Annisa
1/2
It's taken me a while to write about my 30th birthday dinner because with
more important (i.e. expensive) meals, it seems like you should take more
care in the description. Unfortunately, I've been scatterbrained lately.
We went for the seven-course tasting menu, which was impressive, but to
be honest I can't remember the exact detail of each dish. One, because I was
tipsy and two, because it's hard to recall just from waiter description, I
need to see words on a menu. Generically, we had a mini salmon creme fraiche
pastry before the meal started, first: a chilled pea soup, second:
Machengo-filled squash blossom, third: foie gras soup dumpling, fourth:
mackerel, which annoyingly I can't remember much about, fifth: lacquered
squab with foie gras (my favorite), sixth: cheese plate with a possibly
illegal fresh blue cheese from Ireland, seventh: two desserts, one a lemon,
blueberry gelatin thing and a panna cotta, which I ate, enjoyed and can't
remember even though the table next to us asked about it and at the time I
described it to them.
I'm just relieved that I finally got to eat at a restaurant I wanted for
a special occasion. Hints were dropped about Annisa for last year's birthday
but they weren't picked up on. I got Peter Luger, which is funny because
Annisa is totally the anti-Luger. Small portions, modern, feminine. All
things I'm not really about, but I can't eat manly meals all the time.
The only thing I wasn't sure about was the clientele. The middle-aged
French couple seated next to us, kept shooting the most disgusted looks for
no good reason. We hadn't even ordered anything yet, so clearly it wasn't in
responses to poor food choice, they just didn't like the sight of us. It was
really freaky. I'd occasionally scowl back, and almost said something
confrontational, but they left shortly after we sat down. The other thing I
observed is that with the exception of the older Frenchies, the other
parties were all made up of casual twenty-somethings eating what seemed for
them run-of-the-mill Thursday night dinners. I thought the whole boomtown
bubble had burst. You could just tell that for all these 26-year-old doctors
and MBA's (I know because they were talking about their jobs) this was
nothing special, rather something to do. I don't know, it almost bothers me
more than being scrutinized by nasty foreigners.
Annisa * 13 Barrow
St., New York, NY
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