Being Mr. and Mrs. Smith

The main highlight of the week following our last post, was our visit to Le Cirque. Deb had formed a mild obsession with the place after seeing it featured in the tango scene of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. As budding fine dining afficionados, we both were keen to go indeed. On top of this, in the coming weeks, there were live Jazz bands playing. Jazz music is another one of our part time interests, we needed no more a reason to go.

Like a fine wine...
 

I'd like to think you can tell a lot about a place by looking at the cars parked outside, but that's only because I'm an enthusiast. On the other hand though, I do believe they can help characterise a place. This little gem was parked right outside the door so I assume it's owners were dining inside. As a matter of fact, a more modern 7 series was also parked across the courtyard, it would have made a nice photo, but I didn't want to look like too much of a tourist, trying to arrange the photo, as I was dressed up for fine dining. That and it was a public roadway I should probably not be in the way of.

Ah yes, the restaurant...

We actually went to Le Cirque cafe that night, as that was where the Jazz was being played. It had a more casual atmosphere which fit in more with the music. The decor was quite quaint, with a dimly lit and romantic atmosphere, did I mention we brought our parents? With the hope that we could share what we enjoy with them anyway, as they were only here for another week or so more, and we were staying.

Enter... stage, uh, cafe right?

The Avalon Jazz band was playing that night, we'd only heard of them from picking out which night we wanted to attend, we sampled their music on YouTube and thought we would enjoy it. Their music was sweet, playful, cheeky, just very french. The only thing missing was an accordian and a mime, I didn't look in the kitchen for rats cooking. They seemed to have a large support group in tow though, as that took up most of the casual seating area with acquaintances drifting in through the whole night. It leads you to wonder how many people actually turned up on a whim like us, not invited, but that's the challenge really, getting a leg up in this densely populated city.

Being french of course they place a great emphasis on their wine, as is apparent by the backdrop of the last photo. Which neatly brings us to...

The wine tower, as opposed to the cellar.

This was at the centre of the cafe floor, a wonderfully eyecatching wine tower, with traditional library style revolving ladder. A few times that night the head waiter would climb up and select a bottle for their customers. A beautiful feature. Deb was so inspired that she immediately placed one in the dreamspace of our future dream home, but for books of course. One wonders how much the net contents of the tower is worth.

Ok, so with the scenery firmly set, I can finally tell you about the food we ate. To be honest we are at such a surplus for good food here that we've been a little spoilt. Mainstream food is just at a better quality than back in Sydney. So unfortunately we were not blown away by the food, but then again, this was only the cafe, so maybe Le Cirque just doesn't splash out on it's lower class demographic. Flavours were strong, but dishes were a little one-note at prices, but I guess I might be expecting too much of a two course dinner at $35+tax. The best illustration of this was the Lobster Bisque which, although smoky, and containing actual chunks of Lobster, ends up being quite rich, and heavy. We resolve to find out whether or not the restaurant is better, but that we can save for a date night.

 Monkeying around.

Aside from the front of the menu, and this specific piece of crockery, there is little else to create the atmosphere of whimsy that they would suggest. It's a little out of place to me, in what otherwise is a place that seems to pride itself on the finer things.

What did leave a sour taste in our mouth however, happened as the night drew itself to an end. Although the band was still playing, our adventures the previous day (the shopping trip to Woodbery) was just too draining, we were still tired, so we resigned ourselves to paying the bill, and retiring early. One of the nicer details about New York is that in restaurants you can (pretty much) throw a bunch of credit cards at the waiter taking your bill, give them some general instruction, and they will work out the rest. I think this has something to do with their compulsary tipping culture, a generally higher quality of service is expected of the waiters. Unfortunately the two dealing with us were asleep during that lesson. Everywhere else we have tried this at, this does not faze the waiters. I will forgive the first waiter we first addressed, as he looked young, and was probably new. Our directions were along the lines of, split the bill on these two cards, please, (ours, and our parents) and put the glass of wine on this one (our card)". You could see on his face that it didn't compute, but he assured us he knew what to do anyway.

It was abit of  wait, and then a more senior waiter came along. I think you know how the rest goes.

"So you want the drink on this card?" as he points to our card.

We confirm that yes, this is what we want, and he goes on his way.

This was the waiter that already insisted on giving us dessert menus, instead of asking, and didn't really seem on the ball when we told him we already had ordered one at the beginning of the meal.

This waiter then comes back with the bill indeed split. But with the drink only on our card, stiffing our parents with the rest of the bill, when we tried to tell him this was not what we wanted, he passed the buck telling us that he merely did what the junior waiter asked. No offer to fix it.

I feel like I need to mention this because otherwise, the service was very courteous, and friendly. So it is even starker the contrast, the level of service offered at the end of the night.

But I digress, there really are more important things in the world to worry about. Here's another photo showing the wonderfully diverse atmosphere present around this neighbourhood. I wouldn't have been surprised if one of the band members owned this.

You'd think there were more songs about little red Vespas

Life is a Highway/Let's Go Shopping!

Thanks to Deb's corporate discounts, Avis had the best deal for us, it's clearly culture shock when the lady behind the counter makes sure that you want a "compact" for four people. I guess if we were American sized, we would have conceded. Their idea of compact was a Mazda 3 Skyactiv sedan, which back home is a perfectly adequate means of transportation for four average to below sized adults.

Squee~~~!!!

Within the city, it's as good as everyone makes it out to be, nippy, nimble, compact even, but as it reached the highways, it was out of it's element. This is most likely down to it's Skyactiv namesake. Being engineered with fuel efficiency as paramount, doughy throttle response, and reluctant kickdown are par for course. The moment you want to overtake, or go up a hill and keep that car you just overtook from catching up embarrassingly, you need an excessive amount of throttle travel before the electronics give in and finally give you forward thrust. Because of that, you labour the engine, and end up consuming more fuel. Really it's a case of square peg round hole.

