Alright, last post about the past month in New York. It was originally supposed to be about my activities outside of work, but since all we seem to ever do is eat at various restaurants, this has essentially become a restaurant log. There’s also a bunch of places we’ve been to that I never caught the name of. Shame. But anyway, here goes:

The downside of working a lot is that it’s hard to do things during the week. I basically have no time whatsoever from Monday through Friday. I actually didn’t do laundry for the first time until this past weekend – I just kept buying more clothes and underwear, no joke. Right afterwards, I went online and bought more stuff from Victoria’s Secret so I could toss the crap I’d purchased from Duane Reade. Yuck.

Instead, I keep most of my social engagements on the weekends so that I don’t end up canceling on people all over the place and feeling like a jerk. Luckily, people have been in and out of New York every weekend so it’s been pretty fun with sooo much good, delicious, savory, flavorful food. For example, Heartland Brewery has really good mini-burgers.

My first weekend after starting work, I spent most of the time with Rita shopping in Soho and checking out little boutiques. At some point, we went out to a little restaurant called the Barking Dog, where we ate outside in this stone fountain area thing. Quite lovely with pretty good food, depending on what you order. Later we went to Cafe Zaiya because they have really great cream puffs. I also got together with Bo and Chen, who are both also working in the city, but we basically walked around, ate at Monster Sushi and ended up going to the Mac store for some reason. Whatever.

Second weekend, Kasey and Jules strolled into town – yay! So, all us IB kids got together again and went to some very, very random Chinese restaurant in (where else) Chi-town and got gelato afterwards in Little Italy. Also, there was this French restaurant later where Bo tried to hit on the waitress. The great thing about hanging out with other Asian people is that we can do family-style food which is always fun. Chen brought some friends and gave me a sew-it-yourself Monster doll — I’m waiting for a time to do it when I can give it the full attention it deserves.

Oh, when I met up with Rita and her friend Chelsea, we went to this really cute restaurant painted in blue that I need to remember to get the name of. We had a really overzealous waitress who listed off specials for at least a couple minutes. It was a little weird. That, and the crepe place (called Crepe Creations) we went to afterwards that had no food. Seriously. We tired to order stuff and each time they said they didn’t have chocolate, or didnt’ have “fluff” whatever that is but it’s in half their menu or whatever else. When they finally had the stuff, they ran out of apples in Rita’s apple crepe and they ran out of whipped creme and substituted powdered sugar on mine. I know the guy was no Mario Batali, but come on – whipped cream and powdered sugar are so not the same thing.

The weekend after that was busy, to say the least. My sister was in town, so we got together with two of her friends, Monica and Theresa, both people from Plano. Also, Rita came in again, but with James and Ben, so of course we have to get together. It’s funny how people always seem to be colliding here — at the same time, both Brown and Beam – Emory people – were in town, too, and they managed to run into Suhas in the subways on the one day she came into town. My sister and I ended up hanging out with her friends during the day and my friends at night, basically. It’s not worth detailing out everything that went down, but it essentially was a really fun weekend. I also went to, like, five really good restaurants that weekend and ate a lot.

RESTAURANTS INCLUDED:
Havana with the Asian crew, New Yeah Shanghi Deluxe as well as Sala with Monica and Geg, Smorgas Chef and Choux Factory thanks to Theresa (and Geg), and finally I think the Emory kids went to Tigerland but I’m not sure. It was good.

My sister managed to miss her flight out three times in a row (okay, twice it was because she was standby, but still.) The last night she was here, we went to a Japanese restaurant near my place, and for dessert, we ordered some banana sushi concoction out of curiosity. After some slight confusion regarding complementary green tea ice cream (I wanted to know where the bananas were) – it was actually really good.

Finally, this past weekend, my fourth weekend in New York, marking my first full month to be in the big city, was Rita’s birthday! Her not-quite-surprise party was held at Gyu-Kaku, and I met a ton of her friends from high school. Justin showed up because he was in town visiting Stephanie, as well as James and Jimmy-James. Justin ditched us to go to a ballet. Uncool, man. Uncool. Chaussie was also in town for Rita’s 21st, so we all hung out afterwards (Halal on 53rd and 6th, Dylan’s Candy Bar and the ever-reliable Jamba Juice), as Rita went out and got crunk with her high school people.

Anyway, that’s my story up until this point. I have half and hour before work starts, so off to breakfast. Ciao!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 1:28 am and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Tags: New York, Restaurants