Westport is something of a celebrity town, with longtime residents Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward adding some Hollywood glamour, and convicted felon Martha Stewart injecting a dangerous gangster element into the town that makes it very edgy. Actually as you can see the pre-convict Martha had a much stronger influence on the town. This is Main Street, across the river from our hotel, housing a long line of Brooks Brothers, Ann Taylors and Talbots
with a couple of decent restaurants thrown in.
Because my parents don't approve of my relationship with Somchai, we're not allowed to stay in their house, and have to stay in a hotel when we visit them. We stayed at the Inn at National Hall in Westport, about thirty minutes south of Monroe. The hotel is fine, the usual New England chintz interior, although the exterior would be a major disappointment to any unsuspecting tourist looking for the quintessential New England experience. It's a brick building that I think used to be a factory, and is now marooned in a suburban office park surrounded by a parking lot. Service is also patchy. There are only about seven or eight rooms, and we stayed there for about a week, but every time we came to reception we had to identify ourselves and our room number, like there were so many Caucasian and Asian gay couples staying there simultaneously that they couldn't keep track of all of us. And we never met the manager the whole time, which is odd because at these types of places they always stress the family feeling, which is non-existent here. (Room: 6, Facilities: 3, Service: 3, Overall: 4). Oh, and I was just kidding about my parents of course, the real reason we don't stay there is that my room still has the bed I used when I was in high school, which is about the size of the pillow I use on our current bed.
Christmas Eve starts off with a festive dinner, as you can see below. The paper crowns are a relatively new addition to the festivities, and you can see that Dad really gets into it. We then eat a piece of meat and twenty five cakes and pies, and call it a night. Christmas day consists of watching the nephews and Pomme open an endless supply of presents. My invisible sister, the procreating one, once asked me if I were nervous showing all this personal stuff on the internet, obviously misunderstanding the incredibly tiny size of my audience. But I know she's nonetheless not big on this sort of thing, so we'll gloss over her photo and instead focus on Mom, who's more into the celebrity that comes from a starring role in this blog. Here, in a scene straight out of A Christmas Story, 
Mom plays the part of Ralphie and tries to shoot her eye out.
Rounding out the tour of Monroe sights, I took him to our oldest school, the East Village schoolhouse. That used to be the town's only school for a couple hundred years before we sprouted suburban tract housing, now we're forced to go there once a year and our teachers have to dress up in colonial garb. I also showed him Monroe Elementary School, where I joined in fourth grade after we moved from Puerto Rico. I was born near Hartford, CT, then took a slight Puerto Rican detour, then moved to Monroe. Notwithstanding that I'm as whitebread as can be, I was still referred to as the Puerto Rican while attending elementary school. I then moved to Chalk Hill Middle School, an architectural monstrosity so hideous I was ashamed to show Somchai so we skipped that, and moved on to Masuk High School. Weirdly we didn't take any photos of the school, but lots of the football field/running track, so that's what I've included here. I also searched the blog for photos of Monroe schools and came up empty, so our little town needs to get on the information superhighway ASAP. The other non-schol photo was of Great Hollow Lake, a pretty nature reserve. It was of course frozen over, but I couldn't get Somchai out on his skates.
Now, onto the sights of Monroe. The main part of town that hasn't been suburbanized is the town green. Like almost every town in New England, the town's center is a patch of land called the green, always presided over by a white Congregational church (the one poking out of Somchai's head). Across from the Congregational church is the Episcopal church, traditionally arch-enemies since the Congregationalists are descendants of the Pilgrims who fled England, and the Episcopalians are Anglicans who largely remained loyal to the mother country, even during the Revolution. A third old building, the Masonic Lodge, also sits on the green, and seems to be neutral in this theological war, since in the thirty years we've lived here I don't think we've ever seen anyone enter or exit the building, and I have no idea what goes on there.
Mom used to be on the Monroe Historical Commission, which had to approve any construction or renovation in the historical district. I believe it was through Mom's hard work that when Walmart decided to tear down the green and smother the whole area in a giant Walmart, they were forced to call it Ye Olde Walmart in keeping with the colonial character of the town center. (the last sentence isn't true, Mom did a very nice job of keeping the historical center intact, helped by the fact that nobody ever wanted to develop anything here.)
Ah, home sweet home! This is an odd part of the blog, since nobody will ever visit my hometown of Monroe as a tourist, so any casual visitor to the blog will be bored silly, and of course family members are intimately familiar with the place and will certainly learn nothing new here. But since I'm wed to chronology (No, Somchai I'm not calling you a name) we'll plow quickly through Monroe. During the day I showed Somchai some of the town's landmarks, and in the evening we hung around the house, mostly eating, watching movies and playing the family's favorite card game, Crick Crack (not sure if the words have K's at the end or not, so family feel free to correct me.) Mom is at her most frantic during the days leading to Christmas, as she decorates every square inch of the house in festive Christmasness, plus buys about four hundred presents for each of her grandchildren, plus another thousand for Pomme, forgetting that she's no longer a little girl that still believes in Santa. Stoli and I get some socks and the satisfaction of watching everyone else open thousands of gifts.
Our New York week ended with a big group brunch at Zoe, a longstanding SoHo restaurant. It's a prettily designed place, fairly traditional American food, with a special emphasis on brunch. Pomme and Stoli were already in town and staying at the Hudson, and Catherine, Saba and Laura came to hand us over to Mom and Dad over a big communal brunch. We then waddled to our car and drove to Connecticut.
We also went shopping with the girls in the Meatpacking district. As the name implies, this is where the meatpacking companies slaughter their livestock, and was also historically the home of some late night S&M bars and lots of transvestite hookers. As the rest of Manhattan real estate skyrocketed, even the grungy Meatpacking district became gentrified. It's now a very eclectic mix of high end quirky retailers, trendy cafes and even the occassional meatpacker.
