Restaurant Hopping - Rogers Style

Its the weekend which can mean only one thing for me in NYC, the guests are coming. I've had quite a few friends come to town in the two months I've lived here and many have stayed at my place. My weekends are booked through the month of November. This week Ryan and Laura are in from San Francisco. Laura flew to Boston on Wednesday to see her brother and then they drove to NY together. Ryan flew the red-eye Thursday night and arrived early Friday morning.
Last night Ryan and I went to the Met and then waited at various Starbucks for Laura and Chris. When they got to town, we went into the village and met up with the ever elusive Matt Rogers.

I ran into Matt randomly at and elevator a few weeks ago. Ryan and I gave him a call and decided to have dinner tonight. Ryan brought some coupons he got off the internet so we ate in Chelsea and I had the sirloin steak for under $10. Mmmmnm. After, Matt took us to the 'number two' restaurant in the city for dessert but the kitchen was closed. It was 11:30 pm. Since the 'number two' was closed, we walked four blocks to the 'number one' place in the city.

Gramercy Tavern is on 20th at Park Ave. South. I expected it to be full of fancy decorations and fancy people eating fancy food, fancily priced. It was nice inside but the people looked like any yuppie I've seen in the park or at Starbucks. The dessert was average dessert prices but Matt said entres were about $90. He choose a bottle of Hungarian red wine which I cannot pronounce but I can vouch that it is the best red wine I've ever had. Outstanding.

We had good conversation remembering good times in college. Ryan and Matt met in BYX and I met Matt through some friends at various events. We talked about our separate and similar paths now. Matt has been working very hard and is burnt out. We is on his way to vacation in Florida for awhile to maintain his sanity. He really wants to be purposeful in what he does and mentioned some hot topics in my mind. We talked about his desire to start a foundation of sorts to send aid to needy places. He also said he wanted to move to Sudan to fight for the people suffering virtual genocide there. Both of these are important issues in my mind and I look forward to talking about them more with him.

It was a fun night with Ryan, Laura and Chris and I'm ceratainly glad I could find Matt. I now consider him one of my friends in NYC so now I'm up to about four.

Down the Hatch

I am about to celebrate my two month anniversary in New York. Time is moving fast and things are going well. My parents came into town for the weekend and we had a great time. I took them to see all of the tourist hot spots followed by a few favorite locales of my own like McSorley's. On Saturday my dad and I watched the A&M football game with Andrew and Matt Polk while my mom shopped. That night we saw the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall which was very cool. The next day we hit up Times Square Church with Jenn and then walked to the park to see Andrew run the last mile of the NYC Marathon. I had a great time and it was hard to say goodbye to them just like in September when I moved out. I'll be back to Houston in early January on the concluding leg of my '04 Wedding Series.

On a smaller note, more serious note. I'd like to warn the readers about the dangers of eating too many buffalo wings. Andrew, Tom 'Doorbomb', and I went to a place called 'Down the Hatch' last night. Their claims to fame are 1) Connect Four boards for every table and if you're alone the bartender will play with you 2)the Monday Night Football special where $19 gets you all the wings you can eat and three pitchers of beer per person. That's a lot of food intake. Fortunately we only had a couple beers each, or else I might not be here writing this. Turns out, we all woke up at 3:30 AM with a stomach ache from the 4 baskets of wings we each downed. I was worried that they might decide to come out at work today, but I made it. I will use caution in the future and I suggest you limit your greasy orange chicken consumption too.