The Girl Who Ate Everything

Last Monday Lee Anne came back from her "European Tour of Magic and Cool Stuff Like Eating Chocolates and Sneaking Into a Parisian Hostel's Closet." She went to Barcelona, Bologna, Paris, London, Switzerland, and probably other places...maybe the moon...okay, probably not the moon. But if anyone can go to the moon, she probably could. She's very smart. Or she would find a way to hitch a ride on a space shuttle by her cunningness and/or charm.

So anyway, she came back to her American homeland! To NYC...as a stopover to AZ! So she could meet up with me! And get a facial! But I hope I'm mildly more of a draw than a facial. Even if it's a really good facial. I perform no skin clearing. If anything, my fooding guidance will ensure that you get clogged pores. YOUR PORES, THEY WILL CLOG. And this is how.

PORK

We shall start with slices of fatty pork from Ramen Setagaya. It was actually Nick, not I, who suggested we go to Setagaya. Of course, I wouldn't pass up a new ramen shop. It's cheap. It's delicious. And, most importantly, it tends to feature pork. That's like, 20 points right there in my nonexistent rating system. I don't think I ate the extra side of pork we ordered though since I already had a few slices on my bowl of noods.

I likey the Orangina

Water usually does the trick for me when I'm in need of thirst quench-age, but on Saturday night I was...running out of water. And I wanted something else while walking through the muggy air filling the dark deserted streets of NYC. So while walking from Japan Society (where lots of cool movies are playing this week) to Penn Station, I stopped into a random deli with just one beverage on my mind.

Orangina. The bubbly, orange, not entirely artificial (hey, there's pulp!) beverage of my youth. It was one of the few sodas I didn't have to fight my mildly health nutty mum over to let enter our house, meaning that—to fulfill my role as an annoying daughter—I asked for it a lot. But hey, better than screaming for sugary cereals and candy, right? Right.

Orangina also reminds me of Paris, in particular hanging out in a park while sharing a six-pack and baguette with some friends. It's one of the best memories I have. That might be sad. But if you tried it, I bet it'd be a good memory for you too.

Now for some...real food.

I'd happily eat any kind of gelato, whether good or bad. At least, if given the choice between mediocre ice cream and mediocre gelato, I'd pick the gelato. I suppose the best decision would be to choose neither and save my taste buds for a more worthy cause, but it's just a hypothetical situation. I can do anything in a hypothetical situation. Hell, I can FLYYYYYY!!!

Um.

gelato beats all

Preferably, I'd be stuck with good gelato. Or better than good. "Close to godliness" good. Or, "This is God reincarnated as a frozen, sweet, spoonable dessert that comes in a wide variety of delicious flavors, like the humans he created!" good. Otto's gelato is the last kind. Yeah, yeah, I know Grom is today's "it" gelateria, but as they don't offer both caramel and olive oil gelato (at least, I don't think they do), they lose against Otto.

these bottles have alcohol in them

If you go to Sakagura, it's probably because you want something out of one of these bottles. Or all of them. You appreciate the fine taste of rice left to ferment in a pool of moldy water. And why wouldn't you? Fermenty rice squeezings! All natural! Like God intended.

I'm afraid I don't like alcohol. Yes, this puts me in the minority of people who don't like bitter things and aren't curious to know the effects of alcohol poisoning/drunkenness and aren't stressed enough to need alcohol as an escape mechanism and are too cheap to find drinking worthwhile and don't see drinking as a social necessity when we're perfectly happy sitting at home in front of our computers at night, all alone without any risk of feeling the warm caress of another human being, only to be consoled by the burning heat emanated from our overworked computers...wait a minute, this sucks.

Sun scorching my retinas. Faint smell of pot wafting around my head. Little kids playing in a questionably sanitary puddle. Muffled sounds of indie rock band performing on stage. Hipsters patiently waiting in line for beer.

WHERE AM I?

the pool

On Sunday I went to Pool Parties at McCarren Pool for the first time this summer. I went once last year to see Of Montreal, after which in a state of severe bodily fluid expulsion ("sweating") I asked myself, "Jesus, did I really travel 2 hours to roast in the sun and feel like a overly wet, leaky sponge and smell like...[sniff]...oh my god that is not human."

Yes, yes I did. And then I did it again to see last week's Pool Parties because Diana, Patty, Annie, John, Pete and Alex were going and seeing people who stimulate happiness as opposed to trigger nightmare-ridden panic attacks is always a good thing. But if I wasn't sure before about whether my former penchant for attending concerts was being sucked out of this universe, I was now. After standing around the pool with friends and...that was pretty much it, I didn't really feel like watching the bands, even the headliner Band of Horses (who I really do like, as long as I don't have to watch them from the pit of a decaying pool with the same area as a Walmart while being attacked by ultraviolet rays).

There are a few semi-universal factors to dining that may help you gauge the level of satisfaction you'll receive at a restaurant. For instance, does your waiter come by at reasonable time intervals to take your order and give you your food, or does he slink away as soon as you squeak, "I would like—" and only tends to your needs at the start of a new lunar phase? Is your menu contained within a leather-bound, gold tassled booklet or is it viewable under the clear vinyl covering of your table? Does your butter come in the form of a large block resting in its own specially made butter tray or are you given a bowl of plastic, hermetically sealed single-serve butter buckets that each contain just enough butter to inefficiently spread upon one small piece of bread, resulting in a mass grave of empty butter buckets strewn upon your table?

buttah

Aureole is serious about their butter and they know their customers are too. Why else would they present you with a block of ultra-sweet butter in its own gleaming silver tray? Tina, Helen, Giulia and I excitedly stabbed the butter like a bunch of butter-hungry young females...since that's what we are.