Gettin' Deep

The deep dish pizza we got was actually the size of Michael Clarke Duncan, the magic black guy from The Green Mile. It spoke in his voice as well. I understood that a deep dish was a somewhat serious endeavor but I didn't expect that it would render me a moron for the next five hours. We had it topped with jalapenos, onions, black olives and sausage.

It was a fork and knife situation, obviously. I could only eat one slice. We took the rest back to the hotel and put it in my mini fridge and I'm not kidding you that later in the middle of the night I was roused from my sleep by my sister who SNUCK INTO MY ROOM, took the rest of the pie and crept back out like some psychotic, criminal addict.

You know, we have a nice platter of meats and snacks and my sister's gotta ruin everything by stuffing prosciutto into her bra and pockets. THERE'S ENOUGH TO GO AROUND, BRO.

Die Eier Von Satan

I can easily understand why someone wouldn't like hardboiled eggs. They smell like awful garbage! But they taste like DELICIOUS garbage.

My mom made deviled eggs for Christmas and my sister and I ate them til we started cursing at each other. Not pictured is the full range of ingredients mixed into the yolks, which included mayo, whole grain mustard, sriracha, lemon juice and diced jalapenos.

Shnacks

Little balls of mozzarella and piquante peppers are snack staples of the utmost importance at my house in Bayside. I say that because if at any time my mom doesn't have them in the fridge my sister is liable to start hyperventilating and bite whoever is standing closest to her. I went downstairs in the middle of the night recently and she was standing trance-like at the counter stuffing cream cheese inside of the peppers. Probably the most scared I've ever been.

Boqueria

So basically this place was so good I'm hesitant to even utilize humor in this post in fear of making light of how outstandingly delicious everything I consumed was. The interior of the modestly sized, long, narrow restaurant impresses upon you the notion that you've just stumbled into the cozy basement of a fat, jolly Spanish man who cures ham on the hooks hanging from his ceiling. It's slightly modernized, but not enough to infringe upon the overwhelming cheeriness that made my heart purr like a small kitten on Ambien.

We inquired what the Autumn Sangria was but declined to get it after basically being described a melted down yankee candle. So we copped a traditional red, instead - which wound up being not so much red as some seductive, regal shade of violet.

This is spinach covered in roasted garlic, oil, pine nuts, chick peas and yellow raisins. Enough garlic to send your Italian grandmother cowering beneath the dining room table.

If you bring something to me in a worn, metal skillet, you can't see, but I'm actually caressing my groin underneath the table. Especially if it's filled with these shrimp - with a hunk of crusty bread impaled on the handle? I almost poured the whole thing down my shirt.

Peep these croquettas. (TM pending on that phrase). They were filled with ground beef and potato and cheese and covered with whatever all that delicious looking shit is on top. The menu said "salsa brava", which from my youth as a maize farmer in the hills of northern Spain I know to translate to "brave sauce".

Here's Cookie drinking the Sangria. You can't see but her pockets are stuffed with shrimp for the ride home.

This is honestly one of the most delicious meals I've had in a while - enough so that I'd go back to try the rest of the menu. Here is a link if you wanna see what's good:

http://www.boquerianyc.com/index.html

Hail Mary

Bloody Marys are no minor affair in the house of my parents and sister. It's a recent turn of events that my sister actually needs an intravenous drip of Bloody Mary injected into her forearm in order to fall asleep at night. She was actually in this photograph but I cropped her out because she had tomato juice all over her face.