Bond 45 and a lotta $$

I could probably write posts about New York for the next month ? the portion sizes, the in your faceness of it all. But the one thing that strikes me about the Big Apple is the price. If you look ahead before a trip and find places you’d like to eat, recommendations and the like - things are good. But, go for a walk and decide to stop somewhere you’ve never heard of and it can all go wrong.

It happened me a few times when I came here three years ago with Mrs F. A few seafood places that ended up costing me an absolute fortune. And it happened again last night when, after a 2 1/2 hour walk I gave up and decided to just go to the next place that came along. And there it was ? Bond 45 ? an Italian/Steak house. I sat down and ordered an eggplant caponata and a Long Island Ice Tea. I followed it up with a 12oz New York strip steak. The caponata was sickening after about two fork fulls. It was nice, but it would have suited a platter of different tastes rather than one big plate of it.

My steak came as just that ? a steak on its own. No chips, nothing. It was a pretty damn fine steak. But when the bill came at the end, I was bemused to find out how much it cost. For a small plate of cold eggplant and a steak and two drinks. Oh yeah, and I did have an Espresso and a bit of Italian chocolate cake, which to be honest was just like a Sara Lee Chocolate Gateaux. But it was horribly expensive and I’ll not be making that mistake again. I’ll be making sure that I plan my meals on the t’Internet before hand. Lesson learned. Tonight it’s the turn of Tao, a restaurant recommended to me by a few people.