A Brother Interruption

Yeah I was going to post my September food next but this Saturday Owen showed up in New York so I'm going to blog about that first. He got the news Friday that his work needed him in Jersey Saturday but by the early afternoon he was done with his duties over there and made it up to 118th street and I immediately put him on another long train ride down to Trevor's house for the afternoon session of General Conference.

Trevor's house has really got it all

Then we went over to Hank's Juicy Beef for our fellow OPRF/TOPS swimmer Henry's birthday party. Henry opened up Hank's Juicy Beef to bring Chicago style Italian Beefs to New York. 

Italian Beef

Italian ice

Err...that's Henry in the checkered shirt there. Busy party and we were only there at the start.

And then we crossed over the river to the Jersey Lowe's for my first film of the new season, Casablanca. The line was the biggest I'd ever seen there, wrapping around the theater and all the way back through the alley alongside the theater (I guess you need to have been there to know what that means, though)

I was very glad to share my favorite place in New York with Owen. And to finally see Casablanca. I'd never seen it! But it's true what they say, it's a terrible movie*. And also, Karrie came too.

*I only said that to see if you were paying attention. Of course it was great.

Back in the city, all the construction on the Fulton street transit hub is finally done and you can walk from the PATH to just about every train imaginable via the Oculus. 

Sunday morning Owen and I played Street Fighter and watched conference and got hungry and went out looking for tacos.

My first pick was keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Kinda wish we hadn't walked all the way past 1st avenue to find that out.

I love health food!

This looks like rebranding to me

We wound up at El Tapatio, a great place I don't go to nearly enough. Chips and salsa, tostada, taco, sope, just what we needed.

Time passes. It's time to go downtown for a big dinner at Mission Chinese Food.

Owen the Dragon Fighter.

Owen, the about to eat at Mission Chinese.

Owen, about to order at Mission Chinese.

And here we go, our dishes for the evening:

The menu called these buckwheat noodles, but what this was was Naengmyeon I'm pretty sure.

The Ma Po Tofu. It's been a few years since I'd had their's. It's been calmed down a bit, but it's still mean.

Those wonderful Thrice Cooked Bacon and Rice Cakes

The Infamous Chongqing Chicken Wings. These don't scare me anymore and Owen handled them like a champ.

Stir-fried celery and radishes.

Owen, assessing the heat, contemplating the tingling.

Walked the meal off through Chinatown and on up to Union Square. But this is all Chinatown stuff.

Congratulations! You did it!

Owen looks at fishes.

Monday Owen had an afternoon flight back to Idaho, so we had time for one more meal. We dashed out to Williamsburg for a lunch at Emmy Squared. My third visit and I finally got to try the Le Big Matt

and the PepperNoni pizza

Ham graffiti

And then we pulled off some impeccable timing getting Owen over to Oddfellows for ice cream, onto a subway back to the city, and onto a train to Newark (where Owen's plane was quite delayed, of course).

Owen was born when I was in 4th grade, so he was still real young when I left for college. During High School I'd imagine how cool it'd be to have him come visit me in college or after college, wherever I'd be living, and stay in my apartment or house and see my grown up life. So this weekend it turned out my old dream unexpectedly came true, quite a bit later than imagined, but still, how lucky for me.