Celebrating a new Age

Yesterday I took the afternoon off as it was my birthday. I celebrated in style by trying out a few places I haven’t been to before around the city. We started off by having a little picnic in the West Village, cheese, crackers and chorizo was provided by Murray’s Cheese. An old cheese shop located at 254 Bleecker Street that carries a full assortment of flavorful cheeses, meats and crackers. The store even has boot camp cheese tasting class or a class where you can embark on an exclusive tour of their subterranean cheese caves.
A birthday isn’t a birthday unless you have a cupcake from Magnolia at 410 Bleecker Street. The line was short, so we only spent twenty minutes waiting to get in. We then spent happy hour at L'Orange Bleue in Nolita feasting on dollar East End oysters and Prosecco. We have a love hate relationship with L'Orange Bleue as last time we found a worm crawling on our oysters. The time before that they did not honor an online coupon promotion they were endorsing. However, dollar oysters in New York are rare- so we make excuses.
As my birthday just involved a day of eating and not feeling guilty we then headed back up to the West Village to be greeted by a fortune telling gypsy at 1920’s themed restaurant, Employees Only. The deco-ish feel of the roaring twenties is a West Village hotspot filled with all the absinthe you can handle. Naively trying the sweetbreads thinking it was an assortment of “sweet bread” I was surprised to have a thymus gland of a lamb on my plate. The steak tartar was impressive as were the cocktails. Ginger smash, Yellow jacket and the Pisco Sour were among my favorites.
Finishing off the evening we settled on Waverly Inn for star gazing and socializing. The paparazzi were loitering outside in the hopes of catching a starlet or two. Instead they settled for Ben Stiller and his wife Christine Taylor, Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow. The night lived on as we went to quasi-private club, Beatrice Inn where I received my birthday present – a night gawking at Anna Wintour’s daughter Bee Shaffer.