A New York state of mind

I'm back! Haven't blogged in a while, but first and formost, I'd like to say thank you to eveyone for the well wishings on my birthday, especially to my wife for making it really fun. Ok blog time - It was just another weekend in nyc, and my buddy Jack and his lady Kani decided to pay us a visit. Jack's an old buddy from college, who's spent the past year living in corning ny. Prior to that he spent 2-3 years in Asia, but he decided that it's about time he packed up and headed back to the west coast. So with Jack leaving the east coast, and this being Kani's first time in ny, we planned a weekend to get them in that NY state of mind (blog theme song, Billy Joel). And the bleature is: my confession...
When in ny, what else is there to do but enjoy the fine dinning the city has to offer? Jack and Kani arrived at our place around 8.30pm and they immediately settled into the guest room (this could be you, so get out here and visit us!). After a bit of r&r, we headed out to the famed Peter Luger's steak house. To men, a good steak is arguably the best food on the planet. Nothing beats a slab of meat, tender, juicy and full of flavor. After the rave reviews given to us by friends and book guides, we were ready to give our taste buds the test. With growling stomachs, and a chilly night, we headed out to Brooklyn for our 10.45 reservation.

We got there right on time for our reservation, and as expected, the service was rude, the steak was big and the place was packed. What wasn't expected was the outback-esque quality steak. Dry, rough and tasteless. Ok, it was worse than an outback steak, honestly it was bad. Zagat's fabled 'best steak in NY'? - what a crock.
Although the steak was sub-par, our growling stomachs allowed us to glutton ourselves the way a fat kid would eat cake. We were stuffed, finished dinner around mid night and headed out of Brooklyn (NY's answer to Oakland). We got back to our place and called it a night, the next day would be a long day


We managed to make our way to upstate manhattan out to central park, and what else to do in the park on a sunny gorgeous day but hit up the ice rink? Skating around the rink was exhausting, especially when i had to pull Laurie the whole time! Skate girl! I can say though, we never fell once.After skating we headed out to mid town to warm up with some ramen. After lunch we headed out to Juniors for some tasty cheesecake, we ordered three different ones, chocolate, regular and strawberry, they were all good, and Jack managed to finish all of them! I guess that's not to suprising considering his amazing capacity to stuff his face with sweets, he once ate the earthquake at Ghiradeli after eating at an all you can eat hot pot place. Pig

After walking all over mid town, somehow we ended up in Cancun. We thought it was funny that they had this trailer in the middle of times square, great idea though, looked all nice and sunny in there while all of us were outside freezing!

And what else to do in NY but see a show to cap off the night. We actually didn't see Phantom, we saw Avenue Q. We stood in the 'tkts' line for about 45 minutes but weren't able to get anything, however about 3 hours before the show, Jack and Kani earned their lodging for the night at our place by winning front row lottery tickets for the Avenue Q for only $20 each! The show was hilarious, Laurie and my second time seeing it, Jack and Kani's first. The show ended around 10, after that we had dinner and by the time dinner finished it was around 11.30. Now being in SF, you might call that a night, after all, we did a ton stuff, but being New Yorkers, we kept the night going. My other buddy from college, Tap, who now lives in Murray hill was throwing a house party so we headed out, and had a few drinks - but not as many as Tap. It was obvious he was having a good time. And that was our weekend. Oh yes, the bleature, my, ahem confession... I can honestly say now, I hella hella hella hella heart NY. I'm in a NY state of mind. There's no other place like it, there's no other place that can offer more, there's no other place I'd rather live right now. The city's filled with friendly people, lot's of energy and where else in the world can you have chinese food delivered to your door 2 minutes after you order it? If you like San Francisco, you'll hella heart NY too. Hope you had a good time Jack and Kani

Mikey Turns the Big 28

So it seems that Mike had all these plans about what he wanted to do for his birthday and just dictated them to me a few weeks before the big day :) The only input I had for the day was where we'd go for dinner. I searched and searched and searched for the perfect restaurant...but I'll tell you more about that later. So Mike's FIRST REQUEST was that he wanted his birthday cake to be "the cake from the box." That's exactly what he told me. I was like Duncan Hines??! Ok, EASY :) DONE. The finished product was a Duncan Hines Fun Cake (the vanilla flavored one with the colorful dots) and chocolate frosting.

So, we had cake before dinner because dinner reservations weren't until 10pm.

***Funny thing, I never knew how much Mike really liked Duncan Hines cake. In the days that followed his birthday, Mike "went to town" on that friggin cake. He loved it SO much that he consumed a HUGE chunk of that cake for breakfast every morning. I was DISGUSTED.***

Mike's SECOND REQUEST on his birthday was that he wanted to go ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Ok...no problem...if you're in New York during Christmas time, that is a must. So after cake, we headed up to the ice rink where we were greeted with the gorgeously lit tree and rink. Isn't it pretty?? We were so excited to skate on that gorgeous rink, but were disappointed when we found out that it was closed for a special party that night!!! JERKS! How could you ruin Mike's birthday!!!!!!

SO INSTEAD, we did something WAY BETTER than skate on that stupid rink...we sat and admired the beautiful decorations around the center. See how much we enjoyed looking at them?

Saks Fifth avenue light show

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Finally, dinnertime!!! So, the story behind the restaurant was that I started looking a month before his birthday. I researched and researched til I decided on Mario Batali's Italian restaurant Babbo. It turns out that you can make reservations as far as a month in advance. So on the day, EXACTLY a month before Mike's birthday, I called and the earliest reservation I could get was 10pm! ISN'T THAT CRAZY!!!! But the dinner was PERFECT. We had the perfect table, in the corner. The perfect meal, all the food was recommended by the waiter and it was all so tastey and very, very different than the italian food that we are used to eating. APPETIZER: barbecued octopus SOUP: spicy calamari soup, FIRST COURSE: portebello mushroom ravioli SECOND COURSE: lamb and veggies.

We HELLA Heart Freakin the Reindeer

Kristie and I BEFORE drinking

Kristie, Dre and I AFTER drinking

I've got to say that this weekend was the MOST EVENTFUL weekend since we've been in NYC. Saturday night we celebrated, my friend, Kristie's husband's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOE!!!

We began the evening with a yummy and super filling dinner at Yakiniku Juju (korean bbq). We were presented with a platter FILLED with enough meat equivilant to a small dog (for just 4 people!) By the end of the dinner, everyone had food coma and needed to unbutton their pants. We headed over to Park for drinks. The cool thing about Park, is that it has this really nice covered patio area that contains lots of wooden statues, like gnomes and reindeer. After a few drinks, we got kinda freaky with them :)

Dre getting freaky with the gnome

We Heart Rachel Ray!

Last night we attended Rachel Ray's book signing at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. She had a 30 minute Q & A session where we learned lots of interesting things about her. Among them were: she'll be opening up a burger bistro in New York next Fall, she was terrified of being on Iron Chef America, her TV show currently has 44,000 on its waiting list and on her $40 A Day show, when she talks about the ambiance and people more than the food, the food sucks. Mike asked her what were her favorite food cities. She said for international, Florence and for domestic, Montreal, Dallas and San Francisco!! Wow, that woman woman has so much energy! Afterwards, she signed copies of her new book "2, 4, 6, 8."


Later on that night, I met up with Julie and Dre, friends from California, who moved to NYC within the last year. It was really nice to finally hang out with friends. We started out at Central Bar and ended up dancing at Taj til 3:30 in the morning! Mike was a good sport being the only guy and SAVING us girls when creepy dudes tried to HOLLA!

Julie, Dre and I

Mike "saving" Julie