New York - Days 3 and 4
Tue, Jul. 10th, 2007 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterArgh! My computer ate my first post!
I'm still behind on comments and behind on LJ; I suspect I will be for a good few months, as real life has started to get very busy.
Avenue Q
Even though I went in knowing about the problematic gender and racial representations, I was still bugged by them. A lot of this was because the role of Christmas Eve, the Japanese woman, was played by a white woman. I already had a lot of issues with Christmas Eve to begin with, but adding a white actress playing at the exaggerated accent and movements and clothing was very irritating. It was even stranger watching because one of the puppeteers who voiced the Bad Idea Bears and mostly moved puppets around was a Japanese woman.
Yeah. Very disturbing.
On the other hand, I did have fun with the show. Puppet sex will never not be funny, and I am amazed by the puppeteers and voice throwing and whatnot. I particularly enjoyed the "Fantasies Come True" number, which usually isn't my favorite song on the CD. This just goes to prove that shoujo bubbles and pink lights make everything ten times better.
Max Brenner, take two
For lunch the next day, my sister and I went back to Max Brenner to eat with her friend. This time around, I got to sample their savory crepes. My sister and I split one with a sunny-side-up egg and prosciutto in it, topped with the chili mayo sauce in a mad scientist flask. We also split a dessert waffle topped with strawberries, blueberries and bits of white chocolate, with chocolate sauce, creme fraiche and caramelized bananas in toffee sauce on the side.
It was incredibly good and incredibly filling as well. Mmmm.
Sadly, I have yet to find a good place in Bay Area for dessert waffles, which I think is a very profound lack in my life.
After lunch, my sister persuaded me that buying (yet more) peas at the Union Square market and lugging them around while shopping would be a very bad idea. Given that we got home around 7, I think she was right. Though I still miss the peas...
We wandered around Soho because I wanted to visit Purl Soho (a yarn store) and stopped by around 18 different clothing stores along the way. I didn't manage to find any clothes that I liked, but I did find a pair of ten-dollar flats that I got. I think I can wear them dancing. Also, they are pink!
We also managed to trudge over to BookOff at the very end of a long afternoon. Yay Bookoff! Sadly, I couldn't find more cheap $1 manga that I wanted, but I did manage to get some other stuff. I also persuaded my sister to get Emma vols. 3 and 4, so I feel the trip was rather successful.
Stanton Social
For dinner, me and the sister went to meet Mely at Stanton Social, where Mely's sister works as a pastry chef (so cool!!).
The Stanton Social is located waaay downtown on the east side, and it is very trendy, dark and noisy. Also, all the food is in the form of tapas or dim sum, which I highly approve of, as it means I get to try everything.
Well, usually when eating with my sister, we split everything anyway, but this made it much more seemly and polite to do so as opposed to my just forking stuff from across the table. I eat like a barbarian, I know.
The restaurant was extremely nice; several people came over to tell Mely how wonderful her sister was. Mely says she doesn't usually get this treatment, but it was still really neat. We ended up getting roasted corn brushed with salt and pepper (I think) and a creamy, spicy sauce; roasted asparagus with lemon juice squeezed on top (the bottoms were a little woody, but otherwise they were good); french onion soup dumplings; potato and onion pierogies; duck empanadas; peach and brie quesadillas; and the restaurant gave us an order of ribs and a little crostini with roasted zucchini (I think) on top as an amuse bouche.
The food was so very, very good. The french onion soup dumplings were served in an escargot bowl covered with melted cheese. Little bamboo skewers with croutons on top The dumplings themselves are bite-sized and filled with french onion soup; you're supposed to stuff the entire thing in your mouth. The insides were still a little hot, even after we'd finished off the ribs, but the soup was salty and sweet and carmelized and onion-y and a very cool take on Shanghainese soup dumplings. ("Food on a stick!" Mely said to me.)
I also loved the duck empanadas ("Does duck sound good?" I asked Mely. "I am always up for duck," she replied. "Excellent!") and the peach and brie quesadillas, which were served on top of chili honey. They were a little odd at first, but actually worked really well. Mely suggested those, asking if we were ok with that. My sister looked up with a huge grin and nodded vehemently. "I was just going to suggest that!" she said.
And then, dessert! I made everyone eat the famous doughnuts-that-are-actually-beignets, which are soft and pillowy and dusted with sugar. It came with chocolate, caramel and raspberry sauces, the best of which was definitely the raspberry. We also got Mely's sister's reinterpretation of classic snack foods, including a revamped twinkie made instead with pound cake and creme fraiche, a revamped ding dong with chocolate cake and creme fraiche and ganache poured over, and something called a funny bone, which was a cone of white chocolate with peanut butter and chocolate inside.
My favorite was the twinkie, because hey, twinkie! Also, the caramel syrup on top had sunk into the pound cake a little, making the outside slightly crystallized and the inside still soft.
And then! They gave us a free chocolate sampler, which had little chocolate-covered crispy things, chocolate mint patties, three-layered chocolate mousse (dark, milk and white), chocolate panna cotta (creamy and thick and rich), chocolate sorbet with little bits of chocolate on the outside, and little pieces of chocolate cake.
I didn't make it to Chikalicious this time, but I feel this meal completely makes up for it.
I'm still behind on comments and behind on LJ; I suspect I will be for a good few months, as real life has started to get very busy.
