The Playwright Act II, New York, N.Y.

After we went to our 5 p.m. performance of the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular and pushed our way through the huge crowds gathered in the area for the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony (almost as crazy a place to be as Times Square on New Year's Eve!), Ian and I walked around Times Square and the Theater District in quest of a place to eat before going home to Washington. I'd heard that with the stagehands' strike going on, a lot of restaurateurs were having great specials to try to get some business in the doors to make up for the missing theater crowds. About all I saw were $25 per person prix fixe menus, though.

After talking Ian out of going to Red Lobster (seriously), we ended up at a local place with a lot of New York character, The Playwright Act II, an Irish tavern and restaurant west of the Theater District. It was fun.

The entire ground level floor is a long, narrow bar with dark woods and other Irish pub-type decor. It seemed quite popular, as the bar was packed. We were taken upstairs to their dining room, where they managed to squeeze in quite a lot of tables in a small space. A bank of windows allowed patrons to look out over Eighth Avenue. Posters and photographs of Irish playwrights and writers adorned the walls.

Despite having previously declared the intention to order something different for a change, Ian ordered the chicken finger appetizer and a basket of Cajun fries.


I ordered the traditional Irish breakfast. The Irish breakfast starts around a couple of over-easy fried eggs, a couple of pieces of bacon, a couple of bangers (Irish style link sausages), a healthy helping of French fries, some toasted wheat bread, and a grilled tomato half, and then adds the quintessential elements of an Irish breakfast: black pudding and white pudding. Now, let me clarify this a bit, as we aren't talking about chocolate and vanilla pudding. These are actually links of sausage, sliced and then fried. Black pudding is the Irish version of blood sausage, a pork sausage made with pork blood (it's the blood that makes it black). White pudding is similar, though without the blood.


My breakfast was quite hearty and very tasty. Things were very heavily fried, though, and the kitchen could have had a lighter hand with the grill. That made the black and white puddings a little too done, the bacon crunchy, and the eggs "lacy" and beyond over-easy. I thought the chicken fingers looked a little more than golden brown, too.

We started to have dessert (New York cheesecake, of course!), but Ian was getting antsy about catching the early bus back to D.C., and since I was quite full from the breakfast, I acquiesced and we departed sans sweets.