the single life, it's a bloggy world, faustina

i haven't had a single night without plans for like 3 weeks. why was everyone born in the months of february?! next week is no better. nor is the week after that. someone texted to make plans with me and my response was, "well, my next open day is sunday the 21st and after that not until march." i sound like such an asshole. and then i leave for vancouver. i've reached out to some vancouver food bloggers and they've rocked my world with the sheer breadth of their responses. sooo sooo awesome. and LOST is back on so my brain is all kinds of crazy over it. colin and i are taking a writing class at NYU just to toss things up. many random things going on, generally. i'd thought this was going to be a sleepy winter. and we have mice in our apt. like, lots of them. the exterminator left 4 sticky pads and they all caught mice within 3 days or something insane. GAH.

 

my friend, the life stylist from the esquire loft party, got a gig with the today show. amazing. he pretty much just made up a job and sold it to people. and people are buying the crap out of it. rock on. i bow down to that kind of persistence and entrepreneurial vision.

 

just when i think i need to start dating more, all these randoms come out of the woodwork in a way that makes me want to go back into hiding in my gay coven. the random bartender i ran into saturday won't stop texting. he's the ex-boyfriend of an ex-roommate. not interested. i also never gave him my number and i'm not sure how he has it. i was grabbing a quick dinner before the st. vincent concert and just as i was asking for my check some dude behind me started chatting. i thought he was gay. as i was getting up to leave he asked where i was going. holding up my ticket i said, "concert!" his response, i'm not kidding, was, "i'm not really IN to music." what the F? WHO SAYS THAT? what the fuck kind of soulless person are you if you don't like music? he was a writer so all he does is "write and read" and i mentioned travel writing and DFW at which point he rolled his eyes (AT DFW) and said something about DFW being his arch nemesis. AS IF THEY WERE ON THE SAME PLAYING FIELD. some douchebag who teaches writing at a tiny community college in the city. UGH. "you should skip your concert and hang out here with me" is something he said 3 times. this shows 1.) delusions of grandeur 2.) disrespect for my interests/time/money and 3.) a total lack of perception/inability to read body language. i wasn't so much as suggesting that i was enjoying his company because, well, i wasn't. but he was so full of himself he thought i was just playing hard to get. he made me give him his number (don't even talk to me about giving out fake numbers because these days EVERYONE calls you the instant you give it out so that you'll have their number too. and if you suggest taking their number they'll say, "call me so i have yours!" the fake number shit SO doesn't fly anymore). very self-assuredly he said, "we're going to hang out within the week." i said, "i'm actually totally booked all week" "oh, i think you can cancel some plans to have a drink with me." "why would i that? i don't even know you. and you know what? i'm reliable. that's why people like me. i'm the kind of person that doesn't cancel. if you were friends with me, you'd appreciate that. have a good one" i said, and i left. that fucker still called me the next day. unbelievable. 

 

this video of st. vincent's mouth full of blood is awesome. in fact, i keep thinking about that concert. it was really really excellent. she was an adorable person. twee, but not in a way i found annoying. she mentioned the full moon and people clapped. "yes, let's applaud for the earth! i don't detest that." when bon iver came out, they played a song that they have on the twilight soundtrack. she described the movie as abstinence only education because, in the movie, if you have sex you'll die." after a while she said, "well, this is dreadfully pleasant" and i made a mental note to say that as often as is acceptable. she talked about having written a song with david byrne over skype. what a beautiful age we're living in, right? that artists can video chat with each other and make pretty music. amazeballs. and at the end of the concert she said, "this is our final song" and people booed. and, acknowledging the almost mandatory encore, she followed it up with, "that's a lie. but let's all be complicit in the lie." anyways, gorgeous concert in a stunning venue on a beautiful crisp night. bravo!

 

have been spotting lots of blogging creatures lately. i saw nick denton at bacaro, ricky van veen at joseph leonard and ben leventhal at the NBC food carts (click through that ben link and read that Q&A, because his answers in there crack me up. he might even be nice but the whole thing just reeked of overblown ego and he sounded SO high maintenance. my friend aviva read it and said, "i have a mini crush on lockhart", however). ricky, on the other hand, just looks nice. one word: dimples. he's one of the cutest grown men i've ever seen. and he's an adult and i'm sure hates being called cute because guys hate that word and they'd much rather be HOT. anyhow, i'd be disappointed if i found out from someone that he was a jerk. it all comes down to the basic desire to be able to trust your instincts. it's why i'm borderline obsessed with joseph gordon-levitt. he just seems so smart and thoughtful and perfect. although, my friends have had to work with a lot of celebrities at their jobs and someone will inevitably perk up with a, "oh, he's such an ass in real life" or "ugh, he's the hugest dick!" and they'll have several stories to back it up. so back to that times Q&A, i go to faustina with justy last night and none other than lockhart steele and sloane crosley (i have the hugest girl crush on her. she was actually on the list i'd e-mailed to doree when she wrote that thing on girl crushes) get sat right next to us. i talk to justin about whether i seem crazy if i tell them that 1.) i know who they are and 2.) admire their work. so i did just that. holy hell are those people NICE. i mean, SO nice. and funny. and lovely. and they ate the same food as us (plus some). i'm not sure i really conveyed my adoration/dependence i've developed with eater.com. how i obsess about new restaurants and know the chef's name anywhere i go. and get opening night resys to almost every big opening. it's my favorite hobby.

