Eating and Drinking in NYC

I do think New York deserves some props for being a great food city. Eating and drinking was one of my main purposes for being in New York. Later in the afternoon after having lunch at Katz's, we stumbled onto a great little wine bar called called inoteca, and had a wonderful bottle of Ghemme Italian wine (1993 Signore di Bayard). Then we headed over to the meat packing district and had dinner at a stylish Asian restaurant (pictured above), Lotus. After dinner we had a drink at the boutique Gansevoort Hotel, drinks were $15!(more than in Tokyo) It had a cool layout and design, but being a Tuesday there weren't many beautiful people out that night. After that we head back to the Village/Soho. I believe the first stop was the legendary White Horse Tavern, where we drank a few beers outside and argued politics. Then we were off to Max Fisch's, which was one of those sort of ironic hipster bars that made me feel old-I don't think there were many people over the age of 25 there. A lof of them were ironically wearing stuff like Loverboy T-shirts. Out last stop was a stylish hotel lounge at The Hotel on Rivington(it looked as though it were in transition, remodeling or new ownership).

Then next day I woke up too late for breakfast, so I enjoyed some of New York's finest pizza (obviously pictured below), they just don't make it like this in Japan.

I spent most of the day in mid-town Mahattan and took in the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition at The Guggenheim (I'll make a seperate post on that later). That evening I met my friend Jean (of Jeanzine blog fame), for dinner. We tried to eat at the Habana Cafe, but 40 minutes is too long to wait, however, I had an awesome spicy breakfast (black beans, with fried eggs in spicy sauce, and chorizo) there the next day before flying back to Tokyo. So we ended up at a little Asian bistro owned by a Japanese woman called Lovely Day-it was unpretentious and competent-I can't expect authentic Asian food when I leave Asia-so I'd describe it as being fusion inspired-given the American ingredients and food preparation methods(the same could be siad of Lotus). If I go too long without Asian food I start "jonesing" for it-so to speak, so I was happy to have it. After that, Jean took me to a quaint little martini bar in the East Village in a Japanese restaurant complex (Yocho Village) called Angel's Share. I liked the atmosphere and the Japanese-like attention to cocktail preperation and atmosphere: two Japanese ex-pats were playing mellow jazz guitar. After that I went to Decibel, a Japanese Sake Bar by myself to brush up my Japanese before heading back to Tokyo. Next time I'm going to need a week to properly enjoy New York. I missed a Death Cab For Cutie concert in the park by one day, I would have liked to have seen some off Broadway drama, visit a gallery or two, caught some revival films, and it seems like a shame that I didn't spend a weekend in gotham-next time.

Comments

[phatrick]

I remember eating at Decibel one very drunken night in the East Village. I ordered something with fish flakes on it and it concerned me that they were moving. I thought it might just be me. I think it was good. Perhaps you could explore undulating fish flakes in Japanese cuisine in a post sometime?

Glad to hear you hit the White Horse. I'm sure you know the legend of Dylan Thomas heading there after a reading, downing eighteen shots of whiskey, then going upstairs to his room to die. It saddens me somehow to think that Foss could drink Dylan Thomas to death.

[MC]

Yeah, the fish flakes will do that, but even better, sometimes really fresh sashimi served with the head and tail-has the twitchng mouth of the fish still moving as it arrives at the table-it doesn't get any fresher than that!

[AzianBrewer]

Habana is cool but the portion is way too $mall. For some real deal cheap eats Latin grubs go to Boca Chica. It's around 1st Ave and 1st Street.