Rebecca Weger

I’ve had quite a number of homes over the years.  Today I landed back in NYC for the first time in five years.  I lived here for two years in the mid to late 90s and I miss it regularly.  It still feels like home.  We arrived late this afternoon and decided to head right for comfort food.

Dinner was at my favorite Japanese restaurant, Marumi.  I’m not enough of a connoisseur to claim I can tell the “best” Japanese food or “best” sushi.  But it is for sure my favorite.  Partly, its the memories.  I ate my first Japanese food here with a former roommate of mine.  She was an exchange student from Seol, and took me out as a hospitality gift.  I ate many meals here in graduate school when I lived just a block away.  Hot mustard, wasabi and a bottle of Saporo got me through a few bad colds and a flu one year.  Then there were the nights I sat at the sushi bar cramming the last few pages of reading in before my next class.  Or the memory of my mom’s first attempt at salad with chopsticks.

Joseph gamely ordered my two favorite dishes that I can no longer eat:  fried shumai with hot mustard, and yaki udon (now with organic chicken).  I don’t believe he was at all disappointed.

I did not ask any gluten-free questions.  I travel with my own gluten-free tamari.  I settled in with a bowl of chilled edamame and some sushi.  The salmon avocado sushi simply melted in my mouth.  We shared a bottle of sake.

After dinner we took a walk through the village and stumbled on Varsano’s Chocolate.  Having already gorged myself on sushi, a couple of cocoa truffles was more than enough for dessert. The discovery of an actuall bathtub in our hotel led to a brief detour by LUSH for the purchase of a bubble bar (there will be a full-on shopping excursion before the weekend is over) and we were back at our hotel.

A pretty good start to a few day getaway.