LE BERNADIN AND NEIL DIAMOND

This is Day 49 of our 53-day global journey. Yesterday was a day to remember. I would place it among the top three days we've had on this trip. #1 was probably Keukenhof Tulip Gardens in the Netherlands. Not sure what might else might be in this top list.

We began with a 2PM lunch at Le Bernardin. There are 13 Michelin 3-star restaurants in the United States, 4 in New York City. So we sought one close to the Marriott Marquis, and was able to get a reservation at Le Bernardin. We prefer lunches, and luckily enough, they offered this service.

San Francisco has 3 and Chicago 2. None in Los Angeles. I went to Joel Robuchon in Las Vegas 15 years ago when it was on this list, but it got dropped in 2009, and that could well be because Michelin does not review Nevada anymore. There are around 150 3-star restaurants in the world. I've been to a few of these 3-stars on my previous around the world trips.

A competing restaurant organization is the World's 50 Best Restaurants, first appearing in the British magazine Restaurant in 2002. I posted on a comparison in 2013, the period when I was actually dining at one or the other.

Here is a quote:

I have been following Michelin and Pellagrino to dine at the best restaurants. You can scroll down to my various experiences, which must number around fifty or so meals. But how did tire and water companies become the authorities to determine the finest?

Further:

In the very early days:

Michelin started as a road atlas for tire customers. Back then, one star meant "you can safely eat here without getting the runs," two stars meant "if you happen to pass this place do stop and have some food," and three stars simply conveyed "if you're hungry, this one is worth adding twenty miles to your trip and taking a diversion."

Finally, in that posting of eleven years ago, I said that there were 106 Michelin 3-star restaurants. As I said above, there are now 150.
This Best 50 list results from a poll of over 1,000 independent experts, independently adjudicated by Deloittte. Michelin is totally secretive on how they select theirs.
Annual winners are now disqualified from competing, as for example Noma in Copenhagen, which just closed anyway.
The first winner was El Bulli from Spain, Gordon Ramsay in England and The French Laundry in USA.
Both Noma and El Bulli have been #1 five times. El Bulli closed in 2011.

But today, we dined at a Michelin 3-star French seafood restaurant, Le Bernardin.

Very expensive. But everything is other worldly anywhere close to Times Square. For example, a simple t-shirt with the Big Apple sells for $109. In a 7-11 type store, a can of beer goes for $10, ten times more than in the tourist hub of Barcelona.

The restaurant itself is crowded and smaller than I expected.
The staff was wonderful, but food no better than a typical dinner or lunch on a cruise ship. A few photos.

Started with a cheese spread.

Followed by fried octupus and some kind of hamachi. Asked for wasabi, which helped heat things up for the rest of the meal.

A Rioja red.

Red snapper and halibut.

By far the best dish was the chocolate dessert. Crunchy and chocolaty.

Chef Eric Ripert dropped by for a chat.

It was a nice experience, but we were not overwhelmed. In New York City, Le Bernardin is rated #2 to Restaurant Daniel.

We walked by TKTS to see if tickets to A Beautiful Noise could be obtained for half-price. Was standing in a long line when this nice lady staff member saw we with a walking cane, so she said come with me. The priority lane had no one waiting. We got our "cheap" tickets for $110 each.

Show started at 7PM. Was a 5-minute walk from our room to the Broadhurst Theater.

The lead, Nick Fradiani, was absolutely fantastic. He actually sounded like Neil Diamond. He was the 2015 winner of American Idol.

Here are Jax and Nick Fradiani competing in that 14th American Idol season. Runner up Clark Beckham singing Georgia on My Mind. In the final, Fradiani singing Beautiful Life.

A special version of Sweet Caroline. Watch this one. On opening night, with Neil Diamond himself, singing Sweet Caroline. As you know, he has Parkinson's. I am a few months older than him.

Walked 5140 steps today.

Tomorrow, lunch at Fushimi and, perhaps, another Broadway show.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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