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Okay, we've just gotten through disc 2 of season 1. On the odd chance anyone is still looking to not be spoiled ( Read more... )
Feb. 17th, 2008
A few weeks ago for restaurant week we went to Megu. Patty chose the restaurant this time (as I had chosen Jojo for her return from Cyprus), but it has two locations, midtown and Tribeca. Being the woman I once was, of course I said Tribeca, and it the experience was just strange.
I am used to eating at very good restaurants. I am also used to eating at the new popular impossible to get a table at restaurants, as I did that sort of thing not infrequently once upon a time. But I'm not really used to eating at hip scenester restaurants, and so had no idea what I was in for.
We arrived 20 minutes early for an 8:30 reservation. We had to wait on a long line involving a velvet rope to check in at a desk that looked like it belonged in a hotel, and then we were given a beeper thing (which Patty had only seen before at chain restaurants, but I remembered from some other random Tribeca excursion way past).
We went into the bar room, which was dark and red and crowded and had some sexy but unidentifiable dance music on (the genre of which I will not try to name as I don't know what any of them are called anymore) that all sort of bled together. People were loud and young in a "I'm 28 and a rising star at my company" sort of way, and on some deep, instinctual level, I was terrified of them all.
Until I started playing the game where I tried to figure out what people's careers were, who was sleeping with who, where they live, what their dirty little secrets were. That was fun, and since I was once one of those people too, I probably wasn't all that inaccurate.
We did not get seated until 9:20. Let's recap. 8:10 arrival, 8:30 reservation, 9:20 seating. I found this highly objectionable.
"Someone will lead you downstairs now," we were told and then went on this long walk through the cavernous space (where oddly, I'd gone to a dot.com wharehouse party for Microsoft, I think, with some famous band playing back in the day). I was extremely aware of the hostess being much better looking than me and her horsey pride in it. I thought something uncharitable in response. It is strange to live in a city where the message is often that one is not even good enough to serve food, even as you consume that expensive food. New York, for all its aristocracy and even moreso, pretentions there to, reminds you constantly that you are part of the fat, ugly corruption of it. It is a strange thing.
The main room was two caverous stories high, you could have probably, technically fit three in there. The centerpiece was a giant ice-sculpture of the Buddha, melting, and covered in rose petals. We were seated so I was facing it, and I noticed a small white feather accidentally stuck to the top of it's head.
"It makes me think of Elua and the doves," I hissed at Patty, who laughed.
The tables were large and the chairs reclined backwards. It was lovely and decadent and powerful feeling, except for the part where the restaurant was too loud for us to hear each other that way, and so we had to sit on the edges of our seats, hunched over the table if we wanted to talk. Often we didn't, more in awe of the batshit conversations on either side of us, and my trying to determine if some boy band I had never heard of was dining on the other side of the restaurant -- they had the right clothes and hair, and seemed princely as they were led through tables, and introduced to other important looking diners.
We chose to forgo the restaurant week menu, instead getting a large quantity of sushi, which was extremely excellent and among the best I've had here and fairly competative with what I had in Australia. Certainly the selection was stunning, especially when it came to cuts of tuna.
Occassionally, waiters would shout something out, but I was unclear of what -- if this was just communication amonst staff in a busy restaurant or if this was happening every time someone ordered the $180 kobe beef. If so, I thought that was terrible gauche, but I never really did figure it out although I was somwhat put in mind of American Psycho.
When the sushi came, it did not have wasabi on the platter. Our waiter, who I must pause to note was a handsome imp of a boy whose flirtatiousness and solicitude was desireable in perhaps the least appropriate way I have ever encountered in another human being (and was fun because he knew it) in a public setting, arrives with a fresh chunk of the wasabi root. He notes that this has been grown organically on some land they own, and then procedes to grind it right there on a paddle covered in shark skin. He demonstrates this, presents it to me, does this whole show and tell like it's wine -- I know how to do that show and tell, I don't know how to do this one -- and all I can think is paddle, sharkskin, impish waiter, fucking ice sculpture, are you serious?
It was, nearly unfortunately, the best wasabi I've ever had.
We had matcha citron creme brulee for desert, and I wrote a long note on the comment card after we paid, inforing the waiter that he was ridiculous and wonderful and bitching about the noise, tablesize and long wait on our reservation.
I sighed contentdly holding Patty's hand on the long walk through Tribeca to the subway, a bit bitersweet at how all of this was magic that no longer mattered to me, not really, but it was still funny, that life lost.
