The Only Ten I Saw

Two Saturdays ago I flew down to Nashville. But first I had to fly home to Chicago for a couple of hours.

And if you find yourself with some time to kill in the American Airlines terminal, probably should get a torta from Xoco (although it has a different name these days...just go to the torta place, whatever they're calling it now)

I dig a classic logo

My plane to Nashville had revoked its support of something...

Okay, see you again in July, Chicago! (Flying away I realized I could see my family's church from the window. It's between all the cemeteries. Ehh...I think you just have to trust me on this.)

And then, boom, I was back in Nashville, right back in the arms of the Rasmussens

They took me straightaway to preferred and famed taco spot Mas Tacos Por Favor where some fellows were chain stitching in the parking lot.

I was feeling jealous of this guy's chilaquiles

For me: a ground beef taco and a pork taco, tortilla soup, and those chilaquiles!

Amigos with their tacos

While we eat, the next round of folks consider all the Mas Tacos offerings.

I have to say, rolling up to Mas Tacos and taking a spot in the parking lot, then getting in line with all the fine Nashvillains patiently waiting (not too long) for their tacos out in the sun but it wasn't too hot, it didn't make me miss New York one bit. The menu was full of things to discover and the restaurant full of rooms we could have eaten in, along with a nice covered patio. To put it in Brooklynese, it was something like a Mexican Roberta's, maybe...(but also nothing like a Mexican Roberta's).

Avec tacos, we head to the Hermitage--that's the plantation that Andrew Jackson built and lived on. There was a museum to learn all your Andrew Jackson stuff at first before you checked out the grounds and the house.

Then on to the grounds. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the house. No big deal.

Pictures inside the smoke house were okay, though

There was some kind of garden party happening where all the girls had their American Girl dolls with them

Uncle Alfred was one of Jackson's slaves. He drove the carriage. After he was freed he stayed on at the Hermitage. After Jackson died and the Hermitage became a musuem, Uncle Alfred was one of the first tour guides. He was buried beside the Jackson tomb.

Now I bet you were expecting some pictures of Nashville or something at this point. Nope! We did not go back into Nashville. Instead, we headed for the Smokey Mountains, stopping in Knoxville along the way at 10 o'clock to watch Captain America. Then it was an hour or two more to our mountain destination.

I keep saying "Smoky Mountains" but where we stayed was called Gatlinburg. Jeff sold me on it by telling me it was a lot like Branson, MO. Cruising the strip Sunday, I saw what he meant (but also I'd later find out that I was only seeing the half of it [or the half of the half of it]).

We lunched at a humble Italian eatery that Jeff had had a pizza from years before, although upon seating we were immediately reassured that the establishment was under new management.

Then it was time to head up into the mountains. First things first: We visit the Visitor's Center to ubicate ourselves.

Onward to the mountains!

Look how they all have t-shirts of the guy on the right

Jeff and I hiked to this outlook. I hope you like pictures of curving cement walkways, because that's what you're getting!

Then, into the woods with us. Our destination was a place called Cade Cove that was like a road that would go through the trees to a big opening where there would be an animal and then back into the trees and then out into another opening over and over. It was nice seeing the trees and the animals and the sun setting and everything. Before we got to Cade Cove we saw a mom bear in the woods with her two cubs. At the Cove we saw another bear and cub, making it a total of 5 bears we saw, which seems pretty high. I don't have any pictures of those bears because they were always pretty far away but I do have pictures of a fox. Oh and also there was an old church in the woods of the Cove.

For dinner? My first ever visit to a Texas Roadhouse. They won me over by having their own Awesome Blossom (RIP).

Monday: Another beautiful morning in Gatlinburg!

We started the day by hitting Yelp and deciding to visit a hot dog place that sounded pretty good.

I got a hot dog that had been battered in Cheez-Its before being deep fried. Seemed like a perfect match.

Jeff got a Reuben dog. All in all, the food was fine and they had really thick shakes that would give you an awful brain freeze, too.

Then we walked the Gatlinburg strip. So many simulator rides and museums of the odd and themed chain restaurants, I counted five Ripley's Believe It or Not! branded establishments. Gatlinburg's got a funny split personality thing going on where it can't seem to decide if it's going to play up the Southern thing or be Bavarian.

Good donuts here:

Then we went back to where we were staying to take advantage of the pool for a bit. I hadn't been swimming for so long! Turns out I hadn't forgotten how to.

Then we posed with animals at the nearby mini-golf course. We couldn't figure out if we were Owners or Guests so we didn't ask to play. I was tickled to figure out we were staying at a property owned by those people in the Queen of Versailles movie.

Then we headed to nearby Pigeon Forge to see the Branson, MO flavor in full effect. Everything was empty, not because Pigeon Forge had fallen on hard times, but because we were few weeks early for the busy season. Come summer vacation time, all these parking lots would be packed and the strip would be bumper to bumper and it would make sense that there were so many go-kart places.

We had dinner at Corky's. We got there just in time to eat the last of the food before they threw it out.

Hit up a local grocery store for ice cream and to check out the RedBox selection. RedBox didn't do it for us, so we went back to the condo and watched Top Secret from my computer. Glad I brought my HDMI cable.

