A Weekend in NYC (Part 1 - Thursday + Friday)

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We're back!

We're pooped.

We walked, as we do.

We ate, as we do.

We drank, as we do.

It was a GREAT weekend. The show itself was on Saturday, so most of Saturday I worked at the venue, save for a few hours out with Jay and to change before the show started. But let's start from the beginning! We got in Thursday night, and promptly raced to Angelo's Pizza for dinner. We didn't know if we'd have another opportunity for pizza, and this place was right around the corner from our hotel. The pizza was GREAT, and we had the moment where we were all NYC IS SO EXPENSIVE WTF, but it was well worth it.

Thursday after dinner our sound guy and friend, Carl, came in from NC, so we met him for a super late drink in our hotel - The Hudson. The hotel featured lots of bars, all full of very pretty people and excessively loud music, which Jay hated with a fiery passion. We went to "the quietest bar," according to a staffer," which included $16 martinis and loud people. But chairs, so we were OK with it. Our hotel room itself was one of the most micro that we've ever experienced in the city - Jay's knees touched the wall when he sat down on the toilet (he isn't even 6 feet), and there was about 1.5 feet of space on either side of the bed - no exaggeration. I DO NOT know how anyone larger than average size would exist in the hotel. BUT the water pressure was killer and the toiletries included things like cilantro conditioner, so all was not bad. I will say, if you ever do this hotel be aware that there is a $20/day resort fee that includes actually nothing, and I'm working to get removed from my final bill because basically it's just a hotel with bars, nothing terribly resort-ish about the experience. I will say that the hotel pumps some kind of incredible green-tea-verbena type of smell into the lobby, so maybe they have to charge extra for that. It smells kind of amazing.

But. Friday! All week the forecast for rain had been super high, and we were basically planning on our one touristy day to have to be inside. We woke up to....gray skies and no rain! It was fabulous. From our hotel near Central Park we walked all the way down to East Village for lunch - the walk was about 3 miles so we allowed ourselves a high-calorie coffee drink from Pret-a-Manger on the way, AND we decided to have lunch at two places - an appetizer and a main course. Because NYC. First up was Momofuku Ssam Bar, which was recommended to us by our friend Dan. We were obsessed with the idea of trying it out because we recently watched the first season of Mind of a Chef with David Chang and I want to marry him, so eating at one of his restaurants was the next best thing given that I can't marry anyone else at the moment. It's an American-Asian fusion place, and DAYUM. It isn't fancy or large, the menu is simple, and everything is amazing. We tried the Pork buns because they were supposed to be great, and they were GOOD, but definitely not my favorite. Good sauce, fine pork, good squishy bun. But that was kind of it.

The best thing ever EVER, though, was the apple kimchi with bacon and yogurt. Weirdest sound thing ever, right? I know. But trust me, it was incredible. I was thinking this would be little bits of apple with toast or something, but the apple was covered in kimchi, not used to make it. So, we have this super crunchy sweet/spicy thing, and to cool it off we have a schmear of excellent yogurt, and some bacon crisped up just to remind ourselves that pig tastes good. This appetizer was probably one of the best things we ate all weekend.

Then, since we still needed "lunch," we went to Shabu Tatsu, a shabu shabu place that kept coming up on every search I entered. If you've never had shabu shabu, it's a Japanese dining experience that involves lots of raw ingredients boiled in a broth at your table. The broth is mainly water flavored with a bit of seaweed, but after you cook more and more veggies and meats you end up creating a more flavorful broth as the meal goes on. The meal includes rice, salad, and ice cream at the end, and this particular experience was just lovely. The service was great, the prices were reasonable (DEFINITELY go at lunch for that feature), and we drank Japanese beer and ate paper-thin slices of beef until we thought we might bust.

After our lunch, we decided to walk around the East Village a bit and then head back to the hotel to get ready for our nighttime activities. We stopped by McNulty's Tea Shop to get a little gift for my mom (holy shit the smell in there was incredible), and we stopped by Comedy Cellar to pretend that we were famous.

Then, at the recommendation of our friend Matt we wandered into Murray's Cheese Shop which is AN EXPERIENCE, and one that really made me with we lived in a bigger city - I could easily live on takeout or places like this if I did! The smell in here was heavenly as well.