PbP, Ono and Attic Cat

Although my liver may be hating me, it was a really fun weekend. It all started Friday with the annual Project by Project Food and Wine Tasting. This year’s even was a little disappointing on the wine side, with very few wineries represented compared to years past. Maybe the winemakers decided serving a room full of Asians who get red-faced on a glass of vino wasn’t a worthwhile annual endeavour. In any case, the restaurants in attendance were first rate as always, with the real standout being Gramercy Tavern serving a yellowtail sashimi with microgreens and some sort of sauce which I can’t recall the details of (I made up for lack of wine by pounding sake, beer and shochu, so you’ll have to forgive me if I overlook a bunch of details). Kat said the wine sorbet was really good too, but by that point I was done eating and had shifted into drink mode. Jin Tha MC was on hand, um, emceeing part of the live auction. He looked a little uncomfortable trying to be funny and pleasant in this setting instead of doing what he does best (slayin’ any suckas that step to the microphone beeyotch), but he did a good job pushing the auction and raising money for PbP. None of my silent auction bids hit this year, which was just as well. Some of the bids were pretty insane, like the skybox table reservation at Daniel which was worth $300, but was getting bid north of $700. One strange coincidence, Twoin ran into someone he remembered from playing blackjack at The Borgata the previous weekend. But I guess that can’t be that surprising considering this was an Asian event and you know how Asians are all degenerate gamblers.

So PbP finished around 10p and a bunch of us headed to a bar for a couple drinks. Details of that are foggy too as I was half in the bag by that point. All I know is that we were done by about 12:15 and I vaguely recall ducking into Venieros so Kat could get some cookies or something. Then we were gonna drop Kat and Rick off but there was one problem- their building had been evacuated. Apparently the giant crane being used on the construction of the building across the street had a problem earlier in the day. A problem as in a four ton steel beam fell from twenty stories and crushed a yellow cab on Third Ave. So they hopped back in Twoin’s car, dropped me off at Grand Central Terminal and they went up to Ft. Lee to crash at Gar’s for the night.

In the a.m. I drove out to NJ and had lunch with Kat, Rick, Twoin and Gar’s wife at a Korean noodle place (I think it was called Myung Dong Noodle House, but my hangover may have clouded my memory). We each had a giant bowl of carbs in soup; a light beef broth with lots of thick noodles and flour dumplings. Nice, but could have used some meat or something to add a bit more substance. In addition we ordered the kalbi stew which seemed more like a kalbi tang, but I wasn’t gonna complain because it was fuggin delicious. The broth was beefy and just spicy enough to awaken the taste buds without overwhelming. That was awesome hangover food right there.

With our bellies full, Twoin and I headed to the DWR Annex in Secaucus to see if we could find any furniture bargains. The Annex is supposed to be sort of their outlet where they sell discontinued and returned items. Supposedly they were having a sale with stuff up to 70% off. First of all, if there was anything 70% off, it was probably like one item in a back room somewhere. Most of the stuff was marked down maybe 20% or so. Secondly, the Annex sucks. Most of the merchandise was in pretty shabby condition and the selection wasn’t even that great. Although I will say, if you’re shopping for chairs or bar stools, they do have a great selection of those.

From there I went home to catch a quick nap before getting ready for a birthday dinner for Rick at Ono. First thing I should mention about Ono is that their Lemongrass Mojitos are kickass. Maybe a touch too sweet, but the flavor is otherwise fresh and delicious. Kat arranged for a private table just off the bar area. It was a dimly lit space with a giant round table; comfortable and kind of cool. I ordered a few bottles of sake for the table and Kat did the ordering of the food. A parade of terrific dishes ensued. Of the many starters, a few stood out. Oyster shooters consisted of a kumamoto oyster in a shot-cup (ceramic, not glass), with a soy-based brine topped with a raw quail egg. I think it was too salty for Twoin’s taste, but I absolutely loved it. There was also a Kobe carpaccio which was pretty good, but I don’t think it was actually Kobe beef. There was also a flatbread topped with crab meat and some kind of spicy aioli. The tuna tartare was of the scraped not chopped variety and was deliciously slick and rich. A real winner was the surf and turf skewers, the surf one being large chunks of raw tuna with grilled asparagus and the turf one being long chunks of succulently seared foie gras. Those were so good we ordered a second round of them. By the time entrees came, most of us were too full to eat much more. There was a huge hunk of grilled beef with the bone in. Super high quality meat with a nice char, prepared perfectly medium rare. My favorite of the entrees was the tuna steak though. Very rare so it was still super moist, but what made the dish was sauce. Not sure what the sauce was made of, but it was so insanely buttery and creamy it could make anything taste fantastic.

From Ono we headed to a bar called Gstaad for a combined bday party for Rick, Mikey, and Rich. We were lucky enough to score a table area in the corner by the entrance, but after several hours, even that space was SRO. Saw all the usual faces of friends that I only seem to see at these events. It was cool, but I still left relatively early since it got so loud and crowded it started feeling like it had devolved into one of those Asian parties I always hated going to. Dawg will be happy to know I drove his fiancee home nice and early before any guys at the party could hit on her. You’re welcome Dawg. 😛

Sunday began with my fantasy football team getting off to a lousy start as usual so I really wasn’t into it. Fortunately P rescued my afternoon by telling me she had borrowed a Korean drama from her mom and wanted to watch it with me. I went to fetch her but decided I wanted to grab some shabu shabu first (of course) so we went to Shabu Tatsu and it was on as usual (of course). Comfortably sated, we were ready to watch the K-drama, and boy did we end up logging some serious tv time. P told me it was going to be addictive once we started watching, so I left a msg for my boss telling him I was gonna take a vacation day Monday, and we settled in for the long haul. Attic Cat is a charming little romantic comedy series; a story of a sweet, homely, simple girl and a lazy grad student that owes money to a bunch of loan sharks. He needs refuge and has nowhere to go so she reluctantly takes him in. She ends up developing a crush on him, but he’s infatuated with an ice princess. The ice princess has the hots for this businessman who happens to be the homely girl’s boss and of course Mr. Bossman ends up liking homely girl. I guess that makes it a love square? I think the series is 16 episodes long, and we managed to make it through 10 episodes so far. While nowhere near as emotionally engrossing as Crying Out Love, it’s still an addictively adorable series. Now I’ve got the catchy little theme song running through my head…

4 thoughts on “PbP, Ono and Attic Cat

  1. Thanks for driving the misses home. She was a bit tipsy and I was more afraid of her going LC than getting hit on by dudes! ;-P

  2. For those not in the know, LC=Loose Cannon (as in unrestrained verbal blathering) which was also Dawg’s old nickname. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know, I had to ask him for a translation myself!

  3. Wuteva!! Dawg’s the one to worry about when it comes to being a LC. I’m tip top! 🙂

  4. So the good news is that your liver will probably recover for the gourmet onslaught you just put it through … just don’t take Tylenol and lots of alcohol at the same time (and I’m not being snide for once). The equally good news is that they are also making amazing progress with live donors for liver transplant, so if you drive enough of your friend’s fiancees home safely, you’ll have a number of people lining up to help you out if your liver goes out. But take good care of your brain, because out of brain, heart, liver and kidney, guess which of these are _not_ transplantable?

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