The better half and I try to vacation at least three times a year — my birthday, his birthday, and our anniversary.\u00a0 This being the Internet, I won’t tell you which one occurred last week, but we weren’t able to get away, and so decided to celebrate at home, in New York City.\u00a0 Here’s what we did:<\/p>\n
Wednesday:\u00a0 Dinner at Hell’s Kitchen<\/em><\/a>, a trendy “progressive”-Mexican place in (where else?)<\/em>, Hell’s Kitchen<\/a>.\u00a0 Being reluctant omnivores, we went for veggie choices.\u00a0 A recent trip to Italy had made us more aware of the lovely artichoke, which is not on enough menus in the United States, so we started with the poached artichoke quesadilla with idiazabal cheese, roasted sweet corn, and poblano crema.\u00a0 Yummy.\u00a0 For main courses we ate light and shared family style:\u00a0 We ordered \u00a0huitlacoche with avocado, and mascarpone cheese. Hutlacoche for the uninitiated is a truffle that grows on corn — or in simple terms a fungus.\u00a0 It has a unique taste and texture, a bit smoky, a bit spongy.\u00a0 We are fans.\u00a0 Plus the cheese didn’t overwhelm the dish, which is one difference between “progressive” Mexican and run of the mill.\u00a0 The crispiness of the taco created a perfect balance of textures.\u00a0 As a second main, we had the burrito with wild mushroom,\u00a0 guacamole and poblano sauce, which was also well balanced and delicious. The mushrooms tasted like they might have been saut\u00e9ed with a teriyaki sauce, giving them a steak-like flavor.\u00a0 We split a dessert, banana empanadas with chocolate sauce and fresh whipped cream.\u00a0 The cream was unsweetened as it should be to help offset the sweetness of the sauce and the banana.\u00a0 There were other dessert choices that sounded equally good.<\/p>\n Then we walked up to the Metropolitan Opera House to see La Traviata<\/a><\/em> directed by Will Decker with Natalie Dessay, as Violetta, Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky is Germont,\u00a0 I am an opera ignoramus.\u00a0 The decision to go to the opera was made by my better-half, based on its being on both our bucket lists.\u00a0 Neither of us had seen live “grand” opera before, except maybe once or twice on PBS.\u00a0 We are now both fans, trying to figure out what we can sell to pay for season tickets next year.\u00a0\u00a0 We were expecting to be entertained.\u00a0 We were expecting “theater.” What we got was an emotional wallop.\u00a0 Even in the back of the orchestra where we were, when Gourmont slaps Alfredo and you hear him fall, there was more than a murmur in the audience.\u00a0\u00a0 To train the human voice to do what they do and do it while dancing, laughing, running and crying is amazing. To do it while acting<\/em> is a miracle.\u00a0 While we were expecting the tragedy of the lovers, Hyorostovsky’s nuanced performance made us feel<\/em> Germont’s guilt and regret for separating them as well.\u00a0 The stark set with its surreal clock ticking away the minutes of Violetta’s life, and the contemporary dress created a sense of timelessness.\u00a0 This wasn’t a story about a nineteenth century courtesan, but about life, death, love and regret.<\/p>\n The following evening was theater night.\u00a0 Ducking work, we got to TKTS<\/a> at 2:20.\u00a0 The main line was already huge, but the Play Express<\/em> line was short.\u00a0 By 3;15, we had two FRONT ROW seats to the Clybourne Park<\/em><\/a>, which had opened earlier that week.\u00a0\u00a0 On the one hand, we were amazed at our luck; on the other, hand, it’s scary that almost all the non-musical plays had availability.\u00a0 The play, itself has been described as a “sequel” to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun<\/em>.\u00a0 More accurately it’s a re-imaging, with a first act taking place in 1959, the time when the original is set, and the second act fifty years later.\u00a0 It’s been described as an\u00a0 “uproariously funny”\u00a0 comedy.\u00a0 While it is that, it’s also an explosive drama.\u00a0 There are several points at which violence seems imminent, and we weren’t prepared for the tragic tone of the first act.\u00a0 When the curtain came down for intermission, my better half said, “After this, I’m going to need a drink.”\u00a0 The second half is funnier, broader, more satiric, dealing with gentrification and reverse integration, but that too moves into dangerous territory.<\/p>\n We ate after the theater at Marseille<\/em><\/a>, an unpretentious but stylish, French bistro on ninth avenue.\u00a0 We ordered snails, of course.\u00a0 Going carnivore, I ordered the honey glazed duck breast.\u00a0 The better half had the mussels with fries.\u00a0 Lots of mussels, and the best fries either of us had ever tasted, ever<\/em>, in our lives.\u00a0 We tried to figure out what made the fries so perfect.\u00a0 Garlic might be one answer, but there was also the lack of grease and perfect crispiness.\u00a0 The desserts are a bit more extensive than what’s on the posted menu.\u00a0 We had something mousse-like with dark chocolate, so intensely rich that we were satisfied with just a few spoonfuls (rare for us).<\/p>\n We hardly left the house over the weekend, except for errands and long walks to local parks — Central Park, Fort Tryon, Morningside and Riverside, where everything seemed to be in bloom.\u00a0 Saturday night, I started to read Just Kids<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0 Patti Smith’s memoir of her time in New York as a bookstore clerk\/struggling artists\/poet and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe.\u00a0 I kept reading into Sunday morning when I finished. I mention it here because like our two nights out, the \u00a0book could only have taken place in New York, although the New York, Smith writes about where young artsy types could somehow eke out enough of a living to afford the smallest room in the Chelsea Hotel is long gone as are the bookstores where she worked Brentano\u2019s<\/em> and Scribner\u2019s<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Argosy<\/a><\/em> somehow survives.\u00a0 Gotham Books<\/em> which published her early work, gone as well.<\/p>\n Smith, herself, has been quoted as saying that New York is now beyond the means of struggling artists who would be better off going elsewhere. Still for those of us, artist and non-artist who remain or are just visiting, and have limited incomes, some discounts are available. Our two front row theater seats costs were about $60 a piece at TKTS, and though we paid full freight at the opera, discounts and standing room <\/a>are available.\u00a0 Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen offers many reasonably priced restaurants.\u00a0 Walking is still free, as is browsing, and books remain here and elsewhere the most affordable form of entertainment going.<\/p>\n For those of you who might not make it to the Met this year, here’s a clip:<\/p>\n