Restaurant Week

It's Restaurant Week again in New York and I planned my reservation weeks ago for Blue Fin. However, I was an idiot while planning and didn't realize that Blue Fin was only doing the prix fixe for lunch. Yesterday, I was able to make reservations at Zoë for that evening. Josh and I have been there three times for brunch and figured that there was no better time to try their dinner menu than Restaurant Week. As another first, I also requested to be seated at the chef's table, which is more of a counter that runs along their open kitchen, which is located in the back of the restaurant.

I'm kind of happy that I goofed on the Blue Fin reservation because we had such a great time dining at Zoë. Josh and I were the only people sitting at the chef's counter. We were able to see the organization and precision that goes into our dishes from our seats right in the action. Josh says that he never wants to sit anywhere else except the counter when we go back. We actually got to speak with the chefs (when they weren't too busy).

For my appetizer, I had the Chilled Tomato-Rhubarb Soup with Goat Cheese Panna Cotta & Roasted Telicherry Oil. This soup tasted so refreshing and was full of flavor. The goat cheese complimented the tomato and rhubarb perfectly. For my entree, I had Charred Cornish Hen served with White Corn Ragout & Smoked Tomato-Basil Butter. I was surprised at how much food I got because I've heard people complain about Cornish hen usually leaving them hungry. The hen was cooked just right: juicy and tender. For dessert, I had a milk chocolate trifle that was composed of four layers (one was strawberries). I loved the way it was served in a little frosty glass displaying the different layers. The dessert wasn't heavy and wasn't overly sweet. I tried to eat slowly to make dessert last so my evening at Zoe wouldn't have to end.

Josh had the oysters to start. He had the Crispy Maryland Soft Shell Crabs served with Green Tomato Marmalade, Citrus Salad, and Pea Greens. For dessert, he had the banana tart, which was topped with whipped mascarpone cheese and coconut. Of course, everything he had was delicious as well. He also had the $15 prix fixe menu wine selection, which provided a glass of wine to compliment each course. Surprisingly, I liked one of the wines, a chenin blanc (I'm not a wine drinker).

Josh and I were surprised at the end because one of the sous chefs brought over a plate with ten mini cookies, saying that they were compliments of the chef. Excellent! There were five types of cookies, two of each type. I remember chocolate, chocolate-chip, lemon, and oatmeal raisin. The last cookie was another chocolate variation, but I couldn't pin it down.

At first, I was a little afraid our Restaurant Week experience was going to be a disappointment because of the post this tool wrote. He'd gone to Union Square Cafe for Restaurant Week and complained about close to the whole experience he had. I've been to Union Square Cafe twice, although never for Restaurant Week and haven't been let down. He also complained about the price of the prix fixe menu for Restaurant Week, saying that $20 for lunch and $35 for dinner is still expensive. I think the prices are quite reasonable when you compare them the cost of having all three courses off the regular menu of an upscale New York restaurant. I don't think any corners were cut to produce the prix fixe menu we had last night. I told Josh about the post and he said that the author was being a Harvard snob. Most likely, nothing would ever be good enough for him because he went to law school at Hah-vahd.

Books purloined yesterday: 7
Books amassed: 44

Buy me some hot dogs and souvenirs

For sound, imagine a bunch of loud girls who've never seen beer before.

Tonight, I went to my first Yankees game. Actually, it was my first baseball game ever. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did, since I find baseball quite boring on television. However, it went a lot faster than I expected, and I wasn't paying attention half the time.

The several girls sitting behind us were loud and obnoxious, something to be expected at a sports game. They kept bellowing for beer whenever the beer vendors came around, as though they'd never seen beer before and were still blind to the $8 price tag per cup. While we're on the subject of girls, the two girls in front of me on the line for Dippin' Dots were about 12 and wearing enough makeup to make any drag queen proud.

I feasted upon a hot dog and mint chocolate Dippin' Dots (served in a souvenir hat). Of course, I put the souvenir hat on Morty when I got home (yes, I washed it). You can see the picture on Morty's Catster page.

Books purloined today: 2
Books amassed: 37

What weekend?

After I finished work last Thursday, I hopped a train back to NJ to visit the folks. Surprisingly, it went very well and I was back in NY on Friday afternoon before Josh got out of work. That night, we had dinner at Shore., a New England style restaurant. It was good find, especially in TriBeCa, where nothing comes cheap. I highly recommend the raw bar and their salads.

