Momof*ck* YES!

Well the food gods must have read our last post, since after posting it, we secured not one, but TWO reservations to the coveted restaurant Momofuku Ko. Did you read that Frank Bruni? TWO MOTHER F-ING RESY's. Wow that felt good.

Anyway, so we made our first on Sunday morning for Saturday night, after which we danced in our PJs around our living room, and bragged to everyone we knew, only to discover that our cousin's baby shower was Saturday night and not during the day. Who knew? So, we logged on Monday am to see what luck we might have on the 1980s era work computer - and lo(han) and behold - we got one for Sunday night! I mean I guess there are not that many people up for eating on Sunday night at 9:50, but after a lifetime of drinking heavily at Hiro and Park and other such Sunday night establishments, we certainly knew we could scarf down some pork and foie gras on a school night. So we cancelled the Saturday night one and headed to Long Island for some 8 course (basically) Indian food-fest, which, we must say basically rivaled Ko's level of yummyness.

But back to Ko. Since we're off the booze (and had work the next day), we had to pass on the wine pairing, which looking kind of amazing, but the food was good enough to make up for our inner semi-alcoholic yelling at us. Likes: this small biscuit thing soaked in butter and goodness, and the smoked egg with caviar and potato chips, and the sirloin in jalapeno something or the other. Dislikes - the snail sausauge was kind of yuck, but interesting we guess.

Well, since we are so good at securing this resy now, feel free to ask us to book for all y'all. Although, we wonder whether we have used up all our Ko luck. Meanwhile, chef David Chang has been named an "Agent of Change" by Rolling Stone Magazine, which is not surprising, since we kept chanting "Yes We Can" as our stomachs filled and we questioned our ability to eat anymore.

Momof**k* you.

We have now been trying daily for many months to secure a reservation at Momofuku Ko, that tiny restaurant that everyone raves about all the time and is small and hard to get into (if not secret and elite), so it must be good. Basically it involves logging into the reservation system every day at 10am, and trying your bestest to click on a time slot and confirm it in .00021332 seconds before it says “sorry, someone else has grabbed this spot.” We have found this to be virtually impossible, especially since our work computer is from circa 1988 and we swear that sometimes it is secretly dialing prodigy or AOL behind our backs to log on to the internets.

More famous writers/bloggers have blogged about this reservation struggle before, but the other night we met a total cutie who informed us that he himself had been the subject of one of these writer/blogger’s post about this very restaurant, and that he has secured many a reservation by the use of tabs and perseverance. Perseverance we have, but tabs, we asked? Yes, tabs. Now, we are very familiar with tabs since we tabbed and bound our outlines in law school like a crazy person, but never before had we considered using our leftover tabs to mark on our screen where the mouse should be to ensure a quicker clicking time and thus a coveted reservation.

Well last night we tried to mark the screen with tabs so today we would be ready, but the problem with this is we sit in open pods at work, as you may know, and so everyone walking by our desk could see us clicking “refresh” 12318298 times with tabs on our screen. We are embarrassed for ourselves. So 9:59:58 am rolls around, and we count to two and click, and click on dinner, and go to choose party of “2,” but our 1980s era mouse freezes up and instead clicks on 1. Epic fail. We could have paid $100+ to eat by ourselves, but we can do that at home with our melancholy playlist on for much cheaper. We guess we will tab again tonight and try again tomorrow. Maybe by the time we get a reservation, the recession will be over and it won’t be as painful shelling out this kind of dough.


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If You Give Us Health Insurance Then Next Thing You Know We May Want Tax Benefits. THE HORROR.

According to today's New York Times:

"Gary L. Bauer, president of American Values, a conservative advocacy group, said that if Mr. Obama extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal workers, he would 'provoke a furious grass-roots reaction, reinvigorate the conservative coalition and undermine his efforts to portray himself as a moderate on social issues.'"

Really? A grass-roots movement sparked because someone wants health insurance for their spouse? People are ABSURD.


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Then Again, If We Did Have Any Savings, It Would Likely Have Been in Bank Stocks...

