Day 2: New York

Day 2: New York

Weather: Cool and sunny (50s) to cool and overcast (50s) to cool and a slight rain (50s)

Pics: Fitness center, shots from our hotel room on the 28th floor, the High Line Park and vicinity (including Simon’s auction house/gallery from Work of Art), Back Forty West restaurant, Pump Jack art installation at 46th and 8th, GC Station, Affinia Dumont (trying to hide the scaffolding), Kajitsu Restaurant

Fitness center, breakfast in the room (where THB sets off the smoke alarm by setting the toaster one level too high) of Arizmendi rolls, grape nuts, fruit, coffee, and a long walk over to the new High Line park (converted train track, complete with old track). The park is quite the urban success story, with many tourists and school groups walking the elevated plantings that run from 10th to 30th street along 10th Avenue. Worth a detour!

We continue on foot to Pleats Please (Issey Miyake in all pleats) and do a bit of pre-wedding outfit shopping, in the area of the Village we stayed in for DB’s 60th. Then lunch at another place we’ve eaten at before: Savoy. OOPS, same owners, different restaurant; now it is Back Forty West, and we shared a brisket sandwich with fries (nowhere near as good as Trolley Car or T Rex) and salad of grilled kale, escarole, white anchovies, fried capers and crispy chickpeas (excellent), hibiscus iced tea, $43. Along our walk we passed many a bakery; we retrace our steps to the Vesuvio for a cookie (stacked up in the window) and once inside realize that the old bakery has been eaten out and replaced by the “green” Birdbath bakery. Seems to have worked, we share a very unusual, very good cc cookie, $3.

The feet, they are getting weary, and we use the subway (complete with Rastafarian busker and young “widow with two children” hustling change…these are two separate people) to end up in the theater district and Venus in Fur. It is a play within a play, with an unscheduled audition going on and the characters (only two) falling into the roles of the play. The inside joke: the female star, Nina Arianda, is in her first big Broadway role, and at her audition wowed the director and got the part as an unknown. The play is fabulous, Nina’s fabulous and a dead ringer for Maria P, Hugh Dancy does fine in the role, and we got so jazzed we went and bought tix for another play on Saturday night (cliffhanger alert: THB will not reveal the title of this play until next week). Venus was without intermission and we concurred that there was no way to break the 1 hr 45 minute performance without the audience starting a riot when the lights came up halfway through. Engrossing and mesmerizing, don’t miss it: either come to NY or see when it comes to your area, or do what we’re going to do: both. THB’s top rating!

Dinner at Kajitsu, a Japanese vegan restaurant, picked because THB read the review in the NYT; see link below if you want to see the polar opposite of THB’s impression, which was: bland, sometimes under-flavored, stuff did not taste like it looked, and only a few of the 9 courses were even slightly above average. As best we could tell, the chef in the review was not on premise (nor remotely nearby it appears, maybe back in Japan). There were two other couples and a single person at the counter with THB and DB; we were the only ones not taking pictures of the food at some point in the meal. With sake pairings, $260.

Cab down, $8. Walk back in a very slight rain, priceless

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/magazine/eat-vegetable-tempura-sauce.html