Da Dong Gone in a New York Minute

A lot of money was spent to open Da Dong in Manhattan two years ago

Da Dong Roast Duck was my favourite place for Peking duck in Beijing over 13 years ago. The location in Dong Si Shi Tiao was fascinating, as you had to pass some imperial granaries before entering the restaurant.

A few years ago my friends treated me to Da Dong kaoya, this time in a new location behind the Worker's Stadium and the gaudy decor with statues of white horses seemed over the top as well as the LED lights representing reeds in the pond were ridiculous.

Da Dong near Worker's Stadium... see the horse in the back?

Inside there was a massive screen showing videos of chef Dong Zhenxiang cooking in France and scenes of people raving about his food. The video and the sound from it overshadowed our dining experience. It was distracting and not very interesting.

Ahhh how the mighty have fallen.

In late November, Michelin launched its first Beijing guide and everyone expected Da Dong to get three stars -- but it was not to be. It only garnered one, at the Dong Si Shi Tiao location.

And now Da Dong in Manhattan has closed, filing for bankruptcy after two years and scathing reviews from New York critics.

There was much talk about the place when the restaurant group announced it would open in the Big Apple, in a space for 400 seats and situated near Bryant Park. The Chinese really like to make a big splash.

The famous roast duck didn't impress Michelin inspectors

But that ambition apparently didn't translate into delicious food, with food critics from the New York Times and New York magazine giving Da Dong zero stars! While New York Post and foodie website Eater tried to find some good things to say about the Chinese restaurant.

Was it really that bad? I will never know because I never got to try it.

Maybe the ducks were not Chinese? Maybe the wood-fired ovens weren't allowed, making it hard to create the same flavourful smell from the wood of cherry and plum trees? Or maybe the restaurant had too much hype, making critics all too eager to take it down to size?

Then over a year ago I went back to Da Dong (albeit on Jinbao Jie, another location) and honestly, the duck wasn't that great. It seemed more oily than I remembered it, and didn't seem so special anymore. The thin pancakes were not warm, and the other dishes we ordered were pedestrian, or even salty.

What will chef Dong Zhenxiang do next?

One wonders what Dong is doing now, licking his wounds from his massive failure in New York. Will he try again elsewhere or just continue to placate the domestic market?

In the meantime the New York restaurant is trying to sell off all of its equipment, crockery, furniture and fixtures. It's a sad flash in the pan for Da Dong, who now knows the meaning of "Go big, or go home".

Learning More about Georgia O'Keefe

Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills encapsulates O'Keefe's art and life

Yesterday we went to the Brooklyn Museum to see Georgia O'Keefe: Living Modern that ends July 23. She is an artist I have admired for a long time and many years ago copied her paintings in pastel. She encouraged me to be fearless, using big strokes, and express myself through vibrant colours.

Four cream-coloured outfits O'Keefe made early in her life

We caught the museum's 1pm tour through the exhibit and the docent was very knowledgeable about O'Keefe and picked certain pieces to show how the curators presented the show.

It wasn't just about O'Keefe's paintings, but also her clothing, a few miscellaneous things from her home and many photographs of her in the clothing, hats and shoes that were also exhibited.

She was born in Wisconsin in 1887 and at a young age showed a talent for art. The family moved to Virginia and when she was a teenager studied at the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

Later she taught art and as our guide explained, after work she would work on her own art, creating abstract watercolours. A friend showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, a well known photographer and art dealer in New York who was impressed by such modern art by a female artist.

This painting was first shown at the museum

He sold some of her pieces -- over US$1,000 in the late 1920s which was a lot of money in those days -- and eventually the two fell in love. Stieglitz was married at the time with a daughter, and was 23 years older than O'Keefe, but he divorced and married O'Keefe.

They lived in Manhattan and one of the paintings shown in the exhibition was of the New York skyline -- something that was usually depicted by men and not women. But O'Keefe was keen to show that she too could do it too -- and just as well. Not only did she paint the skyscrapers, but also in pink, and with three flowers to give them a feminine touch.

At the time she was known for her flower paintings. Women usually painted flowers, but they were small most of the time. O'Keefe felt if she painted flowers really small, no one would notice, so why not big too, like skyscrapers?

She also insisted there wasn't any deeper meanings behind the some 200 flower paintings she made, as some tried to insinuate there were sexual meanings behind the works.

Pink skyscrapers and flowers

One of the paintings on show is called Black Pansy & Forget-Me-Nots painted in 1926 and our guide explained it was first shown in a solo exhibition O'Keefe had in the Brooklyn Museum in 1927.

At the show, one of her friends bought the painting and O'Keefe managed to persuade that person to donate it to the museum afterwards. O'Keefe also gave some of her works during her lifetime to the museum, and after her death.

