Lots of Food, Not that Many Musuems

Mom and Dad came to town at the end of April, it was wall to wall deluxe eating the whole time.
We began by meeting up in Brooklyn, saying hello, and eating at Olmsted, a new "neighborhood" restaurant from a former Alinea chef. It was wild food disguised as normal food, or normal food with a wild side to it. I don't know. It was inventive, fun, not too wacky, and (most importantly) very, very good tasting. Highest recommendation!

Before heading home we went and saw A Quiet Place so I could watch Mom and Dad jump and worry about that nail. 

Then it was Friday! That night my friend Bryan was leading a tour of the ancient Greek and Roman stuff at the Met, which Mom and Dad were allowed to come on, too

After that we went over to the Flora Bar at the Breuer Museum. Between you and me, I wasn't mentally prepared for how chic and full of Friday night fancy people it was going to be. Mom and Dad handled it well, I was sitting there wondering how we were going to get home afterwards. Food was good, though. I just look at the food pictures and feel fine about the whole thing.

Saturday day we had a nice walk around Inwood Hill Park and Fort Tryon Park, had some family screen time, and went and saw the new production of Carousel.

This new Carousel is good. It's like they said "Hey, let's put on this old musical, but make it REAL good." And they did!

For dinner we went well into Queens to have dinner at SriPraPhai for some nice cheap and delicious Thai. And a visit to the Jollibee bee.

Crispy watercress salad

Sunday, a beautiful day. Before church we had lunch at Ma Peche, soon to be closing. SIgh. Oh well. I had the kimchi burger, Mom had the Chicken and Waffles. Since there was a small chance of the chicken being slightly spicy, Dad had pancakes (not pictured). Food was good, place was falling apart, really seemed they were just phoning it in for their last weeks. Have some dignity, Ma Peche!

After church we went back into Brooklyn for dinner at Claro. This is a delicious place that I was excited to take my parents to, but, oh man, that meal. The food, yes, it was good, but there was about a 20 minute gap between each dish. It got me aggravated old man style, and all they did was comp us a dessert. Sheesh. I loved Claro on my first trip, dinner was delicious on my second trip, but I don't know if I'll go back and recommend it. I mean I chose this place over Cosme. Guess I should've told them that? To illustrate how long we were there, look at how bright the first dish is from the natural light streaming into the restaurant when it arrived. Progresses towards pointless darkness.

Monday lunch at Carbone. This is where things got seriously serious. A fancied-up throwback to old red sauce Italian restaurants that you might wear a tie to, I wasn't sure what all the fuss was about (there's lots of Carbone fuss), but was excited to finally try it out.

It was a very fun meal. At dinner I think the clientele gets supremely fancy, but during the day it was us and idle chic people. I saw two people wearing Balenciaga Triple S's!

For dinner we ate at Hank's Juicy Beef. I had a hot dog.  

And then on Tuesday when i came home Mom and Dad were gone. Just like that! Their five night stay seemed like one of their shortest, but what a good time.

Lots of Museums, Not That Much Food

All right, let's get caught up on some mid-March to mid-April stuff...

For starters, there was this one Saturday when the Homers were in town and we had a dang good time.

One Monday night my friend/bishop Jeff gave a tour of Grand Central because he was being certified as an official Grand Central tour guide. Thanks to this tour I can now point out 4 or 5 things you might not know about the terminal AND I know the way up to the tennis court. (Did you know there's a Grand Central tennis court?!)

There's this eighty year old Spanish restaurant in Chelsea called El Quijote that was being closed down to get turned into something a little more flashy and up to date, so I went to have lunch there to see what it was all about while I still could. Conclusion: Very extremely old school, and very charming in that sense. Food was fine, they gave me a gigantic pot of mussels for fifteen bucks. But, all in all, more of a place that you're glad exists than a place you go to very often. Or more often than once. Or I don't know, probably would've been a party to go there with a gang of homies.

After lunch I went up to the Met to visit Joan

Another day I found myself over by the Daily News building so I dipped in and had a look at the globe for the first time in a while

Easter morning walk through Inwood Hill Park (the part without a hill)

Then, on a Friday, a little West Village, a little Whitney Museum.

The next day, a little Soho time. There was a big crowd having their Nikes marbelized.

One night/day I decided to get out my 50mm f/1.1 and practice with it a little before taking it to Michael's birthday party

And at the end of the week I took my 50mm f/2.0 to work and Brooklyn Bridge Park (and also saw Patricia)

And then, Saturday April 14th, the sun came out and it was nice for the first time. Headed down to the Chelsea galleries from my neighborhood.

