Sunday night my friend J. and I went to a one-woman show at the Hotel Rex near Union Square. I'd read about it on Cooking with Amy and it sounded like a fun performance. Heather Gold, a stand-up comedienne, bakes chocolate chip cookies on-stage while talking about her life growing up Jewish in Niagara Falls, Canada, then going to college at Yale and figuring out that she's gay. She spends the next decade trying to figure out if that's okay with her or not. Her deeply personal journey aside, the real selling point for me was the chocolate cookies the audience gets to eat at the end of the show!
J. and I met at the cozy hotel restaurant, Cafe Andree, for the convenience, but dinner was pretty good and reasonably priced. The small dining room seats about 50; lone diners could borrow one of the many books lining the shelves to enjoy over dinner. We skipped the tasting menus - 4 courses for $34 (or a vegetarian option for $25) - in favor of small and medium plates like empanadas with beef, potato and hard-boiled egg; lightly dressed organic field greens; grilled prawns with fava beans and a queso-filled corn cake; and grilled sirloin mini-tacos with vanilla/habanero pepper pesto. We walked out $21 poorer each, with just enough appetite for the cookies.
The show was fun, if long in a few stretches. Gold had a guest chef that night. Lewis Rossman from Cetrella down in Half Moon Bay chopped pecans ("pronounced PEE-cans in the South," Gold accurately noted) and Scharffen Berger chocolate and answered questions about learning to cook, favorite foods (as a kid, cheesecake, as an adult, pizza). He was one of the highlights of the show. Gold tells her story according to the phases of baking: dry, wet, mix, form, bake and serve. Funny, insightful, even cute at times, Gold interacts with the audience (we get to stir the dough). She makes fun of of who she is but leaves you feeling that, like many of us, she's finally made peace with her place in the world.
The audience was a mix of gay and straight, the laughs were plentiful, the empathy real, and the cookies damn fine.
I look like an EGG but I identify as a COOKIE, tickets available now for new shows starting in June. Guest chefs like Tartare's George Morrone visit the stage often. Moving to NY sometime this fall.
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