The weather was a bit raw and we wanted to trek around the Upper East Side.  So we did something that I have never done in NYC, we took the subway.  I have visited NYC more than twenty times and for whatever reason, have never been on the subway.  Colleen and I visit other cities often and always use their public transportation systems.  I guess in NYC the places that we visit are not too far away from one another.  With the gridded, numbered streets it seems that everything is only a few blocks away.  And I have never waited more than a minute for a taxi.  Anyway we took the subway to the Upper East Side and walked aimlessly for at least two hours.  After a cup of coffee we trained it back to mid-town.

Today’s culinary adventures started at Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain.  We wanted to begin on the lighter side, so we just two had appetizers; Alaskan Salmon Crudo with lime juice, cilantro, scallians and blue corn tortilla crunch and we also had a Crab, Mango, Coconut Cocktail.  It was a nice way to start

Our next stop was Gordon Ramsey’s Maze in the London NYC Hotel.  We did not last long there.  It was all chrome and glitz, not our style.  Though the bathrooms were pretty cool.  One over priced glass of Chardonnay and we were off to Del Posto, another Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich establishment.  Opulent is the best word to describe it.  High ceilings, dark wood, muted toned walls, not-as-comfy-as-they-look banquettes, beautiful flowers, suit wearing servers made you feel as though taking out a second mortgage to dine there would be a good idea.  Once again not really our style.  I was not trying to impress Randy.  We stayed for a glass of wine and a couple of tidbits; some very elegant and tasty lobster-tobiko tea sandwiches and these creamy yet crunchy little mozzarella things.  And we were off.

Next stop,was only a few steps away, in the same building.  Colicchio and Sons.  Yet another Tom Colicchio restaurant, was more our style with lots of brick, high ceilings, funky light fixtures and floor to ceiling windows over looking the meatpacking district.  We sat at the bar order whipped lardo on toast with some tangy yet sweet relish that I have know idea what the orange-ish main ingredient was.  Dried apricots?  We also got a bowl of slightly too lemony grilled squid and octopus with beans and watercress.  We finished our food and beer and headed back to Greenich Village.

Momofoku Ssam Bar, One of David Chang’s restaurants was our next stop.  Jon one of EVOO’s former cooks (whom I have mentioned in earlier posts) is a cook here.  We wanted to have dinner there while he was cooking.  We ordered a bunch of stuff, some of my favorites were pork buns, apple kimchee, thin sliced beef tendon and almost too spicy rice cakes.

After dinner we walked about a block, went into a random bar figuring we would have  couple of beers and to catch up with Jon.  Sitting at the bar was another former EVOO cook, Nick.  Whats even more coincidental is that Nick happens to be working the same position as Jon is at another one of David Chang’s restaurants.  It was just one of those weird things.

More tipsy than we (at least I) desired to be, we headed back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep. The morning was going to come too quickly…