Poverexic in NYC

Today I woke up to the most amazing email from L:

Subject Line:  whatcha doing tonight

Body:

im not going to this but i totally think this screams your name.

http://thrillist.com/links/2348616/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5iYWNvbmVyeS5jb20v/direct

Its called Baconry and its a bakery that puts bacon into anything it
makes. Its online but they are having a launch party tonight where
they will be giving away there stuff.

Party at 730p tonight at Tenth Rail: 413 10th Ave, nr 33rd St; Hell’s
Kitchen; 212.643.0873

Website
Read more: http://thrillist.com/food/new-york/baconery_american_bacon_breakfast_delivery_online-shops_snacks_websites#ixzz1ZFKQWkaA

WHAT!!!  OBVIOUSLY I’LL GO.  I immediately gchatted the only other friend I have who is almost as enthusiastic about food as I am — J.  I knew I could count on her.  After emailing this out to my closest 20 friends, she was of course the only one who wrote back.  I know my friends well.  Fuck the rest of you.

Because this sounded like an amazing event, J and I were concerned about how much free food we would actually be able to score at this event, thinking this launch event would clearly be over capacity.  The event started at 7:30pm, so just to be safe, we decided to meet up at 6:45pm so we could get “front row seats” at this launch event and ensure enough bacon consumption.

When we got there, we realized we were in the shit hole of Manhattan — all the way on 10th Ave where I hardly recognized the city anymore, and this restaurant was next to the largest McDonald’s I’d ever seen in the city (it was two floors, what!!).  Seriously, what was this place, and where the fuck was I.  J and I sucked it up, went inside, had a happy hour drink while we waited for the crowds to arrive.

The crowds never arrived, but the party did begin promptly at 7:40pm, and it started with some appetizers that were amazing looking but had no resemblance of bacon.

Chicken/beef skewers and vegetable quesadillas

Pulled pork sliders

Lots of good food.  No bacon.  What was going on?!?!  I thought the sliders were bacon sliders, but no sign of bacon.

After chugging two more $3 margaritas, the Baconery goods finally started to appear.  It was every kind of baked good you could imagine, all filled with bacon — bacon pumpkin muffins, bacon brownies, bacon blueberry muffins, bacon rice krispie treats, bacon chocolate chip cookies, bacon oatmeal raisin cookies, bacon M&M cookies.  It was absurd.

Bacon pumpkin muffin

Bacon brownies

Bacon rice krispie treats

@Baconery was getting at it.

At the end of this event, J and I were so full we didn’t even want to start to think about Rosh Hashanah.  We had eaten way too much pig to start the high holidays so soon.  Whatevs.  In the words of Ana Gasteyer’s son on Curb Your Enthusiasm:  “GET A LIFE JEWS.”

Shana Tova!

I had the most incredible experience on Wednesday.  After a long day of meetings, I was invited to dinner with a group of about 25 NJ folks to Carmine’s in Times Square before they were headed out for a group outing to go watch Jersey Boys (so touristy).  Being the anti-cultural/anti-touristy person that I am, I turned down the invite to Jersey Boys but of course took them up on the offer to go to this group dinner.

If you’ve ever been to Carmine’s you know it’s family style, and they bring all the dishes out onto these humongous plates.  No joke, I think the person coordinating this dinner over-ordered by like 25 people.  We literally had like 10 courses.  For each group of 5 people, they first brought out salad, then fried calamari for appetizer, then another appetizer plate of sausages, stuffed mushrooms, mussels, clams, fried cheese, etc; then they brought out some delicious penne pasta, then angel hair pasta with garlic tomatoes; then they brought out parmesan chicken, then some really good marinated chicken, then steak (!!!), and a side of steamed spinach.  Then we had a dessert plate of chocolate cake, ice cream, chocolate covered strawberries, etc.  Not to mention the pitchers of beer and bottles of red and white wine that never ran out at the table.  It was incredible.

What was even more incredible was that understandably we did not finish all this food, given most everyone got completely full after course 3.  I have to admit even I thought it was too much food, which really says a lot.  By the end of dinner, there were plates and plates and plates of food that were literally untouched.  The people at my table were overwhelmed by the amount of leftovers, and they started to discuss what to do with all this food.  “Well, we can’t take them with us… how are we going to take all this food in with us to Jersey Boys?  I think L has to take it all since she’s going straight home.”  Clearly that was the plan I had in mind all along, but I had slowly throughout the course of dinner been planting that idea into people’s heads… like INCEPTION.  http://inception.davepedu.com/

I am so good.

It was raining that night and it was impossible to catch a cab back home, but with both hands carrying two very, very heavy bags of 7 large aluminum trays of leftover food, I was determined to bring it all home, even if that meant sweating in my nice suit and heels that would have to get dry cleaned the next day and getting soaked as I walked several blocks to the Times Square subway station and awkwardly smelling up the entire subway car with Italian food as I took the NRQ and L back home to Stuy Town.  It was hard work, but worth it.  The look on my roommates’ faces when they saw the 7 aluminum trays full of delicious Italian food was as if they had just seen the biggest tits they’d ever seen in their entire lives on a tiny 5’0″ girl.  Yes, they got a foner — a food boner.

This is how much food there was when I brought it home:

Carmine's Leftovers

After 4 days, there are just 4 trays left now.  Roommate L has eaten 3 of them by himself.  I am slowly making my way through the leftover angel hair pasta with garlic tomatoes.  I thought this would be enough food to last us like 3 weeks, but apparently it’s going to be more like one week.  That’s still ok.

