avant garde + icp (not the clowns)

when i grow up i want to have an apartment in the city and an estate in the country, preferably in europe. i also want to dress ridiculously inappropriately and traipse about industrial landscapes and the countryside, milking cows and riding subways in couture. that's the life!

unrelated: if you live in the new york area, check out the international center of photography. they will be featuring fashion photography all year, so i'll be there practically every day. i haven't gone yet but i will be there anon. one of the exhibits, "weird beauty" will feature photography by steven meisel, cindy sherman, mario sorrenti, nick knight, steven klein, miles aldridge, paolo roversi, and sølve sundsbø...

the weird beauty exhibit is just one of four fashion exhibits. i am so freaking excited.

sushi

i don't usually get sushi for dinner. i always feel like it's not enough food, especially for the price. but everyone in new haven raves about miya's, and i finally tried it tonight.

i've always heard about how delicious and innovative the sushi at miya's is, but i'm of the school of thought where sushi is just sushi. yes, i understand there's a little room for creativity, but it's usually the same ingredients assembled into a roll. don't get me wrong, i love good sushi, but it's pretty standard fare.

not so at miya's. the chef draws from several types of cuisines to create his sushi and it makes it worth the price and the hype. here's the meal, in reverse order:

we ordered the japafrican queen roll, which is, according to the menu, "sushi created by african bushman to nourish them during their seasonal migrations. eggplant, goat cheese, apricots, avocado, pickled radish, scallions & ethiopian berbere spice mix, wrapped in our freshly made teff grain crepe." that's that spongy ethiopian bread! we also got a kimchee seared tuna roll, which was very simple, not at all expensive, and out of this world. it was made with tuna that was spiced with kimchee spices and seared at high heat to seal in the flavor of the kimchee but keep this inside raw. it struck a perfect contrast in texture between the seared outside of the tuna and the melt-in-your-mouthiness of the inside.

we started with tokyo fries and "it's the great pumpkin, miso" soup.

those are the toyko fries. they're really skinny and crispy fries served with spicy curry and tomato alioli sauce. the pumpkin miso soup was like miso with actual flavor.

we got a small bottle of the dragon lady sake, which is "ginger, lemongrass & clover honey sake. victory drink of lesbian chinese pirates of the south china seas. also popular with sorority girls everywhere." it was unfiltered, so it was cloudy, and came with a stick of lemongrass in it, which gave it an orangish color. it was amazing, but the sweetness overpowered the sake flavor a little too much. it was great with the meal, though, and i can understand how it could get you girl drink drunk, as advertised. next time i want to try the chinese firecracker sake, which is "aged hot chili pepper & citrus sake. painfully euphoric; contains over a thousand secret flavor components. the perfect sake to sake bomb. not for the meek."

the whole dining experience was very fun, and i would definitely go again next time i have a big budget and a small appitite. as far as creativity goes, miya's outshines every other place in new haven. as far as actual quality of sushi goes, though, i'd have to say that the jury is still out.

dior couture

christian dior jump started 2009 couture in paris this week. couture designers may have spent as much time defending their trade as they did executing it for these shows, due to the current economic climate, blah blah blah. whatever! couture has never, in my world, been something that people buy and wear. it's more like art and escapism, which people need in "times like these." dior's line was a perfect silver lining to the recession cloud. everything looked like cakes and old fancy wallpaper or fine china. it's like eating macaroons, drinking tea, and reading baudelaire in your rich aunt's upper east side apartment. scroll back up!

home improvement

if anything says more about a person than the clothes they wear and the food they eat, it's the place they live! (or perhaps the things they say, the way they treat people, their ambitions, their insecurities? ...nah.) anyway, my apartment needs a lot of work before it says anything remotely flattering about me. there are a few things i love...

other than a few great tables from craigslist, a fake fireplace, my jewelry, books, magazines, and a few other little things that i love, my little dwelling needs a lot of work. the place is wall to wall hideous carpet, there are no shelves in the "pantry," so all my food is on the windowsill, and there are drop ceilings. i didn't include a picture of those, because it's just too painful.

there's not enough room for my clothes and shoes, so soon all this crap may be homeless...

my mission in 2009 is to make this place better than just livable on a verrry tight budget. pretty soon i'll have a lot more time than money. maybe i can film the process and strike a deal with tlc or hgtv!

holidays gone wild

after a certain age, the main appeal of the holidays is the amount of food one is allowed to consume free of judgment or restraint. the downside is that the menu never changes and the staples of that menu are generally pretty bland.

fortunately for me, my aunt is a chef and she hosts christmas. she makes christmas dinner exciting again, while still serving the comfort food that even the biggest food snob ultimately craves for a holiday meal. it's not really possible to explain how my aunt's dinner trumps any traditional meal, so i'll just have to illustrate my point with a small battle:

ROUND 1: hors d'oeuvres

vs.

the verdict: the picture on the left is cocktail shrimp. i love cocktail shrimp, but they don't taste like...anything. the picture on the right features mussels and tomato tapenade. unlike their crustacean counterparts, mussels have sort of a sweet and briny flavor that my aunt was really able to showcase with her marinade. they were served with the tapenade and a hard, mild cheese. the result was too sacred to put into print, but trust me...my aunt's hors d'oeuvres win this round.

ROUND 2: main course

vs.

the verdict: the photo on the left depicts a meal served on parents' day at a summer camp -- not as gross as the usual food but not gourmet by any stretch of the imagination. it features a limp salad, cubes of unseasoned potatoes, and slices of ham. the picture on the right features the same components of meat, potato and vegetable, but the similarities end there. the green beans were crisp and delicately dressed. one sensed that the duck that died for this meal was grateful to have met such a delicious demise. and my aunt's equivalent to yams was a pumpkin puree spiced to perfection, the sweetness offsetting the savoriness of the duck.

the highlight was the cheesy latke. the only way to improve upon a latke is by adding heaps of cheese while frying the pancake, resulting in the world's most perfect manifestation of the potato. i think we all know who wins this round.


ROUND 3: dessert

i don't have any pictures of the dessert, but we were lucky enough to have two choices. the first was a chocolate pie. it featured a crunchy, oreo-like crust with a chocolate mousse filling topped with whipped cream. it was sweet but not overwhelmingly so, as she was able to maintain the bitter edge that gives chocolate it's aphrodisiacal quality. the other dessert was a cranberry pie. the cranberries in the pie were whole, giving the pie an uncommonly juicy tartness.

but...my younger cousin made a pumpkin pie for thanksgiving that was out of this world. so we're calling this round a draw.

FINAL VERDICT:
my aunt's meal is the decisive victor! hooray!