Crazy Feet Photography Blog

Tonight was a night for celebration.  And what better place to celebrate than at Blue Fin on Times Square, right in the heart of Manhattan.  We’d flown in from all over the place for this meal.  From Chicago, Texas, Seattle, Norway, Florida, North Carolina & Boston plus a couple of New York locals.  OK so we didn’t fly in just for this meal.  We were also spending 2 days trapped in a small meeting room {with no windows} talking to each other.  Surely that in itself was deserving of a celebratory meal.   But no.  We were celebrating because we had all survived another {& a particularly trying one at that} fiscal year & not only had we survived, but we had done it in mighty fine style…completely blowing our number right out of the water.

The lovely event-planner-extraordinaire, Emily, at Blue Fin HQ (aka B.R. Guest Restaurants) had crossed every “t” & dotted every “i” in planning our night for us.  She even crossed & dotted a few I didn’t even know were there.  When she called me the week before to make sure everything was ticked & tied I half expected her to ask what our inside leg measurements were.  She didn’t.  But she did ask me for our menu choices.  Yep.  I got to choose the menu.  And let me tell you, I take such tasks {very} seriously.  This is food we’re talking about after all.

Emily made me feel very confident that our dinner was going to be quite the event.  It was.

We walked over to Blue Fin.  The idea had been that a 15 minute stroll to dinner would be a perfectly refreshing pre-dinner stretch after 10 hours trapped in that small window-less meeting room.  It was a great idea.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature intervened with an unseasonal heatwave that lasted the entire week.  We still walked to dinner, but it wasn’t the cool refreshing breeze that we had imagined.  Still, we were in New York…in Manhattan…in Times Square…with what seemed like 100,000 other hot & sweaty but happy people.  Who cares if you arrive a little damp around the edges?

Emily had given us the Red Room for our little soiree.  It was hidden away upstairs in the back & was like entering a little cavern.  The candles gave off just enough light to make out who was who in our 15 person gathering.

We popped a few bottles of bubbly, tipped back a few cocktails (or in  my case a glass of grapefruit juice) & then got stuck into the assorted Raw Bar crustaceans that arrived at our table on beds of crushed ice atop huge silver platters.

We clearly have some expert claw-crackers in our group.  Once we’d taken care of the shellfish, it was time for the appetizers.

Crab Cake / Sweet & Sour Cucumber Salad / Toasted Peanuts / Cilantro Aioli

Maine Lobster Bisque / Shrimp / Vol Au Vent

Warm Baked Goat Cheese / Ruby Red Beets / Baby Arugula / Balsamic Vinaigrette

  The servers did a great job of spacing the courses & taking care of our every need.  They weren’t the friendliest servers in the world, but then this was New York, not Seattle where it seems that just about everyone has time for a bright smile & a few fun words.

Entrees were next to arrive.  Unfortunately for the two people either side of me, I insisted on photographing their food before they got to tuck in.  I have a feeling I’ll be resigned to the end of the table next time;  always assuming that is, that I am invited again.

Sushi selection

Our host, the boss, decided to ignore the menu altogether & just ordered a plate of his favorite sushi items.  The server didn’t seem to mind, although he was likely breathing a sigh of relief that no one else boycotted the menu.  

Crispy Skin Salmon / Warm New Potato Salad / Ginger Carrot / Spring Pea Greens

East Coast Halibut / Lemon Herb Gnocchi / Petite Portobello Mushrooms / Jumbo Lump Crab

A lot of laughter & a few more drinks later it was time for dessert.  Given that I am usually disappointed with every dessert placed before me, particularly so for anything made with chocolate, dessert has become a bit of an anti-climax for me & I usually decide simply not to go there.  But since ice cream making is one of my sideline passions I am always interested in tasting other people’s ice cream creations.  The Crème Fraiche Ice Cream was good, although it didn’t knock my socks off {bear in mind I am *super* critical about ice cream}.  I’ve made better, even if I do say so myself  :-)   The Blueberry Tart was {very} blueberry-y & the presentation was rather splendid.

Blueberry Crumb Tart / Crème Fraiche Ice Cream / Candied Meyer Lemon

Blue Fin Ice Creams & Sorbets

Blueberry Crumb Tart / Crème Fraiche Ice Cream / Candied Meyer Lemon

It was a great meal.  Everyone there said how much they had enjoyed it & what a great place Blue Fin was for a gathering such as ours.  The food was great (& it wasn’t so huge that we all felt like bloated whales afterwards), the atmosphere was fun, the boss was on especially sparkling form & the service was smooth & efficient.  I would definitely book another event there.  In fact, I already have :-)

When we left Blue Fin at around 10:30 pm the lights in Times Square were so bright it almost felt like it was still daylight & it was heaving with people.  All-in-all an amazing experience that I thoroughly recommend if you haven’t had the chance yet.

