I could say I went to New York because Stephen and my mom sent me there to celebrate my birthday. I could say I went to spend some quality dress-oogling time with the ladies who will, in the not to distant future, be in my wedding party. I could even say I went in hopes that a bout of jetsetting would snap me out of my prolonged period of useless moping. While all these things are technically true, the real reason I made the trek was to eat.
If you're the sort of person who travels on her stomach, you could hardly to better than five days in New York with Whitney and Tejal. There are few people in the world more enthusiastic about a rigorous schedule of cocktails, dinners, further cocktails, and midnight snacks than those two.
We kicked off Star Chefs Rising Stars Revue, a pretty fantastic to-do hosted by the people at Tejal's new job (which I think she'll talk more about later). I put on red lipstick and dangly earrings, then Whitney ane I up met up with Tejal at an enormous club called Crobar.
The theme was "high-concept street food," meaning we strolled from cart to cart with our ever-refilled wine glass, sampling bites from exciting young chefs like Franklin Becker, Paul Liebrandt, Zakary Pelaccio, Tony Liu, and Will Goldfarb.
About every five minutes, someone would ask, "Have you tried the foie gras hot dog? It's awesome!" I did; it was indeed awesome, as was the tuna sashimi with wasabi ice and sweet soy reduction. The latter wasn't the most literal example of "street food," but the sweet, icy burn had eyes rolling in pleasure all over the room nonetheless.
We continued on to the after party at Bed. In route we were soundly hooted at by two guys driving a garbage truck. Which is every bit as flattering as it sounds. At Bed we partied like rock stars and learned two very important lessons. One: everyone looks sexier lounging on cushions.
Once we spied people passionately smooching, we learned lesson number two: it's better not to think about what you might see staining those cushions if the lights were on.