Sunday, 13 April, 2014 – USA Food and Wine Tour

We meet upstairs at the Terrace for Continental Breakfast. It is a large room with sub-rooms and lots of expensive Andy Warhol and other paintings on the wall. It is a good breakfast for that kind of thing.

The whole day is free, until dinner. So, Julie, Di, Colin and Doug head off to South Manhattan (again). We walk a fair ways, eventually dropping of Colin to his bag shop. We continue along Houston street to, fanfare, Russ & Daughters again. The place is absolutely crowded but they wait their turn. I had already decided that I would go to Katz’s Deli again, which I do.

I order Turkey this time as opposed to the Pastrami.

The Turkey is good, but the Pastrami is special. The server gives be a piece of Pastrami and a piece of Turkey as a sample. The server cutting up the Turkey was very chatty. When finding that I was from Australia, asked if I had an Australian coin he could have. I did not. After finishing I went back to Russ & Daughters to find Doug sitting on a bench outside with no food available yet. I told him the story about the Aussie coin and he had one in his bag. I took it back to Katz’s. The server was on a break but I gave the coin to a waiter to pass it on.

I go back to R&D and Doug is there, still with no food. In fact, it is well over 20 minutes more before the girls emerge with their bagels, a wait of probably well over an hour. I guess on Sunday there is nothing else to do for Jews in NYC but to go to R&D for a bagel.

After finishing, the other 3 take off to do some shopping – in the case of Julie and Di, this lasts several hours. I take the metro back to the Hotel and have some rest and do some Blog work.

Doug has organised a night of Korean Fusion from David Chang. We first head to the bar, Booker & Dax Bar, next door to the restaurant, Momofuku Ssam Bar.

I order the pistol peat – scotch, yellow chartreuse, clarified lime, hellfire bitters. It did not work that well. Julie had the gin and juice – gin, clarified grapefruit juice, very refreshing. For a full list of the exotic drinks refer to:

http://momofuku.com/new-york/booker-and-dax/beverage/

We walk through a passageway to the restaurant spotting the following on the way:

I had been using my phone for the camera shots but had forgotten to charge it. Consequently I used a camera but for some reason most of the shots did not turn out. The following are from Julie.

That Ham was just about the best that I have ever had. The Korean flavours coming through on the dishes so far are great.

That Duck was just about the most tender I have ever had. I cook a lot of Duck, but none have ever turned out like this. Maybe I will try a rotisserie.

As far as we are concerned this has been the most interesting meal on the trip. Others have been quite good but not extraordinarily different. Some in our group did not care for it.

http://momofuku.com/new-york/ssam-bar/

There is a lot of illness around in the group, we all hope that everybody gets better soon.