NYC 2008 - Day 2

Tuesday (July 1)

After a late night we got up late breakfast at the Doubletree. I still have a little status there so we got breakfast for free. It was a nice enough buffet, the fruit was all fresh and the bacon had been cooked in the recent past. There was a sort of short-order cook doing waffles, pancakes, omlettes and fried eggs. He was a great guy and made me good food. I noticed that very few other people tipped him which is a shame since he is making great stuff to order and most of the tourists on line were probably free-rolling breakfast anyway. Jerks.

We had some subway issues...the train doesn't always go where I want it to but the Bangladeshi guy running the newsstand got us on the right line. I should also mention here that I bought my daily new york times from him as I will be trying to complete the puzzle everyday. As you may know from the movie Wordplay or just general nerdliness the puzzles printed in the nyt get harder from Monday to Sunday. I'm pretty good up to Wednesday though Wednesday is not always a sure thing. I have completed 1 Sunday puzzle in my short career but had to look up 2 words to put the last 2 letters in. Anyway I thought it would be soooo special to do the nyt crossword in ny...like in ny with an actual nyt paper get it? Monday was no problem and I was cruising on Tuesday but left it on a subway someplace and had to redo the whole thing to finish the last 25%.

We got off the train way, way downtown under Trinity church and walked by the WTC site. You couldn't see much and frankly I don't like going down there anyway. We took a brief trip through Trinity church and the tiny graveyard. Its an amazing place right in the middle of the canyons of skyscrapers. If not for all the dead people it would be as Tina said 'a great place to eat lunch outside every day'.

From there down a few blocks to Battery Park to get the ferry over to the statue. Battery park was full of people doing portraits and selling knick knacks. There were 2 of those silver dudes that stay motionless and then do the robot thing. They were in the full sun and it was hot and humid. Insane.

Fortunately this was one piece we had planned well and Tina had a reserved spot for us on the ferry and statue tour. The other schlubs had to wait in a 1 hour line in the freaking heat. We went through an airport style screening before getting on the boat and then another before going into the statue. You can't take anything bigger than a purse so I had to drop the backpack in the rental locker which was slick because it used fingerprint scans instead of a key to manage access. The security before the statute itself was the airpuff type. All the women wearing skirts/dresses giggled and blushed when the air hit them. Not sure why. Jackson got pulled out of line for having a hackey-sack in his pocket. They were cool about it but it makes me wonder what sort of corrosive chemicals are in what is obviously a chinese import.

If you haven't been to the statue I don't want to spoil it but its not as tall as you think. Not even close. It is still awesome and if you have any sense of history etc. you'll enjoy being there. Just saying it didn't freak me out climbing to the observation deck. Amazing views of Manhattan and NJ and also out the toward the bay where there were dozens of cargo ships lined up. The observation deck is not very wide so everyone is really scrunched together. A nice Aussie family in Harley Davidson t-shirts took a picture for us and we returned the favor. We also met a nice teacher from Miami that travels the world with here little kid (maybe 8) during the off times from school. That is kind of cool but I can't imagine how she affords it. We talked Scandinavia a bit her and the 2 Norwegian high schoolers over her au pare-ing.

Next the ferry takes you over to Ellis island. It was kind of late in the day so we just hit the highlights of the museum. They had some great 3-D graphical representations of demographic data on immigrants and a flag that was people on one side and a flag on the other. We also watched a movie about the immigrant experience narrated by Gene "Hoosiers" Hackman that left most of the audience misty. It's one thing to hear about how hard it was to get here and how great it was to see the statue. Its something else to hear a guy talking about having a life here that is not even possible to dream of back home and how by being here he came to believe that literally anything is possible. Personally I just had some dust in my eyes I think.

The one downside to this long hot part of the trip is the line standing. I know I've said it one million times but walking is for suckers and I can't stand getting herded around like cattle. There is alot of that on this trip but I'm not sure how to avoid it, that said its a requirement that you go.

Back to Battery Park to take the train so far uptown that we are going to leave Manhattan and visit the Bronx. This was a bad idea and I am damn lucky that it didn't end badly. We switched trains at one point and met a really friendly 'spanish' guy. I enquote-ify that because it took us a minute to sort out what he meant by 'spanish' food when he was making recommendations. In NY apparently 'spanish' is someone who speaks spanish and eats food from Puerto Rico. Once we had that sorted out he recommended a couple of places and warned me to be careful in the neighborhood I was venturing into. He also told me not to drink too much water, recent scienctifical (sic) thinking is that 8 cups is too much and it swells your internal organs or something. Not sure how to evaluate this so consider yourself on notice.

When we got off the train at 182nd and Gran Councourse it quickly became apparent that we would be taking a stroll through the hood to get to dinner. I encourage you to take a street view of the walk. It was fascinating. I'm pretty sure we saw 3 junkies freshly fixed staggering around. There were cops standing in pairs on several corners and everywhere were people sitting on stoops staring at the well-dressed (we were going to dinner after all) obvious tourists stomping around. No one hassled us we just got weird looks. Several times a black car would slow menacingly near us and honk his horn twice. I later found out these were gypsy cabs that could have saved us a 1 mile walk through the heat but no regrets of course. The first set of crazies we encountered were sitting outside what was a clearly labeled halfway house. These 5 women had probably 6 teeth between them and were caring on an animated screaming match prominently featuring the f-word. Did I mention I have my 2 kids (9 and 5) on this walk with me? no? Yeah...moving on. About 2 blocks away just when we though we'd made it a reallllllllly stoned/drunk guy took up station on the port wak and followed without talking for half a block. Finally I turned and said hello and accepted his offer to shake hands (obviously not a great move but keeping him civil seemed wise) and he eventually continued muttering and drifted away.

