Sunday Night Cluster

This past Sunday, the boyfriend, his son and I went to Peter Luger's late afternoon/early evening for dinner. The reservation was for 4:45pm. The boyfriend couldn't get a later time! He had been given a gift certificate for the restaurant and we were all looking forward to the meal. We got stuck in traffic and arrived 5 minutes late. The front of the restaurant was heaving. There was a huge crowd of rather large people. We proceeded to wait for another 20 minutes, with more people arriving practically every minute. Meanwhile, waiters were rushing back and forth with large platters of steak, weaving round oblivious people waiting for tables. I started thinking about cleaning my bathroom.

We were seated in the back room with a view of the kitchen. I saw the maitre d' decide to seat us there when the way to another dining area was too crowded to navigate. It was interesting to see the waiters work. Restaurants tend to have a rhythm to them and it's always fun to see how well choreographed the wait staff is. Our appetizers arrived very quickly - beefsteak tomatoes and onions and bacon. The tomato was good, but I think the dish is mainly an excuse to eat the Peter Luger steak sauce. The bacon was a thick slab of greasy delicious meat, closer to a Canadian bacon, but shaped like an American bacon strip. Another excuse to have steak sauce. It made me feel like having a fried egg.

Then there was a really, really, really long pause before the main course. I looked around and noticed that there were a lot of overweight people in the restaurant. I also saw a lot of gigantic desserts go by. At one table, a little boy was completely defeated by his steak, which had been cut into small pieces by his father. He sat there chewing diligently, but the pile of steak pieces didn't seem to be getting any smaller. At the table behind us, they were debating how many hot fudge sundaes to order. Three out of four of the members of that family were large. Our table had gone silent. I started thinking about cleaning my bathroom again.

Finally, the steak arrived - the Porterhouse for three. It was very large. The plate was very hot. The son had wanted his steak closer to medium. The waiter cooked his slices further with the side of the plate! We ordered creamed spinach, onion rings and German sauteed potatoes. They were very good, especially the creamed spinach. The steak was very good as well, but it felt like I was eating it in the middle of Grand Central Station at rush hour with "Happy Birthday" sung a few times. I was also a little defeated by the steak. Two pieces turned out to be a lot. I kept eating the creamed spinach. We brought home leftovers, enough for another meal.

We decided against dessert. I think we just wanted to get out of there. Seeing a large number of overweight people parade by made me pause, even though the boyfriend and I did go to the dessert bar at Whole Foods afterwards. We fought our way through the crowd in front of the restaurant and left.

Peter Luger is an institution. I just didn't enjoy my meal so much. The food was very good, but I just didn't like the atmosphere and the attitude of the restaurant. Our waiter was very nice - that saved the meal - but I couldn't help feeling as if the restaurant felt like it was the best at what it did, so it could do whatever it wanted and make people wait. And wait, even when they had a reservation; between courses. My experience of really good meals, is that there is a certain rhythm to the meal itself in which the pauses between courses are carefully timed. Not so this night. For the amount of money a meal at Peter Luger's cost, I could think of quite a few other restaurants where food, timing and service would have been perfect. Besides, there are a lot of other steak houses in New York now. And some of them have very good service.

Leaves

This is the view out of the window as I type. Due to an unexpected adventure in house repair, I am staying with the boyfriend downtown at the moment. It's definitely a different vibe down here in Tribeca/Battery Park City: lots of children, lots of dogs, lots of parks. It feels like a neighbourhood catering to families, but the buildings are so tall. In much of the rest of the world, this is not unusual. Having spent all of my adult life in Greenwich Village, the West Village and Union Square, it's a bit odd to live in the valley of the condominiums.

Still, it's lovely to step outside and be surrounded by manicured green spaces. Everyday, I think I will take a constitutional along the river in the late afternoon and enjoy the views of the Hudson. Mostly, I'm online and check on the progress of the sunset at afternoon's end.

Five Fingers

I've been having a great James Mason treat so far this week. The boyfriend and I went to see "The Reckless Moment" last night. Tonight, we watched "Five Fingers" on TCM. Mason was never afraid to play unlikeable characters and had a really long and interesting career - "The Wicked Lady," "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman," "A Star is Born," "Bigger Than Life," "North By Northwest," "Lolita." The list goes on.

I had forgotten what fun "Five Fingers" is - great, true story; brilliant dialogue; economically shot. It's a spy story, but it's really about class. A man decides to become a spy and sells Allied secrets to the Nazis because he wants to become a gentleman. For entertainment, that's pretty hard to beat.

