The Lost NY Weekend: Birthday Dinner at CraftBar

We accomplished a lot on Friday but Saturday was truly amazing! To mark her 30th birthday, Amanda chose Craftbar for dinner. As in, one of Tom Colicchio's restaurants. Anyone that has watched every season of Top Chef - like Andrew and I - knows Tom Colicchio. I expected a good meal because of this association but dinner was amazing - I'm still salivating at the memory of it.

As a group of seven, we scored a very comfortable booth that was offset from the main part of the restaurant.

From L to R: The birthday girl; Carli, a childhood friend of Amanda's; Adam; childhood friend Laura and her husband Mike; and Andrew and me:

We went a little crazy ordering appetizers for the table and had basically one order of everything and two orders of things like the Pecorino Risotto balls and the Pecornio fondue with honey and hazelnuts (yum!!) and full charcuterie plate - half the table was drinking bottles of Malbec wine and the rest of us (including me) were enjoying G&T's:

After the deluge of food, Andrew and I wisely decided just to split an entree - on the urging of our excellent waiter, we went with the pork special (I can't remember what it was called). He was telling us that the chef for Craftbar buys one organic pig a week from a farm in upstate NY and tries to use as much of it as possible in crafting the menu for the week. I also have to say that I was incredibly impressed by the service - knowing that Andrew and I were splitting the entree, our waiter brought us individual portions that were plated beautifully - it consisted of pork belly wrapped around a pork sausage. I'm not doing it justice on the basis of that description but it was incredibly good and filling. On the side, the most amazing and flavorful broccoli I've ever tasted. Little kids would be begging for broccoli every day if they tasted Craftbar's broccoli:

Amanda and Adam seemed very happy with their wine and meal choices:

What is a birthday without something bubbly to celebrate it:


Laura and Mike were adorable - in fact, the whole table was great at keeping up a lively conversation (including a debate on the artistic ability of Lady Gaga):

Then it was time for dessert - Amanda's "birthday cake" was an olive oil cake with orange-cardamom ice cream, pear and spiced walnuts:


I loved my dessert and was very satisfied with it - a butterscotch pot de creme with caramelized apple and creme fraiche. It sounds simple but think of a very decadent, thick, rich butterscotch pudding. And I could eat buckets of the crem fraiche:

We linger at Craftbar for over three hours and enjoyed every minute of it. It was easily the most expensive meal I've ever had, but was so worth the experience!

The evening didn't end there - for those who live in the Northeast, this was the weekend that a HUGE snowstorm hit right before Christmas. So as we dined outside, it was snowing like mad outside and we were about to walk right into it.

The Lost NY Weekend: Friday

Andrew and I spent a fun weekend last month in NYC to help celebrate Amanda's birthday - unfortunately, I'm missing most of the pictures from Friday morning to Friday afternoon, but Andrew's dad pulled a Christmas miracle and managed to recover most of the pictures from the weekend directly from my camera's memory stick. Here is my attempt to describe what the missing pictures captured, and what the recovered pictures show!

Driving up on Thursday night left us with enough energy to fall asleep immediately, which had us rising bright-eyed and busy-tailed on Friday morning. We walked over twenty blocks to meet Andrew's friend from college (and groomsman) Eric for lunch at his office in mid-town Manhattan. I had a great time observing and taking pictures of Christmas decorations New York style, which means they were literally larger than life! I had a great shot of Eric and Andrew posing by UBS gigantic nutcrackers that I am still mourning, along with a shot of Andrew and I in front of gigantic ornaments. That shot was special because of the woman who took it - she got very excited when she saw my engagement ring and told us to savor this special time together and, hysterically, to soak it all in and walk very slowly down the aisle as she did! Judging by her southern accent, I don't think she was (or acted like) a native New Yorker. :)

After catching up with Eric, Andrew and I played tourist for a bit since we were right around the corner from Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall. Insert more pictures of these touristy sites. We then hopped on the subway out to Brooklyn to meet up with Camie (one of my bridesmaids). We got to a first hand look at the high school where she teaches, including the amazing architecture. Insert missing pictures of her gigantic classroom. We walked across Park Slope to meet up with Camie's husband James back at the apartment (as well as get some play time in with their dog Frederick) and then we headed around the block for some authentic Brooklyn pizza (complete with fresh mozzarella, yum!) before heading back to Manhattan to meet up with Amanda.

