vip in the city, page 57

After some surprisingly good pastrami with Russian slaw at Main Street’s idiosyncratically named Bagel Chateau, DK, LK, SYB, HH and I piled into the Taupe Wonder for a trip to Millburn township’s upscale shopping center, along winding low-hilled roads (hence: Short Hills) and multi-million dollar homes.

At the Mall: penguins everywhere! At the Santa Snow Globe…

…and at the coin fountain.

We did not stick around in Short Hills long enough that day to witness Santa Paws where — wait for it… — people could bring their dogs in to have a holiday picture taken with Santa. Infants, however, would not be photographed.

Ended up not doing any Christmas shopping after all, though we did get to refuel with snacks and hot chocolates at the American Express Members Lounge. And SYB finally, finally, gave in to the lure of the super small and shiny.

Back at Chez H, we were joined by SK and RL. Over meat-and-pepper-lovers Boboli and SYB’s homemade apple-cranberry pie, we busted myths about Diet Coke and Mentos, but Settlers and Telephone Pictionary would have to wait for another time.

D and LK picked me up shortly before noon to drive me to Jersey for our day with HH. Along the way, they picked up SYB, and breakfast. Door-to-door service and fresh-baked pear-apricot danish — sweet!

We met HH at his new(ish) home, and then set out for our day’s adventure. Earlier in the week, he and I consulted the Time Out Millburn for goings on around town. As luck would have it, our Sunday visit coincided with Millburn’s 23rd Annual Snowflake Parade.

Everybody loves a parade! I’m not sure why, but I am particularly fond of these small town parades, though truth be told, Millburn isn’t all that small; the 2000 U.S. Census puts the township population at just under 20,000. The five of us took a brisk, ten minute stroll to the turn-of-the-century downtown, along neat, tree-lined streets. We arrived just as the parade was getting started. From the distance, the (sometimes not so PC) announcer introduced each group of parade participants to the waiting crowds lining Main Street, Millburn.

All the essential parade elements were there: the brass band…

… the Brownie and Girl Scout troops…

…clowns, floats…

…giddy spectators….

…men in kilts…

…Shriners in weird little cars…

…high school marching band — this one led by one very young and very energetic bandleader…

…flag twirlers….

…Minnie and (surely not a Disney-approved) Mickey.

Afterwards, Santa needed a bit of assistance to dismount from the town firetruck.

When it was all over, the police reopened Main Street, as a Snowman and a Dalmatian wandered among the townsfolk to the endless delight of the younger set.

Final Saturday!

JD’s bachelorette party tonight. I was unsure what to expect of the evening: based on my last encounter with the Kiwi club, alcohol-induced blackouts were a distinct possibility; the email exchanges among the participants in the days leading up to the event strongly suggested that other mischievous activity would be in the works.

The ladies’ night began with several hours of tequila-fueled revelry. Around 10pm, I was instructed to meet the group at Duvet for Part Two of JD’s “last fling before the ring.”

Below: The nearby Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, all prettily lit for the holidays. It was the tallest building in the world for four years, eventually ceding the title to the Woolworth Building in 1913.

I stepped inside the crowded lounge, and easily picked out our woman of the hour, who was outfitted in rather distinctive headgear and massive bling. The group had commandeered a table (not a mattress) which, by the time I arrived, was littered with wineglasses and other classy — and apparently very popular! — bachelorette party accoutrements.

The back of JD’s shirt was emblazoned with a lengthy and daunting checklist of tasks which she was to complete that evening, setting the agenda for the reminder of the long night. After quickly dispatching with a couple of the tamer items at Duvet, it was time to get down and dirty.

Red Rock West Saloon opened under the abandoned train trestles of the High Line in the Spring of 1996. In its former incarnation, the corner was a blues bar called East Boondocks. Over the past decade, the bar’s neighbors have gotten progressively more upscale, while the bar itself has remained unabashedly trashy and gloriously rambunctious. Equal parts beer ‘n’ whiskey roadhouse and country dance saloon — any doubt why we were the third bachelorette party to descend there that night?

