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Dining in Brooklyn

I saw this meme, about your five favorite local restaurants, on Ali‘s blog and thought it was a decidedly good challenge. Since there are about 20,000 restaurants in New York City, I thought I’d narrow down my favorites to among the couple hundred or so in my Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Sushi restaurants are a dime a dozen in this city, but Blue Ribbon Sushi takes the cake. Homemade wasabi and soy sauce, plus mix-it-yourself miso soup, tastes so crisp and nice. And lets not forget the fish — fresh, simple and delicious! Yum. It’s my favorite place when I want to treat myself (or someone else) to a night of high quality eats.

Another favorite is Miriam’s, a wonderfully decadent Israeli restaurant. I’ve seen a few restaurants open and close in that space, but Miriam’s has the magic touch and has made itself into an “unpretentious neighborhood spot.” Half-off bottles of wine on Mondays and Tuesdays are tempting, as is the decently priced weekend brunch menu.

Another favorite brunch spot of mine is Beso, serving scrumptious South American influenced dishes. If you arrive before the noon and 1pm brunch crowds, you won’t have to wait. I love the empanadas and yucca hash browns, and friends of mine swear by the dulce con leche and chocolate french toast.

Bogota Bistro serves Central and South American dishes, with an emphasis on Colombian food, of course. Mmm, I can taste the plantain crusted chicken, fried yucca, and cilantro mashed potatoes as I write this!

The Brooklyn Fish Camp, an outpost of Mary’s Fish Camp in the West Village, serves almost any kind of seafood your heart could desire. Instead of facing hour-long waits on the weekends, I’ve taken to eating here on Tuesday nights, with great success.

My favorite part of it all, is that even the furthest away restaurant in this list is only a 10-minute walk from my apartment. Little wonder that my kitchen doesn’t get very much use!

What are your five favorite local restaurants?

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I Won the Lottery!

NYC Half Marathon

To get into the NYC Half-Marathon, that is. Apparently the 10,000 slots sold out so fast in the race’s inaugural run last year, that they decided to make a lottery of it this year. I’ve already laid out an ambitious training plan for the next 10 weeks, complete with speedwork and cross-training. My goal is to feel better and run smarter than I did during the Brooklyn Half last month. Plus, it’ll just be cool to run through Times Square with thousands of other crazy people. Who knows, I may even turn into a temporary morning runner (!) to beat the worst of the summer heat and humidity!

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Still Here

Don’t worry, my laptop may have died, but I’m still kicking. Dell has sent me a new (refurbished) laptop as a replacement (yay!), which I received today, so I hope to be getting back to normal in the blogosphere in the coming days.

Anyway, until I’m set up again, here’s a little entertainment.  I saw a quiz on Emily’s blog about one of my favorite things in the world: coffee (duh), and so I thought I’d share the results with you…

You Are an Espresso
At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energeticAt your worst, you are: anxious and high strung

You drink coffee when: anytime you’re not sleeping

Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

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Second Chances

In thinking about second chances, the theme for this week’s Sunday Scribblings, I’ve come to the realization that I’m still making my way in life through my first chances.  I see all those first chances as necessarily leading me to my next first chance, and so on.  Is there a point at which you feel like you’ve exhausted your first chances, and must start using your second chances to live life? If there is, I’m not there yet  — life so far has felt like a series of first chances.  Or is it only a matter of definition?  Am I choosing to define all of life’s choices as first chances because everything thus far in life has led me to the point I’m at now?

At the moment, I happen to be reading Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  One of the first passages in the book has the main character, Tomas, facing a decision.

We can never know what we want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come… …There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison.  We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.  And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?  That is why life is always like a sketch.  No, “sketch” is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture. Einmal is keinmal, says Tomas to himself.  What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all.  If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.

I’m only half way through and am still processing the full weight (or lightness!) of the book.  The idea of a second chance does not exist, which quite fits my realization that I’ve been running along the last 30 years on first chances.  But so far I feel decidedly more optimistic about that prospect than what I’m beginning to understand from Kundera’s novel.

For those who have read the book and have their own thoughts on this topic, please share!  And for those wishing to read more about second chances, click here.