Pat and I were treated to dinner at Acapella, in Tribeca, last night by his colleague Dan and Dan's daughter Devon. Dan had told us about Devon's interesting background with the Peace Corps and working for Ken Burns, and it was cool to meet her. It is perhaps only through meeting someone's daughter that you get to learn about some lesser-known aspects of their personal history, such as their altercation maybe fifteen years earlier with an angry man in a sandwich board, who traded punches with Dan while Devon hit him with her handbag. Somehow, that didn't come up the first time we had dinner with Dan.
My starter was agnolotti stuffed with lobster, in a creamy sauce with chunks of shrimp. It was fantastic. As I think about it, I should have tried to order that in a larger portion, as an entree. My entree was a steak that was only ordinary. We ordered sides of asparagus, spinach, and fried slices of potato, all of which were decent.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop, 174 5th Ave., Manhattan
I have once again taken up pre-natal yoga, this time at YogaWorks. They have three locations for pre-natal classes. I had been a few times to the UWS and SoHo locations, but my first attempt to make it to a class at Union Square ended fruitlessly, last week, when I went to 38 5th Ave. and there was no YogaWorks. There I was, pregnantly waddling up and down the block with my yoga mat as if it might suddenly appear, but it did not. I called Pat at work to see if he might look it up for me online, but he wasn't available, so I got back on the subway and went home. Where I learned that actually the studio is at 138 5th Ave.
The next day, I fell pregnantly down in the street for no apparent reason, twisting an ankle and bruising and skinning a knee (and most tragically, putting a hole in my favorite of my few pairs of maternity pants), so yoga was out for a few days, and then there were some scheduling challenges, mostly revolving around a man I was supposed to interview for my consulting gig who kept being only "available" during yoga class times and then failing to be available at those times anyway. Which begs a tangent: has it become professionally acceptable to schedule work calls with someone and then blow them off or be late? And if that's the new standard, how is it possible that someone as reliable and punctual as myself can't get hired? I mean, aside from the obvious fact that I will be giving birth in 5-6 weeks.
Which brings me back to my pre-natal yoga class - I was determined to get to the Union Square class on Tuesday, after several days of inactivity. But as it turns out, Tuesday was also the day of the parade to celebrate the New York Giants winning the Superbowl. The Giants' win was probably as important to Pat as it was unimportant to me. I think football is a brutish sport. However, I like parades, and this one went literally right past our apartment, and so we watched it. It was fun!
But then I underestimated the challenges the parade would present for getting to yoga class. I made it harder for myself by stopping along the way to pick up a free baby item from someone who was giving it away (this has become a hobby of mine), but then I had to head through the post-parade mayhem to get to the subway, again waddling pregnantly and now also lugging a nursing stool. And it turned out that my intended subway stop was closed until they finished the parade clean-up. So I had to schlep back to a different stop and finally got to 138 5th St. just in time for the class, which I didn't enjoy, because I couldn't put pressure on my knee. Then when I got back on the subway, it turns out they were running R trains express past where I wanted to get off, so I had to improvise and transfer and this made ME 4 minutes late for yet another phone interview with someone else! So I guess I shouldn't cast stones when it comes to the punctuality for the phone interviews, after all.
If you are even still reading this sob story, you are really just wishing I would get to my review of Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop, in the Flatiron district, where I stopped to pick up a sandwich before my second ill-fated subway trip of the day. I had pastrami on whole grain bread, with mustard. It was particularly greasy but delicious. The shop's motto is "raising New York's cholesterol since 1929." I enjoyed my artery-clogging sandwich immensely when I finally got to eat it at 4:00.
The next day, I fell pregnantly down in the street for no apparent reason, twisting an ankle and bruising and skinning a knee (and most tragically, putting a hole in my favorite of my few pairs of maternity pants), so yoga was out for a few days, and then there were some scheduling challenges, mostly revolving around a man I was supposed to interview for my consulting gig who kept being only "available" during yoga class times and then failing to be available at those times anyway. Which begs a tangent: has it become professionally acceptable to schedule work calls with someone and then blow them off or be late? And if that's the new standard, how is it possible that someone as reliable and punctual as myself can't get hired? I mean, aside from the obvious fact that I will be giving birth in 5-6 weeks.
