New York To London Again: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: May 18, 2009]

After a quiet period, I suddenly had a busy week mid-May ten years ago.  It started in New York with another visit to the Ninth Avenue Food Festival.

Repetition had begun to dull this event, but I hadn't quite given up.  I now knew the best vendors to hit - and the same ones are probably still the best this year.   Having said that, Ned Kelly's is no longer with us, so you won't be getting any more roast pork sandwiches cut fresh from the rotating pig.  I followed that with blood sausage and stuffed potatoes and yuca from the Old San Juan.   Then down the street to the chaotic Sea Breeze stall for stacks of fresh-shucked oysters and clams.  Finally a kebab of sweetbreads and lamb liver wrapped tight in intestines, and quail stuffed with feta from the International Grocery,

The evening was a mellow affair - the excellent pianist and music historian Eric Comstock singing Duke Ellington at the Supper Club, then dancing the night away at venue best left anonymous.  Ah, youth.

Sunday, to Yankee stadium, and Monday evening to Jean-Georges.  I think I just snatched a last minute reservation.  Oddly, my diary mentions a young garlic soup with wild flowers, but doesn't refer to frog's legs.  Surely Jean Georges always serves that soup with little frog drumsticks?  Never mind; a roast squab followed with baby arugula and creamy corn capped with a slice of foie gras.  Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru, 1996, and the cheese trolley.  And the very next morning, off to JFK again.

After spending a day in the air with Thucydides* and William Carlos Williams' Paterson, I bestowed my patronage on J. Sheekey's for a late supper of Morecambe Bay potted shrimp, followed by Dover sole meunière with mashed spuds.  For once I didn't take a savory; I was tempted by the rhubarb tart.  Very English.  I drank a pichet of Sauvignon Blanc and managed a Sauternes with pudding.

Naturally, this was a working trip, so after spending the next day laboring I took a simple late dinner of onglet frites at the Charlotte Street Chez Gérard, and then fell asleep in the bath.

The following evening, someone must have suggested a gastropub.  It's not my favorite way to dine: it usually involves only okay Mediterranean-accented food served in a busy bar with drinkers reeling around the dining tables.  This was the Duke of Cambridge, and it served me lamb loin with white beans.

The following evening was one of those extraordinary work-related events in an unlikely venue.  The organization with which I was associated had hired the House of Commons for the evening.  Or at least, they'd booked drinks on the elegant terrace overlooking the Thames, and then after a rather pointless tour - for the benefit, if I recall, of overseas guests - gave us a sort of dinner.  The highlight of the evening was getting first lost, then locked in when trying to leave.  Wandering the dark lobbies and corridors late at night was a positively gothic experience.

Sadly, the next day found me working too, and it was a Saturday.  I managed the ritual tour of the Charing Cross Road bookshops in the early evening, and then after a quick dinner at the Savoy River Room (no details survive), I went to the Lyceum to see the revival of Oklahoma.  Sunday was a free day, and I indulged in a family visit.  I had Monday to myself too, and spent the morning looking at Jackson Pollock in the Tate.  Then up to Camden Town to visit the excellent, now extinct, Compendium bookstore where I found a copy of J.H. Prynne's limited edition broadsheet For the Monogram.  A late flight home.