Then suddenly it was Tuesday morning. We got up early and got out of there, I had a plane to catch and a lunch reservation to make.

The Rasmussens were good sports about letting me check out Husk. Having been reading Sean Brock's cookbook for the last year+ (and roasting chicken after his manner), I was excited to check out his restaurant. I found it to be a real fine place, nice down-home elegance. Lunch was an affordable and delicious event, I'd like to check out their dinner, where the menu seems to lean more towards humble showstoppers, someday.

Started off with a veggie platter (that's grits with a poached egg in the middle)

I had the country fried steak

Jeff had the famed double cheeseburger, Noelle the pimento grilled cheese (not pictured b/c totally out of focus picture)

And then, shoot, it was time to head right on over the airport, another magnificent Nashville trip complete. Don't worry, I'll be back soon to meet the baby.

The Spice Must Flow

As you might know, I'm crazy for Sichuan food, or "spicy Chinese" as I often call it when I'm not sure how to spell or pronounce it. At the end of April I found myself in a fortunate position where, within a single week, I was able to hit up two New York Sichaun heavy-hitters: the well-regarded and (relatively) traditional Little Pepper out in College Point, Queens and the world-renowned and (essentially) free-wheeling Mission Chinese Food on the Lower East Side. 

Let us compare and contrast!

LITTLE PEPPER

Little Pepper is not Manhattan-convenient. To get there via public transport I think you'd have to take the 7 to the very end and then ride a bus for 30 or 40 minutes. BUT sometimes you find yourself talking to a friend with a car about places you'd like to go that you'd need a car to get to and then suddenly they say "Well, I've got a car, let's go there!" This is what happened when I was talking to world-champ Cameron. Conversation lead to proposal lead to holy cow, we're really doing this a week or two later.

Having studied reviews of the Little Pepper and being at the restaurant with an agreeable group, I ordered with enthusiastic abandon. This is what we ate:

One of the best dishes of the night arrived first, an incredibly porky-tasting plate of twice cooked pork. An A++ rendition of an already magnificent dish.

Nice slippery dumplings in chili oil.

A good, very up front Ma Po Tofu

Impossibly garlicky smashed cucumber. The next morning I woke up feeling garlic pumping through my veins thanks to this dish.

"Spicy Potato" means Sichuan peppercorn powder dusted french fries straight from the grocery store freezer. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Another king winner: Scallion fried rice. Look how green it is! All that scallion minced down to green oblivion, this helped take the edge of the spicier dishes.

Nice dan dan noodles.

And finally, my favorite: Chonqinq chicken. My qualm: the chicken was wet with spice. I like my Chongqinq chicken pieces dry and crispy. 

For dessert we went out on a limb and ordered what turned out to be a taro pudding of sorts. It didn't really get us too excited.

I think the restaurant knew the pudding wasn't so great because they sent out some macarons for us, too.

The wreckage and the reckoning 

Oh and the ambiance

My Take: Awful good, awful fun, very hard to get to. I didn't think anything there was particularly spicy, although I know some at the table will think me a maniac for saying that. I might just be a beast beyond feeling? Would I recommend a trek out to Little Pepper? For the double cooked pork and scallion fried rice, Yes. Also, Little Pepper was screamingly cheap. Like $16 a person for that feast (granted we were a party of six, but still).

MISSION CHINESE FOOD

Kind of stumped on what to do for my birthday, I organized a little dinner of Ned, Jeff, Patricia and I at Mission Chinese, which I hadn't visited for about a year. Something I learned: They take reservations now, and if you don't have one, arriving with a party of 4 at opening time doesn't mean you won't be quoted and two and a half hour wait. But the hostess was nice (?) enough to give us a table with the promise we'd be done by 7.

We tried out their bread with buttermilk kaffir lime butter. It was good to have that butter on hand for spicy moments

We were ordering heavy on the veggie side that night. The next dish was, aw shoot, what's it called? It's a Mexican squash or root. Eh, doesn't matter, it was a special.

Got the spicy peanut noodles which arrived a little clumped together. Odd. We cut them into four equal parts with our spoons.

A Birthday present to myself: the notoriously spicy Chonqinq chicken wings, which I've seen ruin the dinners of my dining companions on three other visits to MCF. I don't think they're very spicy, actually. Just seasoned mercilessly sichuan peppercorn powder. They aren't spicy, they're unscrupulously tingly.

Ma po tofu. Nice. They've turned the heat down on this dish 200% from the Orchard Street days. It used to be something that would kill you.

Ah! The thrice cooked bacon and rice cakes. So wonderfully delicious, but one more sampling of theirs has me thinking my homemade approximation has been honed to nearly hitting the mark.

And this is a nice and cooling cooked cabbage dish with flowers. Took the edge off.

The decor:

Friends outside afterwards 

The Verdict: MCF is fun, a great place to go with amigos, and the menu is long and full of all sorts of inventive things to try. Again, I have desensitized myself to some terrible degree because I didn't think anything we ate was all that spicy. Like, yeah, those chicken wings are real sons of guns, but they're not spicy, they're mean. MCF used to be surprisingly fair-priced but now the dishes are creeping up to more typical New York prices.

