A two restaurant day...my gorgeous boss took me to a fancy new restaurant for lunch today to celebrate our 8th anniversary together. I cannot believe it's been so long and how fast it went, and that I have stayed so long, I've never worked in one place so long in my life. 2-3 years was the longest anywhere else...
We went to check out the new Andaz a very high end top of the line Hyatt Hotel of which there are only 5 in the world, 4 of them in the US but guess what, 2 of them in NY!! Is anyone surprised at our fabulousness?!??!! You walk into a slate floor, matte silver metal walled, white accented lounge, not lobby. Beverages abound... There is a shiny white opaque cube off center to the front door with a squiggly white metal sculpture emerging from it, attached to the ceiling, few laptops and a few beautiful people hanging around and this, my friends, is the front desk. The restaurant is elegant but casual with modern Mediterranean/ American food. I started with a salad of mixed greens, tomato slices, shaved cucumbers (a bit uninteresting), and some sort of cheese called blaak which was actually cheese colored but very good against the other components. The dressing was olive oil and lemon juice which threatened to be overly bright but the matte richness of the cheese prevented that. I then had the steak salad which was a small piece of flank steak (very rich and tender) with red endive strewn about the plate and cubes of roasted butternut squash hiding underneath the endive. My boss had a salad of greens with feta, olives, tomatoes and some other things-great creamy salty textures but the olives were triple the normal size of an olive. I wonder what their martinis are like???? She followed that with seared salmon garnished with perfectly seasoned roasted beets and carrots. All the food was full of glorious color!!! Dessert left a little to be desired (which translates to no chocolate option) and when I told our waitress she sighed with me and went over the list of baked goods in the upfront breakfast area and she could bring us anything we wanted. My boss had the chocolate biscoti and I had the double chocolate cookie and none of that drecky white chocolate! All delicious, as was the coffee-rich and flavorful.
The whole operation is really new so I'm sure the silly service mishaps will clear up...our runner kept giving each the other's food and when we ordered coffee no one told us the only choice was Americano and my boss doesn't like espresso so it was a bit of a pain (Americano is a shot of espresso with the rest of the cup filled up with water).
The hotel tries to be very New York centric which is great-there are sandwihches from Katz's Deli (a NY institution since before WWII-one of it's tagline in fact is "send a salami to your boy in the army") the cheese is from Murrays and all the smoked from Russ and Daughters (the BEST!). The second floor of the hotel is it's "business center" but you would never recognize it as such which is why my boss and I loved it-so forward. It is designed to look like you have made it in NY and have an endless Tribeca loft complete with kitchen, den, and bedrooms. The kitchen is the working kitchen for your party so you can talk to the chef's and take food directly from the stove!! We're looking at it for my boss' annual cocktail party and I for one would love to have it there! We'll start doing events and meetings there very soon.
We also got to meet the hotel's general manager who was quite a charmer and ultra glam. I bet he wears Thom Browne suits! And he went to school with one of my company executives so I can have his attention any time I want! What could be better than all of this!?!!??
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