I love Rufus Wainwright. I just do. I know we both like boys, but still, I wish I could love him. Literally, hahaha. We went to see him Friday night at the Mann, and as always, he put on a great show. Not only is he talented with his darn songwriting, musicianship, and singing, but as a live act he’s hilarious. Seriously, he should be a comedy act. This show was the first time where it was much more of an actual production. This dude that looked like Amadeus was the musical director, and there were even costume changes. Towards the end, Rufus even put on a dress, or at least a tuxedo jacket that served as a dress. He put on earrings, lipstick, a ring, and heels. And he danced around with long slim legs. I was jealous. It was absolutely fabulous. True, he could have just sung a phone book and I would have still loved it, but it really was an amazing show. I even got really cheapie discount tickets, but I so would have paid regular price! That’s how good it was!

Before the show, we went for a bite at Sangkee. It was close and the food typically comes out quickly. On a Friday night at 8, this place is hopping, busting at the gills. Perhaps not the best idea. We sat at the bar because we didn’t want to wait. But wait we did. Note to self. Sangkee on a Friday night is not a good idea if you don’t want to wait! We waited an awful lot. But we got to watch all the kitchen action. It’s a really small and narrow kitchen filled with male chinese cooks. Not a woman to be seen in that kitchen! We watched some blowtorch action, lots of stir frying, some pork hacking, it was quite entertaining.

We had the chicken satay appetizer. Man, this was good. Perfectly cooked, not dry at all, with good flavor and a zesty dipping sauce. It was a peanut based sauce, but very mildly peanutty. Plus these lovely chicken sticks came sitting on a little bed of pickled daikon and carrots, which I just love love love! K got chicken with fresh ginger and fired scallion in brown sauce? Watch out, there’s big huge chunks of ginger in this! Otherwise, it was a pretty good dish, with just enough flavor. Whatever chicken they use, I like it. It’s good chicken. White meat, but not dry.

I went with a special, singapore chicken. It came with pineapple, mango, and lychee in an “exotic” sauce. Ok, the sauce wasn’t exotic, actually fairly plain, but it was still a good dish. I like sangkee because they also give you the choice of white or brown rice. I went with the brown rice, and it was good! We had a nice meal, showed up at the Mann just in time to not have to sit through the two openers, and didn’t even have to pay the parking fee. During dinner, it had stormed like a mofo, but we missed it all! So at the show, it was nice and cool. It was a perfect night!

I asked a friend who used to live in NYC, or at least across the way, where to eat dinner. He, being a Cuban, recommended Asia de Cuba. Then he went on to tell me about how there is a significant population of Chinese in Cuba. They’ve been there since the mid-1800’s, when they were brought in to work the sugar fields. Sound familiar? And they stayed and married Cuban and Chinese cuisine together. Who knew?

Asia de Cuba is in midtown, as part of the Morgans hotel. Now the thing is, Morgans does not have a sign. We had to guess, just by the numbers on other buildings, if that was the Morgans. And Asia de Cuba has a teeny tiny “sign” that you could so easily miss also. Really, we wouldn’t mind if there was a sign. It could prove helpful. Asia de Cuba itself is not that big, but they make good use of the space. There are recessed booths on the edges, smatterings of tables next to the booths, and a cafeteria style table in the middle, that seats about 24 or so. The ceiling is high, and on the second floor, there are some more small tables along the perimeter, overlooking the first floor. The place claims to be swanky, and it is.

We had an early reservation as we had to eat, catch the A train, and head up to Washington Heights. We were seated promptly and our effervescent waiter asked us if we’d dined there before. Once he found out we were newbies, he recommended that since the portions were large, for two he would recommend two appetizers, an entrée, and a side dish. Sounded good with us. In the meantime, we ordered a mojito and another drink whose name I forget. They were very attractive drinks. Much more attractive than the people drinking them. My drink was good and strong, the mojito was the best. It was truly the best mojito we’d ever had. I’m not crazy about them, but this one was so good. And it came with a stick of actual sugar cane you could gnaw on. Yum. They were strong too, and we could both feel them. We were excited about riding the subway drunk.

We decided to go with the calamari salad, and when we told our waiter, he said it was large, so we should probably just stick with one appetizer. Kudos to him for not trying to milk extra money out of us. Bravo. This salad was indeed ginormous. It comes with the fancy greens, crispy fried calamari, chayote (which we’d never had before, looks like green apple, tastes like nothing but has a nice crunch), hearts of palm (which J had never had but I had eaten plenty of in Brazil), banana, and cashews, in a sesame orange dressing. The dressing was very light, not too sesame-y or orange-y. The calamari were the best part. It was a great salad.
As an entrée, we went with the honey rum glazed pot roast of pork. You can never go wrong with pork in a Cuban restaurant, or a Chinese restaurant for that matter. This came with some good hunks of fatty and juicy pork, sautéed baby bok choy, fried plantains, and enoki mushrooms. The sauce was strong, and the flavor was everywhere. You could see big chunks of thick bacon that had been in the juice. Those had extremely strong flavors. I loved everything. And with that salad, it was plenty of food. We also got some plantain fried rice with avocado salad. It was basically fried rice with some plaintain chunks topped with guacamole. It wasn’t anything special. So that was the lowlight of the meal. But it was a good accompaniment to the strong flavors of the entrée.

The service was good and attentive. The place does get loud when people start filling up, but what are you gonna do. You’re in a hip NYC restaurant, who doesn’t want to yap? The sociological highlight of the evening was the cafeteria table in the middle. A party of 11 high school girls, all perfect and blonde, were having some type of celebration. How come when I was in high school, I didn’t go to hip expensive restaurants? I feel jipped. Then, a party of 11 college men, all perfect in their button down striped shirts, were also having some type of celebration. You can’t even plan that kind of stuff.

At work, there are very few places to eat, at least within walking distance. Downtown Conshy has a few decent choices, but down where we are, there are only a few options. One is the Mona Lisa Cafe, which is next to one of the bigger office buildings. It’s not that exciting of a place. I had the chicken quesadillas there the other day, and it wasn’t half bad! I was quite pleased.

For Wednesday’s lunch, we had another new and interesting one, made-to-order stir fry from a catering company. I was quite leery of an american catering company making stir fry. It wasn’t anything special, as I couldn’t really put my finger on what flavoring it was. Let’s just say it was “asian” or “oriental”. It wasn’t bad though, as I got to pick my meat of choice, and I picked shrimp. They were big and pretty good. The fried rice was pretty blah and and egg roll was pretty bad. It was all weird and soggy and had big chunks of mushy vegetables. However, the fortune cookies they served were some of the best I’ve ever had. So fresh and crunchy. Yum.

The other night, I tried out some Trader Joe’s eats – chicken masala and garlic naan, both from the freezer aisle. The chicken wasn’t bad, it was a bit watered down though. It comes with brown rice which didn’t do it for me. When I eat indian food, I just expect basmati rice. It would have been much better with just normal basmati rice. The brown rice, especially since it was frozen and then nuked, was quite soggy. Now the naan! It was so good! Yes, it’s frozen, but after you heat it up in the overn for just a few minutes, it really does taste fresh! Like it just came out of whatever oven naan is normally made in. I will definitely be buying the naan again! I could eat it just by itself.