Buy Me Some Peanuts and Crackerjacks..and Bulgogi

Let me tell you, my friends: we've come a long, long way since the days of peanuts, crackerjacks, and hot dogs at the baseball stadium. We've moved on up, and moved on east. Behold the love child of corporate sponsors and the New York demographic:

BULGOGI! Yes that's right: korean food at the new Mets Citi Field Stadium (highly anticipated for Mets fans and foodies alike, the latter because of Danny Meyer's Shake Shack and Blue Smoke outposts taking center sta...err, infield at the new stadium.....) which debuted its bells and whistles this year. The dining options are so many, they have enough room for korean food, not standard baseball fare, but one that I am very excited about.

Check out the goods that made me bibimbap bap bap all over the place....

I was there this past Friday for their last series of the season: Mets vs. Houston Astros. Apparently (yes, apparently--I was there for Shake Shack, people), the Mets haven't been hitting too many dingers this year, so attendance was quite scant. Bad news for the Mets, good news for us! Open seats! We bought cheap nosebleeds, but fear not - no blood was bled..more ahead....

As you can see, Citibank isn't attempting humility or coyness about its purchasing the rights to the name of the new stadium. Citi, Citi everywhere!

The stadium is quite impressive. I had sensory overload. The lights. The people. The sounds. Woohoo! It's so nice, and new, and shiny. It's like the Chanel of baseball stadiums. And there are so many other things to do there, you cold literally spend the whole time at Citi Field and not watch the game. There are games, shops, a dunk-the-baseball-player stand, mini baseball fields for kids, and dozens of restaurants -- we actually went on a tour of the stadium before we settled on settling our rumbling stomachs.

This place is so high end, even the trash can is customized:

This is before Daniel Murphy hit a "homer". Sa-WING, batterrrrr.

Here's what $6.11 tickets will getchya at Citi Field....

We stayed up there for approximately ten minutes; our stomachs were grumbling, so our goal was Shake Shack, and then we wanted to see if we could score better seats close(r) to the green. So we headed off in search for a Shack Burger....

Alas, as I should have expected, the line was unREAL. Just as long as the line in Madison Square Park, perhaps even longer.

I wasn't about to wait an hour for Shake Shack when the original it's just a few blocks away from my apartment, so we my two comrades and I went in search of the next best thing....

Alex, the true Mets fan, got a shrimp po'boy ($12). It looked tasty, hearty, and like a great combination of textures, as any quality sandwich should have.

Perhaps she was having nostalgia for Martha's Vineyard, having only been back for less than a week, but the sister got the lobster roll ($17):

Num num....

I opted for some fare south of the border, not south of my feet (aka the ocean..ok, bad joke....)

This is a Danny Meyer tacqueria. Not a restaurant outpost, but, rather, a Citi Field original!

I decided to try the chile-marinated skirt steak tacos ($7.25).

When I opened the box, I was a little surprised because the tacos looked slightly meager (especially because I much prefer hard tacos over soft).

Nevertheless, I topped both with the accompanying salsa picante and gave it my all (albeit my blurry all):

They were delicious! A lot better than I thought at first look. The steak was surprisingly really seasoned - not from the salsa, but from the marinade.

They had a great tenderness to them from the steak, an added crunch from the chopped onions, and a refreshing blast from the fresh cilantro. I still prefer hard tacos, but I think I'm softening up to soft tacos because they allow the flavor of the taco filling to come through.

With our teeming tummies, we headed off for better seats....

Last looks before the Mets trampled the Astros 7-1

Until next season, Mr. Met!

Be happy and Carpe Diem!

Shake al-Shaq

Wait, really?

That's the first thing I thought when I read this earth-shake of a news brief:

The Shake Shack is spreading its sesame bun seeds and opening a string of Shake Shack branches in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

For real.

Emirs, kings, and crown princes alike rejoice!

I understand the desire for Danny (Mc)Meyer, revered for his dedication to top notch service above all else, to spread his wings; it is a business, after all. But how far (literally) is it going to go? Far be it for me to deny people around the world a delicious burger (including the meltingly delicious 'shroom burger - see below), but does this not shake off some of the inherent charm of a place that prides itself on its local purveyors, community support, and all-American cheap eats grub? I guess it is precisely this charm that people are trying to emir-ulate--or in this case, import into their country/emirate.

But it's not just the Shake Shack itself that's got these peoples' keffiyehs in a tizzy: it's the man behind the bun: Danny Meyer. He is the face of the brains behind the Union Square Hospitality Group, which includes New York cult classics like Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Union Square Cafe, and The Modern. The USHG is clearly a lucrative company, and everybody wants a piece of the lucrative pie.

We've witnessed this inevitability before: Magnolia spreading more of its frosting across the whole of Manhattan; C.O. Bigelow, oldest pharmacy in America, bought out my Limited Brands (people behind Abercrombie & Fitch); and now this (why go so far: in the last year, the Shake Shack started shacking it up in the UWS and the Mets' new CitiField.)

But who are we to stop them from widening their profit margins?

Take Dubai as an example. Despite being the motherland of double digit growth rates, man-made islands, and the only 7-star hotel in the world (which I have tried - and failed - to visit: the hotel is accessed via a small bridge, and if you do not have hotel or restaurant reservations, you can only enter the lobby if you have tea/coffee reservations, which, starting at around $100/head, I wasn't into), Dubai has not been immune to the crashing and shaking up of much of the world's economies. Ideal it may sound, but this emirate cannot wholly survive off of foreign tourists luxuriating in prime real estate locales, private beaches, haute shopping, and indoor ski slopes in the middle of the desert. Accessible is in (or at least to some extent in Dubai); and "American" is certainly in. Mr. Meyer is the USA passport-holding man of food, as well as of business. I'm not saying I agree with it, but are any of us even surprised anymore?

Saudi Arabia is also America's Middle Eastern best friend that has enjoyed cozy relations with America for a long time now. We have political ties, economic ties, nuclear ties, and cuisine ties. Saudi Arabia is bursting with American fast food chains, including McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Subway, and Starbucks (yes, it's being lumped in the fast food category). They even have their own, homegrown versions of American fast food classics (except for camel burgers!) that serve up fried chicken, donuts, and hamburgers inspired by the food sold at their American counterparts.

So things are shaping up for the Union Square Hospitality Group's prospects in this Middle Eastern Kingdom. I mean, we import a fair chunk of our petroleum from Saudi Arabia. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal (full name Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud) is the single largest investor in Citigroup; Danny Meyer can't be that far off the grill marks.

Ma'a salama!

Be happy and Carpe Diem!