Andrew's brother Adam flew in that evening and surprised us at the apartment door with a celebratory bottle of champagne to toast Amanda's 30the birthday (yay, the pics are back!):


Here is a nice shot of all three siblings together - something that only happens a couple times a year!

A shot of Andrew and I enjoying champagne with Amanda, with Adam manning the camera:

Andrew and I were stuffed from our pizza dinner but joined Amanda and Adam at an Argentinian restaurant around the corner as they ordered dinner and we enjoyed drinks. As full as we were, we did take the opportunity to try the bread (fresh baked and great!), the fabulous crispy calamari with an incredible dipping sauce (which Adam added into an impromptu sandwich with some of the meat from the meat plate and the bread):

For the life of me, I can't remember what Andrew and I ordered, but Adam was drinking Argentinian beer and Amanda had her usual wine:


A close up of my delightfully fruity drink:

Amanda hit the hay afterwards to rest up for her big birthday night next door, while Andrew, Adam and I headed to Auction House (a bar around the corner from her place). We fondly have nicknamed this bar "Vampire Bar" due to its dark atmosphere, velvet curtains and paintings on the wall:

Andrew and Adam were having a great time, especially after we received a free round of drinks made with the latest, hip vodka:


I was tired enough to appreciate scoring chairs halfway through the night, although they put us in uncomfortable proximity to a couple that was in a full blown makeout session (and no, wiseguys, that couple was not me and Andrew!)

We had a great time catching up on each other's lives and the hours just sped away:

Finally, we tore ourselves away from the bar knowing that we also needed to get a decent amount of sleep to participate in the birthday festivities the next night.

Regal Beagle

Although it's been a long and snowy weekend, Jen was able to drag my lazy butt out of the house yesterday to try out a new place we had both been eyeing in Brookline - the Regal Beagle, a "neighborhood joint" located in Coolidge Corner.

I'm pretty sure it's only been open for a few months but it's clearly already a Brookline favorite, as the place was packed when we walked in around 7 p.m. (granted, it was a Saturday night). When we were quoted a 45 minute wait, the hostess recommended hanging at the bar to try snagging some of the tables that are in the back which are free game for anyone when they are available. What she neglected to mention was how uncomfortably packed it was - Regal Beagle is very long and narrow in shape and the bar is tucked in the back right next to the kitchen. Rather than being squished along with everyone else that was waiting for a table, Jen had the bright idea to check out the Gap next door. We spent the next 30 minutes comfortably browsing and taking advantage of their 40% off sale items sale (yay!) and by the time we walked back into the Regal Beagle, our table was ready!

Here's a shot of the view from our table, which was directly in front of the bar section - I don't if you can see exactly how cramped it was back there!



Regal Beagle's apparently known for its fun drinks - Jen opted for "The Girl Next Door" on the left, and I opted for their cava special on the right, which had cava (obviously), elderflower liqueur and an edible hibiscus - it was very good and pretty:



My meal was simply amazing - I got their Scallop dish (with a pistachio brittle crust), butternut squash risotto and dried cherry glaze:



Jen went for the Regal Burger on a brioche bun, and from snitching some of the bread and butter pickles as well as the fries, both were delicious - Jen gave two thumbs up to the burger:


Here's a close up of the hibiscus flower at the bottom of my drink - you better believe that I ate it and it actually tasted pretty good, almost like a slice of peach that's been soaked in sangria, both in taste and texture:

For dessert, Jen and I split the white chocolate bread pudding which supposedly came with bananas (didn't taste them at all), raspberries, vanilla ice cream and toffee sauce. For me, this is where the meal faltered a little - the flavors didn't stand out at all and all I could get was a general sense of "sweet." Not bad, but I think it was telling that Jen and I both put our spoons down before the bowl was cleared.

