Poverexic in NYC

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QUIT MY JOB AND TODAY WAS MY LAST DAY!!!  A truly momentous occasion, so of course that means one thing and one thing only: NEW ASHIYA ALL YOU CAN EAT/DRINK CELEBRATION.

Specifically, that means endless amounts of this:

Sake Bomb

And more importantly, endless amounts of THIS:

all you can eat SUSHI

All you can eat sushi including ALL SPECIAL ROLLS and even HAND ROLLS.  So we asked for literally one of every special roll on the menu, plus more.

We were all having a grand ole time until M arrives and accidentally knocks over someone else’s camera at the next table when she drags over a chair to join us.  Uh oh, drama.  That someone else was a really angry, super drunk, anti-white Asian chick who flips a shit over her camera being dropped and starts yelling racial slurs at our table of white people.  This starts up a huge fight between our white table and their yellow table, and it got really ugly.  These Asian gangsta chicks literally got out of their seats and started physically pushing M and my friends while I sat quietly with my head down taking this opportunity to finish up the rest of the sushi rolls on the table while everyone else was preoccupied with the fight.  The racial slurs they were yelling out didn’t apply to me anyway, like “YOU UGLY WHITE BITCHES, THAT’S WHY YOU AGE POORLY.”  Not me, bitches.  So I just didn’t get involved in that shit.

Anyway, this exciting New Ashiya celebration was actually last night because I start my new job already tomorrow so couldn’t get chocolate wasted tonight.  Today my coworkers threw me a farewell party with pizza and cupcakes, so that was a great way to end my 2+ poverexic years at my company.  Apparently my new company has pizza Thursdays, and my first day is tomorrow, Thursday, so that means more pizza tomorrow!!!  Comforting to know I won’t be poverexic at least one day a week moving forward.

All we’ve been doing for the past few weekends is World Cup, World Cup, World Cup.  Which means booze, booze, booze.  AND FOOD!!!!!!! 😀 😀 😀

Actually, taking a step back… Friday night we had another farewell dinner for A, this time at BOKA, which is right underneath Sing Sing on St Marks and is famous for their Korean fried chicken, whatever that means.  I wasn’t that hungry because I had a huge lunch at work as usual, but apparently everyone else at the dinner was because among 6 people we had food for about 20.  I split a large fried chicken combo with S, and everyone else got a bowl of bim bim bow or whatever that Korean thing is called, plus rolls of sushi plus tuna tartare plus edamame plus more fried chicken plus this octopus dish plus a few other things I can’t even remember.  I was like jesus christ people.  Anyway, of course there’s tons of leftover including the entire octopus dish that no one else wanted, so I got to take all of it home in a nice takeout box.

Boka Leftovers

The fried chicken was really good but the octopus not so much, but I wasn’t going to not take a full leftover dish with me.

Didn’t get a chance to eat the leftovers o Saturday because it was USA v. Ghana time starting early.  S, C and SL had been at Slainte since 9am for both games that day, and K and I got there around noon.  Disappointing game, but what wasn’t disappointing was all the food and booze we consumed that day.  I started out with their brunch omelet with free bloody mary and fries followed by 4 Hoegaardens, a Corona, a shot of Jameson and all of F’s leftovers (free):

Slainte Appetizers

On top of that, the waitress comes by a few minutes later with a plate of hot wings and a basket of fries and we naturally assume S just ordered more food (he was in the bathroom so could not confirm), so we just took it.  Turns out S didn’t order it, neither did anyone else at the table, so oops we scored an entire order of wings and fries — as Randy Marsh says, SCOREEEE!!!!  That got consumed pretty quickly.

Following the Ghana game I had the briiliant idea of going mid-afternoon karaoking, which was fun and disastrous when SL decided to order an entire bottle of soju to consume with our pitchers of beer while singing Journey and Gaga and Aladdin.  I was having a blast all day until I got home past 9pm, somehow found myself passed out on the couch and woke up at 1:15am with the most nauseating feeling in my stomach.  I immediately ran to the bathroom and puked up more food than I had ever puked in my entire life — it was literally a toilet bowl full of wings, fries, omelet, sliders, nachos, mozzarella sticks, and 3 gallons of beer.  I thought I felt better until I proceeded to wake up every hour on the hour until 5am vomiting the rest of my food, booze and bile.