Rain

I was getting dispirited by all the rain this summer until it was pointed out that the rain made for particularly lush greenery. Lush foliage and forceful waterfalls...

Oldie, But Goodie

This image was taken a couple of years ago in the Union Square Farmers' Market. Tomato season will be over before we know it...

Memories of Summer

Summer really flew by this year. Much of it was cooler than most years. I was a little flabbergasted when I heard a report on the radio noting that there were only 3 days in June in which it did not rain. And I worked in the rain many of the days it did rain.

That said, I had a mostly enjoyable summer on a lovely job. I met many lovely people and worked very reasonable hours. The latter part is very unusual in my field.

I thought I would post some pictures from this summer as a farewell to summer and a welcome to autumn:

The evening sky after a particularly dramatic summer thunderstorm I was lucky enough to enjoy under cover. Lightning bolts were going off very near by. When I'm not getting wet, I love watching summer storms, feeling the force of the winds.

This is someone's backyard in Carroll Gardens! I almost deleted the image because it looks like I used a filter. It looks so cliched! Then I realised that if this is the image from a first generation iPhone, the light is pretty nice. It felt psychedelic if I stared at the flora for too long. The garden also called to mind Monet, of course.

I got out of a subway station and waited for a van to take me to one of the Silvercup studios one evening. There was nothing there but a road and a subway stop. Then I spied a lit sign in the distance and I really liked the way the yellow light worked with the sky at sunset.

Rabbit Hole

Wow, May was a very light posting month.  I fell into a rabbit hole otherwise known as "The Twilight Saga."  For all kinds of reasons, not only simple pop cultural curiosity, the boyfriend and I watched "Twilight" on his laptop one evening.  After dinner, we cleared the plates and sat side by side at the little dining table and watched this rain-drenched, high school romance - it was kind of appropriate since it was sort of homework.  I fell under the "Twilight" spell.

Normally, I would just wait to watch the sequels, but I dove headlong into the series after reading Caitlin Flanagan's review in The Atlantic online.  I devoured the books one after another, just as the nice saleswoman at Barnes and Noble said I would.  I made my way through 2560 pages, plus the 200-odd pages of the "Midnight Sun" draft that can be found on Stephanie Meyer's website.  Much of the experience was like reliving the giddy parts of being 14 years old again.  "Twilight" is like swooning over your high school crush, looking at the cute boy across the school cafeteria - in my case, the school fountain - and hoping that he will look back and feel the same way.  "New Moon" is mostly a break-up/depression novel with a very nice dose of recklessness and best-friend-who-likes-you thrown in.  "Eclipse" is a tug-of-war/love triangle story, influenced by "Wuthering Heights."  And "Breaking Dawn" is something completely, completely different altogether.  Its siege story echoes and builds on that played out at the end of "Eclipse," but coupled with something else entirely.  I have to say that once the tension of forbidden, dangerous, erotic love has been resolved, there is not much else to keep me interested other than being a completist.  Wanting to find out what happens was nice, but it was a little cringe-inducing rather than satisfying.

Still all that life and death drama did remind of what it was like to be a teenager when everything felt so intense.  I was completely taken with the tension of having to restrain the savage, erotic bloodlust of the vampire to protect the pure and innocent heroine, who is quite happy to be corrupted by said bloodlust.  Some of the dark, lurid emotional tone of the movie and the books also reminded me of what I so love about the Gainsborough romances of the 1940s - I could being projecting rather a lot into it all here.

I staggered out the other end of the rabbit hole, blinking, realising that time had passed and I had inhabited a parallel universe.

The Twilight Saga

by Stephanie Meyer

2560 pages.

Little, Brown Young Readers

Happy Purchase

I wandered through the Farmers' Market in Union Square today with my friend, L, and this is what I came home with:

And there was enough for a second arrangement on my bedroom dresser:

Flowers in the house make me so happy.

Proustian Moment

A long time ago, in my last year of high school in Singapore, I discovered the Raffles Hotel.  This was before their massive renovation, which turned the place into the luxury hotel it is today.  So the hotel was old and a little down-at-heel, but it reeked of atmosphere.  I really could feel the colonial past and the ghosts of the writers who had passed through the corridors over the years.  It was deeply exotic.

I loved to go have lunch at the Tiffin Room.  They served a British Colonial Chicken Curry.  It was unlike any other curry dish around.  The thick curry was mild, but extremely flavourful, quite in contrast with the other very spicy curries served in the country, and indeed, the region.