Overall, I was impressed by the food and the drinks (plus the good service) so I definitely plan on coming back with Andrew at some point.

No More Snow, Please!

Um, change in plans - the two open houses for today have been cancelled due to the fact that it's been snowing all night. Yikes, I feel like the weather forecasters really missed the call on the on this weekend.

So any houses we would see this weekend would look more like this:


Our other housing appointments are in the air - the issue is not so much roads as it is whether each property will be shoveled. Ugh.

New Year, New House?

Andrew and I took a breather from house searching during the holidays, but starting today, it's game on.

Today should be interesting, considering the roughly six inches of snow we got in the Boston area yesterday - it's going to be hard to get a good sense for what the yards look like when they are buried under snow. Plus, I always feel guilty for the homeowners when all the potential buyers track snow, sand and salt into their clean houses. But I'm moving past that, because we are ready and eager to buy a house!! Our dream house is somewhere out there. And we're trying our hardest to find it, evidenced by our schedule today:

Noon: Open house in West Roxbury

12:30 p.m.: Housing appointment in Dedham

1:00 p.m.: Open house in Canton + a drive-by to determine its potential for a housing appt.

1:30 p.m.: Housing appointment in Canton

2:30 p.m.: Housing appointment in Walpole

Wish us luck!

Treadmill Work Out

I know most of you are thinking, "Duh. Treadmills are made to give people workouts." But in this case, it was bringing the treadmill into the house and setting it up that ended up being the true workout. And Andrew's in all the pictures, not just because I was the one taking them, but because he did all the work with it - my feeble arms were just not up to the task! The sad part is that this was technically his Christmas gift from me, but he ended up putting all the work into getting it to work!

Our tale starts on Tuesday, where it was seriously FREEZING in Boston - I'm talking close to zero temps with the windchill, where your fingers felt like they were getting frostbite after a minute of exposure. This was the night that our treadmill was delivered. As it cost an extra $100 to get the treadmill delivered into your house, rather than "curbside," we opted for drop-off in one of our driveways. Andrew used his brute strength to push the gigantic box through our garage to the other driveway:

I don't know if you can tell how big the box is from this angle, but I think Andrew could lie in it comfortably without having his head or feet touch the top or bottom of the box - it's probably eight to nine feet long and four to five feet wide:

Since it was cold and hard to maneuver the box with gloves on, we literally had to go into the house every few minutes to warm our hands as we figured out how to move the box. Even with a two wheeler, it was hard to keep the box from tipping over as it was extremely heavy and the wind kept blowing it over. Keep in mind, this is with the box emptied of everything but the main track portion of the treadmill - it was incredibly heavy and Andrew refused to let me lift it as he was afraid it would fall on me. In the end, he ended up using the two wheeler and supported it with his back up our sloped driveway and around the hedges to our front walkway:

It was around this point that I told Andrew that it would've been well worth it to pay the delivery guy to bring into our house!

After several more minutes spent maneuvering the box down on its side to fit through our front hedges, Andrew pushed it to the front door. Since the box was too heavy for us to lift over the door's lip, Andrew very cleverly had me push an old roll of carpet beneath the box as he lifted to create a ramp for the box to be pushed over. At this point, it looks like I'm doing serious work to get the box through the door...

...but really, it was Andrew taking a quick shot of me before he continued to push the heavy box through the door:

The box took up most of the room in wood-paneled den, which we had previously used just for storage. Between the cold and the effort put into getting the box into the house, we decided to wait until the weekend to build the treadmill:

I use the word "we" but it was really Andrew that put the treadmill together. Here's Andrew figuring out how to slip the cardboard box from the track - it was too heavy for us to lift and remove it that way:


Andrew studying the instructions to figure out how to attach the side panels. Literally, my role at this point was "spotting" him to make sure the track didn't fall on him as he tightened the side panels from the bottom. There was a piece of cardboard that came in the box to hold the treadmill that literally did more heavy lifting than I did!

