Friday, August 28, 2009

Five Star Dining in the City!

Also baseball.

Phil and I had the great pleasure to be the dining guests of my brother-in-law John and his son Luke in NYC recently. We ate at the Legends Suite Club in the Bronx and what an experience it was! Photos won't do this place any justice.

When we first arrived, we were escorted to our comfortable outdoor overstuffed seats in this park-like setting. The seats were large and comfy. On the way to our seats we passed open unguarded open barrels of soft drinks and giants tubs of candy bars and other treats. Grab as much as you liked. We did.

We sat down to watch batting practice. It was then I noticed a young man -- obviously another type of server here -- with an electronic tablet. He was taking orders from the other "guests" around us for bit more standard ballpark fare. I say "standard" but things like sushi were on this menu. There was also pizza, popcorn, ice cream, nachos w/cheese, pretzels etc. After you placed your order (never leaving your seat) food runners brought it out to us. Amazing! I imagined I wanted a pretzel. Two minutes later a pretzel was delivered to me by a panting food runner.

But after a bit, we realized that if this went on much longer, we'd never be able go to the sit down dinner awaiting us inside out of the heat of the day. Yes, there was a special dining room back inside the stadium. And we walked back past the tubs of free food to eat more food inside a grand dining room.

Although it was buffet style, each table still had its own server awaiting our instructions to fetch us whatever liquid refreshment we desired. With the exception of alcohol, all drinks were complimentary. And the buffet tables were incredible, much better than anything I have ever seen on Mothers Day anywhere. There was a Mediterranean food table, a Tex-Mex table, a Steak/Prime Rob/Rib setup. A Polish table. A fish table. A exotic salad table. A dessert table. There were chefs carving the meat, sushi chefs preparing their fare. Servers and table cleaners and moe chefs were everywhere Wow. There were even hot dogs and kraut (which my young nephew chose). Phil, my stepson, went for the duck (yes, duck), ribs, lamb and prime rib all on the same plate.

This is what that looked like.

And this was just his first plate of several for Phil. I tried to be more reasonable in my approach so I chose an anchovy salad, a shrimp enchilada and some sushi. I wanted to save room for more of the treats outside. Although there was dessert inside as well. This was truly a bacchanalian feast unto itself. One would have not been surprised to the the Ghost of Christmas Present carving the beef. There was just excess to the nth degree. We finished our dinner. And if we wanted to come back in an hour and be re-seated to have a second or third dinner, I'm sure we could have.


Back to our seats. The order takers and runners were still circumspect in their duties and eager to feed us and remained so that entire game. Under our chairs piled up nacho boxes, pizza boxes, sushi plates, sausage and pepper remains and various type of ice cream wrappers and half empty containers of drinks or all types. We were truly treated like royalty and we acted like we hadn't eaten in a year!


Yes, there was a game in between all the food but it almost seemed secondary to the experience. I think the Yankees lost.

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