Gotham Gal

Wong

We had dinner at Wong over the weekend.  I wanted to try something new and different.  There should be a sign that pops up when I think I should be eating Chinese food even though Wong is categorized as Asian cuisine using local fare.  Of course I asked for no garlic and that was not an easy ask.  They could not have been nicer about it.  They went through everything we ordered on the menu which could not be changed.  Ends up they use garlic perfectly.  It is actually used as a flavoring not as the main flavor.  Yahoo!. 

I love the feeling and vibe of the restaurant.  The kitchen is open in the back with a bar overlooking it.  There are tables scattered around that can be moved into larger tables and smaller tables.  Really good lighting too. Great architecture.

We began with a plate of puffed bread and an eggplant dip on the side.  Kind of scared me as the dip was loaded with garlic. 

We split everywhere.  These are the duck buns.  Crispy buns with pieces of glazed duck and Chinese celery.  Not sure why they needed to be crispy but they were good. 

Squid with braised mushrooms, carrots and edaname.  This was really delicious.  A nice rich brown broth.

I am a sucker for chicken wings.  Super crispy chicken wings with a spicy tamarind sauce and chopped scallions. 

Oysters were on the specials that night.  The oysters were served in a tart sauce that had a really great kick at the end.

Lobster egg foo young.  Pieces of lobster and a tail mixed with a salted sunny side up duck egg and dried shrimp.  Nice flavors.

Pieces of deep fried fish in on dish which were kind of dry. 


This was served along side with rice noodles, a dipping sauce and black sesame shrimp toast.  Not what I was expecting.  I'd like to see them mix the whole thing together with the sauce and serve it complete to the table.

Special of the evening was a whole deep fried black bass with a spicy chili sauce mixed with bacon. 

My favorite was the crispy cauliflower with peanut sauce.  I could eat a few bowls of this.

Dessert was excellent.  Peach tart with vanilla ice cream in the middle.  Really good crust. 

I like Wong.  A new place to go.  The drinks were killer.  Some of the dishes were really good and others were just okay. There menu changes and I'd consider going back for the duck special they are doing for the month of November.  Sounds right up my alley. 

 

Question of the week

This is a question I really liked because it is something that I believe is really important. 

What is your philosophy about how much time/money someone should donate to charity relative to circumstances such as family obligations, income and wealth?

I did not grow up in a family that really thought about how we fit into the bigger picture of the world.  It was basically every man for himself.  My parents, perhaps because they were products of a particular generation, were very self absorbed.  Yet we did grow up in a very liberal family so we were broad-minded. 

Americans are taught from early on the importance of giving back to their community.  We have seen that many of the organizations in this country are the first to set up funding for tragic events that have happened around the world.  We see kids creating lemonade stands to send money, etc.  It is one of the most amazing qualities of this country.

Our lives changed financially when our kids were 8, 6 and 3.  I was very concerned that our kids would not be grounded, driven, determined and of course humble and polite.  I decided that it was important to get involved with MOUSE so that our kids could see how incredibly lucky they were and be exposed to kids that did not have access to the world they did.  That is also a reason we sent our kids to LREI. 

The message has always been, with privelege comes a responsibility to give back.  Even at each of their bar/bat mitzvahs they each had to choose an organization that they wanted to follow or be part of and give a certain amount to that organization.  We wanted them to write that check so they realized the impact that money was making. 

Fred and I support organizations that we believe are making a difference.  Our kids are very aware of each of the organizations we support.  It is essential that everyone gives back at some level.  I truly believe it is the right thing to do. 

 

A fundraiser using Chef Charles through Kitchensurfing

I have been using the same caterer for over a decade.  I love working with Thom.  I literally shoot him and email and tell him the dates and we are set.  He just sends me the menu sometime before the event, I sign off and that's it.  I can literally show up 10 minutes before the event knowing that everything is perfect. 

