WARNING: This blog is long (sorry soo much to say!) and slightly non-chronological since I wanted to get to the Coney pics earlier.
Michelle came back into the city that Wednesday evening... loads of fun to follow!
I
met michelle, Dave and Kyle, via subway, duh, in the west village for
dinner at the well-sought after restaurant, The Spotted Pig. It's the
perfect place to go when you aren't hungry, because they don't take
reservations and the wait is usually crazy. No prob! We saddled
up at The White Horse Tavern and had a couple drinks. I love walking
around Greenwich Village... it's so clean, cute and peaceful (for
manhattan)... it's adorable actually. Our wait time was almost 2 hours,
Jay would have
freaked, so that's why I saved it for a day when he wasn't around. :-)
Of
course they were ready for us way before that... I think these trendy
hot-spot restaurants try to scare the riff-raff with their ridiculous
wait times... but it's all very exaggerated.
The restaurant was so much
fun! Of course we shared a million plates; snacks, plates and
entrees. I loved the ramp mashed
potatoes (champs), chicken liver toast, burrata & pork belly
special... and the place was really charming...
April Bloomfield deserves her celebrity repertoire!
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| Sorry Mario... |
Thursday while
Michelle had the day to explore, I gave her
a very important job, to get tickets to a play on Broadway.
Unfortunately, Philip Seymour Hoffman's Death of a Salesmen was a no-go, so she went with a play
she heard some folks in line talking about and winged it, "Other Desert
Cities". I was pleasantly surprised. It was
really really good, but talk about a HEAVY play! Man! I won't go into
detail, but there was a lot of crying, and a lot of discussion after. It just really made you think, ya know!
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| Dittelman representin' |
Jay
arrived Friday morning at the crack of dawn! Chell and him had a
glorious day together, central park, the high line, etc. I had them
come to work, meet the gang, then walk 10 blocks to go out for funky
Peruvian in Hells' Kitchen. Pio Pio! It was deeelicious, thanks Jess!
Mario even got side swiped by Carmelo Anthony!! He was star-struck, to
say the least. After dinner we got together with the boys and long lost
college friend, Mark Dittelman, aka Dittels! Needless to say, we all
still acted like we were in college... and Dave got so ^&*%ed that
he forgot he reigned supreme in the arm wrestling department!!
Sunday, the only plan I was adamant about, was
CONEY ISLAND... and we were off!
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| subway station @ Coney Island |
Q train to no-wheres land, or how it seemed shooting south down the above
ground subway into the vast land of southern Brooklyn. We skipped all
around that crazy fun park.
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| how bizarre? |
And then it started to get all weird and hipstomatic! Love me some tinted 70s filtered carn-ey photos!!
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| hot consumer! |
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| baked clams from Garguilio's in Coney |
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| chell's pulled pork AREPA! |
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| My pork, chorizo, avocado Arepa |
Saturday,
Chell and I sampled the Venezuelan treat, Arepas deliciosas! I had
heard of Caracas, the restaurant (literally around the corner from me) from a few new
yorkers, but I give my TIP OF THE HAT to Ms Lauren Youngman! She sent
Michelle with the recommendation to try it
and damn girl, thanks! It was sooo good... my one regret is not going back there to try a different kind of Arepa. I think mine was pork,
chorizo & avocado...
After
the (yankee game, not blog-worthy) we went out in the good ole East
Vills and met chell's childhood friend Jenna and her bf from med school,
we had a drunken swell time hitting up 3 bars in the process, Yuca Bar,
Niagara & The Summit.... all new to me, yaay! And we met up with
long time old friend Sarah Arthur from London!! She was in town visiting
family, and just like that, 6 years later, we were hanging out like it was old times in Westwood!
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| 2nd Ave Deli |
Monday, Jay, Michelle, Dave & I (purposely planned to take the day off) embarked on a major trekking adventure. We started out with a friendly jog south along the East River and ended up going across the Manhattan Bridge and then back across the Brooklyn Bridge! A China town and Little Italy later, we were back home... i wanna say it was close to 13 miles or so but Jay can correct me when he wakes up. After showering up, we rewarded our hard exercise with a ostentatious JEWISH DELI lunch at the 2nd Ave Deli!!! (33rd and 3rd actually) It was more than glorious! Sure I had Katz pastrami and Ess a Bagel's fat bagel sandwiches a few times oh and one lunch trip to Zabar's with Drew that didn't disappoint... but this was gonna be my first sit-down group deli meal and I was ready for it! Michelle & Dave had mile-high meat sammies & I had lox and sable on a bagel platter- mmmmmmm! Oh and don't forget the appetizer perogies filled with potato and cheese, fried up with onions and sour cream on the side. JEW HEAVEN! Thanks guys for this memory!!
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| The Horse Box |
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| Happy Hour 2 @ Bua! |
To end our long weekend adventure, and Kevin Ose spontaneously came up to hang from Pennsauken, NJ, we kept the socializing going! We hit up 3 different bar's happy hours, ending at 7, 8 & 9, respectively... It was great doing HH on St. Marks, since I'm never out of work on time! Also, Lauren, Cousin Mike's girlfriends' sister, came out to play from Brooklyn!
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| Jay and Lauren |
I did have work the next day, but didn't seem to be too worried about it at the time... sleep when you're dead, right? Right.
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| Brothers' Schwartzberg |
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| familia |
The following few days, May reached it's midpoint and the city started sizzling up, five degrees of humidity at a time. Women and men dressed like school was out, shorts and dresses, sandals and tanks. The NY Ice vendors wheeled out their carts from hibernation and sharpened their ice cutters in front of colorful liquid sugar bottles. Oh and the weekend street fairs!! Oh boy, i thought I was in a small European town when the weekend hit. Every day a different avenue in each sub-district of manhattan shutdown and was filled with food and craft vendors. It actually started the weekend before when Jay and Michelle were here and it continued till I left! Then there were themed street fairs, like the Dance Festival. They were parading right down my street, St. Marks, when I left my apartment one morning... I was like whoa there, whoa! 
I walked up to Union Square to check out the weekend Farmers' Market (which is like the most amazingly huge, gourmet & fun farmers market ever!!) and the parade of dancers was still going on up there! Poledancing gymnasts contorting their bodies along poles on floats, even the Giants' dance team was out! Then I popped up the subway and walked up to Times Square to meet people and ANOTHER street fair was going on along 9th Ave.... I couldn't believe it! 
In the late afternoon, I scooted across to Brooklyn to meet the guys at a little beer garden-type of outdoor bar, Lorely. I took it upon myself to order the biggest beer you could get, and drank it all... It was as delicious as it looks! I swam through the rest of the warm evening.
I had my first 'Ice", not to be mistook for Italian Ice or South Jersey's "water ice"! It's basically shaved ice with sugary flavoring poured into it. Dave and I relaxed in the grass along the river, enjoying the nice breezy escape from the humidity. 