Sorry for the delay in posting, but our parents were in town this weekend, and getting fed as much as we possibly could in 48 hours was very time consuming and left very little time for blogging. We started off the weekend eating at Teodora, a Best Lasagne winner in NY Mag’s “Best Of” issue, where we saw some friends (AR, CC) who also apparently read NY Mag. No offense to that esteemed publication, but the Lasagne at Max is half the price and half the gooeyness, so, as Jerri Blank was once told, “go with what you know.” Which is what we did the rest of the weekend -- hitting up our aunt’s cooking and South Indian Vegetarian (and Kosher!) places in Curry Hill and other such regular institutions.

The nice thing about our parents’ visits is that they used to live in the area before venturing south, so they know their way around, have friends here to keep them occupied when we slip away to go gay (our review of what it is like to be at Pieces on a Saturday night SOBER is forthcoming), and they generally do not require any baby-sitting whatsoever. But one thing they have quickly forgotten is how expensive things are here in our great urban metropolis. “You pay HOW MUCH for a haircut!?!?!” our father yelled at us as we showed up newly groomed. “I can get these sheets at the factory outlet for ½ the price” our mother said as we shopped for higher threat counts. “I can’t believe people pay this much for wine glasses” she continued as we were in the $1.00 section of Fishs Eddy. Meanwhile, a recession looms around us and our savings account stands at $0.23, so how can we really argue with such a fiscal outlook on life. Perhaps immigrant parents should have been running the Treasury Dept during the 2000s – Bear Sterns might still be around, toasting their success with 3-for-a-dollar wine glasses.


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We Knew Not To Ask for "Rent" or "Wicked" Since We Would Have Been Shunned...

Last night we hit Marie’s Crisis (after “I’m getting the hell out of NYC” straight drinks with SH and friends). We thought we wouldn’t be up for singing anything, but of course when the songs from Company started on the out of tune piano, we really lost it and started belting about Another Hundred People and Being Alive. The best part of the evening, however, was when Malan from Project Runway spilled vodka on us and said “it’s raining vodka” and then did his Malan from Project Runway scary laugh. Some tourist then took out her video camera to document her and her gay friend’s night in NYC and Malan immediately assumed they were filming him so ran away. He then came back to join in “What I Did For Love” and “One,” natch.

But seeing him got us thinking -- when you go on a reality show to get ahead in your profession (i.e., PR, Top Chef, Make me a Supermodel, Boy Meets Boy (?)), and all the gays in NYC then know who you are and see you out, do you feel self conscious that everyone can accurately gauge your level of success in your field? We mean, we have a hard enough time making up and exaggerating how successful we are, but if everyone saw where we stood in the world of non-profit lawyering on national tv (that would be a terrible show, btw), how could we convince people (meaning love interests) we were the next best thing in public interest advocacy and thus worth dating?


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Confessions of a Former Medium Alcoholic

So we are trying this thing where we don’t drink. It started because of some meds, but we liked it so much that now we are full fledged teetotalers. We are also training for this half-marathon, and find that our weekly long runs are soooo much easier when not hung over. Who knew? Also, we can go out until 3am and still wake up for Meet the Press! The best of both worlds.

At first, we really questioned our will power and thought that eating at restaurants would prove the most difficult since the sight of a glass of red wine on white tablecloth usually makes us salivate and pant, like an alcoholic Pavlovian puppy. But the ultimate test came on Saturday night, when we were in a room of 129310283 gay people at our friend’s Chelsea housewarming – and where the booze was free flowing and boys appropriately stand-offish. We usually find that we need booze in times like these to make jokes and be funny, but since we have given up being funny (for another post), it was really easy to refill our cup with the lime flavored club soda instead of vodka and ice. Mind you, we went home alone, so maybe this whole experiment is flawed. But maybe that’s because we basically spent the whole party talking about how fun not drinking is, which we think should NOT be part of the plan.

Not to mention this thing is saving us a whole slew of cash. And since we are obsessed with our monthly spending pie chart on Mint.com, we are so pleased to see our “alcohol” piece reserved only for the requisite bottle of wine we have to show up places with, and not for that 6th tanqueray and tonic that we definitely didn’t need. Somehow, though, the food section of our spending pie chart is higher than normal, which makes us think we are subconsciously replacing liquor with soup dumplings. Mmmmm, soup dumplings – gotta go.