I know that is not the norm as many people don't know where to go or who to use...so that is where Kitchensurfing comes in to play.  I am investor in KS so obviously I have to move out of my box and give it a whirl for some events here and there.  This week we had a fund raiser for Fred's fraternity at MIT and Chef Charles provided the food.  Absolutely delicious.

The menu was chorizo in puff pastry (take on the classic pigs in a blanket and one of my faves), vegetable samosa with chili tamarind and cucumber raita, braised pork Vietnamese summer rolls with sweet plum sauce, herb & pretzel crusted chicken & bacon lollipops with a cilantro lime aioli, mushrooms stuffed with herb goat cheese and truffle oil and last but not least spinach & feta cups.

A fun event seeing a lot of faces we have not seen for years.  Chef Charles made the event seamless which at the end of the day is truly the key to entertaining in your home. 

 

The importance of mentors at every level

Not sure how we started talking about this but someone told me this story this week and it made me think about the importance of mentors at any level.

This story took place probably 25 years ago.  The woman who told me this story was attending Cornell University.  She grew up with a buttoned up Korean family who had moved to the states when she was a young girl.  They landed in Northern California.  When she got to college, she was rooming with a young African American woman who had come from upstate NY.  This woman was one in a family of twelve kids who would definitely go under the underserved category.  It was huge that she got to Cornell. 

At Cornell, this particular African American woman had never sat down and ate a meal off of ceramic plates.  At home, they ate in shifts off paper plates.  She had no idea about etiquette at a table that just comes naturally to most people.  She also had a beautiful dress that she bought on layaway.  It had taken her six months to buy that dress.  The woman I know had never even heard of layaway.  She had no idea that you could buy something like that.  On parents weekend, the entire family of the African American woman came up for the weekend and all of them stayed in the rooms of each of her roommates. 

This is one of the greatest things about going to college.  You meet people from all different walks of life and it is enlightening to everyone no matter which side you sit on.  Here is what is more amazing.  One day they were talking about what they wanted to do when they graduated.  The woman I know knew exactly what she wanted to do, she wanted to go to medical school.  The African American woman wanted to be a secretary because she had an aunt who was a secretary and she had done the best among her extended family.  A secretary with a degree from Cornell.  That was as big as she could think.  The woman I know was shocked. 

Unfortunately I wish there was an end to this story where I can tell you that this young African American woman who was able to go to Cornell ended up doing something spectacular but I can't because the woman I know isn't sure where she ended up.  What this tells me is that the importance of mentors is everywhere.

Meeting and talking to people who have done something so different than what you know opens your eyes to endless possibilities.  Not sure if they do that at colleges and universities around the country but they should.  How do you help people get out of what they know and what they grew up with and realize that they can and should reach for the stars.

11 Madison Park

Prepare yourself, this will be a long post as the meal was a 5 hour experience.  I had dinner at 11 Madison Park the night after Peter Wells had written an essay in the NYTimes schooling both Daniel Humm and Will Guidara, the entrepreneurs behind the restaurant, to stick to the food and get rid of the shtick.  Trust me, they listened. 

I have been a patron of 11 Madison Park since it first opened.  The room is grand.  Large glass windows set above the room lets the light steam in over the tops of the trees.  You can't see the street but you can feel the city outside.  It makes me think about what NY must have been like 100 years ago. There is this elegance to the place. That is probably why the meal is a play on dishes reminiscent of NYC.

When we sat down we were served a small box wrapped up in string like you would receive at any bakery around NYC to take your treats on the road.  What is inside is not what you will be finding at any bakery anywhere soon.

Savory black and white cookies made into a sandwich.  Under the black and white cookie is the middle which is a black truffle creme on top of a parmesan shortbread cookie.  It is chilled.  Absolutely delicious.

Tomato gelee with gooseberries.  The gelee was layered in flavors that worked well with the poached gooseberries but I did not love this dish.  It was a bit too salty.  

A cucumber ice (think of the shaved ice trucks around town) mixed with lapsang souchong tea, shiso leaves and grapes.  Interesting mixture of flavors.

