[Pink Pig Time Machine: January 2, 2017]
Christmas Eve 2006 fell on a Sunday, so it was home cooking for three days before climbing back aboard the restaurant wagon. I was reading Anna Karenina, wandering around Bay Ridge, and working my way through an on-demand Star Wars marathon, having skipped all the movies when they first came out.
Letcho at the Ukrainian National Restaurant
I also bid a sad farewell to one of my old haunts at its closing party...drum roll...Danny's Broadway Piano Bar and Skylight Room at the Grand Sea Palace, where Broadway Meets Bangkok. The late Jerry Scott hosting.
So, a reveillons for Christmas Eve:
Smoked salmon, hackleback caviar
Blood sausage, potato cake, mustard oil
Rack of venison, parsnip mash, cranberry-red wine sauce
Cheddar, Stilton
Mince Pies
Chartogne-Taillot NV; Contina Gran Reserva (Rioja) 1996; Dios Baco Oloroso
And the price to be paid for a Christmas Eve blow-out, a restrained Christmas Day lunch: braised turkey leg with a cranberry-pine nut-cream sauce and pumpkin raviolo. A drop of Sylvie Spielman's Riesling with that.
On the third day of Christmas (always Boxing Day to a Brit), more smoked salmon and the rest of the venison with chickpea fritters. Finally, on Wednesday, out to Gramercy Tavern--the Tavern Room--for smoked lobster followed by "fresh bacon" and cabbage. Worth noting that: despite the name, it was the first sighting (at a fancy place) of pork belly, a cut which would come to rule New York menus over subsequent years.
A couple of days of gallery going to finish the week: Brice Marden at MoMA, Pollock and "American Artists" at the Whitney; a huge show focused around the collector, Vollard, at the Met (Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse...everyone really); and a Dominican show at the Museo del Barrio. Sustenance: one day at the Ukrainian in the East Village (tripe soup, letcho); the next at Quality Meats: crab cocktail, roasted bone marrow, ribeye with corn brulée.
Finally, the pell mell of New Year's Eve, with an open bar at Manitoba's. Not much more to say about that.
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