Citizen of the World

Matt and I had date night last night. We don't spend enough time together. (For those not in the know, this is a very sarcastic commentary on our lives - we're around each other 24/7...) We're actually doing really well on our diets - even though we had fantastic, big dinners for our 7th anniversary back to back with Valentine's Day dinner. Those nights we even indulged in a martini or two, but didn't overdo it. So far, I've lost 30 pounds since Christmas! Matt's lost about 36 so far.

Eataly was on our places to experience since we heard it was opening up in Manhattan. It's directly across from the Flatiron Building on 23rd and Broadway. The place is basically a big food court with little shops around it. It's pretty disorganized and seems very haphazard. In a way, I suppose that makes it VERY Italian. Maybe for the simple fact that we went there on a Saturday night or that there were so many Italians and frat girls walking around with their FULL wine glasses, but we were ready to sit, have something to eat, and leave. We definitely want to return - DURING THE WEEK - and experience the pizza and seafood places.

When you walk into Eataly, you're not greeted by anyone, because, after all, it's a food court/mall sort of thing. There's no map of the place that we found or could readily see and it's PACKED. Espresso scents waft around the entrance. The first "shops" are filled with chocolate, preserves, honeys, and jarred goods. Then, walking back toward the more open area, you find the charcuterie, cheeses, a wine bar (which surprisingly is also a restaurant). There are dining tables everywhere, hostess stations everywhere, shopping areas everywhere amongst the tables and hostess stations, a bakery, a book area (filled with Lidia's cookbooks, of course), a butcher counter, and pizza ovens (the two big gold boobs here).


Here are some pictures from our dinner, which was wonderful.

White Piemonte wine (very fruity with hints of citrus and honey):


Grilled bitter greens with pinenuts, currants, parmigiano, and aged balsamic


Raw vegetable salad with lemon citronette (prepped with honey) and sea salt


Fennel with parmigiano frico, stewed tomato, onion, and Taggliasca olives


Roasted acorn squash with black lentils, cipollini onions, and aged balsamic


We left Eataly and ended up at Ty's after stopping by Rockbar and chatting with the always friendly and handsome Barry.

Posting about another restaurant the other day (and replying to posts today) made me think of a restaurant that deserves a bad review. This one restaurant, The Crab House in Edgewater, NJ, Matt and I have really given the benefit of the doubt WAY too many times for WAY too long. Finally, I put my foot down - firmly - about 2 years ago. NEVER again. It's a seafood place and it's horrible.

The food sucks (clearly frozen/dried and reconstituted), the service sucks (slow, unattentive, and rude staff), it's too loud (techno music for some reason), and the expensive drinks are all watered down. The only thing going for it is the spectacular view of Manhattan and the George Washington Bridge.

But, the good thing is, you can go to the Outback Steakhouse next door and after dinner walk out onto the Crab House pier and see the views you don't have to suffer for. YAY!

Today, a friend of ours went to see West Side Story and we had brunch with him before our show - Guys & Dolls. We've been wanting to have a discussion about West Side Story with folks (and me my post on here) about the show. I didn't enjoy it as much as I had wanted or expected to because of a lot of reasons. Our friend sent us his brief review this evening stating that it was pretty good in his opinion, but that they must have changed since our show's date - a LOT before it actually opened on Broadway. We had seen the show two days before our departure to the Bahamas and that was the night that I went to the emergency room for 5 hours, so we didn't have time to sit down and compose our WSS review. Matt just wrote out his thoughts to our friend, and I thought it best to come from him what we post (he wanted to write the review with me online here!!). Plus, he appeared as Arab in his high school production of West Side Story.

From Matthew:

"They must have changed a LOT since it opened! I'm sure they are still the queeniest gang members that were ever cast! Not Jets or Sharks, just Twinks and Chiquitas.

Backs to the audience
1) And WOW - someone must have gotten on top of that stage direction, because ALL I SAW was backs. I never saw Riff OR Tony's face when Riff was asking Tony to show up at the dance (Tony was cleaning DOC's sign on the ladder) before "Something's Coming", both of their backs were to the audience the ENTIRE SCENE.

2) There was a creepy red-headed kid that sang "Somewhere" - and sang half the song walking upstage with his back to the crowd.

3) No one actually saw Bernardo kill Riff because all the gang members were standing around them in a circle with their backs blocking the view of the audience. The same thing happened when Tony killed Bernardo. Same thing when Chino killed Tony. Literally, I can't remember all of them!

Re-writes (and SPANISH??)
1) Tony spoke with an old-timey-radio voice that sounded like Jim Carrey doing a Jimmy Stuart impression UNTIL he started singing later.