Roasted eel with foie gras in between crispy swiss chard.  A swiss chard sandwich.  I loved this. Unique with a really intense interesting combination of flavors.  Someone worked really hard to get this to our table without breaking it.

Set inside an eggshell is a sabayon with chives and pieces of sturgeon.  It is a three bite treat.  Each bite was different.  The first was creamy and salty, the next you couldn't taste the salt but the taste was richer and the next added a few pieces of sturgeon to it.  Yum.  

Underneath this glass was smoked sturgeon over apple woodchips which was part of the next course. To me, it was a take on brunch.  

Thinly sliced toasted everything bagels with smoked sturgeon (white fish), caviar over whipped cream cheese, sour and half-sour pickles (I could have taken home a vat) with a plate with sliced eggs and iceberg lettuce with a drizzle of Cesar salad dressing and bread crumbs.  They must have had fun coming up with this course.

We were then each served a roll made out of laminated flour with two types of butter on the side.  The rolls were made like a cinnamon roll.  Delicious.

At the beginning of the meal we were asked to choose 4 things from the menu.  3 savory, 1 sweet. You choose from the ingredients on the menu so I picked Langoustine, Tilefish and Pistachio.  Everyone else picked something different.  We were given the option of having the special of the evening as a substitute for one of our courses.  We went for that, it was a whole duck.  This was the langoustine.  Poached langoustines with thinly sliced fennel, one poached cherry and a creamy clam fennel dollop.  

Out next is their take on tartare using carrots instead of beef.  The tartare is prepared at your table.

Served with a variety of condiments, thinly sliced rye bread (where I would have loved to take a loaf home), mustard oil and one other oil which I can't recall.  We each mixed everything together.  Clever and interesting but not my thing.  Everyone else really loved it.

At this point we were taken to the kitchen for a treat.  Ok, this is not happening for every patron.  I was with two women who are part of the food world.  I so love their company.  After all, how many people can you sit through a 5 hour meal with an keep the conversation flowing?  This is one side of the kitchen.

Here is another side.  

Love this sign in the corner that overlooks the sous chefs.  

We stood behind a small bar and were made a gin drink.  I am not a gin drinker but this was amazing. The smoke was making this hard round ball that she put in the drink.

When the ball was cracked open it tasted like these fruity ice cubes mixed together with a syrup and gin...delicious.

Tilefish with poached turnips, radishes and dill.

A twist on a clambake.  This pot had a rich buttery clam broth in it that we each poured into our bowls.  On the side was a zucchini bread wrapped in corn husks and pieces of clam, tomato and corn in another bowl.

A whole duck roasted with lavender and honey.  I wish they had given us the whole carcass after our pieces were carved.  Probably not the vibe they'd like to present having people rip into the carcass but worth thinking about.

Slices of perfectly cooked duck with a salad of apples and quinoa on the side.

A picnic basket filled with long salty warm pretzels wrapped in paper, gooey cheese. grapes, mustard and a beer to split.  Really just fun.

How about a malt made at your table?  Egg cream with vanilla and seltzer.

Pistachio was the other course I chose. Pistachio ice cream with grapes, golden raisin and sauternes.

Huckleberry goat cheese cheesecake with hints of lime.

At this point we were exhausted and looking to go home but just wait.  Chocolate covered pretzels with sea salt.

Then out came the cards for a little 3 card monte.  We each chose a card, with the cards facing down.  We gave the ones back we chose and shock underneath our cheesecake was a chocolate filled with the card we chose.

Mine was blackberry.

I have written before that I am so over the fancy meals.  We even discussed at dinner if there was a plane sitting in front of the restaurant that could take you anywhere you wanted to go eat, where would that be?  I said I'd like to go to local restaurants around the globe where you could wear cut off jeans and a t-shirt.  There is so much happening in food in our country and around the globe at the local level.  My favorite places are restaurants that I continue to return to time and time again.  With that being said, I do love Madison Square Park because we need to have a restaurant like this in NYC.  An elegant eating experience that pushes the envelope while still tasting good.  It is like couture fashion.  It is important.  Also, the two entrepreneurs behind it are smart, thoughtful and are doing something they are so passionate about.  I will certainly be back.

