August 28, 2012 Disembarkation at New York and Breakfast - the fish mystery is solved, Lunch – Pastis, Dinner – L’ Ecole

August 28, 2012 Disembarkation at New York and Breakfast - the fish mystery is solved, Lunch – Pastis,  Dinner – L’ Ecole

We got up at 4:30 am, showered quickly, dressed and ran up to the observation deck.  The Lookout on the 13^th deck was full, so we went back to the observation Deck at the front of the boat on Deck 11 where we watched the boat go under the Verazzano Narrows Bridge and into New York Harbor, past the Statute of Liberty and south of Governor’s Island to the Cruise ship terminal about one mile south of the Brooklyn  Bridge,  just east of the southern tip of Governor’s Island.

We called Luke and told him we would taxi to his apartment in Williamsburg.  Then we went to our last breakfast.  It was not a stretch to decide on the choice of foods.  Although there is everything you could think to eat on board and you can have it seating in luxury in the Britannia Grille r in a buffet line in the King’s Court, I chose the King’s Court because it had my perfect selection of breakfast items in a short three foot area.  Fresh salad greens, sliced tomato and onion, smoked salmon, capers, sour cream, Philadelphia cream cheese, hard boiled eggs and pickled herring (today’s choices were in either mustard or wine sauce).  I took both types of herring, pile of salmon and all the fixings and then we went around the other side of the hot line and got a toasted bagel and then to the Healthy Corner for a glass of fresh carrot, orange and celery and ginger juice.   I gave Suzette a taste of each of the herrings.  She liked the mustard sauce because it was not as sweet as the wine sauce and she went back for a few more filets of that with some sour cream.    

As stated yesterday, I can not get over how good the herring is so Suzette said why not ask for the producer, so on our way out we stopped one of the Food and Beverage supervisors and asked her for the name of the producer of the herring.  She excused herself and went to the kitchen area for several minutes and finally returned with the following written on a piece of paper “Kattegøt Se(e)afood , Skipp and sild” or “Skipper sild”.     The “sild” is easy, that is erring in Danish and Kattegøt is easy that is a Danish name.  The rest is a little obscure.

Anyway, mission accomplished on the herring. 

Then back to the room and now we are waiting in the Chart Room for our disembarkation scheduled for 8:45 a.m.  Very near the end of a very lovely cruise.   The $1,750 ticket price is rather cheap for what you get.  Our dinner mates are frequent cruisers and their tickets were $990.00 for a 9 day cruise, which is not much more than a transatlantic flight for 7 days of food and lodging.

I recommend everyone consider the cruise option if they can take the extra time.

Bon Voyage

 We had no difficulty clearing customs and took a taxi to Luke’s apartment and arrived around 10:00 am.

When we arrived we were immediately attracted to his back yard which is quite large with lots of blooming plants and trees.  I saw roses, rose of sharrons, a long cylindrical flowered armatures with lots of butterflies and bumble bees feeding on them.   Then we saw three fig bushes toward the back of his yard filled with figs.  We immediately attacked them and working together to bend the limbs down, we picked about a dozen figs that had ripened with an open reddened end to them.   We then went back into his kitchen which is also good sized by New York standards and chopped up the figs and put them into a sauce pan with a bit of water and some maple syrup and I skinned several pieces of skin off a fresh lemon and julienned the lemon pieces into threads and put those into the figs.  Luke then stewed the figs for about fifteen minutes as we discussed what we would like to do in NYC . 

We decided to walk across the Williamsburg Bridge to Manhattan, so we could see the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge from up high, as well as Lower Manhattan.

When we had crossed the bridge we went to a great shop and then decided to walk the High Line, so we took a taxi across town and then walked until we came to the southern end of the High Line.  The High Line is a very interesting urban feature.  It is an elevated train track that was used to deliver goods to the meat packing district to avoid crossing many streets at street level.  It has been landscaped and decorated with walkways and gardens and water effects to make a pleasing diversion in terms of altitude and exposure to a different environment from the neighboring street level concrete and brick corridors around it.  We walked about ten blocks and then Luke said we needed to go the Pastis because we had a reservation for lunch, so we walked the three or four blocks to the Pastis Restaurant at around 12:30.   I had eaten so much stuff for breakfast that I did not want to eat much, so Luke ordered an omelet with French fries and an arugula salad and we ordered a carafe of rosé wine. The omelet was puffed up and delightful and the French fries, a welcome home gift.  The baby arugula with flakes of parmesan cheese was pleasant and not bitter and the bread fresh and heavy with an especially good half whole wheat bread.  