My first night in New York.  There was no way I was staying in & getting room service tonight.  I was heading straight out to see what tasty morsels I could find.  And my travel buddies & I were all hungry.  Seriously hungry.  Those pesky airlines don’t feed you anymore, even when you’re flying across the entire country.  Six hours on a plane with no food – it’s just not right.

So having left home at 5:30 am, flown 2383 miles, arrived at JFK & waited an interminable length of time for my baggage to appear (I was the only one who checked a bag, to say I was not popular is an understatement), grabbed a cab to Manhattan, sat in traffic, checked in & taken my gear upstairs it was 6:30 pm & we were all ravenous.  My body wanted salad, my mouth wanted lamb chops & creamed spinach.  I’ll give you one guess which body part won out.  Well, I mean, come on.  Was I really going to fly all the way to New York for a salad?  OK, yes, I am getting heavily into self-justification at this point.  It’s just, well…once I looked at the menu at Bobby Van’s & saw Lamb Chops & Creamed Spinach I knew I’d lost the battle before it had even begun.

The first thing I noticed when we walked into Bobby Van’s was that everyone was very smartly dressed & there were a surprising number of men sporting ties.  People…it’s 101 degrees outside.  Did you take leave of your senses?  Clearly Manhattan has a bunch more snappy dressers than Seattle.  I would have liked that except that we were still dressed Seattle-style & I felt a tad under-dressed.  No one seemed to care though, although for a millisecond I wondered if the sharply attired & particularly handsome Maître D’ was going to allow us to remain in his dining room.

I chose to sit out the first course, wanting as much room in my stomach as possible for all the marvellous meat & veggies that would be heading there shortly.  My fellow diners all ate lettuce for an appetizer.  I still haven’t quite got my head around the concept of cutting an iceberg lettuce in quarters, dribbling some dressing over the top & calling it salad. 

For entrees, Mark stuck to his plan & ate salad, with sides of broccoli & mashed potatoes.  There was part of me that was a bit envious, especially my stomach as we rolled back to the hotel later.  We supplied Mark with some protein by all donating pieces of lamb, halibut & steak to his plate.  We thought it a very worthy cause.

Eric went with halibut.  I have no recollection of how it was cooked or what was with it, although it was very moist & beautifully cooked.  It was also a huge piece of fish, much larger than it might seem from this image.  It’s not the best image:  I was tired, hungry, there was no light & I didn’t have my flash with me.  Excuses, excuses.  A bad workman always blames his tools.  Sigh.

Forrest wanted steak.  When it arrived he decorated it with onion rings to make a face & used watercress for hair.  I think he was a little delirious having been up for so long with no food.  Who knows.  Or maybe he had become delusional after spending the majority of the day at 37,000 feet above the earth with a seeing eye dog lying beneath his feet all the way & it’s owner filling both her seat & half of Forrest’s.  Yeah, that can’t have been a bundle of laughs for 6 hours.  Forrest’s steak however, was delicious.  Not as good though, I have to say, as Daniel’s Broiler.  Sorry Bobby, Dan has you beat on Filet Mignon.

And me, well I never did get past the Lamb Chops & Creamed Spinach.

You know how steak houses tend to just give you a plate with a slab of meat on it & everything else you order separately as sides?  Not so at Bobby Van’s.  Well, they do…but they make it *look* like a plate of food when they bring it to you, even though it really is just meat on a plate.  Bobby’s Lamb Chop presentation was just lovely & I felt like I had a whole meal placed before me.  Getting the intricately entwined chops apart to eat them was another matter entirely.  It was worth the struggle.

And Bobby, I am sorry but Dan wins out again with the creamed spinach.  Yours is tasty & I ate the entire 2 person serving on my own.  However, I am a bit of a creamed spinach aficionado & I found yours a little thin.  A little body-less, a tad unsubstantial.  But the lamb chops were perfectly delicious (once I’d figured out how to get them apart so I could eat them).  The mushrooms were simply divine. 

I know, I know, another lousy image.  I blame the heat.  It’s still better than no pictures at all, right?  I know you only come here to look at the pictures :-)

It was a fun meal.  How could it not be with 2 Brits (1 naturalized), a Texan & an Alaskan fisherman?  It was a good meal.  It was a big meal.  Bobby Van’s is a great place to eat, drink & be merry.

When we got outside it was still swelteringly hot & sticky.  There were people everywhere.  There were street stalls selling food everywhere.  There was even a van selling Mr. Whippy ice cream.  Oh how my mouth wanted some.  For once my body won out.  I didn’t have room for even one half spoonful of ice cream.  But before I leave New York some of that ice cream is going to be in my mouth.  Just not tonight.