Our entire New York trip, the Czarina is convinced, consisted of merely floating from meal to meal. Don’t get me wrong, we occasionally indulged in NYC-specific consumeristic impulse buying. But overall, this trip was all about the food.

We were able to secure reservations for Adour, Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant, at a decent dinner hour only by calling the concierge at the St. Regis, where we were staying. Previously, we had attempted to get reservations through Open Table, and wound up with a 6:30 reservation. Ew.

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Some of you may remember that the Czarina resolved to try new and exotic foods this year:

Resolution the FIFTH: I will try something I wouldn’t otherwise try this year. Maybe blowfish, or perhaps unagi.

I suppose you can see where this is going already.

But, in an attempt to string you along, I thought I would talk a bit about Sushi Yasuda, the restaurant at which the drama unfolded. We gave the sushi chefs free rein to give us whatever they felt moved to give us, with only a couple of exceptions. The Czar doesn’t like eel (unagi), and blowfish is illegal in the US, so that was out.

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…I’m trying to make reservations, for the love of all that’s holy!

The Czar and Czarina are celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary, and they decided to go to NYC to indulge the Foodie gene. Unfortunately, it appears that a lot of people live there and want to eat there! How dare they! Don’t they know that The Little Owl is on our list?! Who wants to eat at 10:30 pm on a Thursday?!

For most of the attempted reservations (for “real” places that locals eat), I was told that I couldn’t reserve any more than one month ahead. And then ONE MONTH AHEAD TO THE DAY I called. Nope, booked up at lots of places already, except for the 10:30 slot. I don’t care how much press you have, I’m not eating at 10:30!

So I decided to see if I could get reservations to Adour, Alain Ducasse’s brand new restaurant in the St. Regis hotel. Word apparently has gotten around that Chef Ducasse is trying for three Michelin stars because the only time I could procure was 6:30 pm. NO ONE EATS DINNER IN NYC AT 6:30! We may as well brand “Tourist” on our foreheads and wear white sneakers and I <3 NYC t-shirts. I hadn’t really intended to eat someplace that fancy and Frenchy. But by the time we get there they’ll have been open a few scant weeks and that’s always an interesting experience.

I was able to get seats at Sushi Yasuda, serving some of the best fish in NYC. I don’t know if I’m more excited about that, or the fact that you can purchase orgami kits related to the food you’re eating.

If one overlooks the inconvenience of having locals polluting the landscape and using up all the foodie resources, I’m looking forward to our upcoming trip.

Whenever I think about eating in NYC, though, I’m reminded of an episode during a family vacation in the late 80s. My nuclear family was eating out, and, due to whatever we were talking about, we erupted in laughter.

A dour New Yorker next to us in the restaurant leaned over and said, “You’re not from here are you?” My father said, “No, why?” The New Yorker grimaced and said, “You’re too happy.”

I’ve never forgotten that guy. I’ll bet he’s one of the people taking up the restaurant seats I want now, so I’ll guess he finally has his karmic revenge on those annoyingly happy out-of-towners.