How 'bout them Eagles!? Heh. Just kidding. I actually don't follow baseball.

But seriously, I do love SuperBowl Sunday. Know why? It's one of only two days per year (the other is Oscar night) when I can get a table at Frank without waiting. Paula, Andrew, Damion, and I met at my place for a sip of vino, then gave ourselves over to the Italian home cookin' of Frank and his Latino kitchen staff. I ate the usual: octopus salad followed by rigatoni al ragu. Their meatballs, I swear, are this close to being as good as Mom's. And the sausage has fennel in it, which drove Damion up the wall, but which I loved. Paula had the meat loaf--polpettone--which is one of those delicious meatballs, but bigger! Andrew had yummy papardelle with rabbit ragu. In fact, Andrew ate Damion's sausage, half of Paula's meatloaf, and dunked it all in my sauce! Healthy appetite.

Moving on...
One of the perks, I guess, of my job is that I get to take clients to lunch and vendors get to take me to lunch and I therefore get to try out restaurants with zero risk to my own wallet. Today one of the art magazines took me to Spice Market. This place has been a major hit for the 1-2 years it's been around--can't get a reservation, that sort of thing. Well it's quite calm at lunch--we were one of six or so tables.

The restaurant serves Asian "street market" food--filtered through Jean-Georges Vongerichten's insanely rich French kitchen. I ate things I never ate before--star fruit!--and I ate a lot. Everything was served family style, so we each got to try everything that was ordered. We started with mushroom eggrolls served with a galangal dipping sauce. It was great, but even better was the crunchy squid salad (fried squid with ginger and cashews and big chunks of papaya). I had the red duck curry over rice--which was spicy and not oily and did, somewhat, remind me of the delicious Thai food I ate from a street vendor at Camden Market in London. My companion had short ribs--the tenderest and warmest tasting meat I've tasted in a long time.

We opted for the healthiest of the two desserts, don't ask me why. I was intrigued by the sound of "exotic fruits" (who me?) served with ginger-lime salt. Wow--star fruit! But also, kiwi, Asian pear, pineapple, papaya, mandarin, mango, and jack fruit. All fresh, all delicious, and all enhanced when dipped in this weird ginger salt. My companion had a Thai "jewels" dessert that combined water-chestnuts and other sweet fruity things plus coconut in coconut milk. It was very sweet, but mine was better. How I managed to avoid their signature dessert--Ovaltine kulfi--I don't know, but I will have it next time for sure.