Dogs and Highline

If there’s one thing I love as much or more than food, it’s dogs. I haven’t had a dog in around three years and it’s killing me. So whenever my friends have dogs, I turn into a five year old and focus 100% of my attention on the dog for the entirety of my stay at their residence.

Enter Rusty.


Rusty is a Gator dog owned by my friends Chrissy and Jason, and yes he is giving me a high five. He’s a bad-ass, that’s the only way to describe him.

The Kolacki trifecta was in New York this past weekend, which is the first time I have ever seen all three of the sisters at the same time. (My sister wants me to add more pictures of people, so here's the sisters, from L to R, Chrissy, Katie, and Joanna.)


So Jason, Chad, Jo, Katie, Chrissy and I headed to Highline, a Thai restaurant and bar in the Meatpacking district where Jonny is a bartender. I mistakenly ordered the rib-eye (so far I’ve made some poor culinary choices). It was accompanied by a bamboo shoot salad littered with an over-abundance of cilantro.


The marinade on the rib-eye was too salty and too sweet and covered up the flavor of the less than stellar cut of meat. However, the steak was cooked a nice med-rare and was the definitely the best thing on the plate, which isn’t really a compliment.

Before I could even put a bite of the bamboo shoot salad in my mouth, the cilantro bomb went off in my nostrils.

Now those of you that know me well, know that I eat and enjoy everything. I am the least picky person when it comes to food. I will try anything once because people who say they don’t like foods they have never tried really bother me.

My only culinary pet peeve is the grossly widespread over-use of cilantro. It’s just too strong of an herb, and people all over the place use it to the same extent as parsley. It completely overpowers every other flavor in the dish, and this “salad” was a prime example. It wasn’t just me; there was a general consensus at the table that the cilantro needed to be controlled.

When Jason ordered his pork chop, our server didn’t ask him how he wanted it cooked, which I thought was weird. I assumed it was going to come out medium, and the bite I had was pushing well done. Who cooks well done pork chops anymore? The sautéed mushrooms were kind of bland, and I didn’t try any of that crazy orange sauce.



Jo’s red curry shrimp was the best thing that I tried at Highline, at which point I realized I should have gotten a real Thai dish. Grilled rib-eye isn’t exactly a Thai specialty. The curry was a little mild for my personal taste, but the flavor was well balanced. As you can see the dish gets Jo’s “Thumbs Up” approval. (This was Jo’s belated birthday dinner, Happy Birthday Jo!)


Jon insists that the food is good and I should give it another chance but I wasn’t really crazy about anything. We had fun though, and closed out the night at the Brass Monkey Pub.