American Traveler

Cool and Cozy Wine Bar

I don’t know if there’s a cooler place to have a glass of wine in NYC than Bahr Che at Astor Place. It’s in a tiny candle-lit curvy space looking out on Cooper Square.

The wine bar features a nice selection of small plates from cheese plates to charcuterie to salmon tartar to eggplant and grilled shrimp. We tried all of the above, but the one that really stood out was the generous helping of lobster mac and cheese with truffle oil. Delicious! The pasta was perfectly done and mixed with just the right amount of cheese and large chunks of buttery lobster. For cheese, I enjoyed a creamy LaTur, which was made from cow’s goat’s and sheep milk and an aged Cabot cheddar.

But the real reason to visit Bahr Che is the wine.. all 1500 bottles of it. They pick their favorites and present an ever-changing list available by the carafe or bottle. I really enjoyed a super dry, minerally Gruner Veltliner and an exotic Txakolina.  Our knowledgeable and helpful server helped to point us to the right choices with generous samples of wines on the menu.

We were there on a quiet Tuesday evening. I’d like to come back on a weekend when it’s buzzing with oenophiles.

Bahr Che

26 Astor Place,

New York, NY

P1010467, a photo by wjsvt on Flickr.

How do you get to Radio City Music Hall?

Well you can practice, practice, practice. Or you can hop the Metro North to the Botanical Garden station in the Bronx for the Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden. There you will find more than 100 replicas of iconic New York buildings and landmarks—the Brooklyn Bridge, Yankee Stadium, the Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall—all made entirely from plants parts such as twigs, leaves, seeds, bark, and leaves. While vintage model trains run through the displays in the magnificent Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.

i’ve been there before and count it as one of the must-see New York holiday attractions. This was the first time for Lauren and she could not get over it. “I feel like a kid!” she kept gushing. We say a lot of people there on the Thursday afternoon we attended, but didn’t see one without a smile.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for children. you can purchase them online here.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2686014266627&set=at.1194481059229.30472.1144522665.1318136198&type=1&ref=nf

If you’re tired of the mannered, understated, ironic performances that are so prevalent on the stage theses days, Teatro Circulo has something  different to offer. This East Village Latino theater presents an energetic and raw performance of one of Frederico Garcia Lorca’s greatest plays. La Casa de Bernarda Alba is Shakespearian in its tragic scope. It’s kind of a female, Spanish King Lear. It is presented in Spanish with English super titles. Yes, the play is great, but the actor’s in this performance are remarkable: energetic, honest, and heart-felt. The Puerto Rican diva Lydia Echevarria is remarkable as Bernarda. And Maria Eugenia Mercado is a good match for her as Poncia. Every member of this all female ensemble cast deserves applause, including Isabel Arraiza as the long-suffering Adela.

Watch LaCasa Trailer

Or, an enchanting evening out in the West Village

Jesse Eisenberg shows his acting AND writing chops

It was a night of surprises for Lauren and me. The first was culinary as we stopped for a pre-show bite at the Mermaid Oyster Bar in the West Village. We got there early enough for Happy Hour. Dollar oysters and little neck claims? Count us in! WE enjoyed a dozen of each, followed by  shishito peppers and broiled shrimp. hey were all great, fresh and tasty. Oh, and we got a complementary taste of the Lobster Mac and Cheese. Wow!

Then we scooted off to the Cherry Lane Theatre for “Ascuncion” the new play by – and starring – Jesse Eisenberg. We weren’t sure what to expect except that we would see the young actor up close and personal in the small Cherry Lane space. Small yes, but bigger than the Rattlestick sown the street which was the producing theatre.

Really, I wasn’t prepared to enjoy a play written by a 28 year old neophyte. and it that, i was surprised. the dialog is witty, sharp, and on-topic. It’s current and stinging. In the play, Eisenberg skewers young, liberal, hipster types. and he does it with vigor and sass.

Eisenberg plays the clueless, politically over-correct Edgasr

Camille Mana is endearing as the innocent, fun-loving title character. (I think i missed my chance to use the word ‘eponymous’ here.) While Justin Bartha is sufficiently smug and stoned as Vinny, Edgar’s mentor.

Directed by Kip Fagan, it’s a the Cherry Lane until December 18.

Wow! What a great meal at Eataly’s rootop Birreria.

Here’s Lauren scraping the bowl of Cotta Cruda, a salad we shared at our first visit to Eataly‘s rooftop Birreria.

We took my daughter Zea to an early birthday dinner at Mario Batali‘ Birreria on the 15 floor rooftop above Eataly. It’s often referred to as a beer garden, but it’s much more than that. There is beer, of course, a few cask specials brewed on site. Wanda is brewed with chestnuts, while Gina is a traditional IPA. They have lots of other exotic brews on tap.But the real reason to come is the food.

The  Story of Daily News Columnist Mike McAlary

At the Rattlestick Theatre in Greenwich Village

Mike McAlary was a hard driving, egotistical, take-no-prisoners newspaper reporter in the mold of the great Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamil. From Newsday, to the New York Post, to the New York Daily News, he broke stories and made news. He lived hard and died young. ‘The Wood’ is the story of an excessively tumultuous time in his life as he battled cancer and worked tirelessly to break the Abner Louima case, in which a Haitian immigrant was brutalized by an officer in a  NYC Precinct in Brooklyn.

TV, movie, and blog writer Dan Klores tells McAlary’s tale with drama and compassion in this new production at the Rattlestick Theatre. Maybe too much compassion as McAlary mostly seems as thin as cardboard despite his bluster. It’s difficult to demonstrate inner conflict in a character who is so arrogant and self-confident, but John Viscardi gives it his best. K is outstanding as Louima, especially during the hospital scene. (or one of the hospital scenes. The play is plagued by too many cross-cuts, quick cuts, and time warping, mind-bending, attention sapping cuts in general.)

