Eating till Easter with all my Guests

The parents, my aunt, Neighborsman and Chonstein are all in town this week and next. My apartment is going to seem very large when everyone takes their leave.

So it's been a tour of various cuisines so far.

First night my parents were here -- we tried Rice in Jackson Heights. It's Thai food, a bit upscale, and from the looks of it, a gay men's hangout. I wanted to try it because one of the tenants in my building is the owner. We had green curry, great (non greasy) pad see ew, and Thai omelet. Pretty decent, although the omelet was a bit salty. Not sure if I'd go back. But we noticed that there were two Tibetan restaurants around the corner from it -- and I have never noticed them before. One was called Himalayan Yak -- or as my mom put it, "what is that Yuck restaurant doing there?"

Last night, we had Indian food at Dehli Palace. Had an uttapan which is a thick rice pancake cooked with peas and tomatoes. Reminded us of the Korean pa-jeon. And it came with two types of soupy sauces. We also shared a wonderful okra dish, and one of the set veggie Thali meals. All wonderful, but in retrospect, I probably could've had less food. Especially with mild heartburn.

Today -- a healthy cheerios with strawberries and bananas. Lunch -- in Long Island City at a French cafe (Cafe Henri) with a great Nicoise Salad. My aunt's Caesar Salad even had real anchovies. That makes a difference - so many omit the anchovies and consequently, pile on the garlic, which doesn't do much for the flavor.

But wait, there's more! After lunch we made our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to admire the Egyptian art, with the highlight being the wonderful Temple of Dendur. Then a quick tour of Chinese and other Eastern art, with the replica of a Chinese garden (minus the crush of tourists, garbage, photo taking, SPITTING, and othe general mayhem you see in China.) Speaking of spitting, there is a campaign to eliminate public spitting before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And all I can say is....good luck.

So after a few hours of that, we had to recover our strength and went to 86th and 5th to the brand new Neue Gallerie -- an Austrian/German museum which has gotten a fabulous writeup. We didn't go to see more art -- we went for the cafe. Which served authentic strudel, linzer torte, black forest cake, and other wonderful goodies. It was truly worth the recommendation. I can't rave about it enough!
I am plotting on when to go back.

Then tonight for dinner, went to Ichiro, the old hangout of Neighborsman and Chongstein for some basic Japanese sushi (run by Chinese people of course). It's reasonable, inexpensive, and decent. But I gotta say -- Neue Gallerie is my new favorite hangout.