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.