Chikalicious?

Sam's birthday was last week, and we ventured to this place around the corner from where we ate dinner, "Chikalicious" for dessert. It had come highly recommended and was described to me as "just about perfect." We arrive and are quickly seated at a corner table. The website describes Chikalicious as having a "3-course Prix Fixe menu, described as American desserts, French Presentation and Japanese tasting portions, and includes an amuse, dessert of your choice, and assorted petits-fours."
For those of you who don't watch Top Chef or something similar, an amuse is like a mini-mini course, meant to be eaten in one bite. The menu items are pretty frou-frou-ey, and I feel like I am watching Sam feeling more emasculated with each passing moment. Nonetheless, we decide on the lime soup with lime sorbet and brown sugar biscuit (props to Sam for actually speaking those words aloud) and the coconut panna cotta with kiwi and passion fruit relish. Our amuse arrived first, some kind of rhubarb jell-o type situation with a dollop of "vanilla milk sorbet." It came in a dish you would normally put a couple of squirts of soy sauce in for sushi. The combination of jelly-like substance with cold-creamy sorbet was sort of weird and I didn't particularly like it. And it was so small! But this was the amuse, so ok, it's supposed to be laughably, ridiculously tiny.

Soon after we arrived, a couple who were probably related to Methuselah came in. The only empty table hadn't been cleaned off yet, and the hostess/owner told them she'd seat them as soon as she cleaned the table up. The elderly lady, we'll call her Marge, took one look at the table, rolled her eyes, and said, "Well, I should hope so." Meanwhile the husband looks like he is fighting for every breath. They sit down and order their dessert, along with two cappuccinos. The poor hostess/owner brings their drinks not a minute later, and Marge looks at her like she's insane. I hear hostess/owner say, "we always bring the drinks out first, but I'd be glad to take them back if you want them after your dessert." To which Marge waves her wrinkled purple hands and replies, "Yes, take them away, bring them at the end." Who does that?

Back at our dessert table, our "main course" arrives. The presentation was lovely, but again, this is the smallest plate of panna cotta I have ever laid eyes on. Sam and I enjoy hearing the chef bring out each course (and I use the word "course" very loosely here) and describe it to us with painstaking detail. The lime soup with lime sorbet is actually so delicious, I just wish they'd quadrupled the order. The panna cotta (all three bites of it) is very tasty as well. I can't figure out how they've made brown sugar biscuits the size of croutons. This is like dessert for teeny mice people. Or maybe they actually have mice in the back making all of this stuff, with little tweezers, kind of like Ratatouille. I'm thinking about where they might be hiding the mice chefs, when Marge pipes up again.

"What is taking so long?" she demands of the increasingly exasperated hostess/owner. It takes all of the husband's remaining might to nod his head in agreement. "How old is this dessert?" The hostess explains that everything is made fresh and that she just saw their tarts in the oven and is sure they'll be ready momentarily. Marge huffs and puffs a couple more times about what is taking so long, and her hubby taps his cane on the ground in agreement. Sam and I wonder what they are in such a extreme hurry for. A few theories we role played while waiting on petits-fours:
"I've got to get him home so I can feed him his back pill at 9:30"
"We have to go home and plug in, we're robots and our batteries are almost dead"
"We turn into pumpkins if we don't get home in time, very very old pumpkins"

Our petits-fours arrive. I know you will be shocked to learn that they were extremely small. They consisted of two sugar cube-sized marshmallows covered in seven pieces of coconut each, two chocolate truffles the size of gumdrops, and two of the tiniest pieces of pound cake ever created by humans (or rodents). A scrumptious three bites later, we were out the door, leaving Marge and co. to wait on their second attempt at cappuccino.

Scary Humans: part 1

I've decided to devote some time on the old blogaroosky to the weird New Yorkers I have interactions with on a daily basis. There is something about living in the city that lends itself to strange conversations with people around you.

Today, I was running 10 blocks uptown to get to a casting I was helping out with (where I would go on to be bored to tears signing in models for a Comcast advertisement casting. 200 girls in their swimsuits, jumping at the chance to play a "beach mom"--some of them didn't even bother bringing bathing suits. scary.) and a man (who was probably homeless)--was trying to sell me fruit roll-ups at $2 a pop (which is horribly expensive for an individual fruit-roll up). I usually tell people who try to hock something on me that I don't have any cash, or that I'm flat out not interested, but every now and then somebody catches me without an excuse. Today I happened to have some cash, and the guy had fruit roll ups, which I didn't even know they still made! He fed me some line about how I was helping basketball playing children in india or the like, and I said, "alright, you got change?" I pull out a twenty dollar bill, and the guy proceeds to try to talk me into paying $20 for 10 fruit roll-ups. "It's for a good cause!" he kept saying. "I'll take 5. Final offer." I said. (even as I agreed to it I was thinking, I can't believe I am paying this much for fruit roll-ups, and I also, what am I going to do with five fruit roll-ups??) He offers me the box of roll-ups, then proceeds to grab a wad of cash from out of his SWEATPANTS and betwixt his nether regions. He counts out ten one dollar bills and hands them to me. "You have a great day, now." he calls, as I shutter and throw the damp money in my purse.