I arrived in NYC at the butt crack of dawn to attend a photography convention called Photo Plus Expo. It’s a massive amount of dorky middle aged dudes, but also a lot of the movers and shakers in the world of photography. I have enrolled in several seminars about branding, marketing, social media and publishing. I have thousands of images and I really just don’t know what to do with them so I am trying to wrap my head around the possibilities and options for me. I have been shooting stills for so long and have never really specialized in one field, so this is inspiring for me to figure out who I am as an artist. I have been around the planet and back (6 out of 7 continents! Australia is #7 in 4 months woohoo!) and I have tons of cool pictures to share with everyone..... Plus, I get to come to NYC again and hang out while the weather is still nice!
Chris Santos Interview (ironic that I know the woman who interviewed him for this piece… Laren Spirer! More on her later! This is about to become 6 degrees of separation in so many ways) It’s a rare occasion for me to enjoy dinner with the Executive Chef and owner of a place so I was super excited to eat my face off in his establishment. Stanton Social is a tapas style place with a lot of eclectic dishes from all over the world and Chris treated us to well over a dozen of them. I am by no means a food writer, or an expert of any kind in food reviews: I am merely here to tell you what I shoveled into my mouth.
I started with the pink grapefruit and mint martini which was to die for. It’s a strange combination that you would think tastes like ass considering what it’s like when you brush your teeth and then drink orange juice right afterwards. We then had a bacon, lobster, truffle marscapone on flatbread, tuna sashimi over avocado (I had to skip the jalapeno topper… I am the biggest wimp when it comes to spice), miso glazed Chilean sea bass, sweet and sour chicken cashew spring rolls, wild mushroom risotto cakes with parmesan and wild mushroom risotto flakes. OK breathe…. Then we had apple brie quesadillas with smoked bacon, duck confit empanadas, chicken arepas, sweet potato and butternut squash ravioli, orecchiette with rabbit sausage with fire roasted peppers and wild mushrooms, foie gras over vanilla risotto cake with a crispy apple between them, beef wellington. Breathe...I then ordered a cucumber vanilla martini (awesome, but not as awesome as the grapefruit one) and we proceeded to make ourselves sick with dessert. Donuts (waaaay better than Dunkin Donuts, I can’t believe I just said that out loud) with 3 different dipping sauces (chocolate, raspberry and caramel),
peanut butter mousse with concord grape sorbet,
and red velvet Twinkies.
Let me elaborate on the desserts and then I will give you my top 3 choices of the tapas. The peanut butter mousse was delicious, but the grape sorbet was too tart for me. The creamy smoothness of the peanut butter clashed with the texture and flavor of the sorbet.Chris and I discussed this last night and he basically said, “I am sorry you feel that way.” LOL! Anyways, I know he might read this and I want to apologize for offending him, if I did. Like I said, I am just stating my opinion and by no means is this blog going to have any impact whatsoever on the success of his restaurant. I think about 22 people are going to read this and only 2 of them live in Manhattan. As far as the red velvet Twinkie goes… I was a little nervous because one time when I was 6 years old I ate the entire family pack of Twinkies and got really really sick. To this day I cannot even smell one without gagging. So, being that red velvet cupcakes are one of my absolute favorite things to eat, I was a little scurred. Luckily, it tasted nothing like a Twinkie, and was properly stuffed with cream cheese frosting. At that point, I was ready to vomit and I kept eating the fucking thing.
the beef wellington
and the orrecchiette with rabbit sausage. (no pic sorry, I couldn't keep up with the dishes as fast as they were coming!) I can’t wait to go back and eat the other 878 things on his menu! I am sure that I have not named the dishes as they were on the menu, I am merely describing the items in them. After all, when you are dining with the owner, what is the point of looking at the menu at all?
After dinner we were whisked away in a scary black SUV instead of a taxi (of course because only commoners use taxis) to a club called ‘who cares’ where we proceeded to drink more champagne. I spent most of my time there with Chris’s wife making fun of badly dressed, homely “models” that needed to eat some sandwiches. A handsome man named Marc showed up to take us to another club called ‘I hate hip hop’ and I have to say I was a little upset because I had just fixated on these two skanks from New Jersey dancing away with their hideous hair and outfits. Trust me, I am no Versace, but I do own a mirror and I have glanced over the pages of a fashion magazine in the last decade. The night ended at 5 am and I was dragging ass today at the convention. My first seminar was stupid so I walked out and cruised the show floor looking for cool stuff. It is far less nerdy than I thought and there are far less nerds than those that trickle over into the AVN show from CES every year. If you don’t know what either of those are, google them and let your imagination figure out the rest. I did get to hold and caress the Canon 7D Mark II with the get-up that I need to balance the thing over my shoulder. More on that in a week or so…
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