That was a lovely Saturday night I had, and when I woke up the next morning on Sunday, all I wanted to do was kill myself.  So I decided to take care of that by eating the leftover octopus shit from Friday night (terrible idea) then meeting S at VAMOS! for some chips and guac, tortilla soup and bottomless margaritas for the Argentina v. Mexico game (fabulous idea).  Vamos vamos Argentina, vamos vamos a GANAR!!!  Hangover is completely cured and I feel like a million bucks.

Friday was date #2 with Judah Friedlander at Mole in LES, which was INCRED and much better than Paquitos where we went on date #1.  Earlier that day before I knew I was going on this date, I was starving for lunch and had ordered myself a huge lunch at the office of fresh shrimp rolls and bbq beef and spring rolls over vermicelli from my new fav Vietnamese takeout place Pho something.  Well that was a big mistake because I actually got uncomfortably full for lunch and wasn’t that hungry for dinner, but of course I can’t resist authentic carne asada tacos like these:

Mole

The carne asada tacos were awesome and I even got some refried beans and rice with them but thought beans were bad news for a Friday night so refrained.  Following dinner date at Mole I immediately had to run over to dinner #2 at Japonais for A’s farewell dinner to send her off to Beantown.  Since I’d just come from a dinner, I obvi didn’t order anything for myself at Japonais other than 2 delicious Geishas (lychee martinis) but scored some leftover duck from A and beef on stone from C:

Steak on Stone

A relatively poverexic-friendly Friday for me.

Saturday I spent literally all day tanning, ie sleeping outside on a blanket with a pillow, on the lovely Stuy Town lawn, and then today was Sunday Funday watching Brasil v. Ivory Coast at Professor Thom’s.  I was starving by the time I got there and was annoyed to find that there was apparently no waitress on duty, and the bartender was doing all the order-taking and serving, which I knew would slow down everything and would mean more work for me.  It all paid off, though, when the really nice hungover bartender acknowledged this was annoying for us and so picked up our first round of drinks instead, which meant free huge bloody mary for me and also a free extra fried egg on the burger that I had ordered:

Thom's Burger

I thought my burger was a good deal….. this is what arrived at our table when F ordered “appetizer” nachos, along with chicken wings and extra waffle fries:

Nacho Platter

A large platter of heaven on our Sunday Funday.

This weekend was the most I’d ever done on a weekend in NYC since I can’t even remember.  My usual weekend routine is wake up at noon, order Tasty King with roommates, finish eating Tasty King with roommates over TV/movies, take nap from 3-9pm, wake up at 9pm, get ready and go out for the night.

I think Union Street Festival last week in SF motivated me to actually leave the apt and go do something this weekend.  Both Saturday and Sunday I left the apt during the day and went for brunch with the girls followed by some intense World Cup watching.  I haven’t actually given a shit about the teams that played Saturday/Sunday, but I do enjoy interacting with male soccer fans.  What I’m really waiting for are the Brasil games.

Following an entire Saturday of me being out and about, I was exhausted but committed to stay out and go to G’s rooftop party because I hadn’t seen G in a million years.  It was delightful to see him and hang; however, what was even more exciting was the endless cans of PBR and bottle of Absolut Brooklyn that we downed over the course of the night, followed by the several boxes of pizza that were ordered later on (all for free).  While I strongly dislike Brooklyn, I did quite enjoy Spike Lee’s apple and ginger vodka on the rocks.  I didn’t enjoy it all that much a few hours later when I hurled it all up in the bathroom, along with the spinach omelet that I had eaten for brunch.  I suppose that was a good sign of a good night.