I particularly loved how they wrapped up the meal going full circle with the black and white sweet cookies.  A total treat.  

 

 

Donors Choose and Red Stamp unite

Two companies that are near and dear to my heart united to create a collection of cards for Donors Choose with the Red Stamp app.

You can celebrate kids and teachers through Donors Choose by helping students in need.  For the price of a pack of #2 pencils you can unlock 12 awesome cards that you want to text, email, tweet, post to Facebook or send the old fashioned way on a paper postcard. 

You can incorporate your "back to school" photos, apple picking adventures or anything to your friedns and family while supporting Donors Choose at the same time.  100% of the proceeds of this collection go directly to Donors Choose.  The Red Stamp app is free and available here in the iTunes store for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch ( yes android is coming soon ).  Once you download the app, simply go to the "Collections" page and tap on "Donors Choose" to purchase the collection (a one-time flat free of $2.99).

Super excited about this. The app is great and being able to support Donors Choose at the same time is a win win for everyone. 

 

 

Marci Harris, Popvox, Woman Entrepreneur

Marci goes under the title that every industry the best way to disrupt an industry is starting a movement from outside.  That is exactly what Marci has done with Popvox.  Popvox might even be before its time.  She is bridging the gap between what Americans want to happen in Congress by aggregating the flow of communication ( online which is a serious leap for our Government ) and provides that information to the members of Congress.  It is a discussion forum trying to change a system that doesn't work.  A system that has no interest of changing from within. 

Marci grew up in an area of Tennesse sandwiched between Memphis and Nashville.  She comes from a long line of entrepreneurs.  They ran the local funeral parlor.  Her great great Grandmother ran the funeral parlor after her husband passed away.  Her Grandma then took it over. That was a time when a woman had to have a husband to sign a lease.  Her mother ran a flower shop.  Her fathers family started out as farmers.  Her Dad was an entrepreneur in his own getting into real estate eventually developing restaurants and shopping center.  She grew up around the kitchen table talking about the businesses that everyone always had to worry about.  You learn about the obsession to buid something.

Marci has traveled extensively.  Her parents got divorced when she was young.  Interesting enough her father is a Republican and her mother is a Democrat.  At the time her mother was importing silk flowers out of Asia.  She moved the family to Australia for six months.  It was 1991 and she was a sophomore in high school.  She came back and finished off her senior year in Memphis. Her mother moved back to Orange Country, CA.  She decided to go to Paraguay for a summer as an exchange student continuing the abroad experience in her summers between her junior and senior year.  After high school, Marci went to the Franklin School in Switzerland for college. 

At the Franklin School she had to work so she ended up meeting kids from all over the globe.  She did a semester abroad in Buenos Aires.  She lived in Lungano where the Franklin School is located where they actually speak Italian.  .  Seeing the world like that helps you observe the world and people very differently. These experiences made a huge impact on Marci.

After graduation Marci knew she wanted to do something in travel.  Makes sense.  She convinced the Robb Report to hire her in Boston.  It was a time when anyone who understood the internet under 30 was a genius.  I have seen this in many women entrepreneurs.  If they understood the internet, they went to the head of the line.  The Robb Report sent her everywhere, to every conference, to every event because she got the web.  She stayed two and a half years starting out as the asst to the VP of sales moving to the head of special projects in new media.

The next job she took was at the Tufts Fletcher School.  She left after a year and then waitressed for awhile and hung out until she decided to return to Tennessee.  In Tennessee a friend called her and said that the graphic design was sick and wanted to know if she could just come and help out for a short period of time.  It was for a small newspaper in Jackson.  She decided to stay for awhile and soon became the one of the managers after a few months and then the incumbent mayor asked her to run his campaign.  Politics came knocking at Marcis door.

