Poached pear
Tonight we had dinner with DG at Arqua. Arqua is a special, yummy place that we haven't been to in a while. They serve you white beans with focaccia before the meal, and the walls are a cozy terra-cotta color. Because the walls are "high and unadorned", as the New York Times puts it, the noise bouncing off of them can give you a headache. But that didn't happen tonight. They had a special tonight of taglierini with truffles ($80!). D asked the waiter, "When people eat the truffles, do they walk away looking as if they had an illicit drug?" The waiter looked dumbfounded, then he got giggly. Later, I licked the plate after eating my poached pear with warm vanilla gelato, and he offered to get me more sauce. DG, who is apartment hunting, regaled us with tales of apartments shaped like boats, complete with portholes, for $6,000 a month. New York rents are something else. On the way home we saw several Halloween costumes; one of the most noteworthy was a man with...