We made it to Roberto's finally and it was exactly what I wanted. Roberto (I later discovered) was on a cell phone in check chef pants and black jacket screaming in engtalish (english+italian+spanish) at what seemed to be a cook that didn't show up for work. It was a caricturare of an italian guy screaming at someone with the cigarette pasted on the lower lip just flailling wildly to keep the non phone hand free to make that gesture (upturned palm, fingers together like you were balancing an egg) for em-a-phas-a-sis. Inside it was more upscale than a red-check tablecloth red-sauce place (which I do like and would like to have found a good example of but didn't) but not overdone. It was kept dark and seemed to be filled with neighborhood types because many at the tables seemed to know each other. Roberto made the rounds throughout the night and sat down with several tables to chat. The hostess was a college senior, very cute and friendly who before we left made us a list of places to have lunch near the park the following day. Other than the people selling tickets on trains who were universally jerks we found the people we talked to to be incredibly friendly and hospitable. NYC gets a bad rap imo.

We got a table in the back and started with the Calamari e gamberi alla griglia ( Grilled calamari and shrimp served over a mesclun salad and drizzled with virgin olive oil and lemon) which the waiter divided up from the common plate he brought out. I don't prefer this method when eating with the kids but I appreciate that its their style and its fine. The calamari was really excellent, very fresh with just a hint of oil and lemon. None of the rubbery texture you get sometimes and I had to arm wrestle the 5 year old for the little tentacle-y bits. The shrimp were tiny but not overcooked which is easy to do and the salad and dressing was nice and light. A good refreshing start.

For dinner Sophia and Tina got specials and Jackson and I ordered off the menu. I had the Vitello piccante (Veal scallopine with hot cherry peppers and white wine sauce) which while good was a mistake. I'm a sucker for spice and big flavors and this was just some nice veal in a nice white wine with some pickled cherry peppers on top. It tasted like something i could make and that is fine but I expect a little more from a chef. The dish had no subtletly. There were 20 other things I wanted to get and they all would have been better. I am a jerk.

Jackson had ' Orecchiette con salsiccia e broccoli di rapa (Orecchiette with Italian sausage and broccoli rabe sautéed in garlic and oil)' but they subbed orecchiette for another name I couldn't catch. All the pasta was homemade and this was like orzo kind of but longer. They were very dense and a little flour-y (dumpling-esque?). A plate of that would make you gain 20 pounds. The sausage was very homemade had just a hint of some mild herb flavor that went great with the rabe. Btw, until this trip I had never heard of broccoli rabe but it turns out I loved it. Looking forward to trying the roast pork with broccoli rabe in Philly when we get back. The sauce was very light and not in the way at all. The only criticism of this dish was that this particular pasta was too heavy and kept us from finishing much. I even took some back to the hotel for a midnight snack but was stuffed after about 5 bites.

Tina had foil wrapped pasta with marscapone, artichoke, tomatoes and onions. I think it had a light kind of pesto and was very tasty.

Sophia had a plate of homemade ravioli stuffed with blue cheese and a sort of asparagus puree which sounded weird (the puree not the cheese) with a cream sage sauce. This was outstanding. The pasta melted in your mouth and the funkiness of the bluecheese went great with the sage-yness of the cream sauce. I didn't really taste much of the puree but I didn't care a bit. We fought for the scraps and licked the plate. We really should have ordered it again.

We had some wine with dinner (I took a pictue with the phone but the phone is now broken) which we liked and I even mixed some with water for the kids which they both liked. It was a super tuscan but thats all I remember. Stupid phone.

For Dessert the girls got Tiramisu (Light composition of Pavesini biscuits in a coffee liqueur mixture then layered with rich mascarpone and sprinkled with cocoa.) Jackson had Tartufo (Chocolate ice cream envelops a heart of vanilla with chocolate chip sprinkles) and I had the Bricciolata (Specialtv crumb cake made with Amaretto, chocolate chunks, fresh ricotta cheese & sliced almonds served with Hazelnut Gelato). My gelato was silly, it was a top 5 dessert of my life. The crumb cake was also outstanding, moist and delicious.

So as not to take any chances we had the waiter get us a cab to get to the subway stop. The ride back was uneventful except for the drunk guy in a kind of half squat near the door for the first 4 stops. He looked like he was going to poop on the floor but had fallen asleep and somehow perfectly balanced himself so that he didn't even rock with the train. It was very zen. After him we got crazy repeating guy. He got on and began addressing the train though not loudly saying "whatever, Americans say whatever" over and over again but changing inflection some each time so it sounded like a conversation. He would occasionally riff onto short bridges of "don't follow her she don't love you no more" or "smell of coffee, I like the smell of coffee".