P1010371, a photo by wjsvt on Flickr.

The Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center

Lauren with Red-tailed Hawk at benefit in Southampton

Saturday Evening in the Garden

We were fortunate to snag an invite to the annual Benefit for Longhouse Reserve on Saturday honoring Dale Chihuly. Even though the artist was not able to attend, it was still a glorious evening, highlighted by a dazzling perfomance by principal dancers of the New York City Ballet. Of course Jack Lenor Larson was there. So was Edward Albee. Ran into Mark Drucker from Plum magazine, whom i worked with at Garden Design back in the day.

Lobster, Crabcakes, and More…

What great way to start a long weekend in the Hamptons. Happy Hour at the Palm features their bar bites at a super reduced price of $4.50 each, and a buck and half for oysters. And so the two of us were able to enjoy lobster roll sliders, mini crabcakes, oysters, shrimp and a couple of glasses of Reisling for about $50.

I am happy to report that the Age of Brunch is over. Oh, all the folks blithely enjoying their weekend mimosas and Eggs Benedict think that brunch will always be in fashion. After all, it has been more than 100 years since Punch magazine declared in 1896, “to be fashionable now, we must brunch.”

And brunch we do. From sunup to sundown every weekend in New York and cities across America people are going out to brunch. They’re engaging in it, and enjoying it, but can someone please tell me exactly what the heck brunch is?

The simple answer, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is that brunch is a combination of breakfast and lunch. The OED informs us that the word itself was coined by a Mr. Guy Beringer in Hunter’s Weekly in 1895.

But neither Mr. Beringer nor the OED really explains what makes brunch, brunch—as distinct from breakfast or lunch. Is it the food? It’s not the food. Eggs, for example, a brunch staple, are also breakfast food. They are prepared for brunch exactly the same way as for breakfast. Brunch favorites burgers and salads are also served at lunch and dinner. If brunch were a true combination of breakfast and lunch it would combine the dishes as well, e.g. eggs with hamburgers. In fact that is a dish I’ve enjoyed, a regional Rhode island specialty hamburger patty with a fried egg on top. But I ate those on my half-hour lunch break in the Ocean State. That clearly was not brunch because I was on deadline. I had a schedule, I had somewhere to be after I ate, unlike brunch, which is a meal that, in theory, can stretch to infinity—or at least Monday morning. Is it the time? Yes, it’s the time, to a certain extent. Brunch is characterized by a sense of leisure.

Yes, it has to be on the weekend—Saturday or Sunday with a long day and lazy evening stretching out in front of you.

As a boy, growing up on a farm, those long lazy days were non-existent. Even on weekends, there was always work to get back to. So you can understand my bafflement about brunch.

I’m quite sure my Dad, a lifelong farmer, never ate brunch. He probably never spoke the word “brunch”. That’s not to say he wouldn’t like brunch. He would appreciate any excuse to eat. On the farm, my father routinely ate a second breakfast around 10:00 am. As I recall, it was pretty much the same as the first breakfast (or as he called it “breffist”): peanut butter on white bread, folded, dunked in his coffee. Now, you probably won’t find peanut butter on the brunch menu, unless it’s tucked into a crepe or incorporated into some brunch dessert

So does the eater define brunch? To a degree.

My father was a real man. I believe that a regular guy like him, couldn’t care less about brunch. If he’s at brunch, Nine times out of ten he’s there because his girlfriend suggested it. However, he does like the idea of having permission to start drinking in the morning. If that requires ordering a hamburger and calling it brunch. So be it. Girls like brunch. Guys will do what girls like. Straight guys do anyway. And gay guys just plain like brunch.

So just because I am a brunch idiot why do I posit that brunch has reached the apex of its ascendency?

Go to the epicenter of the brunch world, the restaurant Pastis in the Meat Packing District of New York. If brunch wasn’t invented there, it should have been. And you will suppose, from the long lines and the high prices that brunch has never been more popular. Folks will wait for hours for the privilege for paying seventeen bucks for a couple of eggs—the very same eggs that are eleven dollars during the week. That’s a six dollar surcharge for the privilege of calling them brunch. You’ll find l’oeufs on the brunch menu at Pastis. As well as their salades and garnitures. But you won’t find the French word for brunch. Why? There is not French word for brunch. The French do not need a magic work to justify spending all day in a café eating and drinking.

But look around at the outskirts outer reaches of Brunchville and there are signs of unrest. There’s something brewing besides coffee—and that something is trouble. First there was Permanent Brunch, a restaurant in the Lower East Side that promised brunch all day, every day. It seemed like a sure thing. It shuttered soon after opening. Why? Once you experience brunch on a Tuesday at 6:00 pm you realize it’s not so special anymore. It’s not hard to figure out that anything permanent cannot be special. (See marriage.)

But a worse sign of the coming brunch apocalypse is offered by Meat Hook Butcher shop in Williamsburg, Fitting, that the home of the hipster is also home to the first ironic brunch. At the Meat Hook they’ve set up a single table in front of the counter and for $50 a head, guests get to enjoy a “tasting menu” that might include a slice of leftover pizza with Miller High Life, saltines with chocolate and coffee, schnapps and beef jerky followed by lentil soup.

Well, it does meet the main criteria of brunch: alcohol. Plenty of it. But seems to me that once brunch becomes ironic, it’s days are numbered.

So if you’ll excuse me, it’s the weekend, and I’m going out for a late morning meal. I’m in the vanguard of the next fashionable thing. Eggs over easy, home fries and bacon. And a big mug of coffee. I’m calling it breffist.