On Saturday night I went out to eat with Marc Canter and his son Aron at a world-famous restaurant in NYC, Sammy's Roumanian Steak House. 

If you ever get a chance to eat out with Marc, I'd do it. Just kick back and let him work with the waiter. You always end up eating a perfectly orchestrated meal. And even though there aren't many choices at Sammy's, and I had been there many times over the years, this meal was a Canter orchestration par excellence, a new experience. Let me tell you what we had. 

The meal started with glasses of ice cold seltzer and a big frozen bottle of vodka. The seltzer is very good, and while I'm not a big drinker of any kind of alcohol, this vodka, served at 32 degrees, tasted so good. I chugged a first glass, and then sipped it through the meal. It made the schmaltz of Sammy's work much better. 

The next course, chopped liver. It comes in a steel bowl, with fried onions, garlic, and the waiter pours chicken fat over the whole thing and mixes it at your table. I know it sounds terrible, and it looks worse, oh but it is incredibly flavorful and delicious. For me it was the best course of the meal. 

Then the waiter comes out with what he calls "monkey dicks" -- which are long sausages, I have no idea what's in them or what they're called, but they were also very good. You eat them with some pickles, onions and a bit of ketchup.  

Then the main course, a huge piece of flank steak, grilled with lots of garlic and potato latkes on the side. Usually that would be the star of the meal for me, but the other flavors were so rich and the spices so great, esp in combination with the vodka. The main course seemed overwhelmed by the accessories.  

Finally, a big bottle of Fox's U-bet and a half-gallon of milk and a fresh bottle of seltzer. Out of which you make your own egg creams. A New York tradition, which of course had no egg and no cream.