Success! Andrew attaches the control panel to the treadmill and is thisclose to having it ready to go:

Thanks to Andrew's hard work, our treadmill is up and running (haha). It faces our tiny TV but also offers an iPod dock for music and best yet, a built-in fan!

Here's to a healthier 2010 for us as we whip ourselves into wedding shape.

New Year's Brunch at the Harvard Club

Most people would not be in a huge rush to get out of bed on New Year's Day. Lucky for Andrew and I, we weren't nursing hangovers and we had the motivation of being hungry for brunch. Courtesy of Pete (the "smaht" kid), we scored tickets for the Harvard Club's New Year brunch.

We were initially worried by two potential traffic snafus - the swearing in of Newton's new mayor at the town hall and the Winter Classic game at Fenway - impacting our efforts to pick up Pete and Phu and drive into Boston. Luckily, everything worked out where we experienced minimum impact from both events.

Once we stepped through the doors of the Harvard Club, it definitely felt like an "old money" type of place (hence, all the pictures of old, rich white guys on the walls). We stopped at a lounge for a drink to wait for two of Pete's classmates:


As a club member, Pete signed the check for our drinks - we didn't have to use cash for anything except for tipping the coat check guy:


Note the special Harvard Club napkins and the swizzle stick in Pete's screwdriver:


Then it was time to move into the main dining room for the buffet! I couldn't take pictures of the buffet spread (without feeling weird) but this gives you an impression of the room and the incredibly high ceilings:

You can tell why this place would be popular for weddings - in fact, we saw one of the smaller rooms in the building set up for a wedding ceremony when Pete was giving us the tour - but imagine how great those chandeliers would look over a wedding reception:

Now onto the best stuff - the food served at the buffet! It was incredible. There were personal omelet stations, a sushi bar, a raw bar, a carving station and tons and tons of food!

On my first trip to the buffet, I loaded up with eggs benedict with lemon hollaindaise (totally one of the table's top three favorites overall), great corned beef hash and crispy bacon, asparagus with baked acorn squash, butternut squash ravioli with fried leeks and cider butter sauce (so good - the fried leeks really made these), and a cheese blintz (Pete's recommendation), although I somehow missed the fresh berry coulis that was supposed to go on top. The perfect drink to accompany all this food - a mimosa, of course!

My second plate (I had to eat my money's worth) included a slice of prime rib with horseradish cream, tomato and fresh mozzarella and more of the asparagus and acorn squash:

The table got really quiet for long stretches as everyone was taking in all the delicious food, as evidenced by everyone's full plates:

I was getting so full at this point that I stopped eating to leave a little room in my stomach for dessert. Pete was the first to go up to the dessert table and we teased him for looking like James Bond with his chocolate mousse (with chantilly cream) in a mini martini glass:

It was hard, but I limited myself to just three things - the chocolate mousse, a taste of the pumpkin and apple bread pudding with cider sauce and vanilla bean creme brulee - looking back, now I'm kicking myself for not getting more creme brulee!

As a part of the dessert buffet, they had chocolate dipped strawberries, petite viennese pastries, chocolate cake, carrot cake and a chocolate fountain! Pete's friend Dan ended up trying his own sweet and savory breakfast combo - he scooped up some of the chocolate from the fountain and paired it with a piece of bacon:

Stuffed, we posed for pictures in the main lobby before we rolled ourselves out of the club. First, our gracious host posing by the fireplace (and yet another old, rich white guy):

And the obligatory shot of me and Andrew - you can't tell from the picture but Andrew is wearing his 50th reunion Harvard tie (long story but no, he did not go to Harvard and he obviously isn't old enough to have experienced a 50th college reunion).

The Harvard Club has its own parking lot, which is not on Comm Ave but behind the building. This put us super close to Fenway and we could see all the air traffic and helicopters hovering for the Winter Classic game which had just started by the time we had finished the buffet (can you spot the two helicopters in the picture and the tip of Fenway's scoreboard peeking up from the bottom?):

Thankfully, not much traffic when we drove by Fenway but I did get a nice winter shot of the Citgo sign:

All in all, it was a special treat to visit the Harvard Club and to eat all the delicious food. Thanks Pete!