Help!

So I got back to the office after lunch with Noah the other day, excited about how well my first meat up went, only to have my bubble completely burst by my coworkers.

Alex: So how'd it go?
Me: Good! Really well! He wasn't creepy or sketchy or awkward at all! And the restaurant was really awesome - this underground Japanese place below an office building. He's really into Japanese food and his wife's Japanese.
All three of them: OOOOOOOOOO HE HAS A WIFE??
Me: Yeah, but it was totally platonic! He wasn't hitting on me or anything!
Chris T: Yeah right.
Chris L: Did he tell his wife he was having lunch with you?
Me: I don't know! But he talked about her pretty openly! He said she was awesome!
Chris T: Nope. Sketchy. No way he told his wife he was meeting a strange girl for lunch.
Me: IT'S JUST LUNCH! It's not like he saw pictures of me or anything, he had no reason to think I would be attractive.
Chris L: But what was he doing cruising the W4M section of Craigslist??
Alex: Ooo good point.
Me: THE STRICTLY PLATONIC SECTION!!

So guys, what's the jury on this one? Can a married man ever meet a 22-year-old girl off the internet for lunch? How about dinner? How about brunch? Can he ever tell his wife? I'd like to think, if I put myself in wifey shoes, that I would be cool with it, especially since I of all people know how innocent my intentions truly were. I mean, I'd really like to think other people's marriages are stronger than my desire to eat something tasty.

Anyways, the bigger question remains: what are the ground rules here?

There's a guy, StephenB, who is 58 and wants to go to Casa Mono on Tuesday. Our email exchange has already covered his age and our desires for something explicitly platonic. After Tuesday night was suggested, I asked to postpone a couple of weeks for my wallet's sake, to which he replied,

hmm ... I'd be willing to treat you to tapas .. it's not a major three course meal and Casa Mono's pretty reasonable and we could meet and see if we wanted to do another one in a few weeks... up to you

My caution-throwing, tapas-loving stomach agrees. "We could sit at the bar!" She says, "just nibbles!" But do I want to cross that line? He erases the line based on the price and formality of the meal, but is there really a difference between tasting menu at Per Se and Dollar Menu at McDonald's when someone is paying for your nourishment? Forget date territory for a second, is this veering into escort territory? Again, this should be ok, but as my ex-boyfriend constantly reminded me, I inhabit a different world from Most People, where gogo dancing/sex blogging are equally NBD. I can't think about me, what are this 58-year-old newly-divorced man's expectations?

Dammit.

Well, what if I stay away from the sangria?

Savory Tip

The mecca of Japanese food?

Apparently in New Jersey. From what Noah described, it sounds like an amazing treasure trove of Japanese packaging, with a FOOD COURT attached. Best of all, there's a shuttle from Port Authority! I might have to make the pilgrimage this weekend, if the weather is nice. Who's with me??

Noah@Sakagura

Any of my friends could tell you that I have something called "extreme menu anxiety" in which I am unable to go to a restaurant without first reading every published review, with a good smattering of Citysearch/Menupages/Chowhound/Yelp opinions to round out the picture. Even then, I try to drag as many people as I can with me, and once I'm there, will usually interrogate some poor server multiple times before I order.

I just don't want to order the wrong thing. You know, the thing that chefs throw on the menu to get suckers who don't know better to order, thereby boosting their profit margin and allowing them to afford the less cost-effective but truly passionate dishes on the menu. Examples? Seared ahi* tuna, goat cheese arugula salads, anything with salmon.

Which is why I love tasting menus and omakase. No dodging there; the chef decides what you eat and therefore stands behind everything you eat. And, coming to the point, it's also why I think this buddy search thing might be a really great idea.

Sakagura was Noah's recommendation, and it was a solid one. Here's a guy who is married to a Japanese woman, spent time in Japan, and is discernibly obsessed with Japanese food, and he led me - with all the confidence you could hope for in an eating companion - to an underground lair where all the Japanese nationals go. A place I'd never even heard of before.

Plenty has been written about Sakagura. I won't repeat them here. I'll show you some pretty pictures though:



This is the "Jewel" Oke Bento, which is charmingly described on the menu as "seasonal sashimi, fried tidbits, grilled tidbits." I fucking love that. It's like, "No, I won't tell you exactly what is going to be on your huge round plate, just trust me, it's going to be tasty because it'll be either grilled or fried." You can't say no. (Noah had the same.)

The sashimi was top quality, not too big and slabby. The purplish mounds toward the bottom are three individual rice cakes seasoned with pickled shiso. The grilled bits were tofu, a thin slice of steak, and eel. The fried bits were two fans of tempura'd julienned veggies. The little cup had pickled mountain yams, and in the top left was a melon-ball scoop of taro in what tasted like a sauce spiked with sake.

A word here about shiso. Food writers and Top Chef contestants seem to wank all over shiso, but I'd never encountered it before. One of the sashimi was squid rolled with shiso leaf, and it was a crazy flavor pairing - spicy, herby, oceany. I am now wanking over shiso.

I guess I should also say something about the decor here: it was cool. Honestly, I don't care much about that stuff, but if you do, you'd like it. Woodsy and clean and as Japanese as you can picture in that authenticity-seeking, culturally tokenizing head of yours.

On to dessert!

Noah and I discovered we are both into savory desserts. He ordered a scoop of sea salt chocolate ice cream, which was crazy good. I got this:



It's a black sesame creme brulee, and it was even better. My menu anxiety also stems from not wanting to ever get food envy, so this was a clutch win for the home team.

Definitely a great meal, and not even outrageous at $27 including dessert. For my first "meat up," I really couldn't have asked for better. Noah was engaging, interesting, not awkward, and definitely not sketchy. We talked about his time living in Qingdao, my time living in Oaxaca, our takes on fusion cuisine, law, finance, and eggs.

The takeaway of the day: cooking someone an egg, just the way they like it, is love. No other food is so versatile, yet so particular. My dad cooked eggs for me growing up, forever defining my idea of perfection as whites fried to a crisp brown on the edges, yolk gooey but never runny within. Just a little FYI.

We parted ways at 53rd and Lex with a handshake. Back at the office, I saw that Noah had sent me a link to a Picasa album of food pictures. I sent back an Amazon link to Jeffrey Steingarten, and a promise to update him on Shang, which is my next meat-up. Will I see him again? I hope so, he was fun.

*Which, the way, is just the common yellowfin. Bluefin or bust!

Confirmed

Sakagura for lunch tomorrow at 12:15.

Preliminary facebook-stalking of my lunch date reveals a mountain bike enthusiast with pensive eyes. Married, which at this early stage can be either a relief or a stealth bomb.

He definitely wasn't lying about his foodie credentials, though. The largest photo album consists entirely of food encountered on a trip to Osaka, 58 photos in all. I thought I was the only one who shamelessly records meals, disturbing-other-diners-with-my-flash be damned. Good to know, good to know.

I may have a date* as soon as tomorrow.

Noah is not a fan of bananas or raw eggs, thinks I should read FXCuisine, and prefers Japanese.

I told him about the worst raw egg I ever had, which was in the form of a Prairie Chicken. The story isn't interesting; I did it because it was there. It was bad, but not terrible. It tasted like rolling into Frary for breakfast hungover from 99-cent margaritas, asking for an over medium fried egg and getting it way slutty easy, and dousing it with Tabasco to mask the sliminess. In other words, it tasted like the aftertaste of a poor college-era decision.

He is currently pondering good Japanese spots for our midtown lunch meeting. He has been pondering for a while. I like that.



*Again, the label problem. "Buddydate" is clumsy, "fooddate" seems redundant. What should we do?