet-n-Tart, where we introduced the visitors to the gummy, squishy joys of bubble tea, a.k.a.  boba(!) tea.

Flushing, “Destination of Choice”:

It’s these little things, they can pull you under.
Live your life filled with joy and wonder.
I always knew this altogether thunder
Was lost in our little lives.

Oh, oh, but sweetness follows.
Oh, oh, but sweetness follows.

— “Sweetness Follows,” R.E.M. (1992)

Post-parade

As of Saturday night, the bleachers that the City set up for Thursday morning’s Thanksgiving Day Parade were still in place. I climbed atop the tiers to snap these photographs from Columbus Circle.

Must have been quite a vantage point for the festivities.

Angel’s eye view of Central Park’s Merchants’ Gate: