[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: January 4, 2010]
Can it be ten years since we switched millennia? What became of the decade? All I know is that it has become a tradition for me to enter most holiday seasons with some kind of bronchial condition and zero energy. And so it was at the end of 1999.
So there I was, holed up with a big cotechino acquired from Dom’s on Lafayette. I ate it, untraditionally, with a stew of black-eyed peas and drank Estancia cabernet. Then I ate it with lentils, which is more correct. I crawled out of my pit for the excellent revival of “Putting it Together,” the Sondheim anthology with a vague narrative theme, at the Ethel Barrymore. Sondheim veterans Carol Burnett George Hearn performed, with the British musical theater star Ruthie Henshall. Disturbingly, Wikipedia reports that Kathy Lee Gifford replaced Ms Burnett for some performances. Not while I was there.
So food, and a porky dinner at Eleven Madison Park in the days when one could actually still eat out in New York without facing a pork belly. Pied de porc pané to start, then a braise of pig cheeks with red cabbage and apple and some spätzle Still Kerry Heffernan under the tocque, of course. I am delighted to see that a bottle of Michel Ogier’s 1994 Côte-Rôtie helped the pork go down, and there was calvados to follow.
The medicine didn’t work, and all I managed to do on Christmas Eve was stumble down to the Drawing Center and examine the Situationist urban planner Constant’s wildly improbable plans for the “New Babylon.”
Friends offered lunch on Christmas Day, and what a lot of work they must have put into it. Foie gras and toast points, caviar or smoked salmon with dill sauce on blinis, Nicholas Feuillante N.V.. Then roast turkey with two stuffings, chestnut and sausage, gravy from the giblets, cranberry sauce and an array of vegetables. A 1997 Volnay Premier Cru. After cheeses, which I think constituted my contribution, Christmas pudding (plum pudding) with brandy butter and Quady’s Orange Muscat.
Did this cure me? No. There followed two days laid low with all the energy of a damp digestive biscuit. Then I had to emerge again or waste my ticket for one of Jackie Mason’s extended broadway monologues. And on December 29 I finally got out of the city, flying down to Santo Domingo to greet the next thousand years.
The Dominican Republic was, I thought, a safe haven should any kind of Y2K digital disaster strike, as the worst that could happen would be a power failure – a regular occurrence in any case. Counting down on December 30, I took dinner at the oldest grand hotel in the city, El Embajador: arroz negro followed by a whole red snapper and then a mango dessert. Cune Reserva 1995 from the inexpensive list.
The millennium crashed to the accompaniment of a lavish buffet: pernil asado, chivo guisado, pastelitos, ensalada de huevos y papas, spaghetti (or course), quipes, and dancing (or staggering) in the street until dawn. I felt a little better for this. The year 2000 arrived, the world failed to end, and after sleeping all day it was down to the Malecón for chimichurri. The start of another year of noshing.
