hungover and a melty dinner at nobu

my sushi night with em turned into TWO sushi dinners last night.

emily's boyfriend's boss calls (president or whatever of a hedge fund worth 11 billion or something) and says he's at nobu and we're to meet him there. nobu used to be IT. THE sushi place in new york. even though there are arguably half a dozen sushi places in the city that are better than nobu, none are hotter/more trendy, none are harder to get reservations at.

we walk in and the host escorts us to a table. on our way we pass THE DONALD! with his wife (stunning) and some couple i didn't recognize (plebeians!). i'd never seen the man in person. that little puff of hair is so fluffy, perched just so above his forehead.

i'm not sure who is ordering because i've had about 6 drinks at this point but food just starts flying over in mass quantities. no matter what it was, it just melted in your mouth. it was absolutely surreal. yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno. spicy and melty. rock shrimp tempura with creamy spicy sauce over field greens with a salty dressing that i can only describe as a strange combination of ground raw tuna with tapenade. i've never had a shrimp (much less a fried shrimp) melt in my mouth but sure enough, it melted! a shrimp, so tender it just falls apart when it hits your tongue. INSANE! black cod with miso (their famous dish, one that is imitated everywhere). and then a special, thinly sliced pieces of kobe beef (seared on the outside, rare in the middle) served with ginger and scallions. and, as kobe beef tends to do when you put it in your mouth...it too melted. HEAVENLY.

all the while sake is being poured like water and i'm starting to remember less and less of the rest of the evening other than some guy at a hedge fund in philadelphia promising to give me a job in philadelphia. i'm hoping i turned him down but at the moment, i have no recollection of what my response was. i remember the boss taking the check, throwing his amex at it without even looking at the total. i wished i'd peeked at it but i think ignorance, in this case, is bliss. actually, the blissful part is being with a guy so rich that he treats groups of 10 and more to nobu regularly without flinching at the bill.

i hobbled out of the restaurant, the donald long gone, and crawled into a cab basking in the glow of my food euphoria.