Then on Sunday we stupidly attempted to get into Zum Schneider for the Germany v. Australia game, which was of course impossible.  The line was literally around the block.  So we went right next door to Arcane, which looked super disturbing with all its voodoo dolls hanging from the ceiling, but the food turned out to be fantastic.

Voodoo Dolls

They have one of the best brunch deals I’ve heard of in NYC, which is meal + OJ + coffee/tea + brunch cocktail for $9.95!!!!!!!!!!!  It was incred.  Most other places I’ve gone to are OJ OR coffee OR brunch cocktail but not all of it!!!!!!  This place is so kind.  Look how many beverages we had on our table between the three of us.  And the selection was impressive — not only did they have your typical mimosa, bellini and bloody mary, but they also had a rasperrini and a mangorini, which is what we ordered.

Beverages

With the cutest idea for a cup of coffee:

Coffee

The best part of the brunch other than watching all the crazed German fans sing songs in German was when roommate K puts down her fork after eating only half of her eggs benedict plate and gave me the rest.  Yesssssss.  This is why we are roommates.  That means today I had 1.5 eggs benedict brunches, 3 cups of coffee, a glass of OJ and a mangorini for $9.95, and it was all absolutely delicious and filling.

Eggs Benedict

Go Deutschland!!!

Was in SF over the past few days visiting bff K, and that usually means anti-poverexia to the MAX.  However, this particular trip was a great win for poverexia — free/cheap food every single day!

The first day was Union Street Festival on Sunday afternoon which meant an entire main street full of cheap beer gardens, free food samples and drunken Marina folk, which are my fav.

Union Street Festival

The place was an absolute shitshow on Saturday afternoon, and while Sunday was tamer, it just meant more booze and free food for the rest of us.  I got myself a huge plastic cup full of Miller Lite for $7 and started stalking each of the food booths for free food and each of the Union Street stores for free mimosas.  The best free things I scored that day were curry on naan and 3 mini containers of Sabra hummus with various toppings.

Monday was $1 oysters and $5 martinis at Mayes happy hour.  $1 oysters!!!!!!  Adam Richman of Man v. Food once took on a 180-oyster challenge, and I certainly think I could have beaten that challenge.  However, I didn’t have $180 on me, so instead I started out with 15 oysters and got another 5 after that, accompanied by a bloody mary.

$1 Oysters

Then!  The best day was Tuesday when K and I went to go finish up her wedding registry and then celebrated at Burger Bar.  Can’t leave SF without getting my burger.  So we sit down, and immediately out pops celebrity world famous chef Hubert Keller, who owns the restaurant and who I of course recognize from Top Chef Masters.  I have really been on a celeb roll lately.

I guess Hubert caught me staring because he comes over to our table and is the friendliest guy in the world — Hello ladies, how are you today?

(GASP.  HE TALKED TO ME.)  I’M GOOD!!!  I REALLY ADMIRE YOUR WORK.  I AM SO HONORED TO MEET YOU.

Oh why thank you!  You ladies are lovely.  Let me treat you to some of my zucchini fritters and pickled jalapeno fritters!  On the house.

Fritters on the house!

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Best celebrity chef ever!!!!!!!!!  This was just the most perfect thing to ever happen, and they were absolutely delicious.

Memorial Day weekend was incred.  Went to D’s house in Sea Girt(h), NJ, which is literally a 1-minute walk from the beach.  I got so tan.  Tanning was only a tiny fraction of the weekend though — the rest of it was literally just drinking, eating, and playing rounds and rounds and rounds of asshole.

On Saturday afternoon SW the grillmaster starts grilling some burgers and I am like waahhhh I show yous a better way to make burgers: THE JUICY LUCY, or as I would say it, THE JUICY RUCY, or as SW re-named it, THE JRUICY.  So we made some thin patties, put a chunk of muenster cheese inside, mashed the edges together and created the most dericious JRUICY ever.  And then following that was SW’s very own spicy chicken sandwich with grilled veggies.  This was accompanied by endless cans of Bud Light.  I couldn’t stop drinking them, they were just so refreshing.

