Cafe de Artiste & Curtains

Fabulous Food and Silly Musical Fun

Dad arrived in New York City and we headed uptown to check him in at the Comfort Inn on 71st near Central Park West. Not the best hotel and they were remodeling but at least it was quite, convenient and he said the shower had great hot water pressure. This is a big improvement from the midtown Ameritania and New Yorker hotels where he has stayed before. We stopped into Cafe Fortuna for a quick lunch bite before walking around the Upper West Side.

I made reservations for Cafe de Artiste, this fantastic old-world New York place I just love. I only found out about it recently. It is a beautiful space filled with lovely booths, dark wood furniture, a fabulous bar and wonderful flowers and foliage in the front rooms. The space winds about and each room seems intimate and relatively quite for a restaurant near Lincoln Central. One of the real attractions are the six Howard Chandler Christy murals that adorn many of the walls and rooms where you enter. Painted in the mid 1930s, they really have become rather haunting and beautiful reminders of when art and food co-existed in refinement. And the food is fabulous, although I had a dry snapper. My salad was fabulous and Dad's scallops on pollenta with field mushrooms were spectacular. And they had fabulous desserts, tea and coffee - my milk came warmed as to not cool my tea when added. I just love the attention to service and detail. I think it'll become my little luxury splurge when I go to the Met.


Off to midtown to see Curtains. David Hyde Pierce won the Tony for best musical performance robbing Raul Esparza of his rightful trophy; he was much better and had a more challenging role in Company. The plot was simple. The leading lady and star of a Boston western musical production is murdered. The singing detective arrives to question the cast and chorus while puns, pratfalls and punditry fly about the stage. Debra Monk plays the producer with too much largeness, literally - with huge coats and costumes - and figuratively - shouting her jokes and holding dramatic pauses. In contrast, Edward Hibbert, playing the gay director, and Ernie Sabella as Mr. Bernstein do a marvelous job hamming up their roles and embodying their cliche character; they seemed to have fun with their parts. Overall, a silly and forgetfully fun way to kill a few hours.