This is a real sardinian classic: prawns marinated with ginger, brown sugar, lime and chili and then grilled over the fire. As a starter there have to be the culurgiones from casa raviolo. Culurgiones are fresh pasta filled with potato and mint, a sardinian speciality. Serve them with a sauce of fresh tomatoes or with butter and sage.

Found a tin of lobster soup in the back of the drawer.

egg on toast.

"coffin" cake kevin brought from zürich yesterday :-)

Kevin tried to re-cook a il bucco dish. Yummy!
Lukewarm potato salad with celery and parsley and fish filet with mint

A quick delight with leftovers from the fridge ;-)

This is the beautiful Laguiole corkscrew Sarah gave me for my birthday. I admire the handmade Laguiole products since I first saw one at Sir Nick's. It is soo nice to actually own one now :)

Chateau Laguiole Bois d'Olivier
Chateau Laguiole avec manche bois d'olivier. Mitres inox brossées.
Tire-bouchon en téflon pour une meilleure introduction dans le bouchon.
Handmade in France.

It's mad but we toped the Il buco dinner. Last night we ate at Blue Hill Restaurant. I came across this on pims blog.

"with Dan Barber, chef and proprietor of Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills. Stone Barns is only 45 minutes from Manhattan, but it might as well be a whole different universe. A model of self sufficiency and environmental responsibility, Stone Barns is a working farm, ranch, and a three-michelin-star-worthy restaurant. (Note to Michelin: limiting your guide to the five boroughs means you've missed out on perhaps the most interesting and unique restaurant in all of New York.)

Dan's commitment to the environment is well known, but he is hardly a die-hard radical. He is a businessman determined to find a way to be both environmentally and economically sustainable - now that's the way of the future."

We actually wanted to go to Blue Hill farm but then we were running out of time and decided to go to the one on washington place.

Let me tell you we ate the most outstanding food. Here some of the delights we had:

Amuse bouche: a beet root burger, dried rucola with salt, home made butter and something tomato
Beautiful carrots and radish probably marinated in something like salt and lemon water.
With this we got absolutely lovely warm bread sticks.

Maine crabmeat, fennel, apple and stone hill barns panther soybeans, apple mustard broth.

Farona Beets from the farm with local goat cheese, walnut puree, dried fruit and nuts.

This mornings farm egg, foraged mushrooms and stone barn greens.

Wild striped bass, pistou of local vegetables and pureed basil.
With the main course we had a fantastic Delicata and hubard squash puree with honey in it and marinated beets.
Uwe had the lamb from the menu and I still have to find out how it was done.

Passion fruit souffle and passion fruit ice cream.

Steamed cheese cake, dark chocolate, roasted peanuts and and maldon salt.

I had of course the old and new world cheese selection which came with marinated cranberries and portulak.

www.bluehillnyc.com

Blue Hill Restaurant
75, Washington Place
Greenwich Village
New York

Raw skate with orange, avocado, pine nuts, spring onions and cilantro - yummy!

Salad with capers and bottarga

Halibut with lukewarm potatoes , fennel and olives.

Lasagne with goat cheese

Another fantastic meal at il buco.

We had a late lunch at Schiller's . The tuna burger was fantastic.

Schiller's Liquor Bar,
131 Rivington Street, New York City

www.schillersny.com/

Since years I wanted to go to Nobu but sort off never really managed to go there. Mainly because I never think enough ahead to book a table and second because I was not sure how expensive it exactly is.
Thankfully uwe came up with the idea to go there for kevin's birthday.
I guess I don't have to mention that I had high expectations - but I can say Nobu exceed all expectations!
(Except maybe the interior which is a bit outdated)
So let me tell you what we ate: For starters we shared mixed tempura (avocado tempura was delicious), absolutely outstanding yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno a very nice sashimi salad with matsuhisa dressing and new style sashimi.
For main courses we had the Kobe beef toban yaki for uwe and andrew, mad good rock shrimp, miso cod and a mixture of sushi including salmon skin and japanese eel.
With all this we drank lovely warm sake.

And then dessert, the menu had so many fantastic things on it we could hardly decide. Luckily we were 5 so we could almost taste every dessert on the menu.
We had:
Bento Box - Warm valrohna souffle cake with shiso syrup, white chocolate sauce and green tea ice cream
Nobu beer ice cream parfait - bittersweet valrohna chocolate sauce and almond praline
Chocolate mousse, peanut butter cream, caramelized banana and miso peanut butter caramel
Pineapple Trio - Pineapple cake with wasabi ice cream, pineappe coconut rice pudding with rice cluster and vanilla bean roasted pinapple with sake zabaione.

Most of the dishes cost around 10 to 20 dollars so it is not overly expensive.

All in all a fantastic dinner - thank you uwe!

For kevins Birthday Breakfast we went to Balthazar 80 Spring Street in Soho. It's a nice, very old, french bistro and bakery where you get lovely croissants and Bread.

www.balthazarnyc.com