Continuing with our annual visits to New York (technically we’ve already been in 2008 way back in 
Jan with the rest of the fam but who’s counting 🙂 ) Pat and I flew out from London on Boxing Day. I was hoping for a white “Christmas” but apparently we missed most of the snow in the past week so when we got to New York it was a little 
nippy but not that much colder than London and with no snow in sight. How sad. But never mind, snow or no snow, I always have a fabulous time in New York and this visit has been no exception.
Our visit to New York was quite long this time for some reason. Most visits have been about a max but on this trip we were in New York for nearly a fortnight which, considering our numerous visits previously (this is my eight!!!), may seem excessive but somehow we managed to fill every day! Probably due in part to taking time out in the middle of our visit to drop in to Boston (for more on that visit see previous post!)
27 December 2008
On our first day in New York we hitched a ride in to lower Manhattan with our cousins in the early morning and started by having a nice stroll through Chinatown and Little Italy down to downtown. Suitably energised and filled from some quick pastries (Chinese and French) we then headed to Century 21 for some shopping. Best advice for shopping and general mobility in this bargain department store is to hit the place as early as you can. We got there just for opening (by chance) and 
within a couple of hours the place was packed with people, some polite, but also some a little aggressive and rude!
We ended up spending a couple of hours inside Century 21 by which stage I’d amassed a basket of goodies but had barely touched one of the other floors. I could easily have spent another couple of hours in there! But by then we were keen to grab some lunch. Pat had researched some barbecue places for us, gotta love American barbecue, and somehow, rather than choose somewhere nearby, we made it from downtown all the way up to Virgil’s BBQ at Times Square!! Half walking half catching the subway when we got bored of walking. At Virgil’s we shared some spiced-flour onion rings for a starter (a pretty big serve in all honesty) and then had a two-meat bbq combo platter (ribs and beef brisket for me.) Disappointingly I could only eat two sticks of my ribs! I couldn’t believe it!
28 December 2008
Our highlight on this day was a visit to Ninja New York. I don’t know how I came across this restaurant but it sounded very intriguing and promising an interesting dining experience. The website talks about ninjas, special “ninja art” dishes and entertainment. It certainly delivers and for this reason requires its own blog entry.
02 Jan 2009
On the second day of the New Year Pat had organised for us to do a Foods of New York tour of the Chelsea Markets. This is one of those places that shows that even having visited New York on 
numerous occasions before you can always find something new to do. The Chelsea Markets are a very cool and funky place. They even have free wifi there which requires you to “ .. promise to refrain from any hanky panky. Or anything that would make anyone cranky. Anything [you] do with [the] connection that is lame [You] absolve Chelsea Market et al of any blame.” Cute huh?
Chelsea Markets are housed in the old Nabisco factory complex where the delicious but politically 
incorrect Oreo cookie was invented (strangely enough for British consumers who thought that other cookies produced by Nabisco were too plain!)
Our tour guide was a local stand-up comedian so he was very funny and he seemed to know quite a few people in the food industry and have connections with various restaurants. Actually he said he used to 
be a waiter for Martha Stewart at one of these posh Japanese restaurants and boy did he have a lot of stories about her including the fact that she always wanted to use the private tatami room in the Japanese restaurant but without paying. Also, she apparently always went through every item on the bill and on one occasion questioned one of the 
drinks. He replied by saying that her guest had ordered it and she said I didn’t say they could do that. Imagine begrudging one drink!
The tour started off pretty well with sample foods including a cookie from the cupcake store (Elenis), chocolate milk from Ronnybrook Dairy, Italian goods (cold meats, cheese etc.) from Buon Italia, 
scones and jam (though not allowed to call it jam as it was missing a particular ingredient – had to be called fruit preserve) from Sarabeth’s, tea from The T Salon, chutney and cheese and salts (including an interesting vanilla salt) from I think Chelsea Market Baskets, and ice-cream from L’ Arte Del Gelato 
(pumpkin flavoured for me!) It sounds like a lot but they were only little sample portions and after that there was no more food. Admittedly a couple of places were closed for the holidays, like The Lobster Place, so we missed out on a bit. One of the interesting facts was that many shops have historically had their rent fixed for a certain time at something like $5,000 a month compared with new tenants who can pay in the vicinity of $45,000 a month! Pretty steep!
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In place of the closed shops/restaurants our took guide also took us into Iron Chef Morimoto and Iron Chef Batali’s restaurants but only for a look and to tell some stories. We then left the Chelsea Market are and did a quick run through the meatpacking districting and to a friend’s $9 million brownstone. Admittedly now it’s a B&B but it was nice to get inside a Manhattan home to see what one looks like. Finally he took us up to this place called the loft on the top of Hotel Gansevoort from which we had sweeping views across the are and from where we could also see a rooftop pool that featured in Sex and the City.
