Wednesday 2 January 2013

It's Steak Jim, but not as we know it



So the day I’ve been most anticipating has arrived! We’re going to see a game of American Football! Huzzah!! Sitting for 3 hours in the freezing cold to watch 60 minutes of game time played in 10 second bursts with 1 minute gaps in between! What fun!!  WTF? And they get so excited about it!

But I get ahead of myself.  Let me tell you about the eggs benedict I had at the diner… Fully expecting poached eggs, ham, English muffins and hollandaise sauce right? Here’s a picture below; don’t ask me what the ‘stuff’ is on the side, some kind of weird potato thing they add to their breakfasts for no extra charge (when they’re not adding fries, that is)



Large, no? and the hollandaise sauce?? Well, cheese sauce with onion flavour actually.  Very, very weird, I only managed one.  You can see behind Himself’s mega portion of pancakes.  There will be a serious diet when we get home!

Then on to find some shopping in the East Village.  We found a few good places, some to be revisited in a couple of days.  I made a couple of purchases – some grey work trousers. Himself reckons my entire work wardrobe is grey (it may be – grey is the new black baby!) and he got some shirts and a pair of jeans.  Alas, then it was shopping time over and onto the football!

We public transported it to the game, we had to transfer at the charmingly name Secaucus (pronounced with a strong NJ accent see-COWR-cus) Station then onto the Met Life Stadium where Himself almost pissed his pants in excitement.  We found our (very good) seats and then settled in to enjoy the stop-start game.  Five minutes into it and I went to hunter-gather lunch (hotdog and beer for him, nachos for me) The nachos looked revolting and tasted remarkably good.  Settled into watch the game.  Ten minutes later I went to check out the merchandise shop, all very standard ‘stuff’, couldn’t get the team shirt of the player Himself wanted, their sizes run from Huge to Gigantic.  In their defence, a lot of people wear them over their fifty layers of clothes due to the fact it’s FREEZING.  Then came back in and settled down to watch the game.  Ten minutes later I went to get a hot chocolate.  Came back in and settled down to watch the game.  By then Himself was turning blue (in honour of the Giants I’m sure) and decided as it was a white-wash we could leave early (huzzah!) Train home, where due to a late running train I experienced the true NY crush that leaves Sydney peak hour for dead…

Due to our all American day we had dinner at the Mesa Grill which is a steak house.  A couple of margaritas to start, some yummy mini shrimp (prawn) tacos and some ribs, which incidentally had nuts sprinkled on top - there is no place for nuts on ribs... So the steaks right? Very highly anticipated rib eye and NY cut sirloin.  Blackened, cooked beautifully, perfectly medium rare; tenderly melting in your mouth and… absolutely flavourless!! I think you’ve spoilt us Mrs Feather, this is the second time we’ve had meat in NY that has been this way.  Either we’re utter, utter food snobs* or the meat here is really second class.  To be honest I get better flavour from the butcher down the road as well – not nearly as amazing as F&B obviously but better than this!! What is going on?? Even adding salt does not help.  I'm not sure if that's how Americans like it but it's a very anti-climatic experience all round.  Their fries were shite too...  The waitress looked at our half finished steaks disappointedly and asked if we'd like them 'to go'.  No thank you, they were lovely but we've been unwell you see...

To be honest, it's true.  Our appetites aren't what they usually are, they give you so much food and we have both been very unwell (yet the weight still creeps on - go figure)

Tomorrow is NYE and a big shopping day at an outlet, better wear comfortable shoes…

 *Totes

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