DUCK!!!! With Jews!!!!! On Christmas!!!

Last week I was talking with my friend Cheo and he asked me what we were doing on Christmas eve? I said we were doing the Jewish thing, and he was surprised, saying he thought that Jews did not celebrate Christmas. I told him that he was right, we didn't celebrate, but that generally on Christmas eve Jews went out for chinese food and then went to the movies, because those were the places that stayed open that night. This year was no different, as Aviva and I met up with our friends Koffman and Erez at New Green Bo, a fabulous hole-in-the-wall place down on Bayard street (66 Bayard) in Chinatown. We arrived first, Koffman showed up with his friend Heather about 20 minutes later (in a bizarre quirk of fate she was meeting three different groups of people for dinner at the same restaurant, so sat with us in between here 1st and 3rd meals), and then Erez showed up soon after that.

We were pretty hungry after waiting outside for 40 minutes or so, and Koffman had been raving about the duck at this place, so as soon as we were seated in the back we ordered Peking Duck and a bunch of appetizers including an excellent scallion pancake and some very good cold, sesame noodles. As the appetizers we coming two other people were seated at our table, and over the course of the meal we had a very enjoyable conversation with everybody. Overall we ordered entirely too much food, as usual when everyone is hungry at a chinese place, and after the duck we got four more entrees, so we stuffed ourselves and packed the rest to go home. Overall the food was very, very good, although I can say that the foods in brown sauce, the eggplant with garlic and the beef with scallions, were much better than the shrimp chow fun and the rice cakes (kind of a chinese gnocchi) with mushrooms.

After dinner we got desert at the excellent chinatown ice cream factory, and then Aviva, Erez and I walked briskly up to 59th and Madison, giving our extra food away to a homeless guy and generally having a wonderful conversation, before Aviva and I got on the express bus back to the Bronx, where we got our car and drove home. Wonderful friends, wonderful night.

New York Jews

Simply put .. being Jewish in New York is awesome. You all the Jewish cultural benefits, like knishes, holidays on Rosh Hashanah and Passover, random yiddish in the street and hot Jewish girls everywhere (although that is not really important for me anymore but it was when I moved here). So, all the benefits, but not really many of the constraints, because, like in Israel, there are so many different types of Jews in New York that you can feel comfortable being Jewish any way you want. Any way you want to do Jewish, lots of others want to do Jewish that way too ...

This was brought home to me tonight, when I went to my cousins birthday party at my aunts house on Saturday night. My Aunt Debbie cooks a meal for you (whatever you want to eat) on your birthday, and as she is an amazing cook, it is always fabulous. As we all sat down to dinner, nine Jews around a huge pile of mussels and a pork roast, and listened to my cousin talk about how she only likes the traif from the ocean, I thought, I love being Jewish in New York :)