The night before the election there was a devastating tornado that destroyed the town.  3000 homes and businesses were effected.  Marci quickly became the point person for recovery.  She said it was like running her first start-up and it was a town.  The town had just been revitalized and now she was begging people to stay.  Marci went to DC to bring in the urban land institute from DC and draw up a plan of how to rebuild the town.  She worked with FEMA, HUD and the Army Corp of Engineers.  She got private people to commit to capital matching public funding.  After things began to turn around, she decided she should go to law school.  Makes complete sense based on what she had been working on.

She stayed close and went to University of Memphis to get a law degree and then went on to American University to get a master of law.  While she was at American she did an internship with the House Ways and Means Committee.  When she finished that internship she took a job on the hill working primarily on health care reform, medicare, waste fraud and abuse.  This took place between 2007-2010. 

It was obvious to Marci that in Congress there was a problem that could be solved around technology.  She kept thinking about how Congress was literally a world into itself.  It isn't even set up to fix its own structural problems.  She started to keep a list of all the things that needed to be fixed.  The list got longer by the day.  She was just blown away and got more and more frustrated.

There would be weekly meetings for the staff, press secretaries and administration people and she would be the only policy person to show up.  People did not even know what cloud technology was but over time she realized the staffers got it.  Marci talked to Tim O'Reilly and showed him a 12 page business plan she had wrote up.  It was to fix this problem.  He told her it was really interesting and to get back to him when she was ready.

She found two co-founders, Rachna Choudhry and Josh Tauberer, and told her office she was going to leave after health care reform was passed.  She left at the end of January 2010.  She went to CA and Marci started to attend start-up panels.  She began to learn specifically from Paul Martino who she asked to teach her everything he knew about start-ups and in turn she taught him everything she knew about politics.  She was blown away how open and helpful the entrepreneurial world is.

She decided to enter a competition for start-ups after being in SF for two weeks.  She did not even know how to build a deck.  She had learned powerpoint the day before the competition.  The two people who were judging the event were so confused that she got up and pulled over a whiteboard and began to explain.  One of the guys got up and said, "I get it, it is the Craigs list for politics".  He said that Marci was way too early but the idea had great potential and he introduced her to a law firm and everything began to fall into place. 

Popvox is trying to take what happens off-line and put it on-line to create public transparency that is accessible to everyone.  There are different users.  Members of Congress and staff, individuals making their opinions known, advocacy groups and the media.  There is rich information that is beginning to be available on Popvox that they are hoping the site will eventually be designed to create unique experiences for each users.  Here is how it works; a bill is introduced in Congress and the status shows up on Popvox.  The bill is there and users can create a profile to either oppose or endorse the bill.  This is still done in Congress but on paper.  Popvox is not changing the behavior of Congress but they are taking the wealth of information that is coming on to their site, printing it out and get it to Congress.  Archaic on one hand but not on the Popvox end.  Congress is certainly getting much more information which is up to date and hopefully they will eventually want the software that Popvox runs on in the individual offices of Congress.  They are getting information to 100% of the offices now.  They are seeing the Popvox widget popup on sites which helps them aggregate even more information for Congress.  Popvox is hoping to streamline Congress by getting them to read and use what is happening on Popvox. 

Marci is certainly on to something here.  I love that her brother is her COO.  No doubt there is a serious need for technology within Government at every level.  It makes complete sense to get live information to Congress on how Americans feel about every bill. 

If you like what Marci is doing, you can to go WeFunder and see their profile. Marci is passionate about what she is doing.  She has seen the need for disruption for Government first hand and she is adamant that she will be the one to disrupt something that is ripe for disruption. 

b5linenyc

I have been watching Tammy from a far for more than a decade now.  Amazing how time flies.  She is completely entrepreneurial, a jeweler and absolutely a free spirit.  She grew up in the US but had been in Sao Paolo going to college and literally could not get back.  Long story but when she finally got back to the states, it took some time to figure it out.  She has always worked hard, has found a variety of interesting work experiences but has always concentrated on her passion for making jewelry. 

We went to her launch last night.  The lines is called b5linenyc.com.  She hopes to start selling her pieces to stores and she is ready to make the leap. As always, I will be watching. 

