[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: 20 October, 2008]
A musical week kicked off with The Jazz Passengers at the Jazz Standard, a venue which has thrived in the same basement off Park Avenue for more than a decade, and at some point acquired Blue Smoke BBQ as its upstairs neighbor.
I am struggling to think what was upstairs ten years ago. Just a bar? In any case, the Passengers had attracted my attention to their brand of perky, poppy urban jazz by releasing an album featuring Debbie Harry's smoky, deadpan vocals. That was Individually Twisted, and I'd already seen the band play, fronted by Ms Harry and her deathless cheekbones, at the Jazz Café in Camden Town, London.
At this gig, she nursed a glass of something at the back of the room, but joined them on-stage for "Olé" and "Dontcha Go 'Way Mad." I don't know what she was drinking, but I was working on some very strong Knob Creek Manhattans.
I'd lined my stomach previously at Les Halles, then a very reliable if over-crowded brasserie, presumably with an unknown Tony Bourdain wearing his fingers to the bone in the kitchen. Frisée aux lardons was followed by boudin noirs, a couple of them, with mashed potatoes. I ordered Tavel, because getting through a bottle of that solo over dinner is never a problem. No wonder the Manhattans went to my head.
The middle of the week was taken up with writing an introduction to a friend's book of photos (Liberty by Steven Burrows, which now fetches a high price if you can ever find a copy). The next dinner of note was taken at a restaurant which prospered very briefly in the space once occupied by the old French war-horse Le Chantilly.
The restaurant was David Ruggiero, named for its chef, of course, who had cooked at Le Chantilly and had now broken out his own cuisine and was on the way to Food Network and cookbook fame. Things fell apart the following year thanks to some irregularities with credit card slips (the story here if you need it). I was dining there on an expense account, as it happened, and liked the modern, simple lines of the restaurant which had emerged from Le Chantilly's wedding cake interior.
A ceviche was followed by noisettes of venison with cranberries and an unusual prune gratin - all very suitable for fall. Two Californian cabernets joined us at table.
On my way to more music on Mercer Street the following night, I dined for the first time at Lucky Strike, the eclectic SoHo bistro. It used to be quite a scene, but I trust I wasn't unduly distracted from duck spring rolls and steak au poivre with pommes frites. I might add, how rarely one eats this way now. Simpler times.
The entertainment was a line-up of usual Bottom Line suspects draping themselves in moptops and bell-bottoms to perform songs of the British Invasion. Joe McGinty and Marshall Crenshaw, of course - names with which I gradually became familiar - and even Richard Lloyd, formerly of Television.
The Bottom Line is departed, of course, as is the restaurant I visited the following evening, Sonia Rose - a fairly smart French bistro in Murray Hill at a location which is now a hotel. It was a bit like a less ambitious Alison on Dominick - all crisp tablecloths and long-stemmed single flowers in vases.
Tartelette des escargots to start, then rack of lamb accompanied - allegedly - by nine vegetables (no, my journal doesn't list them). Strawberries and crême anglaise - custard, as it's actually called in England - followed, and for some unfathomable reason a Cakebread Chardonnay was drunk. I can only think I was with someone who was eating fish.
Finally, for this edition, after a few hours struggling to comprehend the World Series at P.J. Carney's, I hit Redeye Grill for a late supper - again presumably with a guest, as the menu included crab handrolls, popping shrimp, their large lobster Cobb salad and a two-pound lobster. Diamond Jim Brady I am not, so someone must have helped put that lot away.
But maybe I was simply building up my strength. Next week: I move apartments.
