chelsea market

i am stuffed. this weekend was foodtastical. i ate so well i felt like i was famous, or royalty, or even a socialite who's famous for being royalty. it was great, and pretty cheap. how did this happen? well friends, it started with a little adventure known as chelsea market.


on saturday afternoon my friend, flora, and i were wandering the west side and decided to pop into the market and have a look. she'd never been in and i'd only been there once, but they were closing the last time and i didn't get to see much. it turned out to be a food lovers paradise. this is no secret, and believe me, i feel pretty silly being a new yorker of 8 yrs and not catching on until now.  we wandered through aisles of exotic spices, homemade jams, and stinky cheeses. we oohed and ahhed over squid ink pasta, whole black truffles & jars of pears in brandy. we made mental notes of what we wanted to come back and buy once we had acquired small fortunes and promised ourselves that day would come.

at this point we had been in the italian grocery, buon italia (did i mention whole truffles?) and in chelsea market baskets (wonderful chocolates, spices, & gifts). we headed down to the seafood market, and that's where things really started cooking. or in this case, stayed raw. the lobster place is a spacious and inviting market with every kind of seafood imaginable. the selection is outstanding and i don't know if you will find fresher fish in new york. we lamented that we weren't going straight home so we couldn't pick anything up for later, but then we found the oyster bar. flora and i have a history of eating oysters together, and we do it well. the lobster place had about 8 or 9  east & west coast varieties, each for about $1.50. we couldn't resist getting 2 of each and some sashimi from the sushi station. the guys who worked there quickly shucked our oysters and plated them on ice with lemon and tobasco. we suddenly had an impromptu oyster and sashimi feast for about $20 each. score.

everything was delicious. i don't think i've had better salmon, and the yellowtail (which was snow white) was unbelievably creamy. the oysters were salty, sweet, nutty, briny, and creamy. we felt like we had won the (raw fish) lottery!

once we had devoured our seafood, we headed into chelsea wine vault. here's a confession: i know a bit about wine, but sometimes i will try something just because i really like the label. after looking around for a bit, we agreed that the best labels were coming out of washington state. it was like each bottle was cooler than the next; the designs were bold, modern, understated, and a little bit punk rock. this turned out to not be a coincidence. we soon learned all of the wines we were admiring came from the same maker--charles smith. this guy is not messing around. i read on his website he used to manage rock bands in scandinavia before he started making wine, so yeah, he's a bad-ass. they are really reasonably priced and getting a lot of attention. i've had his kung fu riesling before, and it's everything a riesling should be: sweet but not too sweet, crisp, fruity and refreshing. his wines are like that kid in school that's so cool you kind of want to hate him, but he's so nice you end up becoming best friends and getting into a whole bunch of new music as a result. you know what i'm talking about, right? sure you do.

and then we noticed these guys:

i'm not much of a whiskey drinker, but these bottles were hot. and totally cute. i won't ever be able to take a sip of whiskey and not grimace a little, but these made me wish i could i hang out in a dark  bar all night long discussing jazz and alfred hitchcock films while the well-suspendered* bartender gives me refills of hudson whiskey. however, we got busted once again for lusting after booze because it was pretty. fortunately, the employees of the store were really nice and we learned that hudson whiskey actually comes from tuthill spirits, which is the first whiskey distillery in new york since prohibition. woah! and they produce the first 100% corn whiskey in all of the usa. the only other whiskey of its kind is made in ireland. we were so enthralled by our lesson that we were given a tasting! like i said, whiskey's not my drink, but i still felt pretty cool getting invited to the secret tasting room. oh yeah,-- the tasting room also had cupcakes.

*(not a word until now)