Start Spreadin' The News...

When I got to DC, not only did I have pretty pretty flowers, but there was a SURPRISE looming.

JJ has never pulled off a surprise... until now. I've guessed every present that he's given me, I knew when he bought the ring.... he pretty much fails at keeping a straight face.

I got to DC on a Wednesday. He said I'd have a surprise on Friday after he was done with work... and boy, did I have a surprise!

He told me on Thursday night. WE WERE GOING TO NEW YORK! For those of you who don't know about how we met, here's a brief recap:

I had recently been dumped
He was moving to NYC (well, Hoboken, NJ, but... same thing) to go to The French Culinary Institute
We got set-up
We liked each other
He moved
I cried (don't tell, it's a secret)
He wanted to keep dating me
I went to Jersey for 2 weeks to visit my bestie, Katie (holla)
JJ was conveniently in NYC
We hung out a lot
We fell in lurve
He moved back

TA DA!

Since then, JJ and I have always thought that New York was "our town"...well, sort of.

So I was pee-my-pants excited about going to "our town". And rightly so.


We took Greyhound (4 Hours from DC to NYC... $20. Can't beat it), which was only slightly scary. I packed a picnic (PS I went a little picnik happy with our photos, in case you can't tell) lunch of french bread, gourmet cheeses, veggies, berries, and apples, and off we went! Unfortunately... we went off without our digital camera.

"No worries! We'll just stop and get one of those disposables!" he says.
"That'll take $#!+ pictures!" she says (pardon her French).
"It'll be fine, we never look at pictures anyway," He says.
"BUT WHAT ABOUT MY BLOG?!" She says.

Smug boy... too bad all the pictures did end up... well, you know.

We got there Friday night at around 6, checked into our BEAUTIFUL hotel room at the Hotel Mela, and JJ told me that the biggest surprise of all was going to be at 10:30. I was so excited! I knew it involved food (my favorite thing), and he had told me I needed to get dressed up, and I just so happened to have a dress burning a hole in my closet. That's not a saying, but you know what I mean.

We got all gussied up, thanks to my 2 favorite J things of the moment: JJ and J.Crew:

Not so bad, if I do say so myself.

JJ called a cab (with the help of the door man at the hotel), and he whisked me off to LE BERNARDIN, as in, one of the only Michelin 3-Star restaurants in NYC. As in, delicious delicious fish. As in, Eric Ripert. As in... google it. or you could click the link I just provided.

We decided on the $20/per person more expensive, but not highest expensivity(it was so delicious I made up words) prix-fixe menu. I feel like I'm speaking French in this post, because I'm pretty sure not very many of the things I'm talking about are things that normal, not-food-obsessed people know about. And because that was French.


A prix-fixe menu is a menu where you pay a certain price and then get a certain amount of food. These can range from starter-entree-dessert things (think 2 for $20 at Chili's) to 9 course chef's choice menus. This restaurant, being very un-Chili's, served the latter.

It was 9 courses of deliciousness. My most favorite was the first course, which was a thinly-pounded fillet of tuna served raw over a super-thin slice of baguette with foie gras patee spread on it. Dee. Lish. Us!

Here are some pics of the greatness that occurred:

Tiny Desserts (including a tiny donut) / Gelato, mange blanc, and liquid pears / Surf & Turf / Someone Cute

Oh, it was so legendary. And it reminded me of how I found another food weirdo (also pictured above) to share these kinds of legendary moments with me--and he also thinks that they're legendary! What can I say, I'm in lurve. With food? Yes, but also with that guy.

We had all of Saturday and half of Sunday to laze around, eat, walk around town, eat....

Highlights of the rest of the trip: Eating at Balthazar (ordered the raw oysters, they were ultra fresh and not at all scummy), walking around Canal Street and not buying anything (except a coat and some gloves, but those were not on Canal Street, per se...), and eating at Stage's Deli:

I had the Matzo Ball Soup and a Salami Sandwich. JJ had an Open-Faced Roast Beef Sandwich and a Cel-Ray Soda, in honor of his late Grump-pa Balish. Everything was so delicious.

On Sunday morning, we decided to go back to where Stage's Deli is, so that we could get some of the street food we had seen earlier.

We stood at Port Authority eating a Gyro and a mixed Gyro plate. Yuuuummmmmm.

When JJ and I got back to DC, we went and got chicken at Pollo Rico with Micah, and then JJ had to go to bed--some people have to work.

When he got back from work on Monday afternoon, he looked like this:

Poor, tired, little guy. I guess our weekend wore him out. After all, it gets tiring falling in love all over again.