Question of the week

There are parts of this question that I get asked often. 

I am considering developing a portfolio of angel investments? How much have you invested in total? What is the avg. size of your investments? What kind of IRR are you looking for?

First of all, I'd love to see more investors get into the angel investing market, particularly women.  I am not going to share the dollar amount that I have invested in total but I am going to talk about my strategy. 

I invest in people first, businesses second.  I want to get in at the beginning when the valuations are low.  Low meaning nothing over a $5m post valuation.  So after the round is raised the company is not valued at more than $5m.  I put in anywhere from $25-50K.  I want to own 1% of the company from the get go.  Even when there is a convertible note, I am assuming that the note will eventually convert because they will be able to raise a Series A.  With that being said, although I am not a huge fan of the convertible note, I do it on occasion and it must have a cap so that when we do convert I am able to own my 1%. 

Why that amount?  The reason is that I expect the company will continue to grow and I want to put in my pro rata share at every round.  If I put in $25-$50k from the onset then when there is a $10m round I can afford to keep my 1%.  If it started with $100K, it would become too expensive for me to put money into that round.  Also, this way I am consistent with my investments.  You never know which one will hit it out of the ballpark.  I can't make that choice at the beginning so I am consistent with the percentage amount on every investment.

What kind of IRR are you looking for?  Certainly I believe that every company that I have invested in and have got behind will have some type of return.  I am fully aware that the odds tell me it is not possible but I am a believer in everyone I have invested in.  I am not a passive investor but really roll up my sleeves and help, listen, mentor and do anything I can to help the company grow.  I care about each and every entrepreneur I back.  I preface this up front because even if the IRR is at 2% and another one is at 10%, I am happy because that entrepreneur saw success.  I am probably not the norm on this but it is more important to me to see each of these entrepreneur work seriously hard to execute on their dream. 

I love being part of it. 

 

rational decisions on dying

Steve Ratner wrote an article in the Op-Ed section of the NYTimes called Beyond Obamacare.  He writes about not only the high costs of healthcare in this country but also about the tough decisions we need to make to get the costs down.  This is only one issue where big decisions are going to have to be made in order to get our country back on budget and to fiscally responsible place. 

What resonated with me in the article is this:  No one wants to lose an aging parent. And with price out of the equation, it’s natural for patients and their families to try every treatment, regardless of expense or efficacy. But that imposes an enormous societal cost that few other nations have been willing to bear.  I have written about this topic before after losing my Mom quickly to cancer almost two years ago.  

We were having a conversation about this exact topic on Friday night.  Our friend is a surgeon and he is also an incredibly smart pragmatic individual.  Most people will do anything to keep their aging parent or Grandparent alive.  They will do whatever it takes even if that means surgery at 85 years old.  The risks are high and the costs to the medicare system are enormous.  As our friend says, the decisions we made are not the norm and he applauds us for doing so. 

Our Mom had surgery to find out what was happening inside her brain.  Once we knew the answer, our decision making changed.  There was absolutely nothing we could have done to bring her back to the independent, crossword-loving, book reader, theater goer, lover of the arts, travel lover, witty, amazing chef and political junkie that she was.  It was not in the cards.  She had told us many times over the years, even when she first got sick, if I can't be who I am, I do not want to be. 

I listened to her choices and although difficult, I thought with my head and in reality it was my heart too.  We let her go.  We didn't make her suffer through a bunch of attempts to just keep her alive.  I saw the medical bills that we never paid for and they were extraordinary.  Probably more than she ever spent her whole life on medical treatment.  It was paid for by medicare.  As a die-hard liberal, my Mom would have been appalled to see those bills.  She would have wanted them to figure out what was wrong before even having the first surgery but supposedly they couldn't.

In the end it was quick but I know in my heart we made the right decisions.  Maybe because it happened so fast that the mourning has been strange.  I sort of feel like she is on an extended vacation.  As my sister says, I hope she is having a nice time.