Give Me Some Food

Friday morning started out with breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien with some more recent students of mine- most of them were too young for a beer (with me anyway) but old enough for coffee:

That's Brian- when he was a freshman in high school he used to get kicked out of my Drama 2 class for poking and flirting with his friend Addie- and now he's pre-med and wants to be an anesthesiologist...how they all grow up.

Le Pain Quotidien was wonderful, my student Sabrina picked it because we didn't know how many people would show up and they had these nice long tables to fit how ever many you wanted. The environment was very comfortable- we stayed 3 hours chatting and didn't even realize it!  I thought it was a perfect breakfast place- the mochas were frothy and rich (that's the first picture) and all of the wooden tables gave it warmth. Though, I think by the end, they were trying to kick us out- more and more stuff kept disappearing from the table- they even took our water glasses so we might die of thirst (or leave before we did).

If you do go there, I would order a big bread basket to share with the table. The servers bring it out with different jams and a jar of Nutella. That and my two mochas made a perfect morning.

The afternoon was spent resting for our dinner at  L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon. The dinner was wonderful- and at this point in the trip, I was having so much good food that it was difficult to differentiate- but I would like to point out two things, how we started and ended the dinner.

That was our amuse. It was some combination of fois gras and Parmesan cheese. That probably sounds awful- but it was one of my favorite serving of fois gras ever. I can see how you would only want a taste because it's just about the richest thing I've ever had, but that taste really prepared my palate for the delights of the evening.

This is how we ended- the tarte sampler. From upper left to lower right the tarts were coffee cream, apple, dark chocolate, lemon and milk chocolate peanut. The milk chocolate peanut was my favorite. It tasted like some deconstructed candy bar, but with ingredients that don't taste like wax.

One nice difference about Joel Robuchon, was the decor. I know there is a reason that restaurants all use white table cloths- they make everything look clean and fancy- but Joel Robuchon's black and red decor was very modern. It did make me think a little of a brothel- but a very clean upscale brothel...

Then we were off to:

Stephen Sondhiem's musical Company and I go way back. It was the first thing I ever directed- well...assistant directed. And assistant directing in college basically meant being a therapist to the ladies in my cast who all had hooked up with wanted to date my best friend Stu. In this version of Company, all of the cast members played their own instruments and it was pretty amazing. It also gave many new actors a chance to have their Broadway premier. And the instruments weren't just an after thought, parts of the script were even changed and the whole metaphor of "instrument as partner" was worked into the play.  If you are a Sondheim friend you'll definitely want to check this out.

Le Pain Quotidien
922 Seventh Ave (btw 58th and 59th?) but there are numerous locations
212-757-0775

L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon
57 East 57th St.
212-758-5700

ps- I know, I have not written in some time- thank you for  checking in! We are putting up Anything Goes (opening this Friday) and it has been such a huge project and I have barely had time to eat. I started writing this post awhile ago and only now is it going up. I'll be better soon- I promise.