Then that night the entire group of 20 people went to Asahi Hibachi, or “BYOB Benihana’s.”  It was a complete shitshow, and I think we luckily scared the children at the next table away from us.  I got steak and shrimp and ordered the steak rare, which was good at the moment but bad news several hours later.  I wasn’t the only person who experienced this discomfort.  Anyway, the best part of dinner was by far when SD comes back from the bathroom to find a takeout box where he was sitting and he’s all like waaahhhhh this isn’t mine, I finished my entire plate <<opens box to check what it is>>  And there, delicately placed inside the takeout box, was a bottle of Smirnoff, courtesy of A.

Ohhhhhhhh shit SoNnNnNnNNNNNNNN you just got ICED!!!!!!!!!!!!

The rest of the night was about 6 straight hours of asshole and drinking, which did not mix well with the rare hibachi steak.  It may have been the most beer I had consumed in a single day since college.  This continued until dawn when I finally passed out upright in a chair because all the beds and couches were already taken and the chair was more comfortable than the floor.

Sunday morning started out with some chorizo breakfast burritos, which were amazing but even worse news after an entire day and night of drinking.  The rest of the day consisted of some tanning at the beach, a lot more drinking, and then some sausages with peppers, meat lasagna and grilled pineapples with bacon on skewers for dinner … followed by even more rounds of asshole.

What a great weekend.

VH1’s Best Week(end) Ever.

Went on a date with Judah Friedlander of 30 Rock on Friday, and it was incred.  He was wearing his WORLD CHAMPION t-shirt and CAMPEON DEL MUNDO hat.  We went to this small Mexican restaurant in the East Village, and while the chips and guac/salsa were ehhhhh, hearing about Judah’s life and book and comedy career made up for it.  After a good hour or so, we parted ways as he ran off to go do another comedy show, and I ran off to Crocodile Lounge for D’s birthday where they serve you free pizza with every drink you buy.  What a friendly, friendly place.

Then Saturday was SS’s pre-birthday, which is when anti-poverexia began.  We started off the night with dinner at Republic where I got BBQ pork over vermicelli noodles and a pitcher of frozen lychee martini.  We then proceeded to attempt to get into PDT but realized the cap was 3 people for walk-in and we had 4, so instead we tried to go to Solas then got too lazy to be in a standing bar because my heels were killing me and I really needed to sit, so we went right next door to this awesome hookah place with really incompetent waiters.  Let’s just say we all ended the night with a really strong hookah buzz and were not looking forward to waking up the next morning before noon.

Good thing SS made brunch reservations at 1pm, which allowed me to still not die in the morning and enjoy a lovely brunch at Bar Breton of eggs benedict with smoked salmon, mixed greens, home fries, a side of french fries, and a nutella shake that came in a jar with a huge dollop of whipped cream on top.

Eggs Benedict

Nutella Shake

I then continued to eat SR’s leftover galette with spinach and feta and made a really strong attempt to finish SS’s leftover sundried tomato and spinach omelet but failed because she had literally dumped an entire bottle of Tabasco sauce on the poor omelet and had showered it with black pepper.  I guess that’s what happens when you grow up on Indian food.

The day is still young and more foodventures await me tonight for the series finale of LOST.  Of course my roommates and I were planning to enjoy the finale at home on our comfortable couch over Tasty King, but S insisted we go over to his place where he was hosting a LOST party.  “How can I convince you and the twins to come over to our place for the finale,” he kept asking.

S, the answer is quite simple: get us something that is going to be significantly better than Tasty King (impossible task) and free to us, and we will become motivated to go 2 blocks over to your place.

LOST.

Cottage for LOST

Had an in-person client meeting at our office today, and YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS.  FREE BREAKFAST AND LUNCH.  It was so great.  Had bagels and fruit and freshly squeezed OJ for breakfast, followed by an array of sandwiches, salad, pasta and cookies/brownies, accompanied by endless Diet Coke.  I have no idea what our team got out of that unproductive meeting, but I sure know I got plenty out of that meeting.

