The most important (and photo-worthy) events recently have been my birthday and Thanksgiving, which this year fell back-to-back.
I had a really fun birthday dance party at Lolita, at which I forgot to take any photos, except of the amazing cake Catherine brought for me.
It was definitely the hit of the party.
I celebrated my actual birthday with Catherine, Jenna and Leslie at what I discovered is the worst restaurant in New York, Rolf's French Bavarian restaurant on 3rd avenue. I had walked by it several times over the past year and always thought it looked like fun, especially during the holidays when the interior is decorated in a million pounds of glittering decorations.
Jenna, Catherine and I, before the worst meal of our collective lives.
Leslie, Jenna, Catherine, and I, ignorant of the horrors to come.
Perhaps if you're so dazzled by the decor, you won't pay attention to the dog food on your plate. Wrong!
OK, since I don't have much time to elaborate on the atrocities of Rolf's, I'll just show two quick snapshots that I think can demonstrate the supremely subpar cuisine. I have no problem eating less-than-gourmet meals, but for $20 - $25 entrees in New York, you should be getting a quality, kitchen-prepared meal, not a can of Dinty Moore beef stew opened and microwaved over stone-cold spaetzle.
Would you like to eat some vomit?
Having travelled and lived in Germany, I think I have a pretty notion of what good, upscale, $25-a-serving beef stew should taste like. And I'm pretty convinced that the dinner across the street from Rolf's could send out a more appetizing dish than the meal I was given.
In exhibit B, here's Catherine's "vegetables."
If you're going to serve canned/frozen vegetables (on a $24 dish, no less), you might try using only vegetables from the same can. It kind of gives it away when half the green beans are long, uncut and grey, and the other half are flourescent and an inch-long and cut with the kind of precision only a factory machine can provide. Just a thought, Rolf's.
In addition to the miserable service (the host walked around the entire time slugging Red Bull from a can), insane atmosphere (a CD of eight of disco's most-overplayed tracks which played twice during our miserable time there), and the horrid food, the restaurant barely comped any of the dishes after our complaints that our cold, bland food was inedible. Assholes! So, word to New York: please don't eat at Rolf's. I guess once upon a time it was a good restaurant but it is truly atrocious and unacceptable a restaurant in New York (outside of Times Square) is getting away with such abominations. Ban them!
OK ... so after this meal, the others departed and Daniela and I headed out on the town. After a stopover at a new wine bar on Irving Place with Leslie, we headed to Sin Sin.
I forget which party was going on, but it was ... full of freakazoids.
OK, this girl was nice.
Then Daniela and I headed to Yaffa's in Tribeca to visit with Rachel and have a slightly less insane time than Sin Sin's environs. And then home as I had an early train to catch with my cousins down to southern New Jersey.
So here's Thanksgiving, a day which it seemed like pretty much all we did was eat, sleep, eat, and sleep.
Pre-dinner napping.
While the boys (and yours truly) napped on sofas, the ladies chatted and prepared the food. So traditional we Savages are!
After dinner, there was plenty of civilised talk amongs the adults while the rest of us played a game.
And more relaxing ...
... and more snoozing!
All right, speaking of snoozing, I'm off for the longest flight of my life on which I plan to sleep for the majority of the time. See you in 2008! xoxo
