The Good Life

Sometimes I am so busy planning events and trips and things that I don’t stop to realize how lucky I am to be able to do all of the fun things that we get to do. I had a ticket to BlogHer Food this weekend, and I ended up selling it, a decision that I am so happy about. Since I am headed to San Francisco for the Foodbuzz Festival next month and have had a bunch of weekend trips in the past months, not to mention a recent life-changing decision, I was more than happy to just make the short trip to New Jersey to visit my family and then into New York City for a New York City Wine and Food Festival event.

We drove into the city in pretty record time considering the traffic in the Holland Tunnel and found free on street parking. Score! We had plenty of time to wander around SoHo before our dinner reservation, taking in the beautiful fall weather and all of the great energy New York has to offer. I love all of the little things, like artists on the street and random, amazingly talented singers like these guys who were singing Up on the Roof for everyone to hear. They were SO good.

After some wandering we headed to Barolo for dinner. Being that it was so warm out, all of the front windows were open to the sidewalk. I enjoyed a glass of Vermentino at the bar while waiting for our table in the garden.

To start, we shared a Caprese salad to enjoy the last of the summer tomatoes which are still quite delicious in October! We cleaned every last drop of the fragrant olive oil off of the plate with fresh breadsticks.

For dinner, I ordered the spaghetti with seafood and spicy tomato sauce, cooked in parchment paper. It was absolutely incredible. I wanted to eat the paper to get the rest of the sauce! I didn’t But each and every piece of seafood was cooked to perfection, the sauce was truly spicy, as advertised, and the pasta was exactly what I wanted, since I ran a whopping one time this week!

I didn’t snap a photo because we devoured it too quickly, but we shared a flourless chocolate cake and each had a cappuccino for dessert

After dinner, we headed to the main event of the evening, John Lennon’s 70th birthday party at City Winery, an event that was part of the New York City Wine and Food Festival.

City Winery is a very cool venue for live music and wine. I had never experienced a music and wine pairing before, but it worked. Pairings included a Nigl Gruner Veltliner with the song Julia, Cristalino Cava Brut with Instant Karma, and City Winery Late Harvest Riesling from the Finger Lakes with Imagine.

The evening included 5 flights of wine and 5 sets of John Lennon’s songs. The crowd was rockin! It was both fun and emotional as many people in the room clearly had a connection to the music, the man, and his simple message of peace. Leaving City Winery and walking back out into the city late at night and after a really fun evening kind of made me want to move to New York. But I guess I say that about a lot of places I visit

How’s your weekend going so far?