Which brings me back to my pre-natal yoga class - I was determined to get to the Union Square class on Tuesday, after several days of inactivity. But as it turns out, Tuesday was also the day of the parade to celebrate the New York Giants winning the Superbowl. The Giants' win was probably as important to Pat as it was unimportant to me. I think football is a brutish sport. However, I like parades, and this one went literally right past our apartment, and so we watched it. It was fun!
But then I underestimated the challenges the parade would present for getting to yoga class. I made it harder for myself by stopping along the way to pick up a free baby item from someone who was giving it away (this has become a hobby of mine), but then I had to head through the post-parade mayhem to get to the subway, again waddling pregnantly and now also lugging a nursing stool. And it turned out that my intended subway stop was closed until they finished the parade clean-up. So I had to schlep back to a different stop and finally got to 138 5th St. just in time for the class, which I didn't enjoy, because I couldn't put pressure on my knee. Then when I got back on the subway, it turns out they were running R trains express past where I wanted to get off, so I had to improvise and transfer and this made ME 4 minutes late for yet another phone interview with someone else! So I guess I shouldn't cast stones when it comes to the punctuality for the phone interviews, after all.
If you are even still reading this sob story, you are really just wishing I would get to my review of Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop, in the Flatiron district, where I stopped to pick up a sandwich before my second ill-fated subway trip of the day. I had pastrami on whole grain bread, with mustard. It was particularly greasy but delicious. The shop's motto is "raising New York's cholesterol since 1929." I enjoyed my artery-clogging sandwich immensely when I finally got to eat it at 4:00.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Ichiro, 165 Front St., Manhattan
Pat and I have only ourselves to blame for our appalling dinner from Ichiro, in the Financial District, tonight. We are always whining about how we can't find a good Thai place that delivers to us, and so we applied ourselves the internet for a new option, and Ichiro billed itself as an "Asian fusion" place. But it's not, is it? It is a Japanese place, and we were fools for ordering the Thai dishes. Fools!
Pat's pad thai did not taste like pad thai, and it had bell peppers in it, inexplicably. My red curry was simply not red curry! It actually wasn't bad, whatever it was - it was basically stir-fried vegetables. But I wanted red curry, and red curry I did not get.
The ordering itself was also an exercise in frustration. The online ordering function didn't work, so we called, and while she was very nice, the woman taking the order just was not up to the task of understanding English. (Side note: lest you should wonder whether this was why I didn't end up with red curry, that's not the explanation, as "red curry" was written on the order slip that came with my non-red-curry dish.) In particular, she was thrown for a loop when I told her the apartment number was 2J. I wondered if the Japanese language doesn't have a "j" sound, as German does not; I was referred to as "Chennie" for the nine months I spent in Austria.
Anyway, eating my non-red-curry in dismayed resignation, I looked on the web for Thai restaurants in Jersey City, and found a few highly-rated places within delivery or even walking distance, so hopefully we'll have better luck when we move across the river in a couple of weeks.
Pat's pad thai did not taste like pad thai, and it had bell peppers in it, inexplicably. My red curry was simply not red curry! It actually wasn't bad, whatever it was - it was basically stir-fried vegetables. But I wanted red curry, and red curry I did not get.
The ordering itself was also an exercise in frustration. The online ordering function didn't work, so we called, and while she was very nice, the woman taking the order just was not up to the task of understanding English. (Side note: lest you should wonder whether this was why I didn't end up with red curry, that's not the explanation, as "red curry" was written on the order slip that came with my non-red-curry dish.) In particular, she was thrown for a loop when I told her the apartment number was 2J. I wondered if the Japanese language doesn't have a "j" sound, as German does not; I was referred to as "Chennie" for the nine months I spent in Austria.
Anyway, eating my non-red-curry in dismayed resignation, I looked on the web for Thai restaurants in Jersey City, and found a few highly-rated places within delivery or even walking distance, so hopefully we'll have better luck when we move across the river in a couple of weeks.
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