USA Sep 2011 – Day 9

Today was my friends wedding day and it was the main reason why I went to the states. However I couldn’t justify going for a weekend thus I took the whole week off and went to NYC and Philadelphia as I have not been there before.

I was looking forward to the wedding and catching up with friends from my past travels.

We began the day with a hearty breakfast downtown at Meli Cafe & Juice Bar. I ordered a “Mana Mou”, it was like a mash up of potatoes, peppers, mushrooms and steak, yes steak smothered with layer of cheese. It was delicious! I can’t say the same about the fresh orange juice as it wasn’t sweet, needed some sugar and some ice.

The location of the wedding took place at Morton Arboretum which I guess is like a botanical garden. The wedding venue and setup was quite simple and pleasant. A small gathering of family and friends, that’s all you need really. I remember some weddings especially Asian ones where about 300+ people gathered. I think that is a bit much, especially when most of those people are friends of the parents and not anyone close to you. Its like they are there to make up the numbers.

It was quite a cloudy day and it even rained but when my friend and bride walked towards everyone and to her husband to be, then the sun came out and it was a lovely ceremony.

After the ceremony we all gathered at the reception venue which was a Brazilian steak house selected by my friend whom loves to eat but you couldn’t tell by her physique. I had no idea we were going to a steak house so I was in for a mouth watering treat and celebration. I did also manage to get the macaroon tower from my friends place to the wedding reception without a single macaroon falling from the tower and nothing collapsing.

The Brazilian steak house had an etiquette for eating or rather being ‘served’. On your table is a card, on one side its green meaning yes ‘give me food, now’ and on the other side red meaning ‘crap I can’t eat anymore, please stop!’. It was basically all you can eat carvery with waiters coming around your table with long skewers and if you wanted that particular meat, you’d ask for a slice which they’d cut from the skewer. All up there were about 10 types of meat to choose from plus a huge salad bar. You could order any drink you like so I just stuck to Coronas and celebrated with everyone. This by far is up there with the best reception I’ve been too! The hospitality and atmosphere was second to none and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Oh and no one ate the macaroons from the macaroon tower. All that effort!

After all that eating on the way home my friend suggested we get some more dessert! What a crazy idea that was. Instead of buying stuff we opted to bake something at home and that particular thing was ‘whoopie pie’. It was the first I heard of it and was going to give it a try. A whoopie pie is basically two macaroon large biscuits (by large I mean 5x size of macaroon then stacked twice) which was filled with a sweet butter style cream. Essentially I think of it as a giant macaroon. How did it taste? A bit on the salty side for me. I think my friend added a touch too much salt.

Smiles