The easiest comparison to Red Rock West is the similarly themed Coyote Ugly — before it went from beloved East Village dive to GQ feature story to awful movie to national (soon to be international) franchise. The smell of sweat and booze permeates the bumper-stickered walls; wagon wheels suspend from the paint-peeled ceiling as monster rock and honky tonk blare from the speakers. One half expects to see a mechanical bull bucking in the back room. The main attraction: scantily clad, well-endowed female bartenders who mount the long bar for impromptu hoedowns. They are a talented group — though suspiciously… er, “professional” in manner and dress — gleeful in their raunchy stomping, thrilling the crowds with (literally) flashy bar tricks: taking a lighter to plumes of alcohol sprayed from their mouths, and in a grand finale, setting the bar ablaze with whiskey to dance like demons among the flames.

The staff is remarkably generous in their sharing of the well-worn bartop, regularly inviting (only female) patrons aboard, and at one point: all three future brides.

Step inside, walk this way
You and me babe — hey, hey!

B joined me in tonight’s dinner adventure, deep into the heart of Hells Kitchen. I’d first read about Del Valle in The New York Times a couple of years ago, shortly after its transformation from “glorified deli into modest restaurant.” I was intrigued by the “hopelessly traditional” husband-and-wife-run restaurant, with a 203-item menu and a chalkboard offering house specialties like chicharrón (fatty pork skin) braised in salsa verde and barbacoa (roasted goat meats.)

We headed West from B’s office at the Crossroads of the World to a stretch of block that seemed relatively untouched by the rapid gentrification/commercialization in the area: one unassuming restaurant among a small crop of eateries with very modest surroundings. There are, in fact, two Mexican places of note on the same block — the other being Tehuitzingo, which is the slightly more downscale of the two, comprised of a few stools at the rear of a narrow bodega.

Tulcingo Del Valle — somewhere along the way, the restaurant was rechristened to better reflect the town in Puebla for which it’s named — has a huge menu of simple, classic Mexican lunch-counter food. Their tacos and tortas come highly recommended, as do their moles; Robert Sietsema waxed on rhapsodically about their “extremely delicious” mole pipian of pumpkin seeds and tomatillos in his 2004 review. New York granted Tulcingo del Valle three stars status, and the #27 spot on their oft-referenced (on this blog) 2006 Best Cheap Eats list.

We started off with horchata (not “hot chocolate”), XX and a plate of the nachos, topped with cheese, tomato, jalapenos and some pretty standard guacamole, as we considered our entree options.

B ordered the carne asada con nopales (grilled beef with prickly pear cactus), which earned him an approving smile and giggles from our server. The nopal cactus is one of Puebla’s most important crops; every April, the central Mexican village of Tlaxcalancingo celebrates the Festival de Nopales in tribute.

Such generous portions! The dusky green paddles — spines removed, of course — arrived flopped over the meat, rice and refried beans piled onto the plate. The taste? Mildly vegetal — similar to green beans — with the unctuous texture of aloe or okra, but with a crisper core.

From the specials board, I picked out the mole poblano — signature sauce of Puebla — served with chicken. The platter arrived with tender pieces of meat, swimming under rich, dark, reddish-brown sauce topped with sesame seeds, and accompanied by thick, warm homemade tortillas.

Mole is derived from the Nahuatl mulli, meaning “concoction” or “sauce.” Culinary anthropologists note that very few of the spices in mole poblano are indigenous to the New World; the sauce, is in fact, born in part out of Spanish colonialism, which was an imposing force on the cuisine of Mexico. In Puebla, several convents were active in creating dishes that modified traditional recipes to suit colonial tastes, comingling ingredients from both the indigenous Indian and Spanish cultures. Among the regions of Mexico, there are variations on mole type and color (red, green, brown, yellow), but the mixture is at its essence a puréed combination of chiles and ingredients such as fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices, thickened with some combination of seeds, nuts, bread, masa and corn tortillas. The traditional poblano also contains Mexican chocolate, and can require dozens of ingredients and many hours to make.

The sheer effort involved makes me grateful for places like Tulcingo Del Valle, whose version of this dish is one of the best I’ve tried in the city.

B and I emerged from the restaurant into a downpour on Tenth Avenue. I thought wistfully of my umbrella, hanging uselessly on the coatrack in my office downtown. We huddled under a leaky awning and assessed our options: the IRT seemed too far away; the bus, too unreliable. We hailed a cab — fare hike or no.