Since high school I’ve only seen my parents once a year — in college maybe once every two years.  Despite the fact that I shamelessly love Most Eligible Dallas (watching it as we speak obviously), I actually hate Dallas and refuse to go back unless a best friend gets married there and forces me to come back to the city I loathe.  My family doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving (I mean… we’re Japanese — my mom’s version of “Thanksgiving” is serving ham over a huge bowl of rice), and I hate religion and my mom is too lazy now to care about religion so we don’t really celebrate Christmas anymore either (funny… considering my mom used to send me to Vacation Bible School when I was little — times have changed).  Point being, I don’t go home for the holidays and haven’t for about a decade now, so I pretty much never see my parents.

Living in NYC has brought us closer together, though, because they actually come to visit every year.  Oh, but do they come to visit me?  No.  They come for the US Open.  Why?  Because they are completely obsessed with tennis and live and breathe tennis even though they’re not even that good at playing.  They travel around the world for tennis — French Open, Australian Open, US Open… they love tennis.  They don’t even go for the good games though — I feel like if you’re paying for tickets, you might as well go for the semifinals/finals.  But no, my parents always go for the first 3 rounds of the tournament because they want to watch the Japanese players play, and all the Japanese players are out by like round 1 (sports not our strong suit).  This year apparently all the Japanese players retired or something (???) so you can imagine how disappointed my parents were.

Regardless, when my parents come to visit NYC every year for the US Open, they barely make time for me.  I’m just being a needy daughter trying to get a good meal out of my parents once a year, and it is nearly impossible with their schedules packed full of tennis watching during the day and getting blackout with their Japanese tennis friends at night.  Like mother, like daughter.  I do respect my parents for that.

The good thing is that the US Open falls around my birthday every year, so that gives me a legit excuse to pick a nice dinner spot for some “nice family time” but more importantly for some “great poverexia time.”  This year I made my parents take me to Wolfgang’s.  My dad joked that it was about time I started picking up the tabs for these family get-togethers, and I laughed in his face.  Clearly he’s in the dark about poverexia.  Here’s what I ordered knowing I would not be paying for any of this:

Canadian Bacon and Clams

Steak 1

Steak 2

Steak 3

I was shitting for like 48 hours straight.  It was exhausting.  I hadn’t had that much meat in a really long time (that’s what she…).  It was really incred, and it made me forgive my parents for completely forgetting my birthday one week later.  Go Djokovic.

Well my birthday weekend was a mess/success.  My Mexican friend was visiting from Mexico City to spend my bday with me, and so I had taken a half day on Friday so we could do touristy things like go to Central Park and drink all day at the Frying Pan.  The day started out great when my friend picked up my lunch tab of chili burger and bowl of chili at Big Daddy’s as an early present, and even better, earlier in the day I had received a completely unexpected surprise at work when a box of 18 Sprinkles cupcakes arrived at my desk from my sister (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

The day was going great, and for dinner we went to my new fav restaurant Shitty Crab with S, where they have half-price appetizers, half-price drinks and $1 oysters after 10pm.  After finishing two dozen oysters and two Strong Island Ice Teas for dinner, things started to go downhill.  We knew we had to save up for my bday party the next day on Fraturday, so we decided to take it easy and go nearby for one birthday shot (my Mexican insisted) and go home to pass out.  None of us really know how, but somehow one birthday shot turned into five and before I knew it, I was partying it up with the old Harvard Rugby coach and his married friend, and my Mexican and I were dancing to music videos at Nevada Smith’s until 3:30am before we realized that was a bad idea.

It was a bad idea.  The next morning I woke up to a lovely bday gift from my stomach to the toilet of bright green/yellow bile.  The more lovely gift though was from my roommates when they surprised me in the living room that morning with an incredibly impressive handmade pop-up dick card and a massage/beauty package Groupon.  Yes, a pop-up dick card!!  I opened up the carefully hand crafted card and out popped a very life-like dick, complete with pre-cum made of glue spewing out of the tip and a heartwarming message: To another year STD and baby free… May all your men be hung and 6’3″.  I was truly touched.

Anyway this year I decided to take a big risk and break my three-year NYC trend by NOT hosting my party at New Ashiya and instead trying out a new place, Japas 27.  I had never been to this place before but I had heard it was essentially New Ashiya meets Chorus — it’s all you can eat, all you can sake bomb and all you can karaoke for two hours for the same price as New Ashiya.  This place had a lot of promise.  I felt uncomfortable not having my party at New Ashiya this year and needed to maintain some semblance of bday tradition, so I of course wore my Sugar Babies bday suit, which is my go-to outfit whenever I’m feeling especially slutty and special.

I arrived to Japas 27 after a good hour of pregaming with peach sorbet vodka floats (not as good as they sound) to find my next big surprise of the weekend: M, K and W also all dressed as Sugar Babies to be my backup singers for the night.  After singing my signature Lady Gaga “Edge of Glory,” the night started to blur and all I could remember was SB forcing shot after shot of sake down my throat, and before I knew it, apparently our two hours were up and we were being hustled out and yelled at by the Japas 27 staff to PREASE REAVE.

The rest of the night gets even blurrier, but apparently we headed to Rodeo Bar afterwards where things got even rowdier with continued bday shots for the next few hours.  According to other less blackout witnesses, SB was pretty much trying to rape every guy in sight with her tits, SK had already fallen over about 4 or 5 times in the men’s bathroom, SL was put into a cab by some randos on the street who caught him stumbling around in the middle of the street, and I – the most calm of all – tripped on my fuck-me-heels and fell face flat in the bathroom once and with my poor bruised knees stumbled 20 blocks back to F/G’s apartment in Stuy Town at who knows what time, where I apparently passed out curled up on their living room floor with F’s blanket like a peaceful sugar baby.