Another fun weekend. Friday the NYSE closed at 1p so I was able to blow out of work early. Chowed down on some of my delicious leftovers from Thanksgiving and tried to figure out what to do for the evening. When in doubt, hit up Kat and Rick. Sho ’nuff, within minutes of texting her, Kat writes back “Casino Royale?” Cool. I’ve always liked the Bond flicks, and although Sean Connery was always my favorite 007 (even my dad thought Connery was cool) I’ve still enjoyed most of the non-Connery ones too. Always great action and fun to watch. This was no exception. Daniel Craig’s debut as Bond was an impressive one. While many of the visuals were laughably cliched, e.g. sexily clad lady riding a white horse along the beach in slow motion, the movie was still a ton of fun and the new Bond didn’t make you want to cringe, unlike Timothy Dalton’s rendition.

After the movie, we went for dinner at the Jap restaurant whose name escapes me, but it’s the one where Angel’s Share is located. I love the skewers of offal, particularly the heart, gizzard and tongue. The kimchee fried rice was also spot on. Gar and Esth had been on vacation in the D.R. this past week but had just flown back that day and apparently Esth had missed us cause she called or texted Kat every 10 minutes or so until we were done with dinner. The usual flurry of calls and text msgs ensued as we tried to coordinate between Esth, Tarry and Twain as to where we’d meet up. Twain was at Second on Second (a karaoke bar) and Esth was at Maru (a karaoke bar). I guess we were going to a karaoke bar. But since Twain only texted me twice and Esth texted Kat like twenty times, Esth won and we were headed to Maru…

Maru is an ultra hip joint, very slick and bright with super high ceilings. The impressive wooden door with vertical glass inset was probably about 15 feet tall. While I’m not a karaoke fan at all, I do like the concept of getting a private room to drink and hang out with your friends. As Kat pointed out, Maru was unique in that they do not impose a surcharge for reserving the room; you just pay for the drinks and food. Esth’s friend had reserved the room to celebrate someone’s bday (someone I didn’t know), but they ended up leaving somewhat early and we kept the room for a while longer. The drink packages struck me as particularly odd, pairing Johnny Walker Black with several bottles of Coors light. I guess nothing goes with Scotch like the Silver Bullet. In any event, I’m not exactly sure how much our crew drank, but I know we killed off at least two bottles of Johnny Black and I had to switch to the beers towards the end of the night/morning to save myself from what I knew would be a grim fate otherwise. Esth is a drinking and singing machine, that’s for sure, but by the end of the night, that machine was a little over lubricated but she handled it like a trooper. Was nice to have her back, but Gar couldn’t make it out because he caught a bad cold at the end of their vaca.

I’m not sure what time we finished up, but I’m pretty sure I went to bed around 5am so I was particularly displeased when my doorman called me at 9am to tell me I had a package waiting for me. I told him I’d grab it later and then went back to sleep, not waking up until 1:30p. Turns out the package was early x-mas gift #2 from my poker chick friend in AZ. Last week she sent me a pair of Visiball golf sunglasses which are designed to help you find golf balls because they make anything white appear to glow. Flimsy plastic frames, but pretty freaky cool in the way they appear to work. So this time, I go fetch the package and it’s a mini mah jong set from the same place where she got me the glasses- Hammacher Schlemmer. I’m starting to think she must own stock in that company or something. The mah jong set comes in a handly little travel case, so I think it would be appropriate to bring it down to Hing’s wedding this coming weekend, you know, just in case… 🙂

After a full day to detox on Saturday, I woke up feeling great and ready to go on Sunday. Now if only I knew where to go. I remembered that Vicky High Life usually works at Goblin Market Fridays and Sundays so I sent a text to Rick and Kat to see if they were up for some brunch. Turns out they were already trying to coordinate brunch with Esth and the rest of the crew, so it was perfect. I called up the Vickster to make sure she was working but it turned out that she was in Boston for the weekend. Seems like we keep missing each other. She’s been back from South America for a few months now and we haven’t been able to meet up once yet. Oh well, I still wanted to hit up Goblin Market to get those awesome french fries, so I went ahead and made the reservation anyway.

I picked up Kat, Rick and Dawg on my way in, and we got there a few minutes early so we ordered a couple of bloody marys and french fries (naturally) while we waited for the others. The bloodys were served in full pint glasses and were super tasty. Exactly the perfect thing for a Sunday afternoon. They also had a Vouvray on the wine list so we got a couple bottles of that too. We went through two orders of fries before Esth and Gar arrived. The fries were just as amazing as last time which really says something about their consistency. Though they didn’t need any type of sauce, they were served with ketchup and a really addictive garlic aioli. For our meals, Kat and Esth ordered the crab cakes with poached eggs, I had the smoked salmon scrambled eggs (mainly because I wanted the caviar that it was topped with), Gar and Dawg got the incredible looking Angus burger (served with those killer fries) and Rick got what looked like lobster roll except it was made with shrimp (also accompanied by those killer fries). But since I didn’t know all those dishes came with fries, I ordered two more orders on the side. No worries, we did in fact get through them all. The food was great all around and Kat and I were pretty well buzzed by the time the meal was over. Nice.

