NYC-3/25

Great to wake up in NYC, on vacation. After a light breakfast, juice and toasted NY Bagel with cream chess were out and "on the town."
After a bus ride down 5th Ave. we started at Tiffany and went to several possible, upscale, watch repair places before joining the manager of the main Saks Fifth Ave. store and her husband for lunch in the store cafe, remarkable what service one receives when you are a guest of "the big boss". I wanted to eat lightly, both to try to control my weight gain and also I figured this wasn't a "gourmet" stop on our tour. After a glass of wine I had one and a half deviled eggs and a quarter of a Cuban sandwich. My decisions were correct.
The afternoon, it was almost 3 PM before we left the Saks store, was spent in other stores and glass galleries between 50th and 75th. We walked slowly back to our guest quarters.
Tuesday evening we took some children of a niece to dinner to celebrate their 2nd wedding anniversary. I had read a "squib" in the "New York Magazine" a month or so before and had called, even before they opened, to get a reservation. "Mia Dona" is located at 206 E 58th St, phone 212-750-8117. There is a good review in the Wed. April 2 NY Times, by Frank Bruni, which you can draw up on line. I am not going to try to compete with a professional, excellent, food writer. I will say that I find very little in his article with which to disagree. The 4 of us shared a bottle of wine, but since Marilyn takes only a sip is was more like 2 1/2 people working on the bottle. I chose to start with fried rabbit and vinegar chips. I shared with others and in turn received some of their first courses. Of the first courses I found the best to be the caponata salad. My rabbit was crisp and, to me, too salty. The chips were greasy and could have used more flavor. The owner suggested I try the meat loaf, which was nothing special, but who wants to go against the owner suggestion. We all shared an order of sauteed spinach and pocorino as well as a delicious Ice Cream Sandwich, here I don't agree with Bruni.
The total bill for the evening including some decaf, tip and tax was $220.
Service was satisfactory but not outstanding. Ambiance and layout are well described by Mr. Bruni. It turned out to be a place we probably will not repeat.