One more thing: I'd like to share this video of Anthony Bourdain and Anderson Cooper eating at Mission Chinese Food. I think the worst look in the world is to be the person who can handle spice at a table with someone who is being leveled by it...and I've been that person! No matter what you say you seem like a cocky show off, especially if you're being a cocky show off.

Shoot, looks like I can embed it and just have to leave a link. 

New Museum Death Match*

*This post isn't about the New Museum but some new museums

So last year the Whitney closed up shop on the Upper West Side to move into its new giant building in the Meatpacking District at the end of the High Line and everyone was like "Ooooh, you've got to go see the new Whitney" but I was having trouble getting around to it. Then, just the other month, the MET took over the old Whitney space and everyone was like "Oooooh, you've got to go see the new MET at the old Whitney." And I was like "I haven't even seen the new Whitney yet and I'm supposed to go back to the old Whitney?"

Well, good news. I've now been to both museums and am ready to report on how to best spend your hard earned Pay What You Wish dollar.

NEW WHITNEY

The new Whitney is a million dollars to visit on most days of the week but Pay What You Wish on Friday nights, so each Friday night a giant line forms outside of this impressive factory of a museum. Bryndee and I got there before it opened so the line wasn't much of a concern since they hadn't even let anyone inside yet and it didn't take us long to get in after they opened the doors.

Entering the museum, I found it to be big, brand new, and full of big art and pieces I recognized from the permanent collection. One whole floor was closed off while a new exhibit was being installed.

I'll go ahead and say it, the best thing about the new Whitney is the building and the funnest part is the outdoor spaces. You can reach each floor via the outdoor terraces and staircases. I don't know why you'd ever use an interior staircase at the new Whitney when you could be going up stairs outside.

And here's some of the permanent collection that was on display 

Back outside again to take the stairs again

I really liked these giant pieces of fried chicken

Top floor: More video art and such.

There was this room where you could lie down on this giant couch (or ottoman?) and look up at a projection of the sky but there was this mysterious little hole in the ceiling

Which turned out to be an infrared camera taping the people looking at the ceiling. Ha! You got us.

Okay, one trip down the interior stairs

A little peak at the museum's glass-walled offices

Gift Shop Highlight: This mama bear cookie jar

So, new Whitney in a nutshell: Cool building, good location near other cool stuff, pay what you wish on Friday nights, good old permanent collection on display that you'll recognize from the old Whitney if you'd seen it before, special exhibits that I saw didn't get me going, but they've since opened a portrait exhibit that sounds cool.

NEW MET AT THE OLD WHITNEY

Okay, first things first it's not called "the new Met at the old Whitney", it's the Met Breuer museum. And it's inside the iconic old brutalist Whitney, which they've added a little red to so you feel like "Oh, new stuff is happening here!"

Karrie and I went to check it out on April 22nd, the second to last Friday of April. Every day is pay what you wish at Met museums, but I was surprised that there was no line at all to get in and that the museum was relatively empty. Hot new museum? No crowds on a Friday night? Weird.

Got some good news to share right off the bat: the little adobe village is still in the staircase. Don't tell the Whitney that they forgot to bring it.

The first exhibit we saw was a retrospective on an artist I was not familiar with named Nasreen Mohamedi. I found myself quickly won over by her intricate and methodical graph paper art (and "conventional" art, too...but the graph paper art was what I really liked).

Then we went up another floor to the Breuer's big opening exhibit, "Unfinished", which was all unfinished works of art. Like the graph art, there was something about these unfinished arts that really drew me in. I can't explain exactly why it was, but I loved all the not-done art.

At first it starts with things like "Ha ha, yup, that's definitely not a finished painting!"

But then it gets more challenging and you have to ask yourself "How can you tell when an abstract expressionist work isn't finished?" and I think there was a lesson we were supposed to learn about some of the art that it wasn't complete without the introduction of a viewer looking at it or interacting with it.

From the big window of the museum's top floor I could see across the street right into a family's Seder dinner. I watched them until they noticed I was watching and got them to wave to me. And now I realize that's why the Breuer was empty that night, it was Passover! Everyone had somewhere else to be.

Gift Shop Highlight: Found a children's book I remember my mom checking out from the library when we lived in California about a man who finds a monster that turns out to be kids. I've wondered for a long time what the book even was or what it was called or who drew it and then, say 32 or 33 years later, I find it again...or I think I find it. I turned the pages with trepidation, telling myself I'd know this was definitely the book from back then if there's a picture where a man just has a bloody foot in a bag. And then there it was. A life-long mystery solved. The book is called the Beast of Monsieur Racine by Tomi Ungerer.

So, Met Breuer in a nutshell: Same old building, same old yawners UES location, great exhibits when I went.

ULTIMATE VERDICT: If you want to add a museum to a night in the West Village/Chelsea/along the High Line, check out the New Whitney, the building will at least be cool. But for a good art time, check before visiting either to find out what's on display. Because in these two visits, the Breuer exhibits win hands down, but I bet there's cool stuff at the Whitney sometimes.