A few months ago we visited LA to see our fabulous friend who took us to a crazy array of cool and gorgeous places to eat and drink… So when she told me that she had an NYC buddy who was equally glamorous that she could hook us up with, I jumped at the chance. Normally i’m more inclined towards dive bars and pints than cocktails and clubs, but I’m still a girl… And we all want a night of pretending to be in Sex and the City (even if my affection for the show has been almost destroyed by the appalling films) don’t we?

Our venue for fabulousness was Beauty & Essex, a restaurant/bar/heavenly beautiful place for beautiful people on Essex Street in the Lower East Side. Our beautiful (natch) host and her fiancé were sat in the VIP area and we joined them for cocktails, chatter and endless plates of beautiful tiny foods. Here’s a selection of photographs of some of the deliciousness we sampled, albeit in rather poor quality photos. Sadly, I was more interested in getting on with eating it all than getting the lighting right. I’m a poor excuse for a blogger.

Pork tamales and oven braised chicken meatballs, with sheepskin milk ricotta, wild mushroom and truffle. Nom!

The bar itself is huge and stunningly decorated, with chandeliers and gorgeousness at every turn. I felt like too much of a shameful tourist to take a ton of pictures, but here’s one of our little group outside as we were leaving. The entrance is through a pawn shop, like an old style speakeasy.

The best thing, the very best thing, the most genius thing about it ever, is that in the ladies toilets there is a champagne bar. With free champagne. I feel sorry for any man going with a group of women. He’s gonna be sat on his own for a while. I could have stayed in there all night. I’d imagine it wouldn’t make me very popular with the management though.

After we were all fabuloused out, we headed back to our hosts apartment for a couple of drinks on her roof terrace, but not before dropping into a small art show. That’s what Carrie would have done, after all.

The roof terrace had stunning 360 views across the city, every major landmark and all three bridges were in full effect. Disappointingly my camera skills and motivation to take pictures when having fun haven’t improved much. Here’s one of the midtown skyline though. Puuurdy NYC.

Posted with Blogsy