Monday July 12, 2010

Nikki Benz did great in yoga this am! Her boobs got in the way of several of the poses, but she did not leave the room and she tried to do everything…I think she only sat out on one of the postures. When the instructor asked her name she hesistated and told her “Nikki” instead of her real name. Then at the end of class the person at the front desk brought an envelope down with her real first and last name and the instructor was like “Nikki, what is your last name?” She was confused, I was dying laughing and Nikki was like “Well, yes that on the envelope is my legal name but I go by Nikki.” I wonder if anyone in the class recognized her. Or her boobs. At one point in the middle of class I looked at her inquisitively and did a thumbs up thing…asking if she was ok. She looked at me with a disheveled crazy look of exhaustion and sweat and pain all at once and whispered: “I love yoga.” She, like me, had never done any kind of yoga before but came with the intention of knocking out an intense amount of cardio in 90 minutes. We both HATE doing the machines at the gym. I get super bored and want to get off the elliptical after 15 minutes. Anyways, she said she was hooked and I hope that she does it back in LA or wherever she’s on the road.

I started to take a photo of this cute kitty and of course the owner flew out of nowhere screaming at me to leave money. He actually made me put the $ in the jar before I snapped the pic. Another man walking by got all in his face about how he can’t stop me from taking the photo and blah blah blah. The thing is, I don’t even mind giving the guy a buck. The cat looks pretty content.

St Patrick’s Cathedral (You gotta check out the inside if you have the chance… I didn’t go in today because I have already seen it and I didn’t want Nikki and I to burst into flames today. It was already too hot outside.)

For lunch we attempted to eat Japanese food at Cafe Zaiya but were sadly disappointed that it was not like a real Japanese place. I heard about it online from Midtown Lunch and it was one of their recommendations for a “fun” lunch. It was prepackaged like at the grocery store…ewww…but at this point we were hungry and it was the in-between time of sushi restaurants. The bakery and dessert selection was impressive so we decided to check it out. The green tea cake was too dry for me.

The lychee gelee was decent, but the texture was a little bit too slick for me. And I am not a huge fan of the lychee fruit. Only in my fruity martinis really.

The black sesame ice cream on the other hand! FTW! (For the win) It was nutty and yummy…it had an almost peanut butter flavor. It was gray with black flecks. I am in love and hope that I see this again very soon. Or I will be looking for it in Japan.

After lunch we were in a bit of a food coma and Nikki was in her state of deep relaxation and yoga retardedness so we just started walking …heading towards Bryant Park tp see if we could find some coffee and a grassy area to chill out. But, we miraculously found a bar with some yummy cocktails. Try saying “watermelonade.” Just try. Isn’t that a difficult word to get out? It’s just weird.

Meet Sophie, a 7 month old Portugese Podengo!

I had several drinks, Nikki could barely finish one. What a lightweight. We went back to our respective hotels and chilled out to get ready for our big night out on the town…. We went to Stanton Social to see Chris Santos the owner and executive chef and his wife, Taryn. Again this is one of those special situations where somehow through the magic of the universe I was supposed to meet these people. Chris is a culinary wizard and renowned chef and she is a talented erotic fine art photographer. (Do you recognize him from the show Chopped??) And on the left is Marc, a guy that we met last year when we were out with Chris and Taryn.

Nice tan lines, Laura. Sheesh don’t you have a mirror in the hotel? Wear something that doesn’t look so dumb next time.

Just like last time, Chris had us do the tasting menu of his favorite things. Ceasar salad bites…

Amazing potato and goat cheese pierogies with caramelized onions and truffle creme fraiche (I could have eaten an entire bowl of the creme fraiche!) and also his version of a Nori spiced tuna tartare roll.

FOR THE WIN: hand pulled chicken arepas with manchego and jalapeno salsa verde.

Shrimp (for some reason I am looking at the menu right now and I don’t see this…) it was delicious whatever was on there… I don’t remember. I see corn. lol

Red snapper tacos with creamy avocado and spicy mango (second place winner )

I was utterly stuffed at this point but I did try the meatball slider (if I was hungry I would have eaten a half dozen of them) and the beef carpaccio was deelish too… and would you believe that I didn’t even touch the lobster roll? Am I lobstered out from my trip? No, just full.

They were having a semi-private party upstairs so we rolled our fat asses (well mine, not Nikki’s) up to the tables/lounge. Marc is obviously enamored by Nikki in all of her beauty.

Definitely my favorite picture of the night. lol

We went to another club called Avenue. I love that they are sooo cool they don’t even need a website. Unless I am straight up dumb, I do not see anything to click on that site. On this site it says “Tough Door”…well not if you are with celebrity chef Chris Santos! ahhahahaha! Seriously, thank you Chris for such an amazing night of fine food and drinks…Thank you so much for your hospitality. I had a blast and if you come to San Diego, it’s on me!

I am such a 2 beer queer.

At about 3am I was a little bit cross eyed as you can see in this picture so Nikki and I said our goodbyes and we went home. Yoga tomorrow? oooooh I dunno… I have to check out of my hotel by 11:00. This might be rough.

