Text 10490, 93 rader
Skriven 2011-05-05 08:28:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: my recent trip 294
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So Lilli was called to this gathering at the Sheraton in Queens,
which is right in the middle of Flushing Chinatown, so I agreed
to take a modest detour and spend a couple days seeing the
sights and dining like peasant royalty. Also I need my
Starwood stays to keep Gold. This provided some strange
contretemps as I was given (for the same rate) a corner
room on the club floor, whereas she, as a Platinum, got
an ordinary room near the elevator one flight down. This
engendered a bit of discussion. The only one that made any
sense was that my timing must have been good, and I must
have checked in right after some muck-a-muck checked out.
On the other hand, my being Chinese (and this being a
Chinese-run hotel in Chinatown) and male might have given
me an edge. Yes, we traded, and, no, I did not in fact
charge a bottle of Louis XIII to her room. Two bottles.
Just kidding. Breakfast is included on the club floor
and for Platinums, so perhaps they were being double nice
and giving away more breakfast than they had to.

Day one involved a tour of Citi Field and an industry
dinner, to which I was invited.

Citi Field is nothing memorable, just another ugly modern
ballpark. When they built Shea, I thought that was bad,
but this has it beat. The fact that the bartender served
me a triple Beam had nothing to do with it. The fact that
I told him not to make the second a generous pour might
have had something to do with it - he must have misheard
me, as he gave me a mind-numbing quadruple. I actually
didn't see much of Citi Field, except to note that it
looked sort of like something that Mussolini and George
Steinbrenner might have built had they been friends.

Dinner.

Sourdough Bread Rolls with Butter

Thick Sliced Hanger Steak, Bordelaise Sauce and Crispy
Frizzle Onions

Salmon a la Plancha, Buerre Blanc

Vegetable Lasagna

Mixed Green Salad with Toppings on Side:
Onions, Tomatoes, Olives, Feta and Light Vinaigrette

Sauteed Green and White Asparagus

Pan Fried Steakhouse-Style Hash Browns

Assorted Cookies and Brownies

Sponsored by VISA

The WINE LIST
Bridgelane Chardonnay
Finnegan's Lake Cabernet

Wine Sponsored by synapse

Of the starches I had none. My favorite thing was the
asparagus, which were thin spears soaked in butter and
roasted (not sauteed). Next the fish, which though
somewhat overcooked, was fresh and not overdilled or
otherwise ruined; it was also soaked in butter. You
really shouldn't cut hanger steak in big chunks,
especially if you've done it medium-well - the stuff
was well-nigh unchewable even by those with young
choppers, and the crispy frizzle onions (misspellings
on the menu theirs) reminded me of O&C canned ones
wilted in cool oil. The Cabernet was an appropriate
match - the undrinkable washing down the uneatable.
It featured plum, tobacco, leather, nail polish remover,
and gasoline flavors. The speaker was called something
like Steven Hauser, anyhow a Hollywood guy apparently
trying to be a standup comedian. I couldn't understand
what he was talking about most of the time. And I was
assigned to a table, for some reason, populated by
CEOs of software companies of which I'd never heard;
Lilli was nowhere to be found, being assigned to a no
doubt less nerdy table, so I got to be bored by myself.
Seems, though, that the software execs are a bright
bunch - I saw a lot more salmon and asparagus on the
plates than that other junk.

I left before the bar opened up again, figuring that
another 7 Jim Beams might just do me in. They provided
shuttle service back to the hotel.

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