Sports in New York

So it's a rainy day in NYC... and Tish and Paulo have gone home without saying goodbye... was it something I said or did?

Anyways I have to change the title of the blog to adventures of Harold and the Patels I think with T&P gone. (I'll make the change sometime later)

But the point of this entry is about sports in NY. We had tickets to see the pens play the islanders at nassau colisseum and the knicks and spurs at MSG... and wow...

First off, Nassau is a dump... the Islanders suck... and it takes an hour to drive out there... but what a game! It went to a shootout and we had seats in the 3rd and 4th rows.

Then MSG... what can you say about MSG except that you can feel the history. The Knicks and Spurs went to overtime and talk about a loud pumped up arena... MSG had it all.

I will say this though about the ushers in New York arenas... they are assholes! Most of the New Yorkers I've met so far have been helpful and very nice. Arena ushers are on some misguided power trips... definately doesn't help the new york's reputation.

But of particular note... after the game we took our time leaving and walked past the tour bus that was taking the spurs back to there hotel... and who do we seen in the back row but Tony Parker and the very hot Eva Longoria... Ashif and I did all we could to get her attention... and let's leave it at that.

I'll add a video if I can get it.

I should refute Tish... but...

I come off pretty well in that last one, so I'll let it go. I'll have to get Paulo to write one... but he's reisting... Food moments of day 2... nothing that was mind blowing, but still it was fun for both food and moments. Amazing race moment of the day2: catching ferry on Liberty Island. It's a half hour wait if we missed one, so since we decided we needed to get some food we would catch the next ferry. As we get to the jetty, everybody is already past the gate, and the guy on duty starts shouting at us to hurry and run... after a 100m sprint to the closing gate we make it on to the ferry. Anyways this blog entry has taken 2 and half days to write. Ashif and his peeps are in now... and yesterday we were at the Islander's game. I'll write that one up in a seperate one. But for now, some pics and movies from Day 2.
New York Stock Exchange... Money money money... oh wait maybe... Burn baby burn may be more appropriate

Paulo and I trying to look suitably pious in Trinity Cathedral

Having a heart to heart moment with Paulo...

Pic from the rickshaw ride. I was momentarily distracted.

The "cockney" commentator at work

Bonus pic... Only in NYC moment: We're at a deli enjoying a few drinks, when a garbage truck pulls up. The garbage man throws one bag into the back and then hits the compress button. Just as the garbage is almost fully compressed, the garbage truck spews... I mean it looks liked it was puking... or had a bad case of the runs... anyways right behind the truck is an Infiniti X35 and what do you know, but the truck spews all over the front of the Infinit... ewww...

Day Two in New York - exploration was the order of the day. Oh wait, perhaps I should say that Ben is making me, Tish, write this entry. Breakfast was at a French place down the block from our studio. Ben would write a long entry on the food quality, quantity and ingredients, but suffice it to say that Paulo enjoyed his crepes, I ordered "Irish Oatmeal", which turned out to be licorice flavored oatmeal, and Benedict ordered the eggs Benedict. After breakie we took the subway to Battery Park where we boarded the ferry to Liberty and Ellis Islands. Ben attempted to instruct Paulo on the intricacies of how to operate his beloved camera (yes, this would be the same beloved camera that Ben dropped on the floor last night in our studio apartment), and we all generally froze our faces off in the stiff cold harbour wind.
Once back on the mainland, I demanded lunch (surprise!), so we set off to Chinatown after a brief sidetrip to Wall Street and the financial district. Ben took us to Noodle Village on the belief that it was recommeded in his beloved Michelin guide, but it turned out that that was actually Noodle House, not Noodle Village. Even so, we lucked out, and the food was amazingly good (and not just because we hadn't eaten for like five hours, and were freezing cold). Main dishes were beef and shrimp low mein, with Shanghai soup dumplings and chun fat (?) on the side. Overall we overate by far, which meant that it was fresh and oh so tasty. Apres lunch we boarded the subway again towards the Empire State Building, which is open until 1:15am apparently. Morale of this part of the story is that it took us approximately 1.5 hours to wind our way through the endless sectional lines, elevators and security to reach the observation deck, only to face the cold wind and clusters of people that we dealt with all day. If you like randomly making friends with the people in line around you, this is the ideal venue (Ben!!!!!), however, for the rest of us, it is a lot of standing, waiting, and being treating like cattle.
After the Empire State Building, we made the casual decision to take a rickshaw back the 20-something blocks towards our apartment. I should have known that this in itself would be an adventure. Keep in mind that rickshaws normally carry one or two people, and are pulled by one lone man on a modified bicycle. The lunch-laden three of us approach the unlucky candidate by the name of Sam, who cheerfully assures us that a) he can take the three of us at once and b) he can make it the 20 blocks. Now I, being from a smalle to mid-sized Canadian prairie city, did not know that rickshaw racing is actually a sport. I was quickly corrected in my belief when our poor Sam, (egged on by Ben in all his glory in his deranged, yet believable Cockney accent)did his best to not only keep up with other rickshaw drivers taking ONE or TWO people, but then also attempted to pass them (nevermind the freaking actual cars or anything!!!) at most intersections. Keep in mind that during our entire journey I was wedged between my two male companions, with one leg on Ben's lap (no comment), and was constantly assured that I was in the safest place in the whole setup.
Once Sam dropped us off at our destination (which turned out, no one actually knew, we just kinda stopped in front of an expensive restaurant when Sam got tired), we made our way to a lovely restaurant called Ben Ash. Here, we enjoyed the attitude of the servers (cute little girl who was bold enough to take even Ben on), the drinks, and the overall Jewish-influenced food. I am pretty sure that we talked philosophy, but have been instructed to keep silent on pain of death. As predicted, the Brazilian gets even louder and more emphatic when consuming alcohol.

1st day...

Paulo is sprawled half naked on the bed as I am typing this and it is taking all of my self control not to lose my dinner... and what a dinner...

So highlights, lowlights and generally humurous moments of the past day. We'll start with what may be the smartest move for this trip for me... Before I left I decided to pick up the Michelin Guide for NYC for 2009. I belive Tish's response when she saw it was "My god you are single minded"... after which she spent the next 15 minutes persuing... she also used it to decide where we were going (but all in good time)

Plane was a little delayed getting in but after a brief delay we were off to the Big Apple. Paulo is seemingly fixated on how similar everything is to GTA... I have a slight fear that he may randomly start beating people up...

The cabbie we had was nice and pointed out certain "landmark" places to eat on our way in... I think he had me pegged. Just down the street from where we are staying is apparently a gyro stand that has been opened for over 30 years... when we drove past there was quite the line up (even at midnight).

Our condo is really in an amazing location. It's right beside the Ed Sullivan Theater, where David Letterman films his nightly show. And right around the corner of our condo was the restaurant that Tisha had decided we were going to dine that evening. It's called Omido.


Now this place doesn't have the noteriety of a Nobu, or a big name chef like Moto, or Masa but it's definately some of the best sushi I've ever had. The flavours were clean, fresh and well put together, while the presentation was both aesthetically pleasing and definately enhanced the dinner. One of the things I particularly enjoyed was that every item on the plate was edible and part of the taste of the plate. There was no decoration for decoration's sake. The shaved radish gave an accent of color and a slight bite to the dish...

So what did we have? After a slight debate we chose a variety of dishes that catered a bit to our tastes and agreed to share. First up edamame beans. Difficult to mess up, but in a slight twist it tasted like they splurged a bit and instead of just kosher salt, or sea salt, it tasted very much like fleur de sel...

I should note at this point we had a seat in front of Chef Takase and we watched as he prepared our meal. Next up was a Maguro tartare... Nice firm rich red tuna was diced up and mixed with green onion and I think ponzu sauce before being served over some avocado. Very tasty and proved to be an excellent precursor to the sushi to come.



For the sushi proper, we ordered one of the signature rolls and asked the chef for a presentation of his choice of sushi and sashimi. We weren't disappointed.

The first signature roll was with a grilled black cod, cucumber and fried shredded taro. This was served with a ginger soy sauce.

We got another signature roll with the chef's sushi plate, a lobster roll done with soy paper and avocado. Different and very tasty. As well the sushi and sashimi plate offered a variety of different sushi's all carefully choosen by the chef as we watched and presented a variety of flavors and textures. Of particular note, he gave a generous helping of uni as one of the choices... very much to my tastes :)

After this, we notice one more signature set of rolls being plated for another table. It peaked our interest so we ordered it. A combination of different raw fish, fois gras and vegetables, topped off with gold leaf (yes gold leaf you read that right) was a perfect finish to an amazing dinner.

www.omidonyc.com


While not a famous or lavish place, the food was great!

Anyways it's almost 2 in the morning here, so I'm gonna sign off.