PLUS!  Last night when the clients came in, we were invited to a product launch party at SPiN New York hosted by their ad agency.  And by “invited” I mean apparently the ad agency invited every other partner agency in NY except for us, but our male client who likes us invited us anyway, so we went anyway.  I love crashing parties, and because the invite said “casual dress,” coworker A and I deliberately dressed up in our most “hot yet professional” dresses because clients like pretty people, and we knew everyone else there was going to be in jeans.  The PR girls are always the prettiest out of all the advertising, media buy and digital agency people, hence why we’re never invited to parties hosted by partner agencies.

So the party was just one big ping pong tournament (which I did surprisingly well in), but I got distracted by all the free booze at the bar, the mini burgers with caramelized onions, sliced pork sandwiches, roast beef sandwiches, caramel popcorn in cones, and ice cream sandwiches with coffee ice cream sandwiched between two really big chocolate chip cookies.  It was one hell of a party.

But what REALLY made the party was when towards the end of the night I look over to my right, and standing there was JUDAH FRIEDLANDER OF 30 ROCK.  I nearly choked on my ice cream sandwich when I suddenly gasped in a gust of air.  I was almost as excited as this black dude was about Wendy’s:

Wendy's SoNnNnNnN

Roommate L and I both woke up on Saturday around 10:30am to find that we were both scrambling around the apartment for the same 2 things: Pepto and Excedrin.  Roommate L was going to a wedding, and I was going to a chili cook off.  We both really needed both.

Not sure where our huge bottle of Excedrin went, but after frantically searching around every shelf in the kitchen for about 15 minutes I finally found the huge bottle of cherry Pepto hidden in our 6-pack wine bag from Trader Joe’s!! … only to find to my dismay that there was only one tiny sip left … fuck.

“It’s ok,” says roommate L.  “You need it a lot more than I do.  You’re going to a chilifest.”

Yes, I was indeed going to a chilifest, and I didn’t need anything getting in my way of eating every single chili in the cook off.  So I took that last swig of Pepto, put on my preggers dress in preparation for my food baby, and headed out the door to go support S who was competing in the cook off.  Here’s what was in store for us:

Chili Meat

O-M-G.

The chili cook off was on the rooftop of 230 5th and it was a beautiful day for a cook off.  I was prepared to eat a shitload of chili and get a sick tan.  The party was incred, and out of the 40 teams competing, S’s chili was by far the best one.

Chili by S

It was the same chili S had made at his own chilifest at his apartment last year with 4 different kinds of steak, venison, bison and other woodland creatures.  Here was some other chili:

Competitor Chili

So I had about 40 other bowls of that, plus all you can drink beer.  People were seriously shitting their pants left and right.

After all that chili, though, I still felt S’s was the best.  Apparently, however, the judges picked a different group’s VEGETARIAN chili instead.  I MEAN REALLY!??!?!??!  What even IS a vegetarian chili!?!?!  Why do vegetarians always try to turn meat into mush JUST STICK TO YOUR SALADS!!!!!!!!!!!  That was an unfortunate win.

After an entire day of drinking and eating, we were still starving and parched so S, C, A and I decided to go to dinner at L’Express.  On the menu for the night: duck mousse, salmon tartare and steak tartare.  YESSSSSSSSS.  My fav things.  Everything is better raw, like cookie dough.  So I got the salmon tartare and both C and S got the steak tartare, which was delicious but not quite as delicious as roommate L’s steak tartare:

Roommate L's Steak Tartare

I guess I inadvertently continued my impressive streak of raw meat eating.  C was so full from his appetizer tripe dish that he literally ate like 3 bites of his steak tartare and then left the rest for the waiter to take away until I SWOOPED IN and saved the rest.  It was so good.  The best part, though, was that after I was all stuffed from raw salmon and steak, along with C’s leftover flourless molten lava chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, I took out my credit card when GASP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! kind generous C in his complete state of drunkenness insists on picking up my portion of the bill.

Best day ever.