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03 Jan 2008
This day dawned really bright and beautiful so we decided to spend some time in Central Park admiring the sights. We found there were heaps of people also doing the same – in particular runners who were no doubt trying to work off their festive season eating!
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We then headed over to NBC for a studio tour. This tour, given by pages working at NBC, was slightly disappointing as it probably lasted just under an hour and felt like most of the time we were getting 
shuffled between floors. The tour started with a video which was about 10 minutes long before we moved on to a news stage, Conan O’Brien’s studio (super small and they use all sorts of tricks, like having rounded edges on things and Conan and the band pretending to shout at each other even though they were actually only about a metre or two apart, to make the studio appear bigger than it actually is for TV), the SNL stage, a small costume room (where we saw yet another video) and finally we got to see two of the audience have a go at reading the news and doing the weather. The last time I did this tour in 2003 I got to see Matthew McConaughey rehearsing for SNL! No celebs this time unfortunately.
After the tour we headed to Katsuhama for some katsu before heading home so that we could get ready to join my cousins Kathleen and Audrey and Audrey’s bofriend Andres, for Buddha Bar. Actually Pat didn’t need to primp and preen like us girls did so returning home early was mainly for my benefit 🙂
Buddha Bar is a trendy restaurant located in the meatpacking district with reasonable quality (though slightly over-priced) food. I made the mistake of allowing Kathleen to ask for bottled still water and we 
ended up finishing four bottles between the five of us at $8 a bottle! Ridiculous. I know that it’s a trendy restaurant etc. but I’m disappointed with the bottled water option. They even treated the water like wine/champagne by placing it into ice buckets! But moving away from this complaing, Buddha Bar is quite an attractive restaurant including the jellyfish behind the bar, there is also the trademark giant Buddha (though unfortunately we weren’t sitting in the same room as the Buddha), high ceilings and lots of brown/warm colours. Our waiter was actually pretty funny and fairly attentive though when another, bigger table, sat by us he had to then split his attention between the two of us and was not as responsive or attentive as I would have liked. I think that everyone enjoyed themselves though which is the main thing.
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04 Jan 2008
Two words only are required for today’s entry: Woodbury Common. Ha ha. Not much to say about Woodbury Common except its an awesome place to go shopping. Loads of shops and cheap prices! The only low point of the day were the super-aggressive Chinese women in Coach. Kathleen reckons they were all in the shop to grab bags to replicate! We got out of there pretty darn quick that’s for sure. Its always one of the more popular shops in Woodbury Common even having to implement nightclub style entry sometimes!
05 Jan 2008
Today Pat had arranged lunch with his mate Karl so I spent my time just wandering around with no real destination in mind. I managed to get around all over the place and even made it so far as A&F from 34th street – it felt like quite a walk. If you’ve ever seen A&F models you would think they all came 
from the store. It is totally intimidating being in there with all the staff being way too beautiful to be true. They aren’t necessarily models but hot damn they are attractive. I wanted to get a photo with the half-naked guy at the front of the store (ha ha) but I didn’t manage it as I had to run back down to Madison Square Garden to meet Pat for tour (a tour we probably shouldn’t have bothered with it turns out!)
The tour was horrible. It started with a 15 minute video on the place. Okay fair enough its important to put the tour into context etc. but really – the tour was supposed to be an hour (it turned out to be much 
much shorter than that) and 25% of it is watching a video? Our tour guide was totally awful. There were so many awkward moments where we were just sitting around looking and waiting for him to say something. Plus he rolled his eyes constantly which was totally annoying. We got to hear from one of the cheer girls, dressed in her skimpy cheer out fit, though that proved a little awkward in itself. She did her little speech but no one had questions and no one wanted a photo with her. Think we were all a bit shy to do so! Then we were taken to some private grill area. Uh … boring – could have gone there ourselves without the tour. Then we were taken to a private corporate box. Our tour guide couldn’t even tell us how much the boxes went for. Then finally he took us down to some ring-side seating. At least we got to see some action via the children’s ice hockey game that was just starting as we reached ring-side (although that meant we missed out on going into the locker rooms!)
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And then, after some more weird silence, that was basically the end of the tour. $18.50 later and 40 minutes later we were done. The biggest waste of money ever. Even the NBC studio tours was a little bit better as it at least had decent tour guides who gave us some funny stories and we got to see some “private” areas.