 

Thursday 10.22.09

I arrived in NYC at the butt crack of dawn to attend a photography convention called Photo Plus Expo. It’s a massive amount of dorky middle aged dudes, but also a lot of the movers and shakers in the world of photography. I have enrolled in several seminars about branding, marketing, social media and publishing. I have thousands of images and I really just don’t know what to do with them so I am trying to wrap my head around the possibilities and options for me. I have been shooting stills for so long and have never really specialized in one field, so this is inspiring for me to figure out who I am as an artist. I have been around the planet and back (6 out of 7 continents! Australia is #7 in 4 months woohoo!) and I have tons of cool pictures to share with everyone….. Plus, I get to come to NYC again and hang out while the weather is still nice!

Last night I met up with Nikki Benz for a bottle of champagne and lemon drop shots (good ones… that is always a plus) at the W in Times Square. It’s entertaining for me to be out with a porn star and have random dudes recognize her…..but then it is even more fun when they try to be cool about the fact that they are porn connoisseurs and that they have just recognized a porn star. After having a martini with some cute young Wall Street interns, we went downtown and met up with a new friend of hers named Chris Santos….who happens to own a restaurant in the Lower East Side.

Chris Santos Interview (ironic that I know the woman who interviewed him for this piece… Laren Spirer! More on her later! This is about to become 6 degrees of separation in so many ways) It’s a rare occasion for me to enjoy dinner with the Executive Chef and owner of a place so I was super excited to eat my face off in his establishment. Stanton Social is a tapas style place with a lot of eclectic dishes from all over the world and Chris treated us to well over a dozen of them. I am by no means a food writer, or an expert of any kind in food reviews: I am merely here to tell you what I shoveled into my mouth.

I started with the pink grapefruit and mint martini which was to die for. It’s a strange combination that you would think tastes like ass considering what it’s like when you brush your teeth and then drink orange juice right afterwards. We then had a bacon, lobster, truffle marscapone on flatbread, tuna sashimi over avocado (I had to skip the jalapeno topper… I am the biggest wimp when it comes to spice), miso glazed Chilean sea bass, sweet and sour chicken cashew spring rolls, wild mushroom risotto cakes with parmesan and wild mushroom risotto flakes. OK breathe…. Then we had apple brie quesadillas with smoked bacon, duck confit empanadas, chicken arepas, sweet potato and butternut squash ravioli, orecchiette with rabbit sausage with fire roasted peppers and wild mushrooms, foie gras over vanilla risotto cake with a crispy apple between them, beef wellington. Breathe…I then ordered a cucumber vanilla martini (awesome, but not as awesome as the grapefruit one) and we proceeded to make ourselves sick with dessert. Donuts (waaaay better than Dunkin Donuts, I can’t believe I just said that out loud) with 3 different dipping sauces (chocolate, raspberry and caramel),

peanut butter mousse with concord grape sorbet,

and red velvet Twinkies.

Let me elaborate on the desserts and then I will give you my top 3 choices of the tapas. The peanut butter mousse was delicious, but the grape sorbet was too tart for me. The creamy smoothness of the peanut butter clashed with the texture and flavor of the sorbet.Chris and I discussed this last night and he basically said, “I am sorry you feel that way.” LOL! Anyways, I know he might read this and I want to apologize for offending him, if I did. Like I said, I am just stating my opinion and by no means is this blog going to have any impact whatsoever on the success of his restaurant. I think about 22 people are going to read this and only 2 of them live in Manhattan. As far as the red velvet Twinkie goes… I was a little nervous because one time when I was 6 years old I ate the entire family pack of Twinkies and got really really sick. To this day I cannot even smell one without gagging. So, being that red velvet cupcakes are one of my absolute favorite things to eat, I was a little scurred. Luckily, it tasted nothing like a Twinkie, and was properly stuffed with cream cheese frosting. At that point, I was ready to vomit and I kept eating the fucking thing.

My favorite things were (in no particular order) the bacon/lobster/truffle flatbread,
the beef wellington

and the orrecchiette with rabbit sausage. (no pic sorry, I couldn’t keep up with the dishes as fast as they were coming!) I can’t wait to go back and eat the other 878 things on his menu! I am sure that I have not named the dishes as they were on the menu, I am merely describing the items in them. After all, when you are dining with the owner, what is the point of looking at the menu at all?

After dinner we were whisked away in a scary black SUV instead of a taxi (of course because only commoners use taxis) to a club called ‘who cares’ where we proceeded to drink more champagne. I spent most of my time there with Chris’s wife making fun of badly dressed, homely “models” that needed to eat some sandwiches. A handsome man named Marc showed up to take us to another club called ‘I hate hip hop’ and I have to say I was a little upset because I had just fixated on these two skanks from New Jersey dancing away with their hideous hair and outfits. Trust me, I am no Versace, but I do own a mirror and I have glanced over the pages of a fashion magazine in the last decade. The night ended at 5 am and I was dragging ass today at the convention. My first seminar was stupid so I walked out and cruised the show floor looking for cool stuff. It is far less nerdy than I thought and there are far less nerds than those that trickle over into the AVN show from CES every year. If you don’t know what either of those are, google them and let your imagination figure out the rest. I did get to hold and caress the Canon 7D Mark II with the get-up that I need to balance the thing over my shoulder. More on that in a week or so…