Date 40: Bechamel and quilts in SoHo
Recently, littlestar and I shared a very busy trip to Manhattan. It was appended to a whirlwind redeye into JFK followed by a wedding in Queens and a reception in Long Island (not ours, naturally). As I'd never been to Manhattan before, and because littlestar correctly said that it's silly to fly all the way across the country to spend a single day, we decided to append a vacation in Manhattan.
As I said above, it was busy, with stops at the Metropolitan Museum of art, a specialty rice pudding place, and everywhere in between (including meeting with a plethora of long-unseen friends).
One evening found us without a scheduled event, in search of dinner and with an eye toward seeing a neighborhood we hadn't yet made it to. We decided to go to SoHo. Following a subway discussion of the pronunciation of "Houston" in New York, we disembarked and found that modern-day SoHo is pretty dead at 9:30 on a Tuesday night. The city as a whole, perhaps, does not sleep, but parts of it certainly do. After bypassing several Italian and French restaurants, we crossed a street and found ourselves in front of Hiroko's Place.
They little sign in front admonished us that there would be no smoking inside, and that Hiroko's Place does not serve sushi. Good to know.
This late (apparently) on a Tuesday, we mostly had the place to ourselves, which was very sweet for a night out together. As we checked out the menus, we also took in the decor, which was a mix of small pieces and large quilts by Kayo Aiba. It was charming and cozy, in the sense of comfortable and welcoming (rather than as a euphemism for small).
We surveyed the menu and eventually settled on mentaiko noodles and a Japanese the omu white (that's a Japanese-style omelette comprising a thin layer of egg wrapped around a rice-mix filling, with bechamel sauce).
The dinner was tasty and a fun experiment in trying yet more food that we hadn't had before. We shared, although littlestar preferred the mentaiko and I probably enjoyed the omu white more. We topped it off with a dessert that was, suiting both our tastes these days, just mildly rather than overbearingly sweet.
We reluctantly made our way back out into what was proving a somewhat blustery and vaguely cold evening; I think if we could have swung it, we might have just stayed in the lands of fine art quilts and tasty foods. Nonetheless, we had a little happy glow as we rode the subway back to our hotel, and a little bit of the evening lingered with us for the remainder of the trip.