Matt from the UES says...

Another weekend of eating and drinking to excess, and loving every minute of it.

Friday evening started with impromptu 7pm post-work drinks with a friend at Carriage House, an east midtown watering hole.

At 9pm, I met up with friends at Kanoyama, f/k/a Iso, an East Village sushi restaurant which I've been to no less than 100 times over the past several years. Unfortunately, the secret about this place has gotten out, and we were not able to be seated until after 10pm. In the interim, my friends and I killed time at a nearby Spanish wine bar.

The sushi meal included a very interesting $25 appetizer (which we shared) mysteriously called "tuna rib." It was, in fact, a rack of ribs from a tuna fish. The ribs were connected by cartilage, and the interstitial spaces contained raw tuna which was scooped out with spoons. Then, after we picked the rack clean with our spoons, it was taken back to the kitchen to be marinated in yuzu sauce and grilled. The grilling melted away the cartilage, and we were presented with a pile of tuna bones that could be gnawed on, and had a flavor very similar to beef ribs. Call it Japanese barbecue.

The meal ended well after midnight, but the weekend of eating didn't end there. The next day I took my mom out for her birthday, first to a "chocolate tasting," and then for a lunch of tapas. The tasting was at Chocolat Michel Cluizel, a store located within ABC Carpet on 19th and Broadway. We sat with the manager of the store, who led us through a sampling of 7 different chocolate bars (small squares) that had varying levels of cocoa purity and came from varying countries. My favorite was the Papua New Guinea 67%, for what that's worth. The experience was very similar to a wine tasting but, well, with chocolate. $35 per person, if anyone reading this is curious.

We then walked around the Union Square Greenmarket for a while before ending up at Casa Mono for lunch. We shared three crazy tapas creations: one had potatoes, duck egg, and "tuna bacon"; one had clams, sea beans (whatever those are) and a type of short noodle; and the third was marinated duck breast. All were doused in olive oil and garlic, and all were delicious. We each had a glass of Spanish rose wine as an accompaniment.

And that only gets us to 3pm Saturday.

Saturday night, stuffed beyond reckoning, I relaxed and zoned out and didn't do much of anything (or eat much of anything).

Sunday a friend of mine who lives in NJ picked me up in her car and we zipped over to Park Slope, Brooklyn to have dinner at Al Di La, an Italian trattoria that I had heard a lot about. We had a glass of wine at Moutarde, across the street, while waiting for a table. The meal consisted of beef cheek risotto (which we shared as an appetizer), followed by whole grilled orata (a Mediterranean fish) for me and pasta with pork ragu and fresh ricotta for my friend. Everything was great, though the pear cake that we shared as a dessert was mysteriously lacking in pears.

And that's it. Not a bad way to kick off a Passover week of mild deprivation that begins tonight.