Of course, moments after we shut the taxi doors behind us, the rains stopped.

Trinity Church, as seen from Wall Street:

Met CF and CL for what has been turning out to be our annual reunion dinner. Having left the final arrangements until the last minute, we were shut out of a dinnertime table slot at The Stanton Social — those AvroKO spots are popular! Plan B: ‘inoteca.

Ah yes, the Lower East Side. According to the recent New York magazine feature on the half-life of hot neighborhoods, it’s the cool place to be. No, wait, not anymore. Yes, it is. Whoops, too late.

The restaurant on the corner of Rivington and Ludlow opened in the summer of 2003, an offshoot of beloved West Village wine bar, ‘ino — which most know as the spot that launched a thousand hot pressed panini into the New York culinary scene in 1998. ‘inoteca’s larger, airier space adheres to the formula that made ‘ino so popular: warm, rustic vibe, a menu showcasing an extensive (and exclusively Italian) wine list and simple, small plates, each carefully assembled with fresh, high quality ingredients.

I met my friends at the bar, and the three of us were shown to a table downstairs, all candlelight, dark wood, and bottle-lined walls. We were the first ones there, and over the course of the evening, we could hear the crowd trickle in above us, eventually spilling below, until the noise level reached a low, rumbling roar.

The menu comprised just one page, divided into six sections: Insalata & Antipasti, Piatti, Pane, Fritto, Affettati and Formaggi. Yes, all in Italian. Hmm. I was lost beyond bruschetta and panini, so we enlisted the translation skills of CF and our server, who no doubt is used to such confusion from the restaurant patrons.

It all looked tempting, so we opted for a couple of the panini, assorted bruschetta, a cheese plate with three hard cheeses (giving the server license to choose for us from among the daunting 20+ options), the grilled calamari with borlotti beans and the antipasti plate: a glorious spread of spicy sopressata rounds, florets of grilled cauliflower, kalamata and green olives, a wedge of vegetable frittata, slices of olive oil-roasted fennel, and pickled red onion and carrot, over which were criss-crossed a pair of long, brittle breadsticks. We did not this night order the celebrated truffle egg toast — a creamy concoction of poached egg gently nestled into a thick cut of ciabatta bread, drizzled with truffle oil and shaved cheese… not unlike a gourmet version of “Egg in a Basket” — in which I’d indulged many a time at ‘ino.

The food was flawless, and the wine and ambience warming, but we could not escape the pall of sadness cast over the evening by CL’s news. We gave ourselves over to reminiscences, grateful for longtime connections and the support of old friends.

Hit DUMBO with CS tonight for the reception and booksigning for photographer Ron Galella’s new book Disco Years, a visual diary of the Studio 54-era New York City club scene.

Galella is known as one of the most controversial celebrity photographers in the United States – earning him the dubious title of “the godfather of the U.S. paparazzi culture” by Time and “Paparazzo Extraordinaire” by Newsweek. In his heyday, Galella was norotious for his aggressive tenacity in catching celebrities at their most unguarded and candid. Marlon Brando broke his jaw; Sean Penn spat on him; Richard Burton’s bodyguards put him in the hospital after catching him hiding in the bushes while trying to photograph Burton with Elizabeth Taylor; Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (one of Galella’s all-time favorite subjects) sued and got a restraining order against him. His photographs created icons, redefined the genre of celebrity photography and have been the subject of several books and exhibitions.

The exhibition’s opening night party was hosted by powerHouse Books and *surface. The space was set up with dozens of Galella’s iconic photographs.

Drinks by Boz Spirits’ 267 Infusions and Suntory Zen. The olive and pearl onion vodka (right) was fine, though perhaps a bit too olive-y. Pretty bottles, but I’m not sure why one would opt for this instead of an actual dirty martini. CS declared her green tea liqueur and tonic on crushed ice as tasty as a green tea slushy.

Most of the photos on display were from the gaudy, glittery Studio 54 era. From Andy Warhol to Mick Jagger to Cher to Grace Jones to Ali MacGraw’s original celebrity nip-slip (note: may be NSFW — duh)…

Galella himself was there that night, but no celebrities, unless you count host Randy Jones (a.k.a. The Cowboy) from the Village People, whom CS and I had a hard time trying to pick out from the crowd without his signature hat.

