Subj : Re: Serenity, NOW! To : alt.tv.farscape From : Trouble Date : Fri Sep 30 2005 13:17:21 From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape Rick Savoia wrote: > Trouble wrote: >> Wife and I are going to try and go tonight, as well as hit the local >> Japanese steakhouse, she's never been to a hibachi grill where the >> chef cooks your meal in front of you. Just like last weekend she'd >> never been to New York. I have a brief few words about that if the >> Food Network people here are interested. > Since when do we have to be interested in something for someone > to talk about it? I ask as a courtesy... since I really don't want to see the Serenity thread derailed. > Although, I'm interested. Well last weekend we took a trip to NYC We stayed in a place called 'The Muse' something we saw on Great Hotels, on the Travel Channel, the place is nice enough, and nestled in among a lot of off-Broadway theaters. We didn't take advantage of any of their Museum, Show, or Weekend pachages, but it was a nice place to call home for a day and a half. I found a $249 deal on Expedia compared to their $399 list price for the same Deluxe room on their website, and all the other travel sites. At $249 this Four Star(AAA Four Diamond too) becomes competitive with lots of other NYC hotels. Saturday night we went to Mesa Grill, one of Bobby Flay's restaurants in the city, we had 9:30 reservations made two days before, and the place was packed. We showed up 30-45 minutes early, and they directed us to the bar, its really hot in there from all the people so we choose to wander around the city some more and come back later. It was as we were getting ready to leave that the wife said she recognized somebody leaving as a host of something on Style network, to which I grumble don't be such a tourist, sure enough we get outside and somebody has him up against a wall getting their picture taken... We get back from wandering, again we're encouraged to wait at the bar, crowd is still thick as thieves, one employee takes a shot of the crowd off the upper balcony, probably for the website or something. We wait and finally we get seated. The tables are really close together, no shocker there, we get menus and our drink order in and our waiter dissappears for a while. I look over the liquor menu and everything seems a bit high so I order a 10 year old Laphroig neat, for $13 should have been $6-7 while I was looking at the Mcallan 18, it was about $25 I've had it for $13 a shot but had never tried the Laphroig before. Drinks come and I figure out why the liquor is so high, the glass is about halfway full or a good two fingers full... not a single shot as most places sell it. I kind of wonder if their profit centers are their liquor license, and the cookbooks they sell behind the hostess station. Anyways I order the $33 Lamb Porterhouse, and a Caesar Salad The Caesar salad was standard fare with romaine, and a spicy Caesar dressing, hominy crutons (these were really good) and two 3-4 four inch long strips of anchovy. Great for Caesar purists, but something I could have lived without. They brought out sourdough rolls, southwest style blue cornbread muffins with whole corn kernels and peppers in them. Neither were really award winning, lemme tell ya. The Lamb Porterhouse is two small scallops or medallions of lamb that have bone still attached to them, there is a small serving of bright green spinach, if you've seen them blanch it with baking soda on Iron Chef, that's the one, and a Wild Rice and Corn meal tamale topped with Goat Cheese. The Goat Cheese tasted like creme fraiche, not a hard goat cheese more of a soft spread, the tamale was a corn meal concoction that was too sweet, and had a strange texture due to the wild rice. The only real resemblance these bear to a tamale is the corn husk shell. Now I distinctly remember in Bobby Flay Vegas Gamble he said the Tamlaes were a signature dish of Mesa Grill, I hear from the waiter these Wild Rice tamales are replacing the previous tamales, and quite honestly they suck. The wife had deep fried squash blooms which eneded up looking like egg rolls, she said those were really good. She had the pork tenderloin which was also good, but nothing to write home about. She had two glasses of wine. We wandered out of there for about $130. Dollar for dollar we have a much better time at the local Outback Steakhouse. Anybody here ever heard of Serendipity 3? It was in a John Cusak romantic comedy, supposedly lots of stars have eaten there, its also been on Food Finds, and it was on Oprah's top 10 deserts. We get there at 11:11am, no reservations, there are already 20 people there. The place opens at 11:30am, by then the line was 30-40 strong, and people with reservations were seated first, everyone else went on the list. We were about the 5th non reserved table on the list. There were 5- 6 men in the line, all boyfriends and husbands that had been dragged along like me. Everyone there had seen it on Oprah or in some Romantic comedy and just had to see it. We get inside is say 10 more minutes, they had plenty of tables, problem is getting you seated and orders taken before they seat more people so more groups got called every 5 minutes or so. I have seen the reviews online where they say the food is substandard in quality and mostly diner fare, I would say its standard in quality and of mostly pedestrian diner fare. I had the clam chowder, which was not very thick, but otherwise standard. I also had the mixed grill, a hot plate of chicken breast, two Romanaian steaks, a very well seasoned and tasty strip of beef, and a half length of hot sausage with grilled onions and peppers. For the $17-19 it cost is was a reasonably hearty dish. I forgot what my wife had to eat there, it was a regular meal of some kind. It was well over the $6.95 a person minimum, for reference they sell $7 foot long hot dogs. The whole reason people come here is the Frozen Hot Chocolate, its hot cocoa blended with ice, topped with a heaping helping of very bland whip cream, and topped with chocoalte shavings, and served with two straws. Its not that good, and if you MUST try it they ship online. The wife had a double chocolate mousse that was pretty standard for a restaurant mousse. With Tip $70 compares with typical bistro dining Fridays, Bennigans, etc even if its a lot pricier, you have to figure in the tourist trap tax somewhere. Lastly another one from Food Finds, we went to Rice to Riches, its a nice little place down in the Soho/Tribeca area. Its ok, imagine if Baskin Robbins sold flavored Rice Pudding instead of Ice Cream, that's it, two small bowls, equal to one scoop each cost us $10 Its different, but not really better than ice cream, and I'm pretty happy with regular store brand rice pudding with a little nutmeg on top so maybe I'm not in the target audience... Probably the most amazing experience we had was the 15 block, $20 pedicab ride we took, its a bicycle rickshaw thing, for 4-5 blocks we were absolutely flying along... its all the excitement of a regular cab ride in NYC with no roof, doors or seat belts to save you, plus you get the very real impression you might fall out, or tip over when turning corners. Appropos of nothing our first meal in the city was at Grand Central Station, there was a Southwest style restaurant called the Zocolo there, I just had to add that for the B5 fans. -- "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." --Basho .