Our guide pointed out that many of O'Keefe's clothes were monochromatic -- she didn't want to have to worry about colour in her wardrobe when she would rather focus on the colours of her canvas.

Featured in the exhibition are several items of clothing, cream-coloured dresses she made and they are very delicate and reveal her skill in dressmaking. There are also a trio of white blouses, one of which shows very fine tailoring and could very easily be worn today.

She also had a penchant for black with a bit of white contrasting, be it from the collar of a shirt or the cuffs of shirts sticking out from black blazers. Later on she was obsessed about the V-shape and many dresses and jackets had this shape, whether the neckline or pattern on dresses.

One of the delicate blouses O'Keefe made

As more of her work was sold, she and Stieglitz would move to higher floors in the hotel apartment building they lived in. And this wealth would also help O'Keefe become even more independent, buying a car and buying a home and then another one in New Mexico.

She first went there in 1929 thanks to the patronage of an heiress, and O'Keefe immediately fell in love with the place and kept going back there every year until she finally settled there.

In New Mexico she stopped wearing suits and adopted denim as her fabric of choice, wearing shirts, jeans and even fashioned a Chinese-style dress out of the blue cotton.

However, after O'Keefe's first visit to New Mexico for six months, she came back to New York to find Stieglitz was having an affair with another woman; O'Keefe was devastated and even suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in 1933, mostly because her husband was continuing with the affair.

O'Keefe then finally moved to New Mexico in 1940, purchasing a home there, but then Stieglitz fell ill in 1946 with cerebral thrombosis and she flew back immediately to tend to him until he died in July that year.

A Chinese-style outfit she had made in HK

It took her three years to finally finish dealing with his estate before she permanently moved to New Mexico in 1949. There she was obsessed with painting a mountain called Cerro Pedernal.

One of her works, Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills painted in 1935 encapsulates O'Keefe with the animal skull, a flower and her favourite mountain.

Interestingly there are two outfits shown that have a Hong Kong connection. In 1959 and 1960 she traveled there and got some outfits made, one very east-meets-west, the other looking like a very masculine Chinese robe.

In 1972 she lost most of her eyesight due to macular degeneration and couldn't paint anymore, though photographers would make pilgrimages to New Mexico to take pictures of her. The show has portraits of her by Yousuf Karsh, Bruce Weber, Ansel Adams and Todd Webb.

Andy Warhol also wanted a piece of her and invited her to come to New York to The Factory where he made a silkscreen of her in the same colour as the adobe home she lived in, and was sprinkled with diamond dust. Wonder what she thought of that.

A portrait of O'Keefe in a kimono by Bruce Weber

O'Keefe died in 1986, just shy of her 99th birthday. Art historians like to say she was the first American contemporary artist. Apparently she bequeathed all her things to a very young assistant called Juan Hamilton and her siblings went to court to fight for estate. In the end it was settled out of court.

Learned so much about this remarkable woman and feel inspired by her artistry in art and in life.

Georgia O'Keefe: Living Modern

Until July 23, 2017

Brooklyn Museum

200 Eastern Parkway

Brooklyn

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Roast Duck Empire

Talk about a flashy entrance for one of Beijing's top restaurants!

What's a trip to Beijing without eating Peking duck? And the best place in the Chinese capital to eat it?

Da Dong Roast Duck or Da Dong Kao Ya.

My friends suggested we dine at one of the nine locations I've never been too -- Gongren Tiyuchang Dong Lu, or Workers' Stadium East Road, a block from Sanlitun.

The half portion of roast duck neatly displayed on the plate

I arrived early to find that diners walk a long catwalk into this field with sculpted life-size horses, and in the middle is a "pond" filled with "reeds" that are blue LED lights with a wooden walkway in the middle.

It's very... gawdy which surprised me, as the Dongsishitiao location I used to frequent is in what was formerly the imperial granary, quite a classy place.

But here inside it gets even better. There's a massive screen, almost floor to ceiling (and it's a high ceiling) that shows off many of the gorgeous-looking dishes from his menu, and footage of him giving cooking demonstrations in Europe, hunting for white truffles, and being lauded by laowai, or foreigners.

As a diner facing the screen, it's really distracting to say the least... and there's more horses inside too...

Rapeseed flowers that didn't have much taste

Nevertheless, the food thankfully is still pretty consistent. The menu is a massive tome, a large rectangular book where each page is filled with beautifully-photographed dishes. You kind of need bookmarks to record possible dishes to order, otherwise you'll never find them again.

We ordered the half duck, and as before, it's juicy, tender and the skin isn't too fatty or oily. The pancakes are warm and thin, and we wrap the duck slices with the sauce, spring onions, radish, cucumber, a dab of mashed garlic, and preserved vegetables. They're so addictive that you have to have another one...

