I traveled to NYC for work projects and was able to squeeze in a few great eats and one fabulous museum show. I got in very late on Monday, due to a lightening storm shutting down JFK (3 hours waiting it out in Richmond, VA) so dinner the first night was a late call to room service. The Parker Meridien does a custom pasta dish, pick your own pasta, sauce, meat and veggie. I don't really recommend penne with pesto, italian sausage and mushroom at midnight, although it helps if your stomach thinks it's 9:30p.
We had lunch with our NY colleagues at Serafina, a nice little Italian place near one of our NY offices. We shared a nice pizza. They did a grilled squid on skewers that was delicious, and some tasty bruschetta.
Dinner on Tuesday was at Craft, Tom Colicchio's (of Top Chef fame) restaurant. This was a fabulous meal! The restaurant features ingredients sourced from local farmers and is organized by ingredient and preparation method. We had the crispy bacon as a starter, which was basically a large square of pork belly, with perfectly crispy skin, melting fat and succulent meat all layered together. The eggplant agnolotti was a nice non-meat starter with a creamy tomato sauce. For my main, I had the normandy duck. Wow! This may be the most perfect duck I've ever had (and I've had me some duck over the years). The breast was cooked just to a pink interior, with the skin slightly crisp and the meat melting in your mouth. I've so often had over cooked duck breast that this was a revelation. The leg was confited, and was so tender I barely had to chew, just letting the duck-y goodness melt into my taste buds. My dining partners had the suckling pig for two which consisted of taking the pig apart into about 6 different pieces, and cooking each section in a different way so as to bring out the best flavour and texture in each. For dessert we had the sugar and spice doughnuts, little baby donuts (plus their holes) served with an incredible chocolate sauce and peach jam, and the s'mores, which was my favourite, a chocolate peanut butter mousse topped with toasted marshmallow creme served with smoked salt sorbet. The saltiness of the sorbet combined with the mousse was just amazing (if you've never had chocolate with salt, go try a chocolate dipped pretzel). The wines were absolutely perfect with the meal and the service was impeccable. The room is dark, with just a minimal level of conversational hum so that we could talk to each other without shouting.
On Wednesday, we had dinner at Boqueria, a small Spanish tapas restaurant in Chelsea. This was a fun place, with lots of people stopping in with friends for an after-work bite. They've got some lovely jamon hanging in the window. Among the plates we tried were the quail egg on chorizo, garlic shrimp, croquettas (mushroom and jamon), lamb meatballs. They've got a nice selection of cheeses and jamons, of course we had to have some of the iberico. For dessert, the churros were very nice in a great chocolate sauce. The flan was a light version, not carmelized enough for my taste.
I was able to find some time to visit the Alexander McQueen show at the Met before it closed over the weekend. This show has been making news all summer due to the crowds that have waited in hours long lines to see it. I was able to get in with a friend who had a Met membership card, allowing us to skip the 2.5 hour line! As it was, the exhibition space was incredibly crowded. I'm pretty good about elbowing my way through a crowd, and we had the audio guides, which helped tremendously and included interviews with people who worked with McQueen or wore his clothes. I'd heard that the show had brought some people to tears and I found that interesting as I couldn't imagine clothing causing that reaction. Well, I will admit that I got choked up at a couple of points in the show. His clothes are impeccably tailored and that's not something that you can see in a photograph. But he takes his skilled tailoring and adds something slightly askew to everything. Perfect jackets have a tail on one end, or pants have a hem that flips at the bottom. Some of the clothes are very dark and disturbing but even in those, you see the skill in the craftsmanship. He puts together materials in the most amazing way, combining light and ethereal with rigid and shiny or feathers with satin. Some pieces were so beautiful they took my breath away, but the beauty always had a dark edge. The show included videos taken from runway shows which gave a sense of his brilliant theatricality. In one small box, you can see a hologram of Kate Moss floating in a stunning gown. The music in the show was all coordinated with the music that McQueen used in his runway presentations. McQueen's clothes are intensely emotional and the music adds to that effect. After we came out of the exhibit, it felt like we had been in a dark cave for a very long time, but the experience was unforgettable.
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