And that's a bunch of museums and barely any food, just like I told you it would be!

It's the Toronto Post

A few weeks ago I went up and visited our friendly neighbors to the north (the Canadians) in their city called Toronto. I got up real early, flew there, walked through an airport, rode a train, walked through a train station, and then I was very much in Toronto.

Now I was up there because our friend Collin had a short playing in the famous Toronto Children's Film Festival. It was a joy to see his short play in its showcase and listen to him take questions from the young audience (and even watch him sign a few autographs).

Then it was right to walking around the city. 
Note to self: Come back and get a photo with these angel wings when there isn't such a big crowd.

Had my first meal at Porchetta & Co. on King Street. Collin had already been in Toronto for a number of days and had several meals here. On his first couple days in Toronto Collin had a grad school buddy visiting him named Jason...or Jeff? But he took off that afternoon.

Some walking and the view from our Air BnB.

For dinner that night we ate at the Momofuku Noodle Bar inside the Shangri-La Hotel. I liked that the menu was nearly totally different from the New York Noodle Bar (where I swear not a single dish has changed in years). Collin got a very nice Tsukemen and I had their Extremely Spicy Noodles, which weren't that spicy but came with an emergency glass of milk on the side. Funny touch. We also got korean bbq buns and a rice cake dish and made a visit to their self-service walk-in refrigerator Milk Bar.

The walk home, starting with the Shangri-La lobby.

The next morning I met Collin for lunch after he had done some film festival stuff. We ate at a big shiny taco shop called Wilbur. Toronto seemed to be jam packed full of basically pretty good shiny taco shops.

Then, after another film thing, we met again for another lunch. We went to an A&W. There are lots of A&W's in Toronto. We went because we were on a buddy trip and they have a burger called the buddy burger. And we also went to clink root beer mugs.

Then I walked around looking at statues but was done in time to see Collin do another Q&A

Then we took a walk by some good looking stuff to go have dinner at Tortas San Cosme, another shiny Mexican restaurant where the Mexican food, as usual, was fine and the restaurant was good looking.

Next we had a nice walk through the Kensington Market area and then made our way back to the apartment.

A vacuum-sealed roast chicken. My dream.

Can you believe we're already to Day Three? Collin's first day without major film festival duties, we walked east of our apartment to see what we could see. We walked over to the Rogers Centre, which is where the Blue Jays play, and discovered quite the view of the field from the gift shop.

From there we found ourselves standing at the base of the CN Tower and were like "Well, should we?" and we did. The views were good from the observation deck of this once tallest structure in the world, and even better from the observation pod, even higher up the tower. 

From the CN Tower we walked to the Lawrence Market to try the famous peameal bacon sandwiches (thin cut pork loin with cornmeal around the edges). Our first sandwich, from Carousel, was very tasty. Then the one we got at Paddington's seemed to be a bit of a waste of great branding—what do I mean? I mean it just didn't hit the spot like the Carousel sandwich did. That's all I can say about it.

From there, eastward we continued to the Brewery District, where a bunch of old breweries have been turned into shops and galleries and stuff.

Then, more walking. This time we wound up at the Toronto City Halls, old and new.

Then we walked down Queen Street a nice while to get to Gandhi Cuisine to try their famous Roti, which in the case of Candhi Cuisine, is a tray-filling Indian burrito. 

Short version of what we did next: Walked until it was time to call it a night, grabbed a nice Shake Shacky burger from a place called Burger Priest.

This first photo, ask me to tell you the story sometime...

Ok, last day! We woke up and tidied up and then said goodbye to our nice little skyhigh Air B n B and walked along the nearby water. Lake Ontario, I think it was.

Then we turned landward and had lunch at another shiny taco spot called "La Carnita"--quite oddly, they had no carnitas on the menu. It was fine, like everywhere else.

From there we decided to walk to the famous Casa Lomo, the castle home of a Canadian industrialist.

Casa Lomo: Part tourist trap, part actually a good place to visit. I'm not mad that we went! It's quite different from the Huntington Library, the only other giant mansion of an industrialist I've been to.

From there we caught an Uber to the airport and said our goodbyes. Fun fact: We shared the Uber with a flight attendant who turned out to be working the very flight that I was on back to New York. After take off she tapped my shoulder and brought me up to first class...but it was the kind of first class where basically the only difference is your drink comes in a glass. Still, nice to be in front and to be able to get right off the plane when it landed.