Trip to the Meatpacking District

The meatpacking district in Manhattan was originally a meatpacking district. By midcentury, there were over 135 packing plants and butchers in the small area below:




By the 1980's, the area was overrun by drug dealers and prostitutes. In the 1990's, however, many boutiques and shops started arriving, and as all things New York, rising prices pushed the seedy, grit out of the area. In 2004, New York magazine called the Meatpacking District "The most fashionable neighborhood in New York."

Anyways, we were researching which events we wanted to go to when Food Network does their big New York Food and Wine Festival event in October. In addition to book signings by all their hosts, we're planning on a kids cooking event with Alton Brown and possibly a evening event hosted by Bobby Flay. We'll see. Anyways, while researching that, I realized that we had completely missed so far what is basically the culinary center of New York -- the Meatpacking District. Those few blocks are jam full with restaurants, shops, boutiques, etc. Plus, the studios of Food Network are down there.

So we got around and headed out for brunch. Parking down there wasn't nearly as bad as anticipated:


The area was a little different than I had expected. There wasn't very many people out. It was still pretty rough around the edges. Lots of brick, beat up closed store fronts, warehouses (some still operating as packing plants), and weird buildings like this:


But a lot of the area was renovated modern-distressed style restaurants and shops, like this one:


After a little walking around, and spotting a new Audi R8:



We then settled into outdoor seating at a little Italian place named Vento.






Despite Miles' frown, we had a lovely time sitting outside people-watching and scoping out the surrounding restaurants and buildings. Kristal thought she spotted a celeb, but we can't tell for sure who it is. Kate Hudson?


We started with some bread:


I knew we were in for a treat after tasting the raisin-fennel bread, and (to the right) the banana bread. The light bread was so soft and airy, nearly melted in your mouth.

Then, our food arrived. Mine, the lower plate, was a mozzarella and italian sausage omelet, Miles and Damion split an eggs benedict:


We got a side of fried mozzarella with a sauce that was UNBELIEVABLY amazing. It was like a fired-tomato sauce, slightly spicy, but very smooth. I spent the whole meal dipping my potato's in it.


Kristal ordered oven-roasted eggs over panncetta, spinach, and potato's. Again, the potato's were outstanding. We think they were boiled, skin on, then dumped in a fryer just long enough to give them a crispy outside. They were then split and seasoned with some herb and coarse salt.



This was easily one of the best meals we have had since coming out here. Service rocked as well, super nice and helpful waiter. We all had a scoop of gelati to finish up (I had Salted Caramel), and we were on to our next sight!

Look behind Damion in this picture:


No, not the R8 again. The brick building to the far right of the picture is the Chelsea Market - an incredible collection of food shops. That's where the Food Network studios are too, but they don't give tours. :-( So that's where we headed next.

Not before spying an Aston Martin (think James Bond) parked across the street:



Let's just say, the Chelsea Market is AWESOME. While rennovated, they have completely left the interior really raw and original. There's old brick, pipes, steel, and all sorts of concrete "things" of all sorts all over the place. Really industrial, really cool:


I thought this was an exceptionally cool view:



There were several large, industrial sized bakery's there, some of whom had store fronts, but a couple that didn't, just a fish-tank bakery. They had windows all along so you could see the bread rising, flour flying this way and that as the bakers...well, baked stuff. :-)


There were many, many candy shops, dessert places, several wine shops, a seafood place with more fish than I had ever seen in one place, and a few random nick-nack shops, including one selling Food Network stuff:


This was a funny name for a bakery:


When we had completed our tour of the Chelsea Market, we were pretty fooded out. We headed back to the car, not before spying a new Maserati Granturismo:


We drove uptown to Midtown to hit a sheet music shop. Kristal snapped this picture, thought it was pretty neat:


With the 100+ temperature outside though, we were pretty much ready to get home and into some air conditioned space. Walking around Midtown just wasn't gonna happen.

With a little more research I did after coming home, turns out the MPD really takes off at night, where people flock to the scene. I think we will have to take the Meatpacking District in on a Friday or Saturday night to really catch the magic, although I can say, we definitely found some good eats today!

Until next time!

Jazz Clasical?

I studied piano a lot in college, and of course have always sought out new composers and music. I am so glad, however, that I continue to find new composers who have written copious amounts of piano music. One is Nikolai Kapustin, who was a musician who so wanted to be a jazz guy. Unfortunate thing was, however, that he was so steeped in classical training that he couldn't overcome the rigid training of "play the notes" to become an improv jazz performer (I know a thing or two about that). So, he started writing jazz like one would classical music -- by notating every note! Here's a great performance of his music by Marc Andre-Hamelin, an amazing pianist and great proponent of modern classical piano music. Enjoy!

Catching Up

Yes, another catch up post. Funny how I can never stay current, and always end up having to post in retrospect.