By then it was about mid-afternoon and just before we were meeting Kathleen and Audrey for dinner in the Village at Sushi Samba so we decided to have some afternoon tea dessert at Max Brenner’s – chocolate by the bald man. You can also get ordinary food at Max Brenner’s but, if you have time, you must go there for the desserts.
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They are quite extensive so don’t fill up on lunch or dinner too much before hand. I decided to go for a white hot chocolate with crunchy bits PLUS a chocolate pizza which only came in a half pizza portion! It was so rich – a pizza base topped with milk chocolate, white chocolate plus marshmallows. Delicious for the first bite but definitely way too much after a couple of bites.
We then headed to SushiSamba where were proceeded to have probably the best food I’ve this visit to NY. Except for Audrey, who has quite a small appetite, we all got pretty carried away with our food 
choices. I ended up having a Antichucho, a hot appetizer, a samba roll (actually about six pieces of ngiri style sushi) an entrée AND dessert. The waitress initially told us that the non-entrees weren’t very big but really they were huge. Combined with the Max Brenner we’d just eaten I was done after the Antitchucho and the hot 
appetezier. SushiSamba is a very attractive place with the dominant colours in the restaurant being oranges and yellows. The wait staff are fairly attractive too and though our waitress was okay the fact that she walked away at one stage with us still having questions about the menu wasn’t very good. She probably thought she was being cute most of the night but really we just wanted to know about the food. The fusion of Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian meant there was heaps on the menu that we didn’t know about. In fact, the way she seemed to sell it was that we should leave it up to her to bring out 
selections of food for us until we said we were full rather than us having to choose. But as we had different tastes we wanted to choose something for ourselves.
Food-wise SushiSamba really delivers. It was super fine. The ingredients were clearly very fresh, superbly seasoned and, to my pleasure, offered some very unique combinations like the sushi samba roll I had called El Topo which consisted of salmon, jalapeño, shiso leaf, fresh melted mozzarella, and crispy onion. Nice! In addition to tasting good and looking good, you can also have a decent meal for a very reasonable price – if you don’t go overboard like we did that is! Well, I thought so anyway.
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On the busier nights the restaurant even has a DJ and in the summer the roof top opens up for a very pleasurable dining experience. Reservations are definitely recommended in this restaurant for later dinners, weekends or in their peak. Otherwise you’re like to wait up to two hours for a spot and that may only be at the sushi bar. In another Sex and the City reference this is where the girls like to eat!
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06 Jan 2008
We kind of had a recovery day and stayed local to Flushing. But the day couldn’t pass without us indulging in a least one meal and that was Korean’s answer to KFC – Chicken BonChon which serves Korean Fried Chicken. Next to my Dad and my Mum’s fried chicken 🙂 this has to have been some of 
the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. The chicken is cooked to order so you know at least its fresh. It may take up to 25 minutes between ordering and munching but the wait is worth it. You might pass the time eating their Popcorn Shrimp which, garnished with oregano and what appeared to be parmesan, is delicious. Be warned though that the minimum size order of chicken pieces (wings, drummettes, drumsticks) is about eight pieces so don’t stuff yourself with preliminaries too much. The chicken comes in two flavours – Soy-Garlic (a touch on the sweet side) and Spicy (very very spicy!) Both were fantastic and the chicken remained hot and juicy until the last bite was swallowed. True to their word none of the marinade or oil on the chicken hangs around on your hands. I don’t know how they managed it but it was like magic. Mmm .. my mouth is watering just thinking about how tasty it was!
07 Jan 2008
Our final day in New York was spent squeezing in a few more touristy type things. As predicted by BBC the weather was pretty awful today – heavy rain (yes they actually got it right.) Well, it wasn’t 
quite as heavy as I imagined but it was persistent enough to be annoying and for me to actually use my umbrella you know it had to be quite drenching. As most people know I hate using my umbrella.
Highlights were: free access to the Sony Wonderlab, free tour of the New York Public Library (which prides itself on allowing anyone to access its resources – they even have this reading room which is something like six football fields big? and it’s a truly beautiful building. Ironically this free tour was better even than the NBC and Madison Square Gardens tours!) and quick stop in to Serendipity 3 where we had the largest frozen mint hot chocolate you could imagine!
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According to wikipedia in November 2007 Serendipity unveiled a $25,000 dessert called the “Frrrozen Haute Chocolate,” which Guinness World Records declared the world’s most expensive desert. Now, the menu simply offers a dessert for $1,000. You know, if you can spare the change. Serendipity 3 is also famous for being a favourite hangout celebs including Marilyn Monroe.
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New York – Done!