Oldies Restaurant

As I mentioned yesterday, we had dinner at Capital Grille, which is actually a chain restaurant.  Must be the fanciest chain restaurant in the world.  But as the restaurant filled up with patrons during our meal, we couldn’t help but notice that almost everyone looked to be over 50.  Youngest there had to still be over 40.  Once again, I chose a restaurant frequented by the, um, mature crowd.  I say once again because last time we dined at an expensive restaurant (you know it was expensive because I used the word “dined” and not “ate”), we were also the youngest by far – this was La Grenouille.

These restaurants are great with its decor, service, and food.  But we will have the rest of our lives to enjoy them, while we will be young for only so long.  There must be a good restaurant out there for the younger crowd, and I need to find it.

Best restaurant that I’ve been to for the younger crowd has to be Ninja, although I can’t be sure since we were seated in our own privacy cove.  It is kind of a gimmicky restaurant because servers dress as ninja and they perform shows for you at the table.  It wasn’t cheap at over $100 per person, but it was a good dining experience – something that is more special than dinner at Applebee’s or even The Cheesecake Factory.

I need to find another restaurant like that – restaurant that provides a unique experience and not just good food.  Up to now, I’ve done almost all of my restaurant search on TripAdvisor.  Well, I think word of mouth may be a better method for the time being.

Last Valentine’s Day

Without kids, that is.  By this time next year, we will hopefully have a 5-month old baby we will be spending Valentine’s Day with.  That is great on its own, but that also means this Valentine’s Day will be the last for a while without having someone watch our kids.  (Hmm, never seen “last for a while” used in that context before – usually it’s “these tires should last for a while”.)

As such, I decided on a date in New York.  New York is a place that tourists from all over the world come to visit, yet we live an hour away and haven’t had a date with just two of us since our last anniversary 8 months ago.  Before we have this baby, we decided we should enjoy more of dining and shows that New York offers.

Dinner was at The Capital Grille, ranked as 15th best restaurant (among over 7000) in New York on TripAdvisor, albeit with much less reviews than some other restaurants.  We stuffed ourselves with a $39 pre-theatre menu, with total coming to $129.  I had mentioned in reservations that we had a show to attend at 7, so our waitress told us in person that we should be finishing our meal on time.  That was very personal of them to read my note.  Unfortunately, I was trying to surprise my wife with the show tickets, so she found out about 2 hours early.  Oops.

Anyway, dinner itself was decent enough, nothing amazing – but then again, it takes a lot for me to really give high marks to food.  We then went to see Wicked, which may have been the first time I ever paid full face value for Broadway tickets (after I found out about discounted tickets, anyway).  Wicked was still very popular, so I could not find cheaper tickets.  My wife commented about how full the place was on a Tuesday night.  Well, I assume it is full because majority of these people are tourists and days of the week don’t matter to people on vacation.  I actually wondered what percent of these people were actually tourists.  Couple sitting next to us certainly were – I doubt a real New Yorker would buy a Wicked behind-the-scenes book and a Wicked souvenir cup.

To enjoy the show, I had to do a little reading about the Wizard of Oz story.  Being familiar with this is very helpful in understanding some parts of this musical since Wicked is, essentially, a prequel to Wizard of Oz, told from the perspective of the Wicked Witch.  You could say the title of this as a movie could be Oz Origins: The Wicked Witch of the West.  The best part of Wicked was the storyline, which I can’t give too much credit for since it is based on a book.  But it was an enjoyable show.

We will certainly have at least one more night like this, hopefully two or three, before we say hello to our baby.  We live so close to New York – we need to take advantage of it.