Thursday, October 14, 2010

Best Columbus Day Weekend

Mom and Dad and Emily were in town over the weekend.  We had a lot of fun.  And we ate.  

Friday night we went to Dressler, Dumont's fancy relative, in Williamsburg.




If you click on this and then look closely . . . are there tears welling in my eyes?  Probably because we'd been to Dressler twice before, I knew what I was in for.

 

I'm not going to show you everything we ate, just some highlights.  These braised veal cheeks were very nice.


And back there is my cranberry bean and artichoke heart salad which was very nice. Next to it, a fine little oyster.


This was my dinner of "Roasted Long Island Duck & Confit Crepinette."  That's kind of Dressler's game, to serve you two preparations of the meat you ordered.


For dessert?  "Bamboo Honey Panna Cotta."  Okay, cool.


Saturday I slipped out of work for a minute (yes, on Saturday.  When I work I work serious) to meet everyone for lunch at the midtown Nobu.






Shisito peppers.


Rock shrimp tempura on the left, king crab tempura on the right.


Sizzling plate of mushrooms.


Black miso cod.



And after lunch we slipped over through the block to the midtown Milkbar so I could introduce my family to Apple Balls.


Maybe some other time.


Then that night I left work


And battled my way through Times Square to join my family for West Side Story.





Saturday night Times Square crowds.  Sheesh.


I got a little sidetracked at the last second.





I'd never seen West Side Story before.  It reminded me of Double Dragon.  The scene change before the rumble impressed me but I found most of the actors greatly lacking in charisma.


Sunday, after downtown church, we had a little Cafe Habana lunch.



We split tortas and we split corns.  No, wait.  We all had our own corns.  Get serious.




Dad was always up to something on his iphone.


Probably tweeting Cory everything we ate.



We spent some nice afternoon hours at the Frick, a museum I had never ever been to before (even after seeing it on the Venture Bros.).  I really liked it, it's this one dude's mansion, turned into a museum.  My favorite parts were whenever the audioguide told me how much something cost.


I strongly urge you to someday visit the Frick.  It is not gigantic, you can pass a nice two or three hours there, depending on how much you want to learn.



Walked through the park, admired a lowkey Roller Dancers scene.


Up to the fountain.


Over to the parabolic lawn.


After a walk through the Village it was time for our keynote dinner at Babbo, which we had visited about two years before.



As before (and probably always) they started us off with chickpea bruschetta.


And if you're asking why I took a picture of a piece of bread then you deserve to learn for yourself about the breads of Babbo.


First courses . . . back there there's a nice arugula salad, on the right neci con funghi mixti, in the middle some pork cracklins, and in front there my share of an unbelievable papperdelle pasta in a sauce of I cannot remember what (it was a special that night) under a heap of white truffles that I split with Dad.  This was our baller dish of the weekend.


Some of the second course: Black spaghetti with rock shrimp there in the foreground, thistle pasta in the background.


And those are pumpkin lunes.


Dessert: Mine, on the right: a grape jelly donut (although that's not how the menu put it), a pumpkin something over there on the right and a chocolate pistachio semifreddo in back.


And finally, Monday (Columbus Day!) I snuck out of work and over to Bryant Park for one last lunch with the family.


We had No. 7 Subs.  Meet the Lamb Meatloaf Sub.  It, like the other two No. 7 Subs I've tried, put me in a panic.  So did the bite of Mom's turkey sub I had.


And here I am with Dad and Mom.  Emily is not in the picture because she took it, but trust me, she was there.  It was a fine weekend full of working, walking, and eating as well as cooperation, teamwork, and not fighting.  That's what New York visits are all about.


APPENDIX:

We ate at no new restaurants on this trip . . . well, we hadn't been to Nobu in midtown before, but that's a technicality.  Here are previous posts about the places we ate:




3 comments:

Sarah said...

Your blog kills me. Seriously. Stop posting pictures of delicious food that I can never even dream about in Utah. Really. Nobu? I hate you.

In other news, we need to catch up!

Collin Mapp said...

Oh man! I missed out!

Three things.

1. Dressler. Where I met your parents.

2. Apple Balls???

3. I love that picture where your parents are to the right, the bus is in the back, and Emily is crowded into the left.

(she made me a very delicious Lemon Cake cookie.)

Side of Jeffrey said...

As always, you eat serious when parents are in town. Bravo.