Wednesday, February 11, 2009

C U Next Tuesday!

Last night, for my last North American social event as a "bachelor"
(though a married one), Susannah and her Irishman Shane took a
road-trip (underground rail-trip?) to visit me in Astoria to have some
food, drink, and friendly football banter since he is a blue-nose
Everton fan (Liverpool's cross-town arch rivals who played recently).

For the first time since the fall, we indulged in glorious gluttony at
one of my favorite restaurants in Astoria: Mundo. It is appropriately
named as it was started by one guy from Argentina, has a waitress from
Uruguay, and two cooks from Turkey - and the sumptuous food is a
reflection of this diversity. We had way too much food, but it was so
worth gaining an extra few pounds to fill out my slim-fit wedding
outfit to it's full content. We ordered a carrot dip (grated carrots
sautéed in olive oil mixed with homemade garlic-yogurt - it was
awesome) with warm pitas, the Red Sonjas (their house specialty, Red
lentil patties with cracked wheat (bulgur), scallion, parsley &
oriental spices on a bed of lettuce with lemon wedges), falafels
(Mashed chickpea balls with
oriental spices on mixed greens sided with hummus), Ottoman dumplings
(Homemade
Turkish dumplings with ground beef in garlic-yogurt sauce with melted
butter & mint) and gnocchi al pesto, not to mention two pitchers of
red sangria. This place is great...

After waddling out of Mundo, we headed down to check out the Crescent
Lounge, a place that I had eyeballed a few times while walking past.
In the summer, the doors and windows were opened, revealing lots of
strange couches and dim lighting. Turns out they also have games
(though no Jenga or Connect-4), which we played for a good hour.
Anyone ever played Chairs? It's an interesting engineering game that
is the complete opposite of Jenga - how high can you stack these
chairs before it crashes.

J. Riley, a very mild, very local night that was very fun, despite
Shane being a Charley Uniform November Tango type of guy. Well, I'm
off to Peru in a few hours!

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