Saturday, Grant, my sister and I went to the Met to do one of Grant's Tufts alumni events. It was a sort of scavenger hunt (a bunch of questions along the lines of "Find the room with four paintings of Piazza San Marco in Venice. In each painting there is a pair in tan and grey. Who are they?" and you had to find the Canaletto (and assorted school of Canaletto paintings) in the Lehman collection and note that the two figures in grey and tan were a pair of (humping) dogs, etc.) and it was a ton of fun because we went all over the museum. I went to high school a couple of blocks away from the Met (I mean, my high school graduation was even at the Met) and still it took us to a lot of rooms I had never seen before. For example, keep an eye out for the Studiolo Gubbio because it's the coolest fucking room ever.

In any case, Grant and I were 45 minutes late because I spent the morning vomiting away a hangover from seeing Nancy open up Nick's on the Beach for th summer out in Montauk (yay for Nick's and yay for summer in Montauk!!) and almost didn't make it. Despite the handicap, we finshed all of our questions, got all the bonus questions and tied for first place (go us!).

Afterwards we grabbed my mom and went for dinner at Blue Hill, down off of Washington Square Park. They have the most romantic bathrooms ever! Go see for yourselfDan Barber, the owner/chef, went to my high school and Grant's college. We chatted with him a bit at one of my high school alumni events where he did a whole wine tasting food thing that was pretty phenomenal and he invited us down. Unfortunately he wasn't around Saturday night :(

Their focus is fresh local food (from their farm upstate), and well, it was pretty fresh, local food, and pretty fucking phenomenal. I think that for the money if I had to make a choice I would still prefer Clio in Boston, but perhaps that would only be for their sushi bar. Certainly Dan Barber seems a more down to earth sort of guy than Ken Oringer, who always gives me a sort of sleazy Bobby Flay (Mesa Grill is totally mediocre except the cornbread but jesus fucking christ I mean Bobby Flay doesn't really know how to make anything withOUT cornmeal so you'd hope that his fucking cornbread is good) Rocco Dispirito (heard nothing but bad reviews of Rocco's but I haven't been there yet) sort of vibe. My brother, who being a cook at No. 9 Park, is friends with all those Ming Tsai/hot young chef types up in Boston, confirms my suspicions that Ken Oringer does not want for the company of women.

So Blue Hill is really really excellent. I am not sure how to describe it; the food is not so surprising (tomato martinis anyone? Gin and tonic ice cream dessert?) or perhaps pretentious (although that has a negative connotation which I definitely don't want to imply) as it is at Clio - I guess that he best word would be "simple" but it's still very creative. I think the wackiest thing we had were blue point oysters (local, right??) with lime sorbet. Other than that, I don't know... there was a poached duck (poached duck? huh. weird right? but very simple and unpretentious, like everything else) that was absolutely phenomenal. Everything was absolutely great. Holy cow. And excellent dessert. Chocolate bread pudding mmmmmmm espresso & panna cotta mmmmmmmm passionfruit souffle mmmmmmmmmmmm

I don't know what the buzz is about Blue Hill (I don't really keep up with my NYC restaurants as much as my Boston restaurants, but I know that the buzz about Dan has been good) but if it's not on all the restaurant snobs' radars yet, it ought to be. Totally gets my hearty two thumbs up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!