| Issue #41, January 19, 2007 |
Twentysomething…
Out Of My League
By David Lion Rattiner
Last weekend, I headed into Manhattan to meet up with two college buddies, Jim Rice and Dave Hales. The three of us have all remained close and we have visited each other on separate occasions in the past two years to catch up, go out for some beers and crack jokes. However all three of us have not all been together since we were in college. We wanted to change that.
And so we agreed to get together at Dave’s apartment in Battery Park and then go out and have an adventure. Jim hopped on a bus in Rhode Island (he’s going for his PhD at Brown now), I hopped on the Jitney, and we all met up around five o’clock in the city. The plan was to go out for a fancy dinner. We deserve it.
Hales, who is Mr. New York City, was very excited to go out to a restaurant called Ninja, which is in downtown Manhattan. “It’s awesome, dude. Everything there has to with ninjas and it is really high end, too. We can get some sake and then start a ninja fight.”
“I’m in.”
We called, but Ninja only reserves tables on the Internet. Oh, they are just so cool. Dave immediately got on the computer and we were in.
We arrived at Ninja, decked out in dress shirts and fancy jeans. We were the male version of “Sex and The City,” (which they should make a TV show about by the way).
We rocked into Ninja like the rock stars that we were. I was prepared to throw down a whole fifty bucks. It’s how I roll.
We got treated like crap at Ninja. They shellshocked us. We waited for 45 minutes for our table by the bar and Jim started to have a mini panic attack because the restaurant is in the basement of a building and Jim has this whole thing about exits and fire. “Let’s get out of here.”
And so we did. We were too cool for this place. Screw them..
We walked in a desperate hunt for another fancy place and after five minutes, we found a restaurant called Megu, another Japanese place. We were hungry.
Megu is like this ultimate high society New York City restaurant. It’s huge, with a red interior, an ice statue of Buddha, meals that they set on fire right there at the table. You know, a high-class place. We had a look at the menu and noticed that everything was priced at around $16. This place was perfect. My $50 was going to go a long way.
We sat down. We were met by about four different servers, ordered some sake and checked out the menu and after a brief intro from our waiter, we all ordered a dish. I had a steak, Jim has the scallops, Dave had the tuna.
I was so impressed with us. Here we were, three men all sitting up tall. People were thinking we were masters of the universe and acting like they weren’t impressed, but we knew they were.
And then, our food came out.
This was literally a half-ounce of steak, half a scallop and a dollop of tuna. I kid you not. We all looked at each other and just thought to ourselves, “Oh, so this is why it is expensive to eat here.”
The waiter had a smirk on his face. He had lured us in, knew we would need more food and would be forced to order more. Hook, line and sinker. I started taking super teenie bites of my steak. I was going to enjoy this steak and enjoy this night damn it.
You just would not believe how small of a portion this was. “Can I get you fellas anything else?” the waiter said with a grin.
“Yes,” I said, “We would like some rice, three orders, and some miso soups.”
Hahahhaha, I thought. Rice, the ultimate filler, miso soup, the ultimate cheap Japanese food dish. We would eat rice and still walk away somewhat satisfied for fifty bucks each.
As we desperately tried to talk about sophisticated things like politics and not how small Dave’s half a scallop was, we finished and got our bill. Jim grabbed it immediately and he gulped. “They charged us nine dollars each for the rice.”
I looked at the bill. It was for $240. I couldn’t believe it. Somehow, the sake we drank was like $22 for two little Japanese shot glasses. We had two rounds. I thought at the most it would be nine bucks per sake. This added up. The half-ounce of miso soup I had was $14. Kill me.
Jim looked like he just got punched in the stomach.
We left Megu a little street wiser. The lesson? Don’t go there unless somebody else is paying for you.
The three of us started walking, and then on the corner, I saw a light, a flicker of flame. As I got closer, I found a kebob guy. “Dude, it’s a meat-on-a-stick guy.”
We each had two orders of kebobs. This disgusting meal threatened me with salmonella, but I take risks with food when I just took it up the you know what on a miso soup.
The flame on the kebob cart spiraled out of the air, in a sophisticated way, and the three of us sat down on a bench. I looked up to see Jim, a future doctor, look at me like I was a caveman as grease dripped from his mouth. “Now this is some good food.”
New York City. What a place.
 |