 

so: faustina. i LOVED jeffrey tascarella's piece at eater on bruni. i started following him on twitter so was up to date on all things faustina. took up a wednesday resy, tweeted at jeffrey that i was coming and brought justin with me. the server recommended 3-5 dishes per person. we ordered 9 total (before dessert). it was WAY too much. i should clarify that, considering the mix of dishes we had, it was too much. the ricotta with truffled honey was a little dollop with two skinny bread sticks. something i could have eaten in a single bite. we got the sauteed olives. again, quite nibbly. the poached duck egg w/fonduta came with 3 massive pieces of grilled ciabatta, so, huge. we got the oysters (3) with mojito gelee and the orata with pink peppercorns and seaweed. both totally reasonable portions. i thought about ordering another crudo, or another of the orata itself which was so buttery, cut with just bit of bite from the pepper. so far, so good. when we ordered the server recommended one more dish, suggested a pasta. he said the servings were very small and indicated such with a little circle made with his thumbs and index fingers. so we got the black truffle risotto, which, i should just stop ordering risottos because i don't like them that much. everywhere i go the consistency is different and i'm not sure what it's really supposed to taste like but i'm never that WOWed by it. but, black truffles, so it's a wash. the pasta with tomato and sea urchin was awesome. savory and kind of creamy without being too heavy. the sauce's consistency reminded me of conant's famous spaghetti that he serves at scarpetta. his sauces aren't too wet which means they really cling to the noodle. here's where i'll mention that the pasta sizes were a bit larger than had been described. this is a good thing because we're getting more for our money but a bad thing because we were basically stuffed and dead at our seats by this point. and we still had two more dishes coming out. it was to the point at which we considered telling them to box it up before they got to the table.

 

the pork belly with mustard seeds and roasted potatoes (forgive me if i'm messing up the descriptions a bit, i'm doing it from memory and am too lazy to google the menu). i usually get pork belly because it melts in your mouth and feels a bit like meat butter. and it feels BAD for you. this one was a tad dry and much less fatty than i'm used to. though less decadent, it felt healthier. then we also had the short ribs with spaetzle which was perfect. exactly the type of thing you want to eat on a day when you got a foot of snow and things are slushy and miserable outside. the meat was tender, the pasta bits, garlicky. the bad thing was that justin and i were force feeding ourselves at this point with somewhat agonized looks on our faces and we'd slowed down substantially. then we got into this WHOLE conversation about our families and love and our expectations of both. they let us linger and the cramping had let up some so we ordered dessert. a chocolate hazelnut mousse parfait thing that came with biscotti and this itty milkshake. OKAY. let's talk. that milkshake was AWESOME and there needed to be more of it. a lot more of it. we almost got into a fight over the last sip. i would have thrown the first punch had jeff tascarella himself not come up to us and said, "are you jasmine? did you tweet me?" why, yes. yes i did. THE INTERNET IS GREAT. we chatted for a bit, i told him how much i enjoyed his writing (which he should do more of, or at least put it somewhere people can read it) and that dinner had been fantastic. then he brought over two glasses of what he described as his favorite wine, the donnafugata ben rye passito di pantelleria. it was a perfectly sweet way to end what was more of an epic meal than justy and i had planned for. if i had a do-over i'd cut out one or two of the fonduta/pasta/hot dishes and get another crudo. then i'd hopefully have room for two desserts. i'll report back after my next visit, which will be soon.

 

oh, and re: those NBC food carts, it was kind of a fun way to spend an afternoon. I'd figured out all the answers and gave them to my co-workers and we all ended up winning but in different slots so when most people get to go to 1 cart, i maybe went to three of them? this is a wrap-up of the three carts i saw. i missed the porchetta sandwich but that's okay, i can go to locanda for that. the winner was boulud and his burger. medium rare, tomato relish, buttery brioche, YES. and he had on the cutest hat with earflaps and a shirt that read "eat my sausage" and looked like he was having a really good time. anyhow, daniel boulud flies right to the top of my list of people i want to adopt as my grandpa. right next to roger angell.

 

daily candy sent out a recommendation for this: "SarcMark, Download it for $1.99 to indicate when you're being sarcastic in e-mails or over IM. That's a small price to pay for keeping friends."...i mean, would you even want to be friends with people who were too dumb to get when you were being sarcastic? and people who are bad at sarcasm should probably just STOP being sarcastic instead of buying a character that you can add to things that signal sarcasm. it's ridiculous.

 

i would PAY to be josh capon's friend. how cool is he?

 

new girl crush: julie klausner! best answers to this quiz. i agree with almost all of them.

 

fancy fashion week party tonight. it's hard to look chic in huge rubber rain boots. but i highly endorse the hunter line of boots. they are amazing and totally worth the money. the puddles here are a foot deep everywhere and traipse through as if i'm walking on the beach. i am invincible!