And for all of it, I'd really like to go back. Maybe with a group this time, with the only requirement that we all be keen on the absurdities of it, because I can not do that shit with anyone who takes it seriously. Because I am so not 28 and a rising star in any fucking company thank you.
I am used to eating at very good restaurants. I am also used to eating at the new popular impossible to get a table at restaurants, as I did that sort of thing not infrequently once upon a time. But I'm not really used to eating at hip scenester restaurants, and so had no idea what I was in for.
We arrived 20 minutes early for an 8:30 reservation. We had to wait on a long line involving a velvet rope to check in at a desk that looked like it belonged in a hotel, and then we were given a beeper thing (which Patty had only seen before at chain restaurants, but I remembered from some other random Tribeca excursion way past).
We went into the bar room, which was dark and red and crowded and had some sexy but unidentifiable dance music on (the genre of which I will not try to name as I don't know what any of them are called anymore) that all sort of bled together. People were loud and young in a "I'm 28 and a rising star at my company" sort of way, and on some deep, instinctual level, I was terrified of them all.
Until I started playing the game where I tried to figure out what people's careers were, who was sleeping with who, where they live, what their dirty little secrets were. That was fun, and since I was once one of those people too, I probably wasn't all that inaccurate.
We did not get seated until 9:20. Let's recap. 8:10 arrival, 8:30 reservation, 9:20 seating. I found this highly objectionable.
"Someone will lead you downstairs now," we were told and then went on this long walk through the cavernous space (where oddly, I'd gone to a dot.com wharehouse party for Microsoft, I think, with some famous band playing back in the day). I was extremely aware of the hostess being much better looking than me and her horsey pride in it. I thought something uncharitable in response. It is strange to live in a city where the message is often that one is not even good enough to serve food, even as you consume that expensive food. New York, for all its aristocracy and even moreso, pretentions there to, reminds you constantly that you are part of the fat, ugly corruption of it. It is a strange thing.
The main room was two caverous stories high, you could have probably, technically fit three in there. The centerpiece was a giant ice-sculpture of the Buddha, melting, and covered in rose petals. We were seated so I was facing it, and I noticed a small white feather accidentally stuck to the top of it's head.
"It makes me think of Elua and the doves," I hissed at Patty, who laughed.
The tables were large and the chairs reclined backwards. It was lovely and decadent and powerful feeling, except for the part where the restaurant was too loud for us to hear each other that way, and so we had to sit on the edges of our seats, hunched over the table if we wanted to talk. Often we didn't, more in awe of the batshit conversations on either side of us, and my trying to determine if some boy band I had never heard of was dining on the other side of the restaurant -- they had the right clothes and hair, and seemed princely as they were led through tables, and introduced to other important looking diners.
We chose to forgo the restaurant week menu, instead getting a large quantity of sushi, which was extremely excellent and among the best I've had here and fairly competative with what I had in Australia. Certainly the selection was stunning, especially when it came to cuts of tuna.
Occassionally, waiters would shout something out, but I was unclear of what -- if this was just communication amonst staff in a busy restaurant or if this was happening every time someone ordered the $180 kobe beef. If so, I thought that was terrible gauche, but I never really did figure it out although I was somwhat put in mind of American Psycho.
When the sushi came, it did not have wasabi on the platter. Our waiter, who I must pause to note was a handsome imp of a boy whose flirtatiousness and solicitude was desireable in perhaps the least appropriate way I have ever encountered in another human being (and was fun because he knew it) in a public setting, arrives with a fresh chunk of the wasabi root. He notes that this has been grown organically on some land they own, and then procedes to grind it right there on a paddle covered in shark skin. He demonstrates this, presents it to me, does this whole show and tell like it's wine -- I know how to do that show and tell, I don't know how to do this one -- and all I can think is paddle, sharkskin, impish waiter, fucking ice sculpture, are you serious?
It was, nearly unfortunately, the best wasabi I've ever had.
We had matcha citron creme brulee for desert, and I wrote a long note on the comment card after we paid, inforing the waiter that he was ridiculous and wonderful and bitching about the noise, tablesize and long wait on our reservation.
I sighed contentdly holding Patty's hand on the long walk through Tribeca to the subway, a bit bitersweet at how all of this was magic that no longer mattered to me, not really, but it was still funny, that life lost.
And for all of it, I'd really like to go back. Maybe with a group this time, with the only requirement that we all be keen on the absurdities of it, because I can not do that shit with anyone who takes it seriously. Because I am so not 28 and a rising star in any fucking company thank you.