From this photo I know we also had dinner at Kin Khao, one of New York's top Thai restaurants, located in SoHo. We go here pretty frequently because the head chef, Ray Wat, used to be Somchai's boss when Somchai first moved to Bangkok. Somchai was at university and also washing dishes for Ray at his Bangkok restaurant. Somchai did such a great job that he was promoted to waiter, but on his first day he spilled a huge tray of food all over an understandably unimpressed family, and he was sent back to the dishes. Ray moved to New York a while ago and runs this very popular restaurant that manages to be authentically Thai but also trendy, and keeping its popularity notwithstanding that it's been an "in" restaurant for a couple decades. We sat with the chef as he plied us with heaps of free food, oversaw a very busy kitchen serving a full restaurant, and managed to drink himself silly.
The last few days of our New York stay was a Bangkok reunion, with Catherine and Saba also in town. Again details are sketchy other than remembering we had a good time together. I also remember something about Morell's restaurant, a wine-oriented place in Murray Hill. I think we tried to have dinner there three different times but something came up each time, including our getting lost, which is virtually impossible in the straight, numbered grids of Manhattan. We also hung our in Laura's apartment, where Somchai and I showed different degrees of comfort with the touch of a woman, as you can see.
We had dinner with our friend Laura, who had moved from Bangkok to New York. She inconveniently chose Blue Hill, a very popular restaurant downtown in Greenwich Village. Unfortunately it was pouring rain, and I can't remember exactly how we made our way down to the restaurant, but I do remember it was painful. Food was simply prepared but very tasty. The chef is something of an Alice Waters disciple, stressing the importance of local ingredients, in this case sourcing almost all his supplies from nearby Hudson Valley. In fact, he's taken the trend to its logical extreme, by opening a farm there to help supply the restaurant. Service was very friendly but scatterbrained, regularly forgetting orders, but she had so much fun doing so that it was a refreshing change from the robots at Ducasse. (Food-17, Decor-14, Service-15). Oh, and Laura gets angry if I don't mention her at every opportunity, and she recently berated me for not including our trip to her wedding in our blog. Of course that points to a poor grasp of the blog's concept since the wedding was in 2006. Anyway, I'm just adding this discussion so I get credit for ample Laura coverage.
I'm not wild about the Hudson Hotel's location, near Columbus Circle, which is a pretty uninteresting corner of Midtown. But it's a stone's throw from Central Park, which is a great place to walk around, even in winter. It's empty and atmospheric, except for The Donald's great contribution to the city, the park's ice skating rink.
Alain Ducasse is probably the most celebrated chef in the world, on the strength of his Paris and Monte Carlo restaurants. He had just ventured into New York with his third restaurant prior to our trip, which was getting alot of negative attention due to its being the most expensive in the city. For us masochists, of course, that's like a red cape to a bull, so we quickly booked dinner here as soon as we planned our trip. Weirdly, his luxe restaurant is in the Essex House, which is a perfectly ok, if frumpy, hotel on Central Park South. Its main problem is that for a decade, every episode of Saturday Night Live ended with a plug for the hotel, along the lines of "guests of SNL stayed at the beautiful Essex House" and it always seemed like one of SNL's jokes rather than a real ad. Anyway, the restaurant itself is very impressive, one of the nicest spaces in the city. We both ordered a special white truffle tasting menu since they were in season, which consisted of eight dishes covered with very expensive white truffle shavings. 
Due to my cursory journaling during this trip I don't have many details, except the overall memory of excellent food served by fairly stiff, overly formal service. New York restaurants generally suffer from too informal, or too harried service, but the top restaurants overcompensate for this by going overboard on the formality. You would think Ducasse would get this spot on since France has really mastered the perfect mix of formality and friendliness at its top restaurants, but Ducasse's New York outpost hasn't figured this out yet. And I also remember the restaurant had the most impressive wine list I've ever seen, bigger than the phone book and full of rare and obscure offerings. But we made the mistake of opting for matching wines with our tasting menu, which had the usual effect of overintoxicating us. Midmeal, Somchai gave up trying to finish his wines in time with each course, and ended up with about six glasses surrounding his plate. Also, it was an odd choice of wines, mostly from places like Slovenia, which isn't really what I'd expected. (Food: 19, Decor: 19, Service: 15).
The real negative with the Hudson is the rooms. When I travel for work, I get stuck in a single on a cheap corporate rate. These rooms are tiny, but have some design flair. Since this visit was on our own tab, we opted for a suite, which is about three times bigger, a great plus. But the last time I had seen wood paneling was in the house I grew up in as a young kid before we went "uptown", or at least "upstreet". I think they were going for some sort of Adirondack lodge look, and granted it was more expensive material than the cheap wood paneling of my youth, but it still looked darkly depressing and cheap. 
(Room: 5, Facilities: 9, Service: 5, Overall: 6).
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Some more shots of the Hudson, including the scarily lit lounge off the lobby, and some great outdoor terraces. By the way, this should seem familiar to Pomme and Stoli, since you came in to stay here for a day or two with us. We went to see Little Shop of Horrors, then had dinner at a French restaurant that wasn't bad, but a bit quiet. Jog any memories?
Fortunately I only had to work a couple of days so I was able to move out of the W and into a much nicer hotel, the Hudson. One of many Ian Shrager creations around the city, this is probably my favorite, and I've stayed here a dozen or so times. The exterior isn't up to much, just a cement slab, but it makes the lavish, Alice in Wonderland interior all the more pleasantly surprising. Pictured here is the lobby, the library/pool hall, and the restaurant, which serves the best hotel breakfast in New York.