2) Everything was in Spanish, well, about 1/3 of the dialogue! I wanted to walk out 3 times, but the tickets were a gift from Joey, Steve's best friend, and he was sitting right next to me! This is what happened:

- Every time there were ONLY Spanish people in the scene, they spoke only Spanish. For example, the entire scene leading up to "America" - and then the entire musical number "America". Together, that is more than 15 minutes of NO ENGLISH on stage. I almost walked out for the first time. Thing is, one of the subtexts in the dialogue concerns how much they want to be American and put aside their Hispanic culture (and language).
- All of Maria and Bernardo's confrontation at that dance at the gym.
- Half of "One Hand, One Heart"
- Maria's, Anita's and the Sharks portions of the "Tonight" quintet. So, 2 parts were English
- The scene leading up to and including "I Feel Pretty" was completely in Spanish. I almost walked out for the second time.
- The entire bedroom scene leading up to and including "A Boy Like That" and "I Have a Love" were all in Spanish for a total of about 20 minutes until Lt. Shrank walked in. When I realized that they re-wrote the words to "I Have a Love" so that it would rhyme in Spanish, I almost walked out again!!

3) Also, in the confrontation between Anita and the Jets in Doc's Store, the play had the scene ending with some heavy sexual harassment - but in this production - they really escalated the re-write of the scene to an actual attempted rape, and that was ABHORRENT!!

4) The other re-write that I hated was that A-Rab and Baby John, the two biggest "followers" out of all of the Jets were somehow too "disgusted" to participate in the "Officer Krupke" number(????!!). In the original play AND the movie, both A-Rab and Baby John have the two best parts in that number! BLECH. All of a sudden, however, A-Rab is "back on board with the gang" when it comes to the attempted rape scene (described above).

I'm not even that much of a Broadway Queen, but the production we experienced was HORRIBLE! When we exited the theater, there was a huge crowd of people muttering that they couldn't understand anything, how much they hated the song versions, and how bad it was."

There you have it. Be forewarned, it might not have changed that much, but it could still be better than when we saw it. We'll not waste more money on it, though.

Last night friends of ours, mindplay and trckfckr took us to the Than Long restaurant in the Avenues. Without a car, it's a pain in the ass to get to, but it is accessible with the N MUNI line (which you can pick up from Market St. in the Castro).

The restaurant is very busy for being so off the beaten track, but mostly the patrons are locals. For apps we had calamaris, fried spring roll with peanut sauce, and softshell crab. Matt absolutely loves softshell crab, and I'm learning to like it; for years, I've hated it, but it might be that I'd never had good ones until I met Matt. He is, after all, a Cancer, and would know crabs!!

Than Long has fresh dungeonous crab, and the best dungeonous crab I have ever eaten. They make the crab in a few different ways. Three of us got the regular roasted crab, and I got the drunken crab, which is made with sake and bourbon; my sauce was not as buttery as everyone else's. For a side dish, we ordered the garlic noodles. We didn't care how badly our breath and burps would smell later - those garlic noodles were succulent.

The other fun thing last night was tasting an Anchor Steam Beer. Wherever I travel, I try to taste the local beers - I especially love local microbreweries, which are sadly becoming rarer. Microbreweries were trendy in the late 80s and 90s. The Anchor Steam was very tasty, though a little heavy for accompanying the very tasty. I actually ended up not drinking the greater portion of my beer till after I had cleaned out the crab shell completely. Although we had one crab apiece, Matt and I totally could have split another one, but I'm glad we didn't.

The restaurant has a secret kitchen, which contains and protects an old An family recipe that many people have tried to steal without success. There is a red door that's for "Employees Only" in front of what looks like the kitchen where everything else is prepared; the crabs and noodles are prepared in the sealed, secret kitchen. When the main chefs (who are the only people allowed in the secret kitchen behind the closed door) prepare the crabs, they push them through a little closed sliding window to the other cooks who then finish the plating and serve the food. Then the chefs close the little window again - so no one sees into the secret kitchen.

We left there quite happy. The Than Long crab restaurant is at the top of my list for anyone visiting San Francisco and we'll definitely go there again when we come back (if we get a hankering, we might go there a second time this week).

We found out about other crab restaurants and saw a bunch of crabs at the Fisherman's Wharf late yesterday afternoon. That area tends to be very touristy, but one restaurant we heard about called Scoma's is off the beaten track and hidden from tourists in that same area. Apparently, Scoma isn't visited by that many tourists, but has been open since the late 50s/early 60s. So, we're heading there for lunch and then taking a bus tour of the Golden Gate bridge. After that, we plan to go to Lombard St. and knock around Nob Hill and maybe Chinatown. Looking forward to another day of good food and sight-seeing!

The first episode of Dollhouse that aired tonight was pretty interesting. Dollhouse is a new creation of Joss Wheadon, creator of Angel and Buffy among other things. Granted, the basic storyline tenets are formulaic - underground good-doers with unknown angel investors fighting against the FBI agent who knows they exist, but can't find the Dollhouse. This FBI agent's bosses are antagonistic and arrogant. Just a bit overdone in my book (The Sheild, Hillstreet Blues, Miami Vice, Beverly Hills Cop, all of the Lethal Weapon movies, and the list goes on...).

However, the story, actors, acting, scenery, and tonight's premise was pretty good for the first shot. Not gangbusters, but I'm looking forward to more.