Category: Manhattan

Flashdance, What a Feeling

Saturday was an event-packed APA fest, and probably would have been a logistical nightmare if it were anywhere other than New York. Bright and early that morning I was helping out a moot court workshop for law students in midtown. P- was doing errands, and I met her at the Pathmark in Chinatown with the Zipcar.

After a flurry of SMS’s, voicemails and phone exchanges, we met up with champion blogger MJ visiting from San Francisco. While on a personal hiatus, she’s been travelling across North America and hooking up with bloggers across the country. I told her she should really be writing a book about her trip.

After navigating back from Brooklyn over the Brooklyn Bridge up the FDR Drive really quickly, it took a silly amount of time to get across Houston because of construction. MJ was handed off to us from Uberchick and we navigated towards Flushing. After missing the Queensboro Bridge exit, we came back down from 96th street. Then we went along Northern Boulevard over the hills, through the curves, and into Flushing and the muni lot.

Dinner was at Mimi’s Shabu-Shabu, which is a uniquely American way of having hot pot – instead of the entire group sharing the same pot of simmering broth, each diner gets their own mini-hotpot to operate as they want. Individuality triumphs! For the protein, MJ went all American beef, P- went for the lamb, and I went for the surf & turf shrimps and beef.
Because of the late start and missing the exit to the bridge, we had to hussle through gale force winds to get to Flushing Town Hall for a performance of Slant, an Asian American performance group. They reprised their original production from 1995, which explored Asian men and masculinity/emasculinity. The group has had a long connection with NYU, so I’ve seen many of their productions, but never saw their first one, so I was happy to see this reprise. I also bumped into a guy, P, who I knew from law school, but I was just having a senior moment and couldn’t remember his name for about 15 minutes. He turned out to be the brother in law of one of the group’s members.

After that, we ran through the cold back to the car, and zoomed back to CBGB’s, the famed club that’s due to close in the next year after arranging a temporary reprive from escalating rents. I probably hadn’t been there in like 15 years, back in my club promoting era.

MJ’s frend’s band Dogs of Winter was performing at 11:30 PM. We got there a good 1 1/2 hours early, but spent the next 45 minutes trying to find parking. I finally found a spot in front of the Blue Man Group theater.

We suffered through a really pathetic warmup act (you kind of take competent drumming and split jumps for granted, but when the guy can’t keep time, and the lead guitar had to do everything in his power to avoid crashing into the bass or the drum set when landing, you know they need help). We were much relieved when Dogs of Winter showed up. DoW’s set had a variety of unrequited alt-punk and a Roy Orbison cover. Frontman Brian is a tall lanky guy with big guns for arms and good chops with his axes. P- got his autograph after the performance.
After leaving MJ to the whims of the Dogs of Winter (and we are having a dog of a winter this weekend), we went to Oh Taisho! on St. Mark’s Place for a quick midnight bite, which included ramen, some skewers, and roasted rice balls (yum!!). Afterwards, we found the car (cold and still in one piece) and rode off into Brooklyn, being the youngest and oldest we have been in a long time.

The sides of the Ninja, +1K

P & I slept in during the morning on Saturday watching Food Network’s Mangia Mania week, which is all Italian food. We must have watched 3 separate pizza shows – we’re going to try out some apparently new ones in New York this week – counterbalancing my gym visit on Friday.

The rest of the afternoon we visited Chelsea Market, which houses the world headquarters of the Food Network. Crazy looks through the Fat Witch (brownies), Jimmy’s Gelato (had an awesome green apple sorbet, as well as green tea gelato – yum!), Bowery Kitchen Supplies (can’t believe that there is a device called a Spätzle-Ass), and Buonitalia Imports (the place to get a 3 kg bottle of Nutella). The free weekend ballroom dancing was also happening.

We got out and it was like 20 degrees and we had 15 minutes to get to Ninja Restaurant, our next stop, so we hopped into a taxi. That was definately a good move. We got there just in time to meet one of our dinner guests, and the host/ringleader was on her way. We waited in the lounge before she arrived, and then were lead through a secret passageway led and intercepted by ninjas before arriving at the ninja village.

We didn’t have high hopes, since the New York Times gave such a poor review, but we actually had a great time. Maybe it was partly the good company, partially that we got a good ninja, partially that the restaurant took some of the critiques to heart, but we think that the reviews were completely wrong. The food was actually pretty good, the ambiance was believable, and nobody took themselves too seriously (the ninjas spoke Japanese, but quickly switched into witty English.)

Things can be really expensive if you were to order a la carte, but the key is to pick from the set menus – they have the best value. Ask for the “secret menu” – it’s sort of like the other menu at Chinese restaurants that has the stuff that only those in the know want to eat. The secret menu arrived in a gold box and has 2 more economical set menus that didn’t look like they were going to be filling, but they were very nice. Then we had a choice of 5 desserts, which were shown to us by M- the Ninja on the secret side menu, which she presented to us on a 1 x 3″ slip of parchment.

If ordered in a set menu, the items that we received were worth the price. The courses included: red miso soup with clams, grilled salmon with a rice sauce, cubed steak in a choice of wasabi or terayaki sauce, 5 piece nigiri sushi, and the fateful choice of dessert. The quality was quite good, and the sushi was served with real wasabi root grated at the table. One of our dinner guests also ordered the 5 flight sake tasting menu, which were full sized samples – it was deemed excellent. The funniest exchange concerning the white frog (actually a cheesecake) dessert – P: “I can’t eat it – it’s too cute” – Ninja M: “He was destined to die”.)

If you think of it as just food, it’s a bit on the pricy side, especially if you stray off of the set menus, but if you think of it as dinner theater, it’s well worth it – much better value than Jekyll & Hyde or Mars 2112. And you’d be supporting NYC’s better struggling Asian actors and actresses (our dining host had actually been on a casting call for Ninja waitstaff). Recommended if you want to splurge a bit.

Also, this is the 1,000th (or maybe 1,001 if SSW posts before me) post! Can’t believe we made it this far…. next post will be more of a long form reminiscence.

Eating Out Weekend

BTW, Happy Birthday to SSW!

P-‘s old neighbor who moved back to Japan was in town, so we went out to eat more often than usual this weekend.

Dragon Palace Restaurant (202 Centre St. Manhattan): new dim sum place near Lafayette St. The place is well apportioned, and the siu mai – type dim sums were very tasty. The kitchen needs to work some kinks out, because a bowl of fish congee (“juk”) and a fried rice dish, while tasty and obviously made to order, each took 20 minutes to come out.

Dumpling Man (100 St. Mark’s Place): not bad, but a little pricy. Best value is not order the combo, but order 10 packs. I liked the pork ones a lot, while P enjoyed the chicken, and they had a pumpkin dessert dumpling that was very tasty also. The red monster sauce was too slick and spicy for me – it made it hard to keep the dumpling in my mouth without slipping. The marco polo sauce is your basic Italian basil tomato sauce, but was a lot better than I was expecting. In future visits, though, I’d stick with the free sesame oil and soy sauce. Surprisingly, they do not offer hot tea.

Blue Smoke (116 E 27th): the only thing better than good ‘cue is ‘cue you didn’t have to pay for – while I got the drinks, P’s sister picked up the tab. You have to know that the chef is from St. Louis, so you ought to go with KC wet style BBQ and ribs; Texas dry rub or Carolina vinegar will probably not live up to expectations. We ordered two sides of ribs – the Kansas City ones were meater and more tender than the St. Louis ones, so I say go with the former. Mac and cheese was exceptional, with al dente pasta, as well as the collards and the creamed spinach.