The food was delicious, but at 1:30 we paid the bill and grabbed a taxi to the Morgan Library to see the Josef Albers show, when Luke announced that the Morgan was closing at 5:00 p.m.  The Morgan has an exhibit of many of Albers works from the 40’s through the 70’s, when he was formulating his Homage to the Square series.  The works were oil on paper.  It was interesting to see his experiments with color, but they were just that.  Many were over painted with different colors and did not have that vibratory intensity of his finished works.  Albers’ life is as interesting as his work.  He was born in Germany and attended the Bauhaus and then was in charge of the stained glass work shop at the Bauhaus and met his wife Ari Fleischmann there.  When it was closed by the Nazis, they immigrated to the U.S. and began teaching at Black Mountain.  Albers later taught art at Yale.  He was interested in how one’s perceptions change about colors based upon how their juxtaposition to other colors.  So they are experiments in color theory.  The Morgan also was exhibiting a collection of Winton Churchill memorabilia, but my favorite was an exhibit of Venetian drawings and books.  My favorites in the Venetian Exhibit were two books from the 15^th century.  One was a reprint of Vetruvius, a classical Greek or Roman treatise on architecture, for which Palladio prepared the illustrations, and Palladio’s famous treatise on architecture, which was opened to his four sided Villa Rotunda, also from the late 1400’s.

We then came back to Luke’s for a nap and then got dressed and went to L’ Ecole for dinner.  While Luke and Suzette went two blocks to a shop, I sat at the bar and ordered a corked ½ bottle of French apple cider from Normandy (Cidre Bouché Brut de Normandie 2009 produced by Etienne Dupont at Vietot-Pontfol, France that was unfiltered, unpasteurized with 5.5% alcohol for $15.00)  that was delicious, especially with ice.  Then around 8:00 Luke and Suzette returned and Rebecca arrived and we were seated.   L’Ecole in honor of NYC Restaurant Week 2012 was serving a Prix Fixe three course menu for $35.00 which we all took.   Luke took the Smoked Salmon, sliced smoked salmon rolled into a column and stuffed with cucumber-dill salad served on a Potato Galette made from threads of potato deep fried to golden brown with a dab of Horseradish cream, Rebecca and I had the hand made orecchiette pasta that resembled a human ear, tossed with a lovely stewed mélange of late summer squash, tomato jam, and Pecorino Romano that had sautéed the ingredients until they gave up their juices and joined together (melanged).

Suzette was quiet, so she must have enjoyed her grilled eggplant slices stuffed with Ricotta, Arugula, pine nuts and Smoked Tomato Vinaigrette.

For entrees, Suzette and I both ordered the Sautéed/Fried Branzino with Ratatouille with a puddle of light lemon aioli sauce with four small mounds of pureed tapenade in a row on the aioli sauce.  The ratatouille was super fresh.  It had been sautéed, but not baked, so its vegetables were still quite fresh.

Luke took the gnocchi with peas in a cream sauce.    Very soft and with a deliciously creamy sauce

The restaurant was featuring a selection of wines for $35.00 per bottle also and we decided to try a appellation Quincy Sauvignon Blanc.  I missed the name of the vineyard, but the wine was crisp and fruity.  We need to try more of these in the future.

Rebecca ordered the Pan Seared Grouper on a bed of sticky rice with a Red Pepper Emulsion and garnished with roasted tomatillos.  I try a forkful of her sticky rice and it was creamy and soft to the taste.  A tomatillo was slow roasted to golden brown, perhaps having been glazed with the re pepper-bacon emulsion.  I have not seen this treatment before and like it very much.    

 For dessert we tried one of each of Apple Fennel Compote on a smear of Thyme Anglaise with cinnamon crumbs, a Warm Almond Corn Cake with smoked corn ice cream, a Peach upside down cake with toasted Almond Ice Cream and a balsamic glaze and a dark chocolate Gianduja Tart with Vanilla-orange peel ice cream and a Cocoa Syrup.   The most interesting part of the Apple Fennel Compote (slices of apple and fennel that had been cooked in syrup was a sprig of thyme that had been rolled in turbine sugar and then fried until crisp.  The peach upside-down cake was my favorite because it combined a wonderful Fancipan cake with peach slices and the toasted almond ice cream was delicious.

The corn dessert was too spicy for us for a dessert and the chocolate was okay but not great.  It combined a thick chocolate sauce on top of a layer of coffee flavored lighter chocolate custard below in a tart shell that was a little over-cooked.

One must remember that L’Ecole is like getting a hair cut at a Barber College.  The people in the kitchen are all students, so there are hits and misses.  That is why you can get a three course meal with the freshest and best ingredients for $35.00.

After dinner we went to Luke’s apartment to sleep and get ready to return to Albuquerque.