The Last Week - Abriged Edition

Last week was the second annual birthday extravaganza for Cathy, which as I said previously, was held at Gramercy Tavern. We had one of the most fabulous meals I've ever eaten (excluding those home cooked meals, Mom ;o) and the service was just impeccable. Simple intangible qualities like having the hostess come over to our group and tell us that we have a great table that is being prepared and having the waiter come over and personally wish Cathy a happy birthday are certainly a rare thing here in New York, especially in a high-class place like this. I was most impressed by the fact that someone actually walked me to the bathroom rather than just pointing in the general vicinity. It's easy to see why this place is so damn expensive, I sure hope I can still pay my rent this month....

The meal was a three-course prix fixe deal with appetizers, an entree, and dessert. My Maine crab salad appetizer thing was just fabulous and I appreciated the fact that the bowls had a heavy, low center of gravity, similar to the glasses that I have in my apartment :o) . My sliced steak entree had some incredible onions and other vegetables that I wish I could cook. I have no idea how they made them, maybe it was the....secret ingredient. And by secret ingredient, I mean the soft, whitish, round things on the corner of my plate. With such exquisite dining, you expect secret ingredients that you can't find in your local grocery store. I sniffed it and it didn't have much smell, but it looked quite a lot like garlic. Ahh, roasted garlic! I love it! I went ahead and loaded up two of the slices on my fork and then stabbed a petite piece of steak and an onion for the full effect of having several allium species in one savory bite. Waiting for the taste of my previous bite to complete its journey down to my stomach, I then opened the hatch and loaded the assortment into my salivating mouth. I closed my mouth and was waiting for the full garlic effect to hit me when the small whitish thing quickly dissolved and I almost spit out the mouthful of food. What the hell? That's not garlic! What is it?? Chaos ensued as I panicked and asked everyone what this thing was that made my mouth feel like I just drank a gallon of tasteless, liquified butter - and that's not a good thing. Several guesses were made and Paul tried a small piece and correctly guessed what it was - bone marrow! Disgusting! The waitress said that the steak was very lean so the marrow should be spread on the steak to make sure that your arteries are clogged by the time you finish your meal. Well, something like that, anyway. All I know is that I wasn't about to try out the "roasted garlic" again....

For dessert, I got the tapioca pudding with some sort of basil sauce and some other stuff in it that was fabulous. Part of the benefit of ordering this is that for some reason nobody else seems to like the tapioca....balls/pearls/whatever they are called. I suppose they are a weird texture, but I've always loved those chewy things.

Now that I'm back to being a swinging single (girls think they are so smart playing games and apparently they don't comprehend things that guys tell them straight up - keep that in mind next time you complain about our immaturity Summer ;o), I planned a little soiree with my friend Sean, his girlfriend-like-companion, and his girlfriend-like-companion's (single) friend. Then Sean decided that he wanted to "break up" with his girlfriend-like-companion a few hours before we were set to go out. Uhh, thanks Sean. Luckily, over our fierce rollerblading trip after work, I talked him into holding off the breakup until after the main event for the evening. We ended up having seven people go out rather than just the four of us, but it was all good. We had reservations at a tapas table at one of my favorite restaurants, Suba. This is the restaurant that I took my mom and dad to last year where we had a fabulous nueva-Spanish dinner. We just did drinks and tapas this time around before we went club-hunting down in the LES. We wound up dancing to 80's rock and 50-Cent mixed with Nine-Inch-Nails over at The Delancey before Sean performed his vanishing act and went home and caused chaos with his girlfriend-like-companion and her friends. So we headed home soon after that, but I think everyone had a good time - up until that point, in any case...

J. Riley, that's all I've got for tonight, maybe I'll write about the weekend this week at some point