eating at pampa

My good friends in the St. Lawrence String Quartet are here in New York for a few days, performing in a couple of different venues. On Saturday night, I took Tony and Ai-jen to see them play an all-Dvorák concert with Menahem Pressler at the Met. (The web page for the event is a little weird, because it shows a photo of Pressler in the Beaux Arts Trio, instead of with members of the SLSQ.) I really like Dvorák’s Piano Quintet Op. 81, so it was a real treat to get to hear it performed live by such great musicians. Pressler is very cute at the piano; he sort of bops around and stares out at the rest of the group. I love seeing musicians play who radiate a strong connection with their fellow music-makers.

After the show, we went out to Pampa for Argentinian steaks. Tony, Ai-jen and I had eaten before the show at Josie’s (because of time, we cruelly deprived Tony of their lemon curd yogurt pie, which is one of the best desserts EVER), but we pigged out again on fries, desserts, and sangria. I was impressed with Daisy (she’s one of the SLSQ’s students from Toronto); she probably weighs no more than 100 pounds, but ate a steak that was literally hanging off the plate at both ends. I wanted to see how there could possibly be room for so much meat, but I thought it might be rude to stare. Speaking of rude, much of the conversation at dinner — at the other end of the table — centered around p o r n, for some reason. I mentioned that the search term that hits my site the most is “pooping” because of a photo I have of my cat pooping on the toilet, and Geoff’s old NY-buddy Sean looked up and said, “oh! I’ve been to your site.” I wonder what search led him to pooping Hiro … ;)

Saw Barry, Lesley, and John (Lad) for dinner tonight, up at Gennaro on the UWS (really great slow-roasted (or braised?) lamb shank), and we bumped into Elise and Ben, whom we all knew from the music department back at Stanford. Almost felt like we were back in California. :) [see some photos]