Gift Horses
I like surprises. I never understood eager beaver kids who’d scout out their Christmas presents before they were wrapped. If I had a baby, which is highly unlikely, I wouldn’t want to know its sex until it was born. I hate it when people don’t take surprises seriously (what I think is a birthday present was left in its clearly marked shipping box on our dining room table all last week and drove me batty—and to add insult to injury, if I’m to believe the packaging, the color of the not-so-secret object isn’t really my first choice. Am I ungrateful or what?).
I do get antsy this time of year because I get wound up trying to deduce where my birthday dinner will be (my party is Saturday at Sheepshead Bay gem, Clemente’s, though it’s looking like rain will thwart my dockside dining plans). All I know as of last night is that it’s a restaurant above 14th Street, has a well-known chef, is upscale, has cuisine from the European continent but I can’t know the country because it would give it away (wha?) but that it’s not Italian, and there was uncertainty whether the restaurant was less than a year old.
Um, those are pretty useless clues. So, I’m racking my brain trying to come up with sparse European cuisines: Swedish, Portuguese, Greek (not really underrepresented but James might think it is)? Aquavit? Anthos? Can't think of a Portuguese other than Tintol and that doesn't seem right. I suspect Eastern Europe is out, at least I hope so because I don’t want to end up at the Russian Tea Room.
Second guessing James isn’t easy because his thought process is way different than mine and he’s not super up on dining trends and openings (me either, really, but I seem plugged in by comparison). I was all, “did you read about this restaurant or did someone tell you about it?” His coworkers are strangely foodie (mine not so much) so it wouldn’t necessarily by a bad thing if he got his idea from one of them. Last year he picked Cookshop, which I never would’ve guessed.
Despite saying that I enjoy surprises, I’m also a bit of a worrier and an obnoxious control freak so I always have pent up fear that I’ll end up someplace wretched. Is this what not looking a gift horse in the mouth is about?
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