Best Value Wines Under $10

Here’s a neat list of value wines under $10 which I got from About.com. I’ve tried and enjoyed a couple of the wines on the list; so the selection (at least according to my taste) is hopefully OK. These wines are also more widely available; you can probably find them at your local [...]

Bach Busker

I was about to take the M104 bus at Columbus Circle when I came across a violinist playing Bach just outside the subway entrance near the Time Warner building. He was playing a favorite Bach prelude that I like to play myself (not very well) on the guitar. He was pretty good and [...]

Bouchon Bakery

We’ve never eaten at a Thomas Keller restaurant. Everytime I visited San Francisco in the late ’90s, I would always try to get a table at the French Laundry, but I never succeeded. We could try for Per Se at the Time Warner building but I don’t really want to spend that much money, at [...]

Egyptian In Astoria

We were looking to eat at a Greek restaurant but ended up in “Little Cairo” in Astoria, Queens. My, how that neighborhood has changed – for the better, actually. Steinway Street now has Middle Eastern shops selling halal food, Middle Eastern sweets and groceries. And yes, it even has a mosque.
We had a really great [...]

CIA

We were back in Dutchess County today, hoping to see some fall foliage and maybe eat at the Culinary Institute of America.
We’d been trying to get a table at the CIA for a couple of days, without any luck. None of their four restaurants had open tables, so instead we tried their Apple [...]

Croatian At The UN

It was Croatian Week at Delegates Dining at the UN so we got our first chance to try Croatian cuisine. We tried a bit of everything – Mediterranean salad with smoked ham and oranges, roasted veal, risotto with calamari, Dalamatian beef with gnocchi, marinated chicken with dill and lemon sauce, refried beans, pasta with truffle [...]

Vietnamese Bouillabaisse

We’ve had the real bouillabaisse before in Marseille.  The waiters gave us baguette slices and told us to rub raw garlic over them and dunk them in the soup.  There’s supposedly a set of rules that specify how to cook this dish, including what kinds of fish to use (rascasse, John Dory, etc).  [...]

Mexican In Bergenfield

Nope, we didn’t go to the same ghetto Mexican joint we’ve enjoyed in the past. That would violate our rule of not going to the same resaurant twice, if we can help it. So we tried a nearby Mexican restaurant called Los Guaros. Bingo – another nice Mexican place to eat. [...]

Rhinebeck Aerodrome

We went this weekend to Rhinebeck in upstate New York, one of the last places that show working WW I planes. The airshow featured classic biplanes and triplanes including German Fokkers (the Red Baron’s favorite), French Spads and a variety of US aircraft. We even got to fly in a 1929 200 HP [...]

Great Book – “Heart In Two Places”

One of my new friends, Gemma Nemenzo, ( a cousin of Gilda) wrote a great book entitled “Heart In Two Places”. It’s a story we are all familiar with – immigrating to the USA from the Philippines and trying to build a new life in a new land. 
I’ve never really related very well to most of [...]