Best Why Must Life Be Full of So Much Wonder and Joy?

Saturday morning. Let me tell you about it. I went and saw a $6 viewing (something I'm beginning to truly believe in) of Kung Fu Panda with Ali. Kung Fu Panda was excellent, funny enough for adults and in many ways a perfectly legitimate kung fu movie. I wish I had planned ahead better and invited Andy. My Dad really liked it, that's probably one of the reasons I saw it. This is what my Dad said about it in an email he sent me this week (By the way, Blake is my nephew, he's five. Unless his mother leaves a comment that says he's six. But I counted it out in my brain and I'm pretty sure he's five.)

I went to see Kung Fu Panda last night with Blake. I was't looking forward to it, but I loved it. It is funny without being gross and it has a tender heart. I would give it 4 stars.

You know, he was right about it being funny without being gross. I don't think there was any bathroom humor in it at all. And a lot of the cool stuff in the movie I enjoyed it but I could also tell that if I were younger (much younger) I'd have really been eating it up and drawing it when I got home.

Anyway. Here's where the Wonder and Joy comes in.

For lunch we headed to the Momofuku Noodle Bar because I totally neglect the Noodle Bar. The Ssam Bar is one avenue closer to me and I love it so much that it takes more willpower than I've got to pass it up to go to the Noodle Bar. But Saturday I set the goal and we made it over to the Noodle Bar and as I was charting out a course to deliciousness I got a great idea (because I was craving a pork bowl so bad) and said to Ali, "Hey, what if we have lunch here AND at the Ssam Bar" and Ali said "Yes!"

Hallelujah! Perfect Saturday lunches!

So we took it easy at the Noodle Bar and canceled a couple of dishes and had ourselves the magnificent pork buns (available at both establishments):


And then their smoked chicken wings with pickled chili, garlic, scallions. SO incredibly tasty and a much more generous plate of wings than I had been expecting. The sauce they came in was so villainously delicious, if it isn't in Pete's cookbook I'll just die.


And right before leaving a whim struck me and I slurped my first oysters. Glidden point oysters with spicy pickled shallot and horseradish, to be precise. Tasted like sushi, wet, salty sushi. I'd do it again and don't know what took me so long. Oh, and maybe we poured the leftover wing sauce over the nori noodles after the oysters were done and ate them up so we could finish off the sauce? You really have to just trust me on how great that wing sauce was. Is.


Then it was off to the Ssam Bar. On the way: This bike!


At the Ssam Bar it was sublime business as usual with the pork bowl (We split it. It's big.)


And I had the bread and butter for the first time. The bread & goats butter and morel butter, that is. Turns out some bread and butter is worth paying for.


A morel turns out to be a mushroom. When I saw that the bread came with morel butter I decided not to ask what a morel was for fear of getting creeped out...what if it was some kind of gland?

Speaking of glands...

Ali nixed ordering the famous veal sweetbreads at the noodle bar because they were veal, not because they were thymus glands.