After a couple of quiet weekends, thanks to horrible New York mutant colds, we finally ventured out of the apartment this weekend: Yay!
We went into Manhattan late Saturday morning, heading for the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Suzy needed to check out the Greek and Roman art exhibits for school. On the way there, we stopped for breakfast at Max Brenner, a chocolate-centric cafe/restaurant. The food was OK, but not great (it didn't help that I had to send my eggs back for being nearly raw in the center). The chocolaty items were a different story: we each had a hot chocolate, and the breakfasts came with chocolate spread for the toast, and that stuff was delicious. Based on that, we'll go back some time, but for dessert.
We ended up spending about two hours looking through the Greek and Roman sections of the Met, with Suzy taking some notes for her class. It was interesting, but I found it to be a bit too repetitive -- I can only find so many urns and pots interesting. The highlights for me were the arms and armor, the statues, and a chariot.
We headed back to Brooklyn and made a "brief" stop at the new Trader Joe's grocery store that opened not far from our place. We ended up filling our little cart more than halfway, stocking up the fridge, freezer, and cupboards with a variety of meal and snack items. They have a great selection of foods there, both fresh and packaged, with the majority of it being their own brand. If the quality ends up being good, I can see doing a lot of shopping there, as their prices are fairly low.
Later Saturday evening, we walked to DUMBO to go a restaurant called Henry's End. We were lucky and got seated almost right away. Our server was interesting: the restaurant comes across like a somewhat high-end pub, with a mix of professionals aged about 25-50, but our server (though she certainly was a good one) seemed like someone from a small-town diner. She was probably 55-60, and she called everyone "hun" or something similar, and she would say things like "How did you do?" as she came to clear plates. She was pretty funny, just because she seemed so out of context.
Anyway, the restaurant itself was pretty good, but I don't know if we'll rush back. There are so many places to try, and we've already found one or two, like Saul, that we would definitely go back to, that there isn't much room for return visits to places that just decent-to-good. I will say that my entree, elk chops, was quite good, and they were definitely noticeable for their interesting selections of game: Buffalo steak, elk chops, turtle soup, and more... Different! For the record, the elk seemed like it was somewhere between lamb and beef in flavour, not gamey tasting at all -- a very mild flavour in fact.
On Sunday, it was a quieter day, though we did go see and late afternoon show of Burn After Reading. I enjoyed it, though I found that I didn't laugh a lot, really. I wonder if I will warm to it after multiple viewings, like Fargo or The Big Lebowski? I certainly liked it better than Intolerable Cruelty, and far more than The Ladykillers (which is the only Coen brothers' movie I really dislike).
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