a little local flavor

here i am with another update on the restaurant week front: delish. to the max. tonight i went out with mk (my bwf) and a (my owf) to mesa grill, which is a bobby flay take on southwest tex mex. i love a prix fixe dinner--i would never order an appetizer and an entree and a dessert, but tonight i got to try all sorts of deliciousness. mk and i started with a black bean soup that was not too thick but not too soupy, with different salsa toppings, a little spicy and a lot good. (a had a fry fread--i love! taquito which looked great.) my entree was a chile relleno stuffed with goat cheese and acorn squash with a roasted fig sauce. so good, although a little rich. mk had chicken and mashed potaotes (with a southwest twist) and a had some mango salsa'd fish with a risotto. dessert was the best sweet thing i have eaten in a long time: crunchy vanilla profiteroles. a puff pastry with vanilla bean ice cream and crunchy vanilla caramel and a spicy mexican chocolate sauce. ohmiGOSH so amazing. i would eat it again right now. it's a good thing we live so far away. dinner was made even better by the conversation. i really really like the girls i work with; they are truly fantastic women, funny and smart and really great. i just feel so lucky to have found friends in the workplace who i like so much outside of the workplace. we talked about work and men and books and theatre and the dentist, and it was just a lot of fun to have such a great evening.

now i am home, a little sleepy thanks to 1991's best margarita. but i do want to relay these two fantastic overheards.

friday night we went out for some tv-watching treats and the corner store opposite the local bar was open. after selecting ginger ale (and ok, some ice cream, it's my weakness) we were getting ready to pay when these brooklyn neighborhood guys came in, drunk and loud and having a good time. they were friendly with the guy behind the counter (mohammed called "mo") and were yelling at each other and at mo, especially "joey cheeseburgers" who loves, you guessed it, cheeseburgers. and who was really upset that they were all out of cheeseburgers. then this enormous guy in a coat with a fur collar came in, and they started shouting about the godfather, and that the godfather was here and "hey yuppies, don't be afraid of the godfather" (which sounded like "gawdfahthah".) though we were the only people in the store, it did not occur to me until stephen said later, that we were the godfather-fearing yuppies in question. what, i don't look like a girl from the neighborhood?

also overheard this weekend in windsor terrace (in my building, no less.)
guy: so this is my friend dave huspah (some last name that sounds like chutzpah), but we just call him chutzpah.
girl: what's chutzpah?
guy: you know, chutzpah. it's yiddish.
girl: oh, yiddish, is that like british but not really?
guy: seriously? (she doesn't say anything.) no, yiddish is the language spoken by eastern european jews (he gives a very intellectual explanation of yiddish and its origins, which i didn't catch all of.)
girl: oh, so you're jewish? welcome!
she then proceeds to tell a long story about a jewish friend who celebrated chanukah (which she pronounced like the chan in "change") and found a cracker and got $200 and "made out like a bandit". which then devolved in a story about make-out bandits (who are, i guess, those who will make out with anyone.) ah, the things overheard.