It’s people like me who celebrate their birthday twice. F is like me and had his official bday dinner with his 20 closest friends on Tuesday night, then had his official bday bash with his 20 closest friends again on Saturday night. Tuesday night was incred – I initially fought against the tapas idea (for selfish reasons obviously – tapas never fill me up enough; they’re pretty much priced like a regular dish except it comes in a midget portion). But Mercat turned out to be more than enough food. Probably because we had our base set of dishes, then ordered twice that amount after we finished that because we were all still starving. Plus 20 bottles of red wine for 20 people.
Mercat Dinner Base Menu
Formatges y Embotits
3 Cheese Selection (Manchego, Garrotxa, La Peral)
Assortment of Embotits
Apats
Patates Braves
Bombes
Coliflor
Tonyina amb Escabetx
Cuina de Mercat
Cansalada
Gambes
Pebrots farcits
Racions
Remolatxa
Espinacs
I had no idea what any of that meant.
For some reason the 3 Asians invited to the dinner were forced into one corner of the large table, and they made us eat from different plates and drink from separate water fountains. Except this time it was to my benefit, since the rest of the table was splitting the tapas dishes among groups of 4 guys, and then I was splitting tapas dishes with just 2 other girls, both of whom were going to be bridesmaids in a wedding in 2 weeks and were really trying to watch their waistline. Here’s just a sampling of what I ate that night:
Tuna Tartare and Cheese
Pork Belly
Steak
After dinner we all took turns pouring wine into each other’s mouths from those decanters with a long spout. I know that sounds sexy and all, but it really wasn’t when I tried to impress the table with my wine drinking skills and instead a drop went down the wrong tube and I projectile spat out a full mouthful of wine onto the restaurant floor and started gagging uncontrollably. Not the first time that’s happened to me in life. I was most irritated by the amount of wine I had just wasted.
Anyway, after Tuesday night we were all looking forward to Saturday when B/A were actually supposed to throw a huge combined daytime August birthday bash for B, S and F since they had missed out on their bdays by taking a two-week trip to the worst places in the world, Seattle and Portland. We were looking forward to day drinking and techno all day on B’s rooftop with close friends, but 24 hours in advance, they cancel the party on us due to “weather” reasons (really they just didn’t want to hang out with us after all). Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous day perfect for day drinking, and pissed about our lack of party plans, the rest of us just decided to day drink elsewhere, and F decided to throw his own bday bash at the Watering Hole that night. In preparation for Saturday night, S naturally decided to shotgun a Four Loko, which was probably bad news considering the last time he shotgunned a Four Loko I accidentally sent him to the ER. Anyway, he ended up fine this time – after falling asleep at the bar for half the party, he rallied for the second half of it by aggressively drinking whiskey after whiskey.
Watering Hole was pretty fun considering it’s an Irish bar with karaoke (huh??) but their song selection and music videos weren’t quite the authentic karaoke experience that we have every other weekend in Ktown. This place was full of people who you could tell were clearly in an acappella group in college and karaoke was the way they were reliving their dreams in NYC – but I don’t mean the Quinn and Puck jocks-but-secretly-acappella type; I mean like the Mercedes and Artie and fat opera lady/men types who didn’t even need a microphone to project their voices throughout the entire loud bar. This place also had some Irish dbag controlling the song entries, and he was clearly picking and choosing favorites and discriminating against the Asian. I was there for 3 hours, submitted 4 songs, and only got to sing Total Eclipse of the Heart. The karaoke DJ probably would have gotten seriously hurt if it weren’t for the free pitchers of beer that were calming me down the entire night (courtesy of the bday boy). Anyway, all in all a successful night where no one actually got hurt, I drank for free, and sang some oldies but goodies with good friends.
Poverexic in NYC 