Dining with Drew Barrymore

Need I say more, Drew Barrymore and I dined at Marea restaurant last night. She dined at her table with her friends and I at mine with Stelios!
Marea is a great seafood restaurant on Central Park South in New York City. The food is sublime, the service is excellent and the ambiance special!

Stelios and I went there for our anniversary dinner after taking a spin around the Metropolitan Museum of Art(you all know it's one of my haunts.) The museum is a great place to go on a rainy day, you can park your car in the garage and take the elevator to the galleries, so no umbrella, no problem!
Yesterday, however, we were lucky enough to find a parking spot on Fifth Avenue and 90th street. Who could believe that, finding on street parking in New York City. It's like finding a needle in  a haystack! Stelios did a great job of fitting the SUV car into a tiny parking space that left barely an inch of space on each end. I was impressed.
It was still overcast but the rain had pretty much stopped so we walked the few blocks to the museum.

When we emerged several hours later(I'll show you what we saw in my next post) the sun was out and we found a different New York City, bright and shiny. We strolled down Fifth towards our restaurant and made it in time for our 6 o'clock reservation.
We were seated at a comfortable table with a nice view of the dining room. You all must know by now that if there are oysters on the menu, we're ordering them. We got a bottle of the Greek Santorini Thalasitis wine and shared the dozen briny mollusks.

 Next came a wonderful grilled octopus with tiny potatoes and a delicious glaze.

 My main course was an Italian fish soup that was full of shellfish and flavor.

 Stelios had the black Sea Bass.

For dessert we shared a pistachio pana coda with a rhubarb and rose petal  sorbet, it was sublime. I love anything with rose in it and this one did not disappoint.

We were finishing  our coffee when I saw the Maître' D escorting a woman through the restaurant. She was not disabled nor old, so I took a closer look. Drew Barrymore had just been escorted past our table! She was just as pretty as in the movies or magazine pictures. Dressed nicely but unassumingly she had dinner with her husband and another couple. They seemed to be having a good time. I thought about getting her picture but I would never succeed as a paparazzi. Let her enjoy herself in peace, I decided and, sat back to chat about her movie, Firestarter, with Stelios and the diners next to us.
Enjoy!,

Maria