Dinner With The Minx

Last week I had the pleasure of another dinner with my good friend, The Minx, who was visiting from Baltimore. As always, she picked the restaurant - and this time she picked the fantastic (and cheap!) Baohaus.

Read about our delicious dinner HERE. My mouth is watering just thinking about it again...

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Dinner With The Gals

Took Maddie to a neighborhood Greek/Cypriot joint last night, and we were joined by the fabulous Designing Wally - a fellow Astorian who I'd never met. A couple of hours and 3 bottles of wine later, the three of us were laughing like schoolgirls and delighting in each others company. Truly a wonderful evening.

Wally is good people (the jury is still out on Maddie), and I hope he enjoyed our company as much as we did his.

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Blame Amber

Yesterday started out kind of crappy, however - much to my surprise and delight - it ended quite wonderfully.

"Why is that", you ask?? I blame Amber!

Last night I got to meet one of my oldest MOST ESTABLISHED blog friends - Miss Amber LeMay. Amber is on a whilwind tour of NYC and we finally arranged to meet. Accompanying her for dinner was none other than Russell D - part of the RJD Productions team responsible for the look of this blog. Russell is also the person Amber and I call when our "computer thingy is broken". Poor dear.

However, there will be NO photographs published of this magical evening. For one thing, a lady doesn't have her picture taken when she's as fat as I am. Look at what happened to Liz Taylor (God rest her eternal soul) - the poor woman never DID live that down.

Besides, Amber was deep undercover (and that girl can go DEEP) - posing as some fabulous dude named "Bob". It was an ingeneous disguise designed to fool the paparazzi who had gathered outside the restaurant, trying to snap her picture. And her "Bob" drag worked like a charm.

So, if I have anyone to "blame" for my much-better frame of mind today, I'm blaming Amber LeMay. And Russell, of course ...

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Dinner With The Minx's

My friend The Minx is in NYC with her adorable husband, Mr. Minx - and I had the pleasure of having dinner with them last night. Since I am completely unadventurous when it comes to restaurants, The Minx always picks someplace for us to eat when she comes to town. And she never disappoints.

This time she chose the Times Square Japanese bar/restaurant - Sake Bar Hagi. She had read good things about the place, and Anthony Bourdain even liked it when he visited.

Sake Bar Hagi serves "small plates" which are really reasonably priced. I let The Minx do the ordering and I went along for the ride. Here are some of the delicious dishes we sampled...

Gyoza (like pot-stickers) and Fried Calamari...


A couple of platters of assorted skewered meats ...


A noodle dish with pork and string beans...


One of the things I just couldn't attempt was the Octopus Balls (below). If The Minx's would have pretended it was delicious I probably would have tried it - but they were ambivalent so I stayed away. I usually like a nice ball, but not this time...


One of the things that surprised me was the fact that they had a corn dog - served with mustard and ketchup. How could you not love a restaurant that serves corn dogs?!?...


It was a great dinner with great friends - and the price was right. We each had a glass of Sake, and our bill came to less than $100. For 3 people eating in Times Square, that is a huge bargain!


PROGRAMMING NOTE: The Minx WILL be recapping last night's episode of Top Chef, however she won't be posting it until Friday ... stay tuned.

Dinner With Friends

I had a lovely dinner last night with my friend The Minx (who's newest blog project is All Top Chef), the delightful Laura K (from Blogging Bravo and Blogging Project Runway), and Laura K's fabulous friend Roz. Since we all wanted to catch up, no one answered their phones during dinner (which was at Mario Batali's excellent pizza place - Otto). So it wasn't until we had separated and I returned my roommate's missed call that I found out about Michael Jackson's death. Holy Crap - I still can hardly believe it.

In a way, I'm glad we didn't find out during dinner - the sad news would have really dampened a wonderful evening. Otto is a nice place - it's reasonably priced and just steps away from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Otto specializes in antipasti, small-plate pastas, and delicious thin-crust pizzas! Here are the four pizzas we ordered (and shared)...

Laura K. ordered Four-Cheese...

I can't remember what this one was called, but Roz gave me the slice with the prosciutto on it (delish!)...

The Minx ordered Mushrooms and Taleggio cheese...


Finally, I ordered the asparagus and goat cheese...

After dinner The Minx and I took the subway uptown, and we passed Parsons - where Project Runway is currently filming. There was even a VERY PR-ish white van parked out front...

But, alas, there was no Tim Gunn sighting...