At the time, the restaurant did not have air conditioning.  It certainly made for some sultry lunches, the slow hypnotic whirling of the fans a constant accompaniment.  One treasured memory is a rainy Friday afternoon in the Tiffin Room when I had my first real Singapore Sling.  The drink was quite delicious, but what remains is the grey, almost silvery look of the room in the tropical monsoon light.  I was far, far away from 1980s Singapore.  The drink had nothing to do with it.  It was the atmosphere.

After the renovation, I had lunch at the Raffles Hotel once.  The food was quite good, but it was really not the same.  The magic was gone, lost amid the pristine white walls and the air conditioning.  And now they have a lunch buffet, not exactly the same experience as having a Colonial lunch tray presented to you at the table.

For some inexplicable reason, I have managed to find a way to relive the moment.  In New York.  In Nolita.  I go to Rice on Elizabeth Street and have their Indian Chicken Curry.  Sometimes, on grey and gloomy days, I just crave the mild, rich flavours of the golden brown curry dish.  The raisins, chopped banana and mango chutney add just the right amount of chewy, sweet counterpoint to the savoury tastes of the velvety curry sauce and tender chicken pieces.  I used to order the dish with the delicate green rice, but have lately been seduced by the nutty texture of the Bhutanese red rice.  The wood panels and dark interior of the little restaurant can feel quite cosy on quiet afternoons, but I have the same warm, comforting, nostalgic feeling when I eat the dish as a takeout at home.  There are other delicious dishes on the menu at Rice - the Mexican Chicken Soup or the Warm Lentil Stew - but in the many years the restaurant has been in existence, I almost always order the very special Indian Chicken Curry.

Old restaurant sign next to the menu board at the takeout counter

Rice

292 Elizabeth Street

New York, NY 10012

(212) 226 5775

www.riceny.com

Tropical Moment

It was sunny out this afternoon.  So I took the opportunity to wander around Soho to some of my favourite shops to look at what was new for Spring.  Even though it was quite nippy, I had a tropical moment. At R by 45rpm there was a lovely, lush mini-tropical rain forest at the entrance of the shop.  It made me stop for a second before entering.  Past the greenery, there was their usual special, gorgeous cotton and denim, amid the soothing incense aroma.

R by 45rpm

169 Mercer Street (btw Houston & Prince)

New York, NY 10012

(917) 237 0045

www.rby45rpm.com

Bright Spot

Last night, after dinner, my lovely friend spontaneously presented me with a tulip.  It has brightened up what were two very dreary days.

The Moment When I Realised It Was Easter

I was cruising down Prince Street when I saw this

And this

And this

And then this

Bunnies: The Nymphenburg Porcelain Collection

E.R. Butler & Co.

55 Prince Street

New York, NY 10012

(212) 925 3565

By Appointment Only

Sixties Moment

I ran into the Flowers Cafe twice yesterday to grab some tea and lunch.  By far, the best part of the experience was the 60's collage at the back of the cafe.  The fellow behind the counter proudly told me that his daughter had made it.  I love that "The Birds" and "Zabriskie Point" are included.  I only miss my beloved Beach Boys.

Flowers Cafe

355 Grand Street (btw Essex & Ludlow)

New York, NY 10002

(212) 777 8785

Springtime Reminder

It's another grey, rainy day today.  I'm posting this image of Jefferson Market Garden from yesterday to remind myself that this rain is here to bring out more blooms and make all the gardens more verdant in the coming months.

Another Autobiography

I just tore through another autobiography.  This time, it's not exactly an entertainment biography, but close.  I have just read, "Love Child" by Allegra Huston.  She is the daughter of Ricki Soma, John Julius Norwich and John Huston.  Yes, that John Huston.  And, yes, there are two fathers.  I'm sure the attraction is now obvious - child of famous director, colourful characters, colourful adventures and name-dropping.

The highlights of the name-dropping proportion of the book are Jack Nicholson and Ryan O'Neal.  Her description of O'Neal goes a long way in explaining to me why the O'Neal offspring have been a handful, to put it mildly.

What I am left with, after putting the book down, is the story of a rarefied childhood, spent shunted from one place to another, trying to fit in and keep up with a family of extraordinary characters.  They are certainly fun to read about, but not necessarily to live with.  Her discomfort is pretty palpable throughout.

I'm mulling over Janet Maslin's review of the book in The New York Times.  Maslin points to what can be read between the lines and what is left unsaid.  I would have found the book far more satisfying if there had been more details and more said, but quite a few of the characters are still alive.

Love Child

by Allegra Huston

Illustrated. 289 Pages.

Simon & Schuster

Boyfriend Present

I love the gift-giving process.  Contemplating and selecting the right present for someone I know gives me a lot of pleasure.  I love receiving presents as well, but that's another post.