Couple quick updates first. We leave for vacation in 6 days! Here's our itinerary:

• Next Wednesday, 5pm, we fly out of Newark and land in beloved Portland International Airport!
• Spend Thursday - Sunday in Portland visiting friends, visiting work, going to the SignaCert picnic, going to The Creek with the gang, etc.
• Monday morning we drive to Redding, CA with Miles. Damion stays in Portland with friends
• Tuesday, Kristal and I leave Miles with my parents, and we book it to Eureka, CA -- on the coast. We then spend two lovely days on a mini-vacation touring northern California breweries, coastal towns, and the redwood forests.
• Thursday we come back to Redding and spend the evening celebrating my brother's birthday, July 31 (and Kebra's birthday, although she's in BFE Alaska! :-)
• Friday we go back to Portland and spend the weekend
• Sunday we fly back to New York

Needless to say, we cannot wait!

In other news, we managed to spend too much money over the past few weeks overhauling our living room. We bought some living room furniture that was long overdue - a bookshelf, some cabinets for DVD's and Nintendo games, a TV stand, and a ginormous TV to set on top of it. Also managed to pick up a A/V receiver so we could finally take advantage of the amazing surround sound the owner of our place has wired into the whole living room. We bought a great area rug for the whole thing, and have created a space we really enjoy. It's been great having people over and hanging out in our new living room.

Work has been going well, we have nearly closed on another big deal which, for a startup, is great news. Kristal has been staying busy (as you will see) with the boys now that summer vacation has set in. The boys have been busy with summer music camp for the past two weeks. The Hoboken School of Music, where they take lessons, lets out for the summer, but they took two weeks of summer lessons with Miles' teacher and have been having a great time. They actually recorded CD's of themselves playing, which I will post this weekend.

OK enough of the rambling, let's get to the pictures.

Last weekend we made our maiden voyage to the Jersey Shore. So first off, we haven't heard anybody out here call the beach the "coast" as we do on the west coast. It's called the "shore." Clearly New Jersey has a "shore" and the real motivation for visiting is that it supposedly offers surfing. So we went to the closest beach there is to us, which is about an hour away (about the same as the Oregon coast from Portland). These pictures were taken from the 'pet-friendly beach' which wasn't actually on the ocean but rather on a little bay where boats passed from dock to open ocean:








As for surf, let's just say that if I felt like surfing crowded, ghetto New Jersey beach break with self-inflated jock New Jersey types, maybe I'd brew the board out. After all, I did bring it all this way. However, it really was a downer out there because even though it was great being on a beach again, it was full of beach-type people. This, as opposed to the great oregon coast -- sweatshirt-wearing, hippie, granola, chill people. Here, it's bikini's, lords with fake tans, way too many muscles for me to feel comfortable, and tons and tons of people on the beach. Will we return? Most likely. But enjoy it like we do the Oregon coast? Never.

Onward.

On the way home, Kristal captured another classic "Andrew-driving" pic:


And we had the good fortune of encountering the really cool self-pay toll on the highway. See, most of the tolls around here (and there are PLENTY; we keep a $20 in the car nearly all the time just to take care of the frequent tolls we encounter) are "you-pay-an-attendant" type. This kind is cool -- you just toss your change in this plastic chute, it automatically counts it, and authorizes you through. Clearly difficult to capture with a stil pic, it was really fun tossing a handful of change into a plastic bucket and having it auto-count it!

See the chute?


The other day, Kristal and the boys had a great day out. First, they hit a couple of parks, one with a fountain. If I had kept a blog of us in Portland, these pictures would have been commonplace -- nearly every park in PDX has a fountain.







We're trying not to take for granted that the New York skyline, specifically the Empire State Building, is our backdrop for things like this:




Afterwards, Kristal and the boys went to lunch and Johnny Rockets, a retro burger-joint. The boys ordered, for the first time, "grown-up" burgers. In fact, so grown-up that Miles said to the waitress that he would like a "grown-up Smokehouse burger." Obviously they had their mouths full, no pun intended!




And a few more pics to round out the day:






Until next time!

That's MISS August to you!

Found out a few days ago that our veterinarian was Miss August 2003 for Playboy. What's more, a guy downstairs had the issue, and had to show me What's more, she maintains a web site and occasionally updates with "membership only" pics. With her "friends." All I can say is:

Catching Up

Hello gang,

Another catch up post. Kristal and the boys went to the Central Park Zoo the other day, so I wanted to post some pics of that, as well as Oliver after getting fixed and having his dew claws removed. Poor guy was in pretty bad shape!

One additional note, I have made the linked images larger, and will try that for a while. So when you click a picture in the blog, it should take you to a bit bigger picture than before. Hopefully that works.

Anyhow, on with the pics.

The boys and Kristal found the statue of Balto. The boys read a story about Balto and ever since then we've wanted to find him in Central Park!


Miles hauling the backpack for a while:


Watch out -- Giant Spiders!!!


Miles keeping a keen eye on the goat...


Looks like they're having a great time so far!



Keep the good times going....


After Central Park, the boys and Kris went to FAO Schwartz, which is right at the southeastern corner of Central Park. This is the flagship store on Fifth Avenue.

Miles hugging a huge Ugly Doll:


Will it be Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin????


Poor Ollie: