Another Good Friday (El Paso Taqueria)

Last night, after another long week, Aviva and I met up with some friends in the city for a well deserved night out. I hustled home after work, quickly showered and changed, and took the BxM10 into the city to help a friend with some moving issues. She needed to move some larger pieces of furniture out onto the curb for morning pick-up, and requested that I show up to help dismantle some things. My friend had gone to a nearby hardware store to get an axe or a sledgehammer to help disassemble the futon, but the guy at the store just laughed at her and gave her a set of hex wrenches, which ended up proving much more useful and less messy.

After we moved her furniture, she and I headed up town to meet Aviva and the rest of our friends at a small Mexican place called El Paso Taqueria. A medium-sized, Mexico-city style Mexican place, there are 3 of them scattered around the upper east side. We went to the one on 97th and Madison. The place was very pleasant, with about 10 tables, holding a good 50 people, packed into a small, dusky space. The walls were decorated with southwestern and mexican motifs, and a large flatscreen hovering above the dining area showed an ongoing footbol match.

The food choices were nice, a lot of nice variations on the standard mexican options of enchiladas, quesadillas and burritos (my burrito de hongas ... 3 mushroom burrito, takes the prize), along with several more interesting options, including the lamb-wrapped in avocado leaves that Russell had. Aside from the fact that they gave me a steak burrito and gave Sarah my mushroom burrito, the service was good as well. In fact, my only objection other than the mix-up with my food (that resulted in me getting in a few bites of steak and missing out on several excellent mushrooms), was the fact that the restaurant was not showing any of the NCAA tournament games ... how is it possible for there to be a TV in a location that serves beer during the Madness and not be showing it.

So I did not watch the games but I did have some great conversations, such great people here, and after dinner we made our way back down 2nd avenue, past the construction of the 2nd avenue subway which will never be completed, and after failing in our first attempt to find ice cream (because Emack & Bolios was inexplicably closed on a Friday night at 10 pm ... how is that even reasonable in Manhattan, the night is just starting at 10 pm) we ended up at Pink Berry. Although this place is a phenomenon, I did not find it that good, although Aviva liked it quite a lot and overall the opinions were positive. I just found the lack of choice in yogurt flavor (original - lemon, coffee and mint) a bit off putting, although the large amount of extra mango pieces I got with my yogurt were great, and they do have some wonderfully quirky kitchen tools. After the yogurt we said our good nights and took the BxM10 home ... another good night ...