Dispatches from the Culture Wars

We then went to do some exploring. We went to Central Park and took a tour of the park on one of the bicycle cabs (which smells better and lasts longer than the horse and carriage rides, plus I couldn't get the Seinfeld memory out of my head). Then we walked to a street fair all along Broadway from 57th to 47th streets. The weather was absolutely perfect, 80 degrees with a nice breeze blowing.

We ended up walking 2 1/2 miles, all the way from Central Park to the hotel on 40th street. Stopped at the M&M store along the way, where I bought a gag gift for one of my poker playing buddies. We rested a bit and changed clothes before heading to our second culinary destination of the night, Craft. Craft won the James Beard Award as the top new restaurant in the entire nation in 2002, so my expectations were high.

Verdict: Mixed.

We had an appetizer of roasted foie gras with champagne grapes that was excellent. The foie gras was perfectly prepared, charred on the outside without being overcooked. The acidity of the grapes perfectly cut the richness of the foie gras as it melted on your tongue. A very good start.

She ordered the daurade, I ordered the muscovy duck. We had two side dishes, served family style, a potato gratin and garlic risotto. The entrees were both good, not great. Nothing particularly notable about them in any way, certainly nothing worth the price being charged. The potato gratin was also good, not great and certainly not memorable.

The garlic risotto, on the other hand, was fabulous. I know some say you can't go wrong with a risotto, but that's nonsense. Risottos can go very wrong. They require patience and good technique to do well and this was one of the best I have ever had. It was perfectly creamy the way a good risotto should be and the garlic flavor was perfectly balanced.

For dessert, we split an order of a dish we could not resist: Boston creme doughnuts with a blueberry compote and cheesecake ice cream. Another major hit. The doughtnuts were served warm and matched perfectly with the blueberries and the ice cream. A terrific end to the meal.

The downside: the service was vastly overattentive. There is such a thing as paying too much attention to the customers and they did it in spades. They tried to remove plates while we were still eating. When my friend got up to use the bathroom, a waiter appeared to refold her napkin for her. Too much, guys. Leave us the hell alone.

So the overall verdict on Craft was mixed. Everything was good, a few things were great, but the things that were great are things that should be great in any decent restaurant. If you can't cook foie gras or risotto well, you have no business being in the fine dining business. Would I recommend it to others? Probably not. Not because it was bad; there was nothing about the meal that was bad. But for the kind of money a meal there costs, everything in it should be incredible.

After dinner we went to the Iridium jazz club for an interesting show, a collection of jazz musicians playing the music of Sting. My friend Vinx was originally supposed to do the vocals, but he pulled out of the show a few weeks ago and was replaced by Corey Glover, the lead singer of Living Colour. Since that is one of my favorite bands, we decided to see the show anyway.

Glad we did. Corey Glover still has his voice and it was soaring all night. But the star of the show was Lew Soloff on trumpet. When the curtain went up my first thought was, "Who's dad is that guy?" An old, pasty, bald white guy on a stage full of young black musicians, he looked like a pork chop at a bar mitzvah. But the guy can play and it quickly became clear that the other musicians respect him, even revere him. He stole the show, getting ovation after ovation.

And that was the end of a very long day. Tomorrow I go to lunch with another friend, then off to the airport to fly back home.