Wow, things have been so busy I haven’t had a chance to write in over a week, so let me try and catch up by covering at least the highlights…

Friday night I got tickets for the whole 211 crew to go see the super funny Indian (dot not feathers) comedian Russell Peters at the Beacon. It was a late 10:30pm show, so on Kat’s recommendation we made dinner reservations for before the show at an Italian restaurant nearby called Sambuca. Not since my Amsterdam Billiards days have I spent any time on the Upper West side, and now I remember why- parking is a bitch around there. I circled around for 45 minutes to no avail before giving up and throwing my car in a garage for $41. So I was a bit frazzled from the parking ordeal when I arrived at the restaurant, but the awesome food more than made up for it. Sambuca serves enormous portions so everyone gets to eat family style. We had an eggplant app that was decent but eggplant rarely thrills me. The mussels app was fantastic though. Decently plump mussels in a buttery white wine and garlic broth. Classic, rich and delicious. Perfect for sopping up with bread. For our entrees we got linguini with white clam sauce, penne pesto, chicken marsala and a veal dish. All were really good, but I was most impressed by the perfection of the pasta dishes. Perfectly al dente pasta. The white clam sauce was beautifully balanced in garlic and clam juice flavors with plenty of chunks of clam. The pesto was also executed exactly the way I like it. Still a vibrant green but cooked just enough so that the sharpness of raw basil and garlic were not present. That’s the key to great pesto- if it’s completely raw, it is too sharp, but it really shouldn’t taste cooked either. Sambuca had it down pat. We finished off our meal with a complimentary glass of moscato and some sort of layered ice cream tower thing. I didn’t feel like having any so I don’t know how it was. The espresso was first rate, although we had to ask for the lemon rinds separately.

After dinner we walked over to the Beacon to see Russell Peters. If you don’t know this comedian, just search for him on Youtube. He’s Indian but grew up in Canada. More than anything, his meteoric rise was attributable to the internet because he did an absolutely killer standup show which I believe was for Canadian tv, and since nobody watches Canadian tv, it was the internet that made possible the circulation of his comedic genius. He’s totally westernized in his everyday life, but he can do a terrific Indian accent complete with all the funny mannerisms and hand gestures that any Indian American would recognize from their auntees and uncles. But beyond that, it was his rendition of a Chinese accent that really earned him huge popularity across the masses of slant-eyed Asian Americans like me. When I first heard Russell do the Chinese accent, I realized that all the other comedians’ ching-chong type attempts at a stereotypical Chinese accent were really pretty far off the mark. Russell does it the way a real Chinaman would do it, and because of that we Asians think he rocks. The whole theater was heavily represented by just about every Asian ethnicity. It was an awesome theater, crowd, vibe, performance and ultimately an awesome night all around.

Saturday I went to my friend Mar’s annual house party out in Hoboken for her husband’s birthday. They have a great place for parties; two floors- a nice little kitchen/hang out area downstairs with the sofa and tv hang out area upstairs. I drank too much gin all night and so around midnight I took up residence in their big comfy leather chair and kind of just dozed in and out of consciousness for the next few hours while the party wound down. Mar’s got great family and friends, and there were two of the cutest little dogs running around all night (a brother and sister duo). I recall that there were a couple of really good veggie dips too. But mostly I remember drinking all that gin…

The next day I vegged out all day until the evening when it was time for a little 211 poker. Busted out early as usual as I’ve really no clue how to win there anymore, but I still go just cause I love how fun and silly the game gets. But this time I had a jonesing for tripe and I knew Momofuku was open until 11p, so I promptly busted out at 10p and headed over to get some takeout. Momofuku currently has 2 locations, one a noodle bar and the other a ssam bar. The ssam bar was closed until 10:30p when they were about to reopen for their late-night menu, but I didn’t feel like waiting around, so I headed over to the noodle bar. I ordered about $50 worth of food including 2 orders of tripe, one Momofuku ramen, and one oxtail soup. The ramen was decent but nothing to write home about. The tripe was too salty on its own but perfect with rice. The oxtail soup was pretty good although most of the shreds of oxtail meat in the soup were somewhat lean-ish, so the best part was the hunk of full bone-in oxtail at the bottom. That was great.

Speaking of food (and in this blog, when aren’t I speaking of food, really), yesterday was Thanksgiving. As usual, I spent it in Queens with my bro’s family and his in-laws. I tell ya, my family can really cook. Jones was on hand and he made all the pies like he always does, but he didn’t have time to make a fruit tart for me this year :(. I made up a huge amount of Flemings’ jalapeno creamed corn thanks to Kat who found the recipe online. It was “great success” as Borat would say. I made a second tray without the jalapenos for the kids to eat too and both trays were nearly emptied. That’s 64 ounces of corn in each tray, so my family had a lot of fiber last night. I imagine Mr. Hanky may be making an early visit this year. 😛 My brother brought out the giant deep fryer so we could have a fried turkey again this year, and boy did we do it right this time. Jones got a 14lb Empire turkey, and injected with butter using one of those turkey syringe things. Talk about overkill! Empire poultry is a Kosher product that undergoes a process which while I don’t know if it is technically considered brining because I don’t think it rests completely submerged in a salt solution for any considerable length of time, it does involve salt and water and has the same net effect- it is damn juicy on its own. I always look for Empire when buying chicken, but this was the first time I had tried an Empire turkey. Take that, injected with additional fat, and then deep fry it. The result was wondrous. Absolutely the juiciest turkey I’ve ever tasted. Even the white breast meat was absolutely oozing juice with every single slice. Man, it really was perfection. Happily, I now have leftovers for a week. Sweet.