A new dish we tried was a massive vegetarian dumpling shaped like a bun, but it's not doughy. Inside was choc full of vegetables and cubed bamboo shoots. This was delicious and the crunchy texture was refreshing.

Braised eggplant with garlic and garnished with flowers

The braised eggplant dish was also a treat, decorated with flowers it was almost too pretty to eat. The slices of eggplant were well seasoned with soy and hoisin, and texture-wise were quite meaty.

However a disappointing dish was one of rapeseed flowers. While they looked pretty on the plate, they didn't have much taste to them, but now we know... it wasn't an expensive dish, but an interesting experiment to try.

Finally we had some mochi filled with durian paste that was fun to eat and the taste of the usually pungent fruit wasn't too intense. The restaurant also served some fresh strawberries that were surprisingly sweet.

Green-coloured mochi filled with durian paste

The chef-owner Dong Zhengxiang is not only a solid chef, but also a smart businessman. So much so that he's ambitious enough to open a Da Dong branch in New York! It will be located in 3 Bryant Park in Manhattan, New York and the rent isn't cheap -- 13,000 square feet there was asking for US$2.3 million per year...

I also heard he is using top quality chinaware with plates that cost 3,000 yuan (US$435) per piece...

Sounds like for Dong, it's go big or go home in the Big Apple...

Da Dong

Beijing Workers' Stadium East Road

Chaoyang District
(010) 6551 1806

Art on the Roof

The "house" pays tribute to the Mid-West as well as the Psycho movie

The Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a great spot to take in the views of the Manhattan skyline. And it was the perfect contrasting backdrop to British artist Cornelia Parker's art installation, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn).

The rooftop has amazing views of the Manhattan skyline

In a video she explains that she wanted to do something with red barns, and then came across Edward Hopper's works. He did a painting in 1925 called House by the Railroad, and realized that director Alfred Hitchcock had based the house in the 1960 movie Psycho on Hopper's painting.

She researched that eerie house and found that in reality it wasn't a real house, but wait was actually a facade, a set prop for filming.

That gave her the idea to do something similar on the roof of the Met, since it would be difficult to construct an entire house there.

Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad

Continuing with her interest in barns, she worked with a restoration company that salvaged wood from an old barn and made it into the facade of the Psycho house, with the corrugated roof fashioned into individual shingles.

When people approach the work, they think it's a whole house on the roof, but when they go around the back, they actually see it's propped up like a set.

But it's so interesting to see such a traditional piece of Americana architecture found in the mid-West contrasted against the sleek New York skyline.

Kudos to Parker for thinking about all these aspects and tying them altogether to create an arresting image that's alternatively quaint and unsettling at the same time.

Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)

Look around and the house is actually a facade

Until October 31, 2016

The Roof Garden Commission

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 Fifth Avenue

New York
(212) 535 1675

Picture of the Day: Manhattanhenge

Coming across the Manhattanhenge

According to Wikipedia, the Manhattanhenge is an event during which the setting sun is aligned with the east-west streets of the main street grid of Manhattan, New York City. This event, also known as Manhattan Solstice, occurs twice a year around the summer solstice.

The other night we were walking home from dinner and managed to witness this event. Summer is definitely in the Big Apple.

Circling New York by Water

Passing under the Brooklyn Bridge on our harbour cruise around Manhattan

Yesterday the summer heat definitely arrived, the same day we decided to do a harbour cruise around Manhattan. We went down to Pier 83 on West 42nd Street and caught the 12.30pm cruise.

Even before the hour and a half tour started, our guide was already telling us interesting facts and figures about New York. Not only was he a fountain of information, but also funny too. What a change from the guide who took us around Kykuit.

Passing by the Statue of Liberty on a gorgeous hot day

We learned that the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world for 45 years with 102 floors, and has two zip codes. The guide pointed out that you will never have a record of 45 years anymore since everyone is in a race to build a taller building.

Before the Empire State Building it was the Chrysler Building that was the tallest building for only seven months at 77 stories. The building's outer layer is made of nickel alloy -- the same metal used to make five-cent coins, which is why the building is so shiny.

Our guide then told us to look to the right to look at New Jersey for a few seconds before continuing on about Manhattan, as a joke. But one interesting fact was that Hoboken, New Jersey has more churches and bars in one square mile. Go figure.

Another trivial bit of information about Hoboken is that it was where the game of baseball started, and where they began manufacturing baseball caps.

Not many people know who Audrey Marie Munson was

He also talked about a woman's likeness being on more than a dozen statues on top of several buildings and places in New York. Audrey Marie Munson was considered America's first supermodel, or "American Venus" and acted in a few films.