Meanwhile, Rog and Lisa were on their way back from CT, so we decided to bombarde Rog with text messages asking to play poker at their place. It was 3p and Rog said not to come over until 5:30p so we had a few hours to kill. Hrmmm… what opens at 3p on Sundays? That’s right, Chikalicious. Rick wasn’t down for any dessert, so he, Gar and Dawg went to grab a drink at a bar while I got the ladies all to myself- Kat, Esth and Esth’s cute foodie sister. Kat and I always love bringing people to Chikalicious for the first time, so this was a double treat for us since neither of them had ever been. Since Esth’s sister is studying at Cordon Bleu, we figured she in particular would really be into this kind of place and naturally we were not wrong. Chika’s classic chocolate tart for Esth and Kat, the caramel panacotta with pineapple sorbet for me, and the banana trifle for Sis. Delicious across the board as always, and I had a lovely madeira paired with my panacotta. Then for a kicker, Sis was so curious about Chika’s signature cheescake that we decided to order that too! You want it, you order it; exactly the way I like to roll. Sis of course loved it. I think she described it as “a puffy cloud of ricotta heaven”. I could practically see the almost devious machinations in her eyes as she was trying to figure out how she might be able to reconstruct this masterpiece of a cheesecake. Awesome.

I picked up a bottle of Coppola Syrah and headed over to Rog’s for poker. We played for about six hours and I busted out of the money every time (no surprise), but once again, I had my eye on the clock as I was targeting the after-hours menu at Momofuku Ssam bar. So I busted out of the last game a bit after 11p and headed over there. I started with a glass of sake, not that I needed any more booze, but they didn’t appear to have anything non-alcoholic other than water. I started with the plate of seasonal pickles which was an enormous bowl featuring all sorts of goodies including mini carrots, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, shitake mushrooms, a couple of different kinds of radishes, radish kimchee and cabbage kimchee. All were still crunchy, fresh and delicious. All very mildly pickled, with a subtle rice wine vinegar seeming to be the most prevalent pickling ingredient. Next up was a plate of two delicious pork belly buns, each filled with a generous amount of pork belly slices, hoisin sauce and scallion. The pork belly was succulent, moist and fatty and the sweet hoisin sauce was the perfect foil. I wolfed down both buns and was ready for more. Next up was the highlight of the night, a salad of apple “kimchi” featuring two different types of apple- mutsu and macoun. The peeled apple slices were treated with the same red pepper that would be used to make traditional kimchee, then adorned with baby arugula and in place of croutons were the star of the dish, the whole reason I ordered it- bits of fried pork jowl. Those precious gems were simply unreal. They looked like fried bits of pork skin but when you bit into them, they were impossibly light and airy, disintegrating in your mouth and leaving nothing but an ethereal porky essence on your palate. The apple and arugula made a swell combo for sure, but once I tasted those pork jowl bits, I wished I could have a bowl of just those alone. Man, it makes me crazy just thinking about it. Next up was the tripe which I wanted to order to see if it was any different than what I had gotten at Momofuku noodle bar last week. It wasn’t. So it was the same slightly over salted spicy tripe where one of my big complaints was that the tripe pieces were too small. After I ate all the bits of tripe, the bowl was still three quarters full of just the spicy broth and the vegetable brunois. By this point I was plenty full, but having been suitably impressed thus far, I was even more curious as to what else they had to offer. In particular I asked about the 4 different variations of ham they had listed on their menu. I really had no idea what to expect. When I hear ham, I think ham steak. Apparently when they say ham, they mean something more akin to prosciutto. I asked the waiter for whichever was the smokiest of the four offerings and I was served the Benton ham from Madisonville, TN. It was served as a super generous amount of paper thin slices arranged on a big plate with two long pieces of deliciously crunchy and chewy bread and a little thimble of apple butter. I didn’t think the apple butter went particularly well with the ham so I just loaded up the bread with slices of the ham and went to town. It was probably too salty for one guy to try and eat all in one sitting, but the flavor was fantastic and I just couldn’t resist. I downed the whole thing in just a couple of minutes. It was a pretty obscene amount of eating for a late night meal, but I just can’t help myself when I’m checking out a new restaurant for the first time. Apparently my server thought it was pretty extraordinary as well, as he brought me a complimentary glass of dessert wine with my check. What kind of dessert wine? You guessed it, my fave, moscato d’asti. There was no better, more appropriate finish to a pretty terrific weekend.