Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Wednesday morning was overcast and we carried our umbrellas all day, although they were never raised. We did a bit of walking and window-shopping and then hopped into a taxi and headed down to Greenwich Village. After an obligatory photo shoot in front of the "new" Provincetown Playhouse, which was all but torn down and rebuilt by NYU, we walked to our lunch destination.

Tertulia is a relatively new restaurant that's received rave reviews. They offer a tapas menu, which Marlene appropriately described as Basque Taste. (Taste is one of Gerard Craft's many fine St. Louis restaurants.) They do not take reservations for dinner, when it's almost impossible to get a table. But when we arrived for our 12:30 lunch reservation, the restaurant was almost empty and stayed that way.

The menu was enticing, but we needed help from our server to orchestrate our meal. We did not need his help orchestrating our beverage — a pitcher of perfect sangria!

We started by splitting a recommended special — a croissant filled with ham and cheese. It was unimpressive to look at, but it was delicious.

Next, we shared fried Shishito peppers with lots of sea salt and Ibérico ham croquettes. When the peppers arrived, there was a brief "uh-oh" moment when we feared they'd be too "hot" to eat. But they were delicious, and quickly disappeared from the plate. The croquettes were good, but it was difficult to taste the ham.

We next shared crispy potatoes with a garlic aioli sauce and a skirt steak sandwich with gorgonzola. Unfortunately, the potatoes came out well before the sandwich and we were "forced" to keep eating them. They were YUMMY!

When the sandwich finally arrived, it was good, but not great.

We enjoyed Tertulia and would go back, but our dishes were a bit uneven.

After lunch, we walked through Washington Square Park, where there are always sights to be seen.

We then took a taxi to midtown and walked through Bryant Park, took an obligatory photo of the New York Public Library, and rested (one of us) in the ladies shoe department at Saks.

On our walk back to the apartment, I was accosted by two young thugs who asked me if I was Jewish. When I answered in the affirmative, they put a covering atop my head, thrust two foreign object into my hands, and forced me to repeat a strange incantation.

After some downtime in the apartment, we hailed a taxi to take us to the Duke theatre on 42nd Street. The traffic cooperated and we arrived early, with time to shop for t-shirts for our two grandsons.

"Cock" is a powerful play that's a virtual "cockfight" between three characters, two men and one woman, with a fourth character added to the mix towards the end. One of the male characters has been in a relationship with the other male character, but this relationship is threatened when he finds he's attracted to and is in love with the female character. Let the fight begin.

The characters are all uncomfortable throughout the play, never knowing the status of their various relationships, and the theatre is designed to make the audience sit uncomfortably throughout the play in a wooden cockfight ring. It worked.

I highly recommend "Cock;" it was theater at its best.

When Marlene made our dinner reservation at Neta, with her superb map skills, she thought it was down the street from the Duke. It was down the street — in the West Village. Luckily, we had figured this out in advance and ordered a car to pick us up after the play.

Neta was nondescript on the outside; we had trouble finding it. But it was bustling on the inside, with lots of noisy diners. It was very unlike the sedate Masa, the high end New York sushi restaurant we had dined at a few years earlier. Most of the diners were seated at a long sushi bar, but we were taken to one of three tables for our meal.

Our waitress asked if we'd like a beverage. I showed her a photo on my iPhone.

My son Zach and his wife Amy had dined at Neta two weeks earlier on their New York vacation. They had ordered and consumed FIVE (5) bottles of sake, all of which were pictured in Zach's weekly blog. I had asked Zach which sake he had liked the best and he told me the fifth one.

As I showed our waitress the photo of the "fifth one," it occurred to me that whichever sake Zach had ordered and consumed as his fifth probably would have been his favorite, assuming he was lucid enough to remember it. But to Zach's credit, it was indeed sweet and tasty.

Also per Zach and Amy's recommendation, we ordered the multi-course Omakase menu. It was nicely paced and served; much less pretentiously than Masa. The quality of the fish, as at Le Bernardin, was impeccable. I've not included photos of every course, but every course was delightful.

Dungeness crab and cucumber salad with ginger and ponzu vinaigrette

Warm scallop and Santa Barbara uni with cilantro and mushrooms

Local blowfish with tempura vegetables. (It tasted like chicken!)

One of the many rounds of sushi, in this case yellowtail and salmon

After we finished our bottle of fifth one, we asked the young waiter who had been helping us to recommend another sake. He suggested we order a second bottle of fifth one and then switch to a lighter sake, if we desired a third bottle, to compliment the lighter sushi courses.

We ordered another fifth one, and then our third one, which I believe was Zach and Amy's second one.

As our waiter served our sake, I told him our son and daughter-in-law had dined at Neta two weeks earlier. He exclaimed, "They sat where you're sitting and I waited on them!" He told us they had been delightful diners and he had enjoyed serving and talking with them.

He also told us that after Zach and Amy had downed FIVE (5) bottles of sake, the staff had carrier them comatose to a taxi. OK, not really, but I don't understand how they did it. I was completely plotzed after our THREE (3) bottles! Zach and Amy, I salute you.

  Thursday, October 4, 2012
 

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