In 1909 she was discovered by a photographer in New York and he introduced her to his artist friends, including sculptors who used her as their muse. From there she acted in some silent films.

But then things went awry -- Her parents divorced when she was young and so she and her mother lived together in a boarding house owned by Dr Walter Wilkins. According to the story, he fell in love with Munson and even arranged to have his own wife murdered so he could marry Munson.

The Enterprise was named after the Star Trek spacecraft

She and her mother fled New York and Munson denied having any romantic relationship with Wilkins. He was eventually tried and convicted of murder with the sentence of death by electric chair; however, he managed to hang himself before his execution.

A about two years later Munson tried to commit suicide by swallowing a solution of bicholoride of mercury. When she was 40 years old, her mother had her committed into an insane asylum where she lived out the rest of her days until she died in 1996 at the age of 104.

A half niece found her in 1984 when Munson was 93. But after she died, Munson was buried without a gravestone in the Munson family plot in New Haven, New York.

What a sad story.

Our tour also took us to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and we later passed under the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges before turning around and returning to where we started.

Under the wing of the concorde, that no longer operates

Apparently New York is called the Big Apple because apples have a lot of sugar. And that was a metaphor for rich. So jazz players would say that getting gigs in New York meant getting the "big apple"...

Afterwards we went onto The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum next door. The aircraft carrier was built in 1943 during World War II and served in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

The Intrepid was destined for the scrap heap, but property developer Zachary Fisher and his brother Larry saved it and parked it on the water and stocked it with lots of military planes, and even has the British Airways Concorde and the space shuttle Enterprise.

The Chinese consulate is a big compound

It's more for military buffs, but still worth checking out at least once. Visitors can also go into parts of The Intrepid, seeing where the captain worked and slept, and the equipment they used, precursors to GPS and such. The bunks don't look too comfortable, but that's the way things were at the time.

As we left The Intrepid to go back home, we passed by the Chinese consulate, a massive compound seems to house its staff as well. Wonder if they get many protesters, though NYPD officers were standing around the door leading to visa applications...

Revisiting the Highline

The High Line overlooks the meatpacking district in Chelsea

Four years ago my friend took me to see a cool community project called the High Line in the meatpacking district and wrote about it here.

It turns out the start or end of the High Line is at the Whitney and on my last day in New York I took a long stroll along it and was amazed to see how much it had grown the last time I was there.

Flowers are growing nicely in between the cracks

The grasses had grown much taller, and trees had created a natural canopy in parts, and more importantly the path had extended much further. It's not a place to run through, but to walk alone, or with people and meditate on the scenery in front of you.

There are a few stops along the High Line where people can get drinks and snacks. The coffee stand was quite popular, though the others selling empanadas, artisanal popsicles and ice cream sandwiches were quiet.

For souvenir hunters, the High Line has its own gift shop too, with proceeds going towards funding the maintenance of the park/path.

There's lots of green spaces making it a pleasant walk

A nearby plaque explained that the High Line was built between 1929 and 1934 by the New York Central Railroad to take dangerous freight trains off the streets. They carried meat, produce, and dairy products into warehouses and factories on the third floor, and were nicknamed the "lifeline of New York".

However eventually trucks replaced trains in transporting goods and by 1980, the Highline had stopped running. In 1999, the High Line was threatened with demolition and two friends set up the Friends of the High Line to save it.

In 2002 the local government took on the initiative and the High Line was inaugurated seven years later.

A patch of shrubs and flowers that has grown nicely

However it was a massive donation of $20 million from the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation in 2011 that really gave the High Line a shot in the arm. Media mogul Barry Diller's offices in the Frank Gehry-designed IAC building is a stone's throw away from the park, while his fashion designer wife's studio and office is very close by.

The High Line is now a major tourist attraction, and on the day I went, a number of the people passing through were overseas visitors -- Italian was spoken a lot -- while some were locals preferring to take in some greenery on their walk, or avoiding the traffic below.

I walked all the way to around 34th Street by the docks to take in a view of the clouds threatening to take over the sky with rain. Only a few drops fell as somehow the winds managed to disperse the clouds to reveal some clear patches later in the day.

Yutaka Sone's depiction of Manhattan in marble

In one section is a massive marble sculpture -- of Manhattan! It's quite amazing to see it. Called Little Manhattan New York, New York (2007-2009) by Yutaka Sone,  it's a depiction of Manhattan in a nine-feet long piece of marble that captures everything within the two-year time period it was being created. You can't help but let your jaw drop seeing all the detail that went into this piece.

Not only is that amazing but also the fact that developers have quickly jumped in and built condos around the High Line to bump up prices. But do you want to live where people can walk by and look into your apartment? 

Nevertheless, can't wait to see what the High Line looks like the next time I come back!