Recommended!

This is the Monday feature in which I shine a light on the best things I ate and did this past weekend.

Food: It's basically the same as a cantaloupe, but with a different name and pronounced ridges, like a hot air balloon: the muskmelon. They had a bunch of free muskmelon samples on toothpicks at the Fairway in Red Hook on Saturday, and they were fantastic. Sweet, juicy hunks of cool summery melon, and it's very good for you--lots of beta carotene. Very recommended! (Also recommended is Fairway, which has so many free samples.)

Automotive: My favorite gas station is the Hess on the corner of Union Street and Fourth Ave in Park Slope. It satisfies all my fuel needs, plus free air. I also vacuumed my car for 4 minutes for $1.25 on Saturday afternoon in the pouring rain thunderstorm. Dramatic! That's a lot of sucking.

Restaurant: Because of very, very special circumstances, I ate the tasting menu at WD-50 last night. Twelve courses of ridiculous and bizarrely delicious culinary novelty, like yogurt cigars, knots of foie gras, pine needles, and cocoa-sealed hazelnut crunch sacs. (I pasted the whole menu after the jump.) The restaurant itself was a little kooky. One of my companions described it as what someone making a movie in 1993 would have envisioned for a scene that took place in a really cool restaurant. Wacky, Seussian drop lights over each table, walls of rich blues and greens, wall-covering art, black-beamed ceiling. Rust-colored leather booths (the color of their website), gleaming wood tables. Very comfortable. Mystical bathrooms with hidden, push-panel doors. Recommended! Eat everything.

Restaurant/Drinking experience: I managed to go to Bar Tabac twice this weekend, possibly as subconscious retaliation against the Strong Buzz's wailing, foot-stamping rant against it. Once for drinks at the little tables at front, and again for dinner inside. I've never had a bad experience there. Yes, it can get crowded. But the waiters are always kind, the food is always delicious, and when the weather is nice, it's decent for outdoor drinking. So, that's all.

Unrecommended:

Outdoor drinking: I went again to Trout, one of my favorite spots in Brooklyn. This time it was even more crowded--packed full by 5:30pm on Friday. The worst people there were the dozen wasted, idiotic white-collar workers on some kind of screaming, disrespectful booze field trip, and a table of massive, shitfaced goons who harassed me until I had to leave early. I was trying to read a newspaper and have a glass of wine before my brother showed up, but I felt so uncomfortable that I left.