After the craziness of the whacko homeless woman laying all over my car as I parked in Manhattan, I walked over to my sister’s apartment where we decided which restaurant to have dinner before our concert date at Radio City Music Hall. The upper east side where she lives, is a very residential neighborhood with families, schools, and plenty of places to eat and shop. It’s comfortable and quiet. Almost as if you’re not really in the city, you can sneak in and sneak out without having to deal with alot of city stuff. Except for my little excitement with the homeless woman, which my sister said is very unusual in her area. Maybe things are changing? Who knows?
So we decide to visit a busy Turkish restaurant we hadn’t been to before and it was really good. So good that I forgot to take pictures before we devoured the food. We had salad with feta cheese, pide bread and tzatzik dip with some other spicy dip to start and braised lamb shanks with grilled eggplant, pilaf, and a dish of manti for our entrees. We come from Greek and Armenian descent, so Turkish food is pretty much the same thing we’re used to having at home. Even though our cultures have a history of violence and genocide at the hands of Turks, we like the food and make believe it’s Armenian or Greek cooking. Anyway, that’s the only photo I took of dinner!
Afterwards, we grabbed a cab and headed over to Radio City. It’s a gorgeous theater, built after the 1929 crash by John D. Rockefeller, in the mid-town area. We were seeing a famous Greek singer, Dimitris Mitropanos. He is known for popular Greek music called “laiko“. Droves of young and old people were there to see him. We met many friends, and Son #1 and Gorgeous DIL (daughter-in-law) were there too.
It was a wonderful show with great music and singing. One thing about Greek concerts is that when the people get excited they want to dance. They don’t care where they are, on the steps, in their seat, in the aisle, they are dancing! The poor security guards never know what’s going to happen with that. They think the people will rush the stage, but they never do. They just want to dance, kinda Zorba the Greek-like stuff! If there’s room they’ll start a line dance, but this show was the lone dancer type music.