Anyway, my small car review over, back to the road trip. We started the trip mid morning, about 9:30 after all the paperwork was signed, so the voyage out of New York was relatively uneventful. Relaxing even. We wound along the landscape and were greeted by beautiful vistas of small cottages covered in snow, quaint suburban towns that you only see on TV as an Australian. Pedalling our way up a slight hillside, I finally experienced pea soup, a term I've only ever come across in literal terms.

I... can't... see!

It was only a brief point where visibility dropped to this level, maybe less than a kilometre, half a mile or so. It was funny as there was no sign that we would have this heading out of an otherwise clear New York.

Where am I???

After that brief spot there was no need for any more trepidation. It was very clear (cold) sailing ahead. Hovering around 40 degres fahrenheit the whole way (that's about freezing, sydneysiders). We reached Woodbery Commons shortly after they had opened, so it was still relatively quiet. It was a very oddly arranged complex, if you're used to shopping centres in Sydney anyway. More akin to a small scale village, where each shop is a house, large numbers of shops were arranged into "towns" with the Information stand and Food Courts being the quasi town centres.

Today we visit the state of Shopping, New Jersey

Because of this, the place has it's own map that they hand out at the information centre, shopping here requires military co-ordination, so see below the destinations I wanted to visit circled in black (see if you can spot 8). The shops circled in red are the ones Deb wanted to see/we ended up wandering into (find 16 + 1 for lunch).

They're all there, just take my word for it...

After a brief morning of shopping, it was time to stop in for lunch. I saw Philly Cheese Steak and my mouth started watering. Deb would never say no to something like that, especially because we hadn't been eating that badly up until that point.

Yes, that is my normal sized hand in the background... why do you ask?

It wasn't actually that big, blame perspective. They were roughly smaller than a Subway Foot long / 6 inch respectively. The "regular" drink is considered "large" in Australia though. What was beneath the wrapping however was a revelation, Philly Cheese Steak is actually more akin to our kebab meat back home, how this came to be described as such I don't know. I guess "Philly Shredded Beef" doesn't sound that appetising... not to say that it wasn't, it's just a misnomer, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

With our calorie reserve sufficiently brimmed, we continued to conquer the shopping outlet. As Deb would often put it she was "in a happy place".

 

$7.50 Jeans? How can I lose!

Conquer we did for the rest of the day, we eventually left at about 6pm as daylight was slowly leaving us. What started out as a relatively empty parking lot as customers slowly filtered in, ended up full of cars sleepily waiting until their owners had their fill of shopping.

Warning: Children left in car may be middle aged when you lose you them

The drive back home was relatively peaceful, so much so that Deb would occassionally nod off into a light sleep. And as soon as I was getting anxious about upcoming road directions, surely enough the GPS would chime in as it was needed.

What we came back to however was quite a spectacle. 6:30, everyone squashing into Manhattan.

Everyone in this photo is in the way

Next stop, the mines of Moria... I mean Manhattan

Gas, brake, honk. Gas, brake, honk. Honk, honk, punch. Gas, gas gas!

Needless to say it was very slow going from then on. I think it took us about half an hour of the one and a half hour trip to cover the last few miles. We had wanted to keep the car for the night for dinner, but quickly resolved that going anywhere in this mess would take us far longer than what was sensible. Who knows if this had cleared itself by the time we finished dinner too. So we dropped the car off early, as it didn't matter being daily rental. It had done it's duty for us, and we were thankful.

As we hadn't shopped that crazily, we caught the train back up to the apartment before heading back to dinner. Below are the spoils from our voyage that day. I don't think we spent much more than $150 on all this either, disregarding the set of boots that were ordered for home delivery as they weren't in stock at the outlet.
Final count,
1 Corningware,
2 sets of boots,
1 pair of jeans, 1 hat,
1 fancy yet sensible dress,
1 jacket,
1 pair of khakis.

Taking up too many seats on the subway

Everyone was starving from the walking around in the cold, so we quickly decided on a place to eat. Never mind the fact that it was back where we had rented the car, just an avenue over. Since we had dropped it back so early it was just past normal dinner time when we sat down.

We settled on a place called Citrus, a funky little place full of cuisine described as Asian/Latin fusion. Interesting I know, but it worked. The clientele was an interesting mix of young and old, so it was hard to peg the demographic. But generally the food took on an asian shape, with sushi, and seafood. The Latin part was usually the sauce or other such trimming giving it a spicy kick. We all thoroughly enjoyed our food, of particular note was Deb's Sushi combo, with 4 different variations. Two were the normal sushi and sashimi staple of kingfish, salmon, tuna and exceptionally tasty scallops, another was a seaweed roll that somehow unified spicy tuna and a slice of mango, another was a very french spicy tuna tartare with a layer of refreshing guacamole with added cucumber to combat the spice.

An Asian and a Latino enter a bar...

A special mention for the dessert I had, which was an evolution of the humble Apple Pie/Crumble. Inside along with the baked apple, instead of the sugary syrup was a cinnamon cream/mousse like filling (in texture anyway), this added a soft, sweet and creamy complement to the toasty apples. The cinnamon vanilla ice cream on the side was one of those flavours you could happily nurse a tub of on a wintery night, while curled up in a blanket on the couch.

I won't refuse a slice of this humble pie. (Yes that is a vial standing in for a teapot)

So all in all, that day was the closest thing we've had to a real holiday this trip, with shopping, a brief culture clash, a road trip, family and delicious food all in one. So that's it for us from this decidedly mass market post. Next week you see what our largely finished apartment looks like, and we visit Le Cirque for Dinner and French Jazz!

Yay, No blink!