Unfortunately, Josh's grandmother passed away this weekend, so we were quite busy on Saturday in Brooklyn. We squeezed in a visit to my cousins, where Josh lightened his mood by playing with my younger cousins and their blocks. After we were stuffed full of food, we went back to Manhattan to catch a late showing of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It was good enough to almost make me forget about the NYC movie ticket prices.

On Sunday, we went back to NJ to help out Josh's mom for the funeral. I worried about Morty and Eli quite a bit - of course. This was the first time I'd gone away without hiring a sitter. Then again, I'd only be away for a day.

The funeral was on Monday, followed by food at Josh's house. My brother was nice and gave us a ride to the train station in New Brunswick. After we got back to Manhattan, we decided to go out and enjoy the last of our so-called weekend by walking around in SoHo for a bit. We did a bit of shopping and then had dinner at Penang. I'm very fond of Penang and ate at the Edison, NJ location several times. This was a watered-down version of Penang. The menu was definitely more expensive and lacked several items (that I remember). The service was horrible and inflexible. I asked for them not to include something in a dish and the waiter said they could not separate the items, which was strange because I'd never had a problem with it before. When I got the dish, the offensive item was sprinkled on the top.

Yesterday, I was a little exhausted with the non-weekend we had, so I went out to ONY with my coworker and we had some good ramen. We followed that up with some shopping before heading back to the office. I decided to cheer up Josh by bringing him to Gray's Papaya, because strangely, he's never been there before. We had their special: 2 hot dogs and a drink for $2.75 and it was very tasty. True, it's not the best hot dog in the world, but when it's $0.75 apiece with great service, you really can't argue. Afterwards, we walked around in the Village for a while, walking past the huge line outside of Magnolia. Before we went home, we each had a slice of pizza from Famous Joe's Pizza, as seen in Spiderman 2. Apparently, Ben Affleck thinks it's pretty good too.

I have to agree with Ben - it is good.

Books acquired today: 1
Books amassed: 35

Flippity-flops

It seems like every summer, I'm on the hunt for the most comfortable, yet easy-on-the-eyes pair of flip-flops. I usually wind up with ones that have uncomfortable straps or just don't seem that great to wear while walking any distance beyond 1.5 blocks.

Behold... the flip-flops of my dreams.

I feel like I'm walking on a cloud. After I left the store, I walked the cobblestone streets of South Street Seaport and noticed the overall crappiness of my then-current flip flops as I felt the edges of each cobblestone I walked over.

Josh was so impressed by the quality that he bought some for himself - the guys' version, of course. He was slightly disappointed that the soles weren't as thick as mine, but I was quick to point out that J.Crew didn't make wedge flip-flops for guys. Now he doesn't have to continue looking for manly sandals/flip-flops.

Or... as I like to call them: mandals.

Books purloined today: 8
Books amassed: 23
(I also went to the children's department yesterday and got several books, but I gave them to my cousins already, so I didn't include them in the count)

Sweat and the city

Something doesn't strike the right note with me when it's disgustingly hot at 8:30 a.m. Normally, I'll walk a couple blocks to catch the subway. I go down into the station, smelling that distinctive eau de NYC subway station and wait impatiently for the subway to come.

I've heard people complain about taking the subway, but I can't imagine walking being much better in this weather. At least the train cars are air conditioned.

I spoke too soon about that air conditioning. Of course, the 3 train I caught didn't have working air conditioning. I wondered if it was possible for the subway to be hotter than the station platform. After a few seconds, I decided that it was indeed, very possible. For once, I was happy to get off the train to make my transfer because the platform was MUCH cooler than the train car I'd been in. Fortunately, my connecting train was air conditioned, not that I was on the train that long.

Books purloined today: 1
Books amassed: 15

1 down, 2 to go

This week, I became an official 2L. That's right, all my grades came out, as did Josh's. Surprisingly, we didn't fail anything and have truly completed our first year of law school. I can finally stop checking the registrar's website every ten minutes.

We celebrated a couple nights ago by going to Blue Water Grill for a late dinner. The restaurant was surprisingly crowded for a Wednesday night, and we weren't dining during prime dinner hours either.

Josh had a citrus martini and I had a bellini. For appetizers, we shared half a dozen oysters from various parts of Canada, and Josh had sautéed sea scallops with wild arugula and a lobster pineapple vinaigrette.

For the main course, we had the following:

1. Tuna, Smoked Salmon, and Avocado Roll
2. BBQ Eel, Tempura Sweet Potato Roll with Tamarind Glaze
3. Baja Roll: Tuna, Yellowtail, Jalapeno, Avocado with Tomato Salsa
4. Coconut Shrimp, Mango, and Cucumber with Spicy Coconut Vinaigrette
5. Lobster Mashed Potatoes

We didn't order dessert because we were so stuffed. It was a very lovely meal, and I'm so happy that first year is finally over.

