Tarkblog

This is a blog about the adventures of celeb and red2 and others in New York City.

I have never been before. I never really had a reason, or desire, to go. But when presented with the opportunity to take a fairly inexpensive trip, I’m all for it. If I had to pay for most of the stuff that I did while I was there, I’m sure I never would have gone.

We got into LGA around 9:30 AM. We had a scheduled pickup by a van - you know, one of those guys holding a sign with your name on it. After grabbing our luggage we found “Ben Cash Credit” and went outside. Ben (if that was Ben, I don’t know) was a little confused about life in general. Someone asked “where do we go?” and Ben said “outside”. He never lead the way - instead, he just kind of let us walk to where we thought we were supposed to go and followed us.

We got outside to the taxi/bus pickup area and Ben kind of stood in a daze. Finally he decided maybe he should go and get the van, so he told us he’d be right back and he walked off. Slowly and casually. We stood there with our thumbs up our asses. It was comical, to say the least.

Ben made it back, and sure enough, he had a van. It was very reminiscent of what BA Baracus drove on the A-Team. It also comfortably fit 8 people which meant that it somewhat uncomfortably fit 9.

We had a scheduled tour of Manhattan later that day, and since Laguardia airport is in Queens we asked ben if he could take a little “longer” to get us to our hotel and take us by some impressive sights or anything he could think of. He didn’t know any. So, we’re like “just drive us around dude and make stuff up”. He took us by Shea stadium and Flushing Meadows. We saw the big tower like things that were part of the world’s fair (and what Vincent D’Onofrio alien in Men in Black used to escape in.

Ben was…not a very good driver. He went very slow, which is a no-no in New York. He would constantly just kind of stop while he was looking around, with lots of cars backed up behind him. When you tdo this in New York, two things happen: you get honked at, and people blast around you. This made driving with Ben very dangerous.

Ben didn’t know a thing about Queens, really - which was a little surprising considering he had lived there almost his entire life. He knew the Mets played in Shea stadium. That’s really about it. Ben gets a 1 out of 5.

Ben got us to our hotel, the Millennium, which was a block off of Times Square. We checked in, but the rooms were not ready, so we stowed our baggage. We walked down the block and got some lunch at the Red Flame Diner. This place was most impressive. We were seated in the back right by the order window where the guys were making the food. The waitress took all 9 of our orders and then proceeded to walk to this window and yelled all of them out to some dudes standing behind. Meanwhile, at least 4 other waitresses did the same for other patrons. There was no exchange of tickets and no writing - the whole thing was verbal. Pretty soon, all of our food was up - and she brought all of it back to us without having to refer back to the order tickets to know who had what. She just knew. Most impressive.

We got back to the hotel and there was a 20 person mini bus waiting for us to take us on a tour of Manhattan. We had a driver and a tour guide, and it was just our group on the small bus. It was very nice.

This tour was, by far, the best part of the trip. The lady who did the talking KNEW HER STUFF. We spent about 4 hours on the tour, stopping twice at Central Park and once at the World Trade Center lookout. Our driver, Tommy, was awesome. He definitely knew how to manuever that bus around town, sometimes with very little clearance, and he also knew the best way to cut people off and get to where he was going. One time he got yelled at by the “Postal Police” (I’m not sure what that means), but otherwise he did an awesome job.

We hit all of the highlights of Manhattan in those four hours, learned a TON of interesting facts and things about New York, and most importantly for me, got some bearings on where things were located in case I wanted to go see them later.

They dropped us back off at the hotel around 5, which gave us not much time to get our room keys and luggage, and go upstairs to get ready for our 6pm dinner reservations. We dressed up, and headed off to our restaurant. I don’t know the exact name, but it was something like “Churrabuscara Primafecta” or something like that.

I’m going to try and explain this restaurant, but I won’t do justice to how incredibly awesome it was.

We were seated at a large round table. They took our drink orders. We seemed to have a person just for keeping our drinks and another person just to make sure we had everything else we needed (plates, silverware, food, etc)

This is how it worked: the first stage of dinner..the “red” stage (indicated by a card placed in front of you) was the salad stage. They had a salad bar, all you could eat, that you went to. Salad was a very small portion of this bar - it was mostly fishes, pasta salads, mozzarella cheese dishes, and side dishes like sauteed mushrooms, olivey things. There was also a sushi platter and some exotic sea things like octopus. The food was incredibly good.

When you were done with your salad bar, you flipped over your card to the green side which signified you were ready for the main course. We had no idea what to expect upon doing this.

First, a guy showed up at our table with this long skewer full of pork sausages. He would go around the table askign if you would like one, and if so he would use a very long knife (read: machete) to slide a piece down the skewer and onto your plate.

Yum, pork sausage is good - yessir, I’ll have that.

Not 30 seconds later a guy shows up with some side dishes for the table: onion rings, mashed potatoes, fried bananas (totally awesome), rice, bread, and some meat sauces. So we start passing those around to fill up our plates.

Then about 15 seconds later another skewer guy shows up with some pork loin. He goes around and slices off some pieces for your onto your plate if you would like some.

Then about 30 seconds later came a guy offering some short ribs in barbeque sauce.

My plate was getting pretty full.

Now imagine the next 10 minutes of trying to actually eat, while being bombarded with the following items:

smoked salmon
sliced prime rib
garlic steak
flank steak
filet mignon
LONG ribs
smoked turkey
pork tenderloin
split chicken

It was a non stop bombardment of meat choices being brought right to you. And it was BLISS. There was a sauce that you were supposed to put on your meat, but I wasn’t able to do it because everytime I tried to actually do it some guy came and just gave me more meat to eat.

After completing stuff myself with 12 or so different meat choices, they brought around a dessert cart full of tasty treats. I passed, but a couple people had some desserts. They also brought around a bottle of port wine and offered some small glasses, of which I partook. It was very very tasty.

I did not see the final bill because it was included in the trip, but I’m guessing that with tax and tip (and almost everyone had one alcoholic drink) it was close to $1k.

Dinner took about 90 minutes, so we had 30 minutes left to get over to the show we were seeing - The Producers. It was only about a 10 minute walk, and we got there before the doors opened so we had to stand in a LONG line to get in (even though we already had our tickets purchased long ago).

The show was hilarious. I had seen the original movie from many years ago. It’s a Mel Brooks production, originally starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick…though they have since gone on to other things and have other people starring on those roles now). It was very very funny, a bit adult at times, and very well done. Hilarious. Two thumbs up.

After that, I was exhausted (A lot of us fell asleep a few times during the show due to having to gotten up at 4am to get to the airport). Most of us went back to the hotel to sleep, but a couple of people went out to wonder amongst Times Square.

Next up…day two.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 9:03 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.