Avenue Q
Even though I went in knowing about the problematic gender and racial representations, I was still bugged by them. A lot of this was because the role of Christmas Eve, the Japanese woman, was played by a white woman. I already had a lot of issues with Christmas Eve to begin with, but adding a white actress playing at the exaggerated accent and movements and clothing was very irritating. It was even stranger watching because one of the puppeteers who voiced the Bad Idea Bears and mostly moved puppets around was a Japanese woman.
Yeah. Very disturbing.
On the other hand, I did have fun with the show. Puppet sex will never not be funny, and I am amazed by the puppeteers and voice throwing and whatnot. I particularly enjoyed the "Fantasies Come True" number, which usually isn't my favorite song on the CD. This just goes to prove that shoujo bubbles and pink lights make everything ten times better.
Max Brenner, take two
For lunch the next day, my sister and I went back to Max Brenner to eat with her friend. This time around, I got to sample their savory crepes. My sister and I split one with a sunny-side-up egg and prosciutto in it, topped with the chili mayo sauce in a mad scientist flask. We also split a dessert waffle topped with strawberries, blueberries and bits of white chocolate, with chocolate sauce, creme fraiche and caramelized bananas in toffee sauce on the side.
It was incredibly good and incredibly filling as well. Mmmm.
Sadly, I have yet to find a good place in Bay Area for dessert waffles, which I think is a very profound lack in my life.
After lunch, my sister persuaded me that buying (yet more) peas at the Union Square market and lugging them around while shopping would be a very bad idea. Given that we got home around 7, I think she was right. Though I still miss the peas...
We wandered around Soho because I wanted to visit Purl Soho (a yarn store) and stopped by around 18 different clothing stores along the way. I didn't manage to find any clothes that I liked, but I did find a pair of ten-dollar flats that I got. I think I can wear them dancing. Also, they are pink!
We also managed to trudge over to BookOff at the very end of a long afternoon. Yay Bookoff! Sadly, I couldn't find more cheap $1 manga that I wanted, but I did manage to get some other stuff. I also persuaded my sister to get Emma vols. 3 and 4, so I feel the trip was rather successful.
Stanton Social
For dinner, me and the sister went to meet Mely at Stanton Social, where Mely's sister works as a pastry chef (so cool!!).
The Stanton Social is located waaay downtown on the east side, and it is very trendy, dark and noisy. Also, all the food is in the form of tapas or dim sum, which I highly approve of, as it means I get to try everything.
Well, usually when eating with my sister, we split everything anyway, but this made it much more seemly and polite to do so as opposed to my just forking stuff from across the table. I eat like a barbarian, I know.
The restaurant was extremely nice; several people came over to tell Mely how wonderful her sister was. Mely says she doesn't usually get this treatment, but it was still really neat. We ended up getting roasted corn brushed with salt and pepper (I think) and a creamy, spicy sauce; roasted asparagus with lemon juice squeezed on top (the bottoms were a little woody, but otherwise they were good); french onion soup dumplings; potato and onion pierogies; duck empanadas; peach and brie quesadillas; and the restaurant gave us an order of ribs and a little crostini with roasted zucchini (I think) on top as an amuse bouche.
The food was so very, very good. The french onion soup dumplings were served in an escargot bowl covered with melted cheese. Little bamboo skewers with croutons on top The dumplings themselves are bite-sized and filled with french onion soup; you're supposed to stuff the entire thing in your mouth. The insides were still a little hot, even after we'd finished off the ribs, but the soup was salty and sweet and carmelized and onion-y and a very cool take on Shanghainese soup dumplings. ("Food on a stick!" Mely said to me.)
I also loved the duck empanadas ("Does duck sound good?" I asked Mely. "I am always up for duck," she replied. "Excellent!") and the peach and brie quesadillas, which were served on top of chili honey. They were a little odd at first, but actually worked really well. Mely suggested those, asking if we were ok with that. My sister looked up with a huge grin and nodded vehemently. "I was just going to suggest that!" she said.
And then, dessert! I made everyone eat the famous doughnuts-that-are-actually-beignets, which are soft and pillowy and dusted with sugar. It came with chocolate, caramel and raspberry sauces, the best of which was definitely the raspberry. We also got Mely's sister's reinterpretation of classic snack foods, including a revamped twinkie made instead with pound cake and creme fraiche, a revamped ding dong with chocolate cake and creme fraiche and ganache poured over, and something called a funny bone, which was a cone of white chocolate with peanut butter and chocolate inside.
My favorite was the twinkie, because hey, twinkie! Also, the caramel syrup on top had sunk into the pound cake a little, making the outside slightly crystallized and the inside still soft.
And then! They gave us a free chocolate sampler, which had little chocolate-covered crispy things, chocolate mint patties, three-layered chocolate mousse (dark, milk and white), chocolate panna cotta (creamy and thick and rich), chocolate sorbet with little bits of chocolate on the outside, and little pieces of chocolate cake.
I didn't make it to Chikalicious this time, but I feel this meal completely makes up for it.
(no subject)
Tue, Jul. 10th, 2007 11:51 pm (UTC)::makes plans to fly to NYC and visit Mely::
::makes plans to let out waist on all my clothes when I come back::
(no subject)
Wed, Jul. 11th, 2007 12:36 am (UTC)Pretend twinkies! Foodonnastick! Soup dumplings!!!!!
I am now very hungry. Mmmmm, food.
(no subject)
Wed, Jul. 11th, 2007 02:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Thu, Jul. 12th, 2007 09:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jul. 12th, 2007 10:52 pm (UTC)