The boyfriend had a birthday last weekend.  For months I had thought I knew exactly what I was going to get him, having done the research at Christmas.  Then on the spur of the moment, I went to Dashwood Books.  The boyfriend and I have a history of going to photography shows: Lee Freedlander at MOMA; Stephen Shore at ICP; Ten Years in Focus: The Artist and the Camera at the Getty; William Eggleston at The Whitney.  Why not a good photography monograph?

At the store, David Strettell was lovely.  I threw the names of a couple of photographers at him and he pulled books from the shelves for me to consider.  Then I talked about my personal preferences and he pulled more books for me to enjoy.

Forty-five minutes later, I settled on Robert Adams' "The New West" and Henry Wessel's "Night Walk."  Present-hunting aside, I loved learning about why Sam Haskin's "Five Girls" was special.  Apart from the great-looking girls, the printing process produced very rich, grainy textures and deep, deep blacks.  I was more mesmerised by the blacks than anything else in the images.  Leafing through Slim Aaron's "A Wonderful Time" was just a pleasure.  The boyfriend loved the monographs.

There are all kinds of other places to find a boyfriend present or find a photography monograph, but why would I deny myself the great guidance and fun of going to Dashwood Books?

Dashwood Books

33 Bond Street

New York, NY 10012

(212) 387 8520

Early Spring Blossoms

I'm always thrilled when I see the first blossoms on the trees.  Elsewhere, there are little buds on branches, promising more blossoms to come.

Guilty Pleasure

I've been spending the past couple of late nights and late mornings indulging in one of my favourite guilty pleasures: an entertainment autobiography!  Many hours under the covers with George Hamilton's many, many, many lively adventures!  Hamilton led a colourful life before he got into the movie business.  Then...  The book is exactly what I want from a showbiz biography - sex, name-dropping, more sex, colourful characters and more sex.  Hamilton didn't exactly make a lot of really great movies, though I love "Two Weeks in Another Town," and am very fond of "A Light in the Piazza."  Who knew the story of how he got into the latter would be almost more fun than the lovely Florentine travelogue?

I'll just end with why Hamilton's mother never sought to be a movie star herself:

It was too hard, too demanding, and the moral cost was too high.  Sharing an insight with me culled from her earlier movie foray, she once told me that  in 1930s Hollywood, with the casting couch system running full tilt, for a woman to become a star she would probably have had to sleep with the entire studio.  Example: the casting director to get the role; the producers and directors to keep the role; the camera, makeup and lighting men to make sure you looked good; the editor, so he didn't leave your best work on the cutting room floor; and so on and so on.

A very juicy read.

Don't Mind If I Do

By George Hamilton and William Stadiem

Illustrated. 306 pages.

Touchstone

Signs of Spring on a Grey Day

Lunchtime Entertainment

No long ago, on a chilly, rainy day, the boyfriend and I went to lunch at a Nolita restaurant.  We were seated in a cosy little nook next to the bar.  There was a banquette with three tables and a window looking onto a pretty little fire escape.  The mirrors above the banquette and next to the window gave the area the extra light needed not to feel claustrophobic.  We were seated next to a young couple who were having their ups and downs during their meal.  (The girl next to me was obviously more expressive because all I noticed were sweet glances from the boy and quite tender hand-holding between courses.  I only heard about the drama after we had left.  There were tears on her part.)  They spoke either French or Italian softly throughout the meal.

Shortly after our main courses arrived - a perfect salmon and sublime braised beef shoulder - this tall, skinny English guy meandered over to our cosy corner speaking loudly into his cell phone.  Needless to say, we looked up when we heard this barking overhead.  Then I noticed he was looking at himself in the mirror and arranging his artfully "messy" hair during the phone conversation.  I was just thinking, "It's really not very attractive when a guy fusses over his hair and primps so obviously in front of a mirror," when he lifted his t-shirt and started to scratch his flat, very hairy stomach in front of us.  The preening was amusing enough, but the boyfriend's eyes widened when the shirt went up - just inches away from his head.  Said guy was completely oblivious.  He swiveled round and started fussing with his hair,  admiring himself in the other mirror before stalking back into the other room.

All this in the space of about two minutes.  In a restaurant full of people.  The boyfriend and I guffawed and went back to our meal.  We loved going to the restaurant.  Entertainment as well as lunch!

Hands

I was drawn to the contrast between the grey nails and the bright coral ring.  The unexpected colour switch was a nice surprise.  Of course, it helps to have graceful, ivory hands.