Awesome meeting

I was supposed to have a meeting today with my intern group, something we were placed into on the first day of the internship. I felt like it was the first day of applied analysis all over again, where we had to meet our assigned groups and do ridiculous projects together. I think the point of my intern group is to exchange information about our different departments and jobs so we can gain a better understanding of the publishing industry.

Unfortunately, only two of us showed up to the meeting and the rest showed up halfway through our lunch hour, so it amounted to very little.

Books purloined today: 2
Books amassed: 14

Step into my office

So my ten week publishing internship has begun. I find it funny that I couldn't get an interview as an English major college graduate with a publisher, and now as a law student, I got an internship. I do feel slightly out of place though. Most of the interns are still in college, bubbling with enthusiasm and optimism.

I'll be working in the subsidiary rights department of a large publisher this summer. True, it's not as glamorous as an editorial job, but I found out from my coworkers that the editing jobs always go to superstars from Ivy League schools (those bubbly interns I met must've been from Ivys). No wonder my only internship in editing was with a textbook publisher.

I don't make very much money, but, I find that the intern's wages are compensated by the loads of free books I get. Every day I walk into the office, it's like walking into a candy store.

I plan on making another wall for my cubicle out of books.

Number of books purloined today: 6 [edit: 7, thanks to K for getting me another Braun book that I didn't even know existed!]
Number of books purloined in total: 8 [edit: 9]

Quack!

I ended my temp job yesterday. I have to say I will miss it (if not for the spectacular views of Central Park from the office, then for the wonderful people I met). I doubt I'll be running into minor celebrities during my Starbucks runs when I'm at my internship. I took to the temp position like a duck to water, thanks to my time at the Conk. My supervisor seemed surprised to find me intelligent because I could ::gasp!:: solve problems and make constructive suggestions. One of the other people in the office went to law school and gave me some advice, which was nice.

Perhaps I enjoyed this temp job so much because I had a very brief stint at another temp job last week. My agency told me that it was filing, but when I got to the job, it turned out that I had to take out each file folder and go through each document to check for duplicates. Duplicates had to be discarded, unless they had signatures and after about half an hour, I wanted to walk out the door. During my lunch break, I called the agency and my first day was my last day at that assignment. I know that at these jobs, I'm just the temp and probably won't be remembered, so I shouldn't have been disturbed by the lack of conversation from the people at that first job or their insipid handshakes.

At the Central Park job, people had firm handshakes (I find that to be very important) and actually asked me questions about what I did. They were sad to see me go, and I was sad to leave them too. I actually left the office with some business cards and offers of help whenever I needed a recommendation, so it was a good experience.

Now that Josh and I have switched into full-time work mode, we appreciate our weekends a lot better. Now there's that feeling that hanging around watching TV isn't going to cut it anymore. Today we only managed to get lunch in Chinatown because I was too tired to do anything else.

However, we plan to get much more accomplished tomorrow because I will remember to wear a hat so I won't get a headache like today.

Lunch break

Excuse me sir, there's an elephant stuck to your shoe.

I'm temping this week at a financial firm by Central Park. I went to FAO Schwarz during my lunch break today. They have a huge section filled with stuffed animals and one of these is the elephant pictured above. Normally, tourists take pictures standing next to it.

Today, the security guard yelled for some prepubescent kids to get off of the elephant. They had climbed onto its back. Of course, the kids showed no remorse for what they did, and their stupid parents didn't do anything about it either. The guard said, "That elephant costs $15,000. You break it, you buy it." I left the store quickly after that because I wanted to avoid being yelled at for having my iced chai in hand around a $15,000 stuffed animal.

Yesterday during my lunch break, I stepped into Trump Tower for a moment, and guess who I saw? None other than Apprentice winner, Kelly Perdew. I also saw another guy who worked for Trump and was standing in for George (I think during the second season).

This temp job is so much fun.

Literary appreciation

Apparently, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is being released this summer. This deeply saddens me.

Yes, it's true that the old movie was released in 1971, but what really needs to be updated? Candy is timeless! I think that the movie is pretty good despite being made 34 years ago. Actually, the updating part isn't what really bothers me.

I'm afraid that kids who see the movie this summer will think that Charlie is based on an old movie, not on a lovely book written by Roald Dahl.

Then again, this is coming from someone who'll take reading a book over watching TV any day.