Afterwards, we hopped the F back to Manhattan to meet SC and JG for some neighborly wine and shopping. The four of us ended the evening with dinner at a nearby Italian (not Japanese) restaurant.

I had a bit of time before I had to meet M for our special tasting reservation, so SYB and I spontaneously decided to check out Room 4 Dessert, the tiny dessert bar on Cleveland Place from Will Goldfarb, former pastry chef at Cru. 31-year old Goldfarb, who is reknowned for his unorthodox, experimental creations, opened his NoLIta dessert laboratory in January 2006 to fine reviews. It was named #23 on New York magazine’s list of Best Cheap Eats of 2006.

We found ourselves the only ones seated at long polished wood bar. In addition to the usual wine-by-the-glass selections, R4D’s menu offers dessert cocktails (called “glasses”), dessert flights (called “tastings,” with clever-clever names like “Laissez Pear”) and dessert alternatives (like the “Project Bunway” and “Ghostface Keller” — surely the only menu item in the city to play tribute to both Wu Tang and Thomas Keller.)

Just non-appetite-spoiling cappuccino for me; SYB went for the “Choc ‘n’ Awe,” which was painstakingly assembled by the friendly bartender: a serving each of butter cookies spread with dark chocolate ganache, chocolate ice cream, cocao mousse and a white chocolate cake with a ruby port sauce.

Bill Buford, founding editor of Granta magazine and author of books on British soccer hooliganism and kitchen apprenticeship penned an engaging essay for the June 26, 2006 New Yorker about a stint he did at Room 4 Desssert, offering a glimpse into “the different planet from the rest of humanity” (Goldfarb’s words) occupied by pastry chefs. Check out the scanned version of the entire piece for an interesting read (via Snack.)

And then it was off to the Monday Room, the newly opened wine lounge M and I were cheekily calling “Public Next Door.” Last month, three-year old Public transformed the adjacent space from what had been offices, then a gallery, into what now feels like a secret hideaway, set off from the scene of the main restaurant and bar. We were there that night by invitation, to sample the menu in progress, with wine pairings. (Thanks, M!)

I was immediately struck by how design and concept firm AvroKO had completely transformed the tucked-away space: from the pristine white-walled box it was a month and a half ago to a sexily-lit club room with low tables and leather stuffed chairs. M and I were presented short menus from which we were to select the tapas-inspired small plates to sample. Based on our selections, the sommelier created flights of wine tastings (half-glasses) from Monday Room’s extensive and rotating list of 60+ bottles — each of which he sampled personally upon decanting.

Chef Brad Farmerie‘s rich and varied menu — created specially for this restaurant offshoot — offered many temptations. We began with smoky, grilled strips of chorizo in a mole-esque purée of black beans and chocolate, studded with chile-dusted popcorn. Sounds strange perhaps, but it was so delicious, we ordered it twice. Ditto the venison carpaccio, which was terrifically light, and made up for missing out on our favorite Public starter of cured wild boar. We also tried the rounds of foie gras pâté with toasted bread…

… and a cheese plate with mostly New-England cheeses. M, who as a rule, doesn’t eat seafood, did not join me in sampling the Tasmanian sea trout. (Pity for her – it was citrusy, salty and divine!)

But we both shared the squared off green mango sticks, tartly crisp and studded with chiles, arranged Jenga-like on the plate — reminiscent in form to Public’s summertime watermelon and feta cheese salad.

For dessert, a selection of dainty chocolate truffles, with unique flavor combinations like pumpkin and (more) chiles.

We spent well over three hours in the Monday Room, lounging, sipping and enjoying the fine company. At one point, Chef Farmerie himself came out to mingle with the guests. I later learned that the Monday Room takes its name and inspiration from a New Zealand man that AvroKO knew of, who set aside a special room in his offices where he would retreat on Monday evenings with a glass of wine, to smoothe his transition into the week ahead. Sounds good to me, any night of the week.

Looking forward to my next visit – if I’m ever able to score one of the 24 seats again.

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.

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)

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: