Rats

In my ten years in New York City, I have seen many things: A cab burst into flames on 3rd Avenue, a man urinate on the side of a building in midtown in broad daylight and of course, the naked cowboy. But, I have never seen a rodent scamper across the floor of a restaurant first hand. Sure I have seen the news reports, watched the video of the mice which took residence at the Taco Bell in the Village, but nothing prepares you to see it with your own eyes.

We were in Philadelphia for a baby shower last week. “You don’t have to come to the shower and watch Marta open the breast pump and pacifiers.” I ensured M his presence was neither needed nor wanted at that event. “We will go out to dinner after with your friends on Saturday. Friday night I made some plans to have dinner with my brother and his wife. We will make a nice weekend out of it.” With the promise of a breast pump-free weekend, M gladly boarded the Amtrak train to Philly Friday afternoon.

My brother and sister-in-law had been eager to try a new Chinese restaurant that opened just down the block from their house in Society Hill. Being billed as “less greasy, more healthy” Chinese, Matt didn’t flinch when they suggested the restaurant. We entered the subterranean restaurant making our way down a full flight of stairs on Walnut Street to enter a surprisingly quaint and cute restaurant that was bustling with diners. Midway through a course of spring rolls and Wonton soup, something caught the corner of my eye. “Oh fuck, did you see that,” I said as I jumped onto the seat, trying to crouch down and not be so obvious.

“No. What? What are you looking at?” M said swinging his neck back and forth like he was watching a tennis match.

Rachel, my sister-in-law shrieked, jumping from her seat across from me and nearly standing upright on her chair. “I just saw it! There is a mouse.” She pointed to the corner of the room, right next to the swinging door that led to a kitchen. My brother seemed completely unbothered as he lifted his bowl of soup to his lips to drink the remaining contents at the bottom. “Every restaurant has mice. So what? Soup is good.” He reached for the remnants of Rachel’s spring roll. “You going to finish that? Guess not?” he said as he shoved the end into his mouth but not before he drenched it in a covering of duck sauce.

M tried to talk me off the chair. “Get down from there. You are a making a fool of yourself,” he said in a voice which attempted to be a whisper but was more of a shout. While we debated whether we should leave, tell the manager, or if my brother had his way – ask for more free food or tell them we are food critics from the paper, we heard the waitress’s loud blood curdling scream followed by a crash which came from the kitchen. The manager, who had been sitting quietly at a high-top table in the bar area, dropped the newspaper he was reading and rushed into the kitchen. Two seconds later, he came back for the paper, rolling it into a makeshift club and scurried back to the kitchen again. Over Olivia Newton John’s rendition of “Let’s Get Physical” which played softly from the surround-sound speakers, you could quite clearly hear the sound of newspaper slapping and more screams.

Slap. Whack. Slap.

The manager reemerged from the kitchen carrying the balled-up newspaper which I swear had something still moving in it, and went out the front door.

“I am NOT eating the chicken here,” I said.

The next night, M had sworn off Chinese forever. “Not only is it disgusting, greasy and smelly, but ALL Chinese restaurants are infested with rats.” It wasn’t worth arguing with him and I feared that after last night’s debacle, I was never going to be able to convince M to go out for Chinese ever again. “Well tonight we are going out for French food so no sesame oil and no mice.”

Oh, promises in vain.

After we finished the mussels and fries. After we downed two bottles of red wine. After we laughed with our friends who we hadn’t seen since the wedding. After we sampled the cheese platter. After the dishes were cleared and the restaurant quiet, and right as the waiter delivered the bill to the table – a mouse scampered across the floor.

I bellowed. Kate yelped. I resumed my position on top of the chair. M sunk his head in both embarrassment and disgust.

“We are two for two,” I said to M. “Two nights in Philly and two rodent sightings. How is it that I have managed to live in New York for ten years, in a city that has garbage rotting on the streets, a city that sometimes smells like dead rats, and I have never been at a restaurant when a mouse brazenly dashed around?”

“Don’t know,” M said as he signed the credit card slip. “Maybe the mice in NYC are smarter. Maybe in the City of Brotherly Love the mice think that slogan pertains to them too.”

Have you ever been at a NYC restaurant or Upper East Side restaurant and encountered a mouse?

Downtown Uptown

Downtown Uptown


Now that I am married, Girls Night Out has become even more important. I have known many brides that become so wrapped up in being a newlywed, a new wife and absorbed in their own lives that the last time they see their friends they are still wearing the ugly bridesmaid dresses forced upon them.

On email, we went back and forth: “Where do you want to go for dinner?”

“Let’s go downtown. Should we do something trendy?

“I feel like an old married lady. What are the new hotspots the kids are going these days?”

Back and forth we went over two days, multiple reservations were made, multiple plans were discussed. “Girls, I don’t feel like going downtown,” Alissa wrote. “It’s freezing and I am not in the mood to hike all the way down there.” No one argued, we have long since reached the staged where convenience outweighs cool. Besides, it is about being together…even if together meant the Olive Garden or a truck stop off I95.

I fired off an email when the idea struck: “Let’s bring downtown uptown.” Two years ago, for Debra’s birthday we chose to celebrate her first anniversary of her 30th birthday at Frederick’s Downtown, just slightly south of the Meatpacking District. At the time, the place was new, an outpost of its uptown sister, and crawling with pseudo-celebs. We saw Gastineau mom and daughter sipping champagne in a back corner table and a few other celebutards. But the food happened to be amazing even if the attitude wasn’t checked at the door.

More back and forth on email, we set a time and all agreed on Frederick’s uptown location at 66th and Madison. “All the glamour of downtown but within walking distance to my apartment,” Jodi said. What amazed me was that 4 uptown girls had been to the downtown version on multiple occasions but had never tried the original one which was in their very own backyard.

We all arrived within minutes of each other and very near to the reservation time, a feat very rarely reached. The place was empty except for a few diners who quietly enjoyed their meal in the backroom. Frederick’s Uptown draws a “ladies who lunch” crowd and a late night Euro crowd, but at 7pm we had no problem getting a reservation or a prime table in the front with views of the street.

The tartars (Salmon and Tuna) were out of this world and so large that we barely had room for our entrees when they arrived. The wine flowed, 2 glasses each and we couldn’t drink anymore. “Is it pathetic that after a half glass of wine, I feel it?” I asked the girls who all concurred that Red Bull and vodka is a thing of the past. The restaurant sent over a free dessert which we picked at to be polite since we couldn’t eat another morsel. By 9pm, the vibe was changing, the tempo picking up and the crowd streaming in. “Anyone want to stay for a drink?” Jodi asked.

“Can’t. I have an early meeting,” Alissa said.

“I have to walk Chief, M is playing tennis tonight I don’t want to come home to any yellow puddles.”

We double kissed on the cheek outside on the sidewalk – Frederick’s is the kinda place where, despite my detest for the “double-kiss-affect”, it felt mandatory after the maitre-D wished us Bon Soir a few times.

Alissa started her walk north on Madison, Jodi to the East and I headed South. Sometimes there is nothing as great as an amazing dinner with friends, a nice cold walk home….and no need for a cab.

Al Fresco in January

“Can we sit outside?”

The hostess at Mediterraneo looked at me as if I asked for tongue sandwich with mayonnaise. “Sure, but you are just wearing a sleeveless shirt. Won’t you be cold?”

I was cold last Friday when the wind chill dipped below zero, but it felt like summer as the temperature soared into the 60s. I looked at Stacy, Tara and Lori, my dining companions as they nodded their approval. Lori reached for her cotton sweater in her bag, “Outside sounds perfect,” she said.

There were a few empty tables set up on the sidewalk, none yet filled as people seemed afraid to commit to sitting outdoors in the middle of winter. We took our seats on the sidewalk and ordered a bottle of red wine. “I had to sit outside. When it’s January and it’s this warm – you have to sit outside. It would be wrong to not take advantage of this weather.” Truth be told, I was slightly cold in just a tank top, but the red wine worked like a heating lamp and within minutes my slight chill evaporated.

Over pasta and red wine we watched the Upper East Siders who came out in droves from their sleepy winter hibernation – a jogger in shorts flew by, a couple with their Boxer puppy strolled down 2nd Avenue, a flock of kids in just T-shirts buzzed by on skateboards. The calendar read January but people’s minds read spring.

“I am all about the environment and stopping greenhouse warming, but I’m not going to lie – I love this,” Stacy said, her sleeves rolled up as she dug into her penne pasta. My favorite time of year in the city is the first warm spring day, granted it usually happens in March or April when restaurants carry up the outdoor furniture from the basement storage areas and the sidewalks overflow with people. It is a bit eerie to have winter gloves and a scarf tucked into my bag, recently used, and to be dining al fresco.

“You girls are crazy,” a passerby stopped to point out. He was bundled up for winter, a parka appropriate for the Arctic was topped off with a hat, gloves, a scarf and finished with a pair of fur-lined boots. We looked up from out plates of carbs. “Buddy, we may be going out on a limb dining outside tonight, but it looks like you didn’t watch your local weatherman either,” I said in defense of our dining choice. He tightened his scarf and peered over the planters which separated our section from the sidewalk. “I wanted to see if you were wearing open-toed shoes. Aren’t you freezing?”

Stacy chimed in, “Aren’t you hot? It’s downright summer tonight and you are dressed for an expedition in Antarctica.”

“I just flew in from LA yesterday,” our new friend informed us. “It was 76 degrees when I left. That is summer, that is warm – this, well, this is just cold. In LA, we would be bundled up in blankets and staying indoors with this weather. You're going to get sick sitting out here.”

Just like beauty, weather is also in the eye of the beholder.

Resolve

I am not one for New Year’s Eve. It is always a holiday which brings out the worst in people – almost an excuse or reason to get crazy. It is a JV holiday which has reached a level of commercialization which is almost unbearable. Restaurants jump on the band wagon, seizing the opportunity to charge $150 per person for a prix fix meal – the food inevitably mediocre and the champagne always cheap. It is impossible to get a cab, a reservation or a flight out of New York.

This year, M and I decided to forgo the parties and celebrate alone with a quiet dinner at Park Avenue Winter, where surprisingly there was no set menu and no credit card required to hold the reservation. It was a normal night – with a few silver and white balloons to commemorate the occasion. It was just the kind of evening we were hoping for.

“So what are your New Year’s resolutions?” I asked M. As he pushed his salad around his plate, he thought about his answer. “Eat more salad?”

“No, I am serious. We should write down our resolutions this year and then next year at dinner on New Year’s Eve we should read them and see how many we kept.” I asked the waiter for a pen and paper and started to write mine down despite M’s protest of my idea. When I was done with my short list, I handed the pen to M who scribbled down his resolutions. “Happy? I did it,” he said handing it back to me and waiting for my reaction to his list.

We both had the usual on there – go to the gym more, eat healthier, be neater. For shits and giggles, M also added get more sleep. “I think you should also add to use your Crackberry less.” I smiled when I said it, but I wasn’t kidding. “Ok, fine. I will add that too.” He added “less crack” to the end of the list and pushed it back to me. “I think you should add to buy less shoes and get rid of the ones you don’t wear.” Swallowing hard, I agreed and scribbled no more unnecessary shoes to the list, which allowed me some wiggle room with the use of the word unnecessary. “I think you should add to be more helpful around the house and walk Chief more.” M nodded and wrote it down.

Back and forth we went, pushing the list across the table as we kept adding to it until we ran out of room on the piece of paper. “This is going on the refrigerator so that we have to see it everyday otherwise we will forget half of them.” I think that is the problem with resolutions; people make them, put them away on scrap paper and forget all about them – like a greeting card they pick up in a store and buy for future use. It lines the inside of your junk drawer until one day you rediscover it and wonder why you never used it.

We left the restaurant before midnight, opting to celebrate with a bottle of red wine in lieu of champagne at home. We didn’t bother to turn the TV to watch the ball drop, instead we left the Law and Order marathon on. “Five minutes ‘til 2008. Go open that bottle of Shiraz and get some glasses.” M said as he adjusted the sofa blanket to cover his bare feet and tossed his shoes on the ground.

I returned a moment later with the open bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other. “Do you want….” I started a sentence but was quickly interrupted when I took a New Year’s nose dive as M’s loafers sent me flying into the coffee table. Red wine everywhere, the glasses still in my hand M didn’t know whether to laugh or call 911. “I’m ok,” I said rising from the river of Shiraz that trickled from the rug on to the hardwood floor, my gold shirt looking blood soaked like an opening scene from Law and Order.

“Oh no, the rug is totally going to be ruined.” M ran to the kitchen to get the bucket of cleaning supplies. “Windex?” he said handing me the blue bottle.

“Windex? Do you want a streak-free window? No, I need the carpet cleaner. I need the red bottle of Resolve. Hurry!! The stain is setting.”

Fumbling through the bucket, M tossed the bottle of Resolve and a roll of paper towels across the room like a QB throwing a last minute Hail Mary pass. I blotted and scrubbed. I dabbed and I squirted. But the faint outline of red wine remained when nothing was left to spray from the bottle. “Looks like this will be a memento to remember 2007,” I said to M as I walked into the kitchen to throw away the dozens of red drenched paper towels. He was writing something on the list on the refrigerator. “What are you doing?”

“I am being more helpful around the house. I added “buy more Resolve” to the grocery list,” he proudly said.

“That's not the grocery list. You just added Resolve to the New Year’s Resolution list.” I removed the magnet from the list and flipped it over to show him the long list on the other side of the piece of paper.

“Oops. See, true resolve for 2008. I am already sticking to my resolutions with resolve.”

What are your resolutions for 2008?