Day Five (May 7th): New York City

Highlights of what turned out to be a pretty full day:

1.- I have now officially completely lost track of which day of the week it is.

2.- Dim Sum

Before leaving, a friend recommended eater.com (thanks, Phranque!). I have not taken the time to get very familiar with the site but it appears to be a crowd-sourced restaurant review site. In any event, they have a top 38 restaurant list for New York City, based upon reader input, which they seem to update fairly often. One of the restaurants listed was Nom Wah Tea Parlor, on a side street in Chinatown, mostly on the supposed strength of their dim sum. Now, given that the last time I was in NYC, I walked around the continent's biggest (according to our tour guide at the Tenement Museum, anyway) Chinatown, without finding dim sum, I figured I should give it a try.

Thank the gods I did.

This turned out to be at least in the top three dim sum I have ever had, if not the best ever.

Everything I ordered was very tasty, but in a different (and really good) way than I expected. It is like they set the bar for what those particular dishes should taste like, and all other iterations have lost a little bit of the definition of the original. I ordered:

- The 'original egg rolls', reluctantly, because, well, egg rolls. I was so surprised. This is not your dumb ass deep fried egg roll with plum sauce. For one thing, (and please sit down... Are you sitting? Good...), there was egg in the egg roll!!!! This was a mixture of chicken and vegetables wrapped in egg and breaded with something akin to a thin layer of Chinese bread dough and deep fried, but it was still fairly light and the crust was airy. I now have to believe that this is the original egg roll type, because of, in great part, well, you know... eggs!

- The chef's special pan fried dumplings, which combined pork and chicken. Really good, and not too greasy.

- Soup pork dumplings. This is evidently a Shanghai speciality, which I had never come across. Essentially, there is soup in the dumplings and you have to bite it in a manner that does not splurt soup all over yourself. It is quite interesting.

- BBQ pork bun (aka, sasu-pau), which was really fluffy and light. The dough tasted a it differently than other sasu-pau's I have had before; it actually had a taste to it.

3.- MacBeth

Allen Cumming stars in this one-man (plus a couple of extras) production of MacBeth. The conceit is that Cumming plays a patient to a psychiatric ward, recently admitted following a violent crime, who is exhibiting multiple personalities; i.e., the characters from MacBeth.

Right off the bat, I should say that this was not the best one-man MacBeth that I have seen, because that, of course, would be MacHomer. Allan Cumming is mostly alone on stage for the better part of two hours, with some brief inter-actions with two other actors, who play a doctor and a nurse. It is a tour de force, an impressive display of acting stamina. That being said, he sometimes does not do much to differentiate the characters; even knowing the source material, it is difficult at times to determine if it is MacBeth or his Lady who are speaking. The same goes for some of the ancillary characters.

After a while, however, I got caught up in the conceit itself: just who was this character in the psych ward; what had happened to him to get him in this state; was he a victim or a victimiser; why was he haunted? While hinted at, those questions are never answered.

4.- Artisanal

I had dinner at Artisanal, on the corner of Park Street and 32nd (or thereabouts). Artisanal is basically a restaurant built around a cheese list, which is basically its raison d'être. They feature some 80 or so cheeses, available à la carte, or in one of about a dozen cheese flights, which can be paired with wine. As for the menu, it is the French brasserie type.

I had a tuna carpaccio appetizer and the duck bourguignon (which I had never seen as a meal) as a main course. I finished the meal with a selection of three cheeses, a Spanish cow and sheep combo, a French blue chèvre and a Comté from France, a semi-hard cow's milk cheese. Of course, I did not get the names.

5.- Rattle 'n Hum

I finished the evening at Rattle 'n Hum, a bar on East 33rd, near Fifth. By my count, they have 39 taps, a mix of Belgians, Dutchies and American craft beers, including nine from NY State (and one from Joisey!)

The comped drink count is now at two, as the bartender bought me a pint.

I also NYC-geeked out as I walked from the bar, which lies in the shadow of the Empire State Building to my hotel, a block away from the Chrysler Building. Woo hoo!

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