Confessions of a Korean-American Man in New York City

Let's kick it up a notch! I'll get to that in a bit. Last night we celebrated Darko's birthday at Chinatown Brasserie in NoHo. It's replaced Time Cafe which was a nice hangout a few years ago. Unfortunately, my attempt for a surprise party was more of a fizzle because Darko has the habit of always asking the same damn questions because of his ADD, so as a result of his consistent nagging and questioning, I kept leaking out who was going to attend and after a while, I kept forgetting who I revealed because I kept saying it's 4 of us and I probably rotated in all the names. Okay, my take on the restaurant. The decor is cool and was typical of the asian catering to the americano's feel, trying to be chinese by being unchinese. It was very spacious with a good noise level that keeps conversation humming. I read a few reviews which varied, but here's my quick take. It would be great to transport the dishes south of canal street to this nicely decorated place, but too bad we can't have the best of both worlds. We started with the dumplings and they were okay. They barely challenged the king of all dumplings which is located on Pell St, Joe's Shanghai. We also had the lettuce wrap but that didn't even come close to PF Changs in Edgewater. Someone in our party made the comment that we could've paid the $10 ferry ride and ate at PF Changs b/c Chinatown Brasserie appeared to be the suped up cousin. We ordered various dishes and proceeded to eat in family style tradition. In conclusion, PF Changs and the restaurants of the actual Chinatown down below Canal have nothing to worry about. It wasn't a bad place because the decor was nice, but it could be a great place if the food could kick it up a notch, which leads me to Emeril. A couple tables over from us was Emeril Lagasse of Food Network fame. I know AirSuz is gonna be pissed she wasn't there last night because back in 2001, she, Cal and I had tickets to see Emeril on 9/11. Obviously the show was cancelled that morning and when we received our rescheduled tix, I couldn't attend but AirSuz and Cal ended up going and being selected to sit at the counter for the whole show where they got to sample everything Emeril made. As I recall, we had a viewing party at Cal's apt for her first foray into the small screen. Anyway, as Emeril walked by our table with his party, I yelled BAM! I'm sure he gets that numerous times daily, but that's what got him famous. All in all, it's always good getting together with friends I don't get to see too often and sure the service sucked but they did have Montefalco wine which was really my culinary highlight of the evening. For those who were with me at the villa in Umbria this summer, when in Montefalco, do what the Montefalcons do!