blog

One of my goals in life is to eat at every restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen, a strip of real estate north of Times Square packed with tasty food. I think I’ve eaten at six or so by now. Eatery was last Friday’s meal, an odd combination of homey American food and international fare. Rather, a Western conception of international fare, with standbys such as Spring rolls and Quesadillas and Roti, probably added in the Fusion cuisine rush that seems to afflict so many restaurants.

I requested a custom drink – it consisted of Vanilla Vodka, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Godiva Chocolate Liqueur. I saw it a while ago on Food Network, it was a cocktail serve in Boston meant to evoke the taste of a Boston Creme Pie. While it didn’t do that, it was delicious – even the waiter said so. If Eatery starts serving it, you can thank me for that.

The food was tasty and filling, although it could have used some more salt and pepper. My friends and I ordered a range of foods, so I got to try Chicken Paillard, Atlantic Salmon, French Fries and some other stuff. They were all well-executed if unoriginal, which I suppose describes Eatery rather well.

I’m about 11,000 words into my novel, a Loads and Loads of Characters story written in Third Person Present (which is fairly rebellious as far as writing goes). I don’t quite know what’s going on (I’m not going to plan. I have nothing against outliners, but it’s not for me), but it’s shaping up quite nicely. It seems that I produce about 500 words a day, which is fine – at this rate, I’ll write my desired 100,000 by, say, next June or so. I just got a new toy for writing on the go, an Alphasmart Dana, which is essentially a keyboard with nothing else attached except the tiniest of screens so you can see what you’re writing.

This Friday, I went with my coworkers to Smith’s Bar, a manly sports sort of place with rugby on the screen and large men with mustaches. We then went around to the various lounges of Hell’s Kitchen, but we were rather early, and the only ones there. Hell’s Kitchen lounges all have a certain cool atmosphere, a hip modernity that’s only helped by the copious neon lighting. That was fun, but I had to cut that short, because it was somebody’s birthday dinner.

Walking from 44th and 10th to 32nd and 4th took us to Todai, a Japanese buffet. The food wasn’t that great, but there’s no way I can pass up a quality pun like this post’s title. There was unlimited sushi of all shapes and sizes, hot food and a crepestation, which is not the title of Sony’s next console. There, you can fill a fresh crepe with chocolate, cream and a variety of fruit, the heat of the crepe melting everything together into two bites of ecstasy.

This Sunday was a Barcade LoveSac tag-team combo event. Barcade is a neat gaming-themed bar in Williamsburg, and Lovesac is a maker of bean bag chairs. They slapped the word “Gamer” onto one of their chairs, a decision which is hopefully driving some Gamer business their way. The day was for speedruns, which is when a player tries to finish a level as quickly as possible. There was Contra, Super Mario Bros, and some other, less awesome games (like Super Mario Kart). It took me a couple tries to even score in Contra, since getting a Game Over midway means you didn’t complete the level. After several deaths (I was able to beat the entirety of Contra as a boy, what happened?), I placed a respectable time of 1:40. The person running the event told me that the top time was 1:30, which was fine by me. By the way, beers with the word chocolate in their name don’t actually contain any chocolate. I know, I was surprised too.