[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: November 16, 2009]
A bit of catching up to do with the dusty old memoir. We had just squeezed past Hallowe'en 1999, as I recall, and it looks like the following week or two saw some casual dining around town.
Starting with a midscale Latin American restaurant on Third Avenue, Sonora - no longer extant. A duck and plantain salad - clearly a good idea, followed by oxtail with plantain and yucca crisps and an interesting parfait of chocolate and dulce de leche.
A couple of nights later I repaired to one of the city's legendary dives, still very much with us, the Famous Wakamba Bar just down from the Port Authority. You buzz your way in off the street, and if you speak no Spanish you're probably the only person drinking there who doesn't. Brooklyn the next day for the Museum of Art's reprisal of the Young British Artists' blockbuster show "Sensation." This show had done much to launch Damien Hirst, Jenny Saville, and Tracey Emin, to whom it would be impertinent to refer as a young turk. Doesn't this all take you back to a former mayoral regime? It was outside the Wakamba that police were to shoot an off-duty security guard suspected of being involved in drug dealing. It was the "Sensation" show which prompted the mayor's calls for suspension of public funding to museums displaying anti-religious art - in this case, he was concerned about Chril Ofil's rather lovely portrait of the Virgin which, like other of his works, uses elephant dung as a framing device. Giuliani. Yes, it really does seem like ten years ago now.
Following the show, off to Gage & Tollner, that 1879 gem more recently travestied into a TGI Friday's. Gaslit and formal, it still served an oyster dish named after Diamond Jim Brady, and followed it up with an elk chop paired with board tenderloin, with wild mushrooms and chestnuts. A Tyrrell's Estate Shiraz for the big meat dish - what a pleasure, and where do you see that kind of menu in New York now?
It was during this period that I started working my way through Paul Harrington's Cocktail , a book both wonderfully concise and generous with historical information. It has been the keystone of my drinks library ever since. The Maiden's Prayer and the Monkey Gland were features of this particular week, and after a couple of the former I went to watch Counting Crows at the Hammerstein Ballroom wrapped in a very pleasant glow.
Next culinary stop, Bondi Ristorante, an extinct Italian in the neighborhood about which I remember nothing. Fortunately, my diary lists what was eaten - smoked venison carpaccio, papardelle with quail ragú, truffled pheasant and wild board with African spices and cous cous - permitting me to infer that I went for a special game menu.
More entertainment a couple of nights later at Danny's Broadway Piano Bar at the Grand Sea Palace (Where Broadway Meets Bangkok) - a name I just love repeating. Piano, song, oysters and clams, shrimp rolls and crab cakes, and then sitting up late watching a TV show then somewhat new: Iron Chef. In Japanese.
