Crayfish Festival at Aquavit

Quick, if you hurry, there is still time to take part in the second week of Aquavit's two-week Crayfish Festival. Lunch is $27 and dinner is $37, which includes a pound of crayfish as well as a hot and cold buffet. Even if you aren't the sort of person who likes "to suck the head" (as a young Emeril Lagasse instructed Julia Child in this PBS episode, (click on part 2 of 2)), you can ignore the pound of boiled crayfish and still be very very happy.

These chanterelle toasts were possibly the best things of the evening, and there were a lot of really delicious dishes to choose from. Imagine caramelised onion, fresh chanterelles with a hint of cream atop crispy buttery toasts. I'm telling you, the words are failing to convey how amazing it was. Let's just say that after three plates of food and a pound of crayfish each, you can put one of these toasts in your mouth and still be amazed, seriously considering if your stomach can handle just one more toast.

Wow, I sound like a complete pig, and I am. But I swear that this three plate scenario arose not outside of an urge to gorge on a buffet, but rather because everything was so good we couldn't help ourselves.

Marcus Samuelsson's herrings are always fantastic, and this one with a hint of crayfish was no exception.

Skagen salad on toast

I got really into this meal. There were a couple of elderly couples. Some dressed in the appropriate combination of blazer and skirt, others going as casual as shorts. This old-school couple near us was one of my favorites. The gentleman and lady daintily ate their crayfish with the little forks provided and managed to not get any juice running down their arms. Meanwhile, the bastard consultant and I had long abandoned any utensils and were constantly pawing away at the cloth napkins in our lap.

There was also a buffet of hot dishes, which included a seared flank steak atop a corn and crayfish salad, beautifully poached salmon, some sinful potatoes gratin, crayfish mac 'n cheese, corn with this chili butter, and finally this amazing soup that tasted like condensed essence of crayfish. And I mean the whole crayfish: tail meat, cholesterol-laden mystery insides and more. It was the sort of soup that a normal chef would use to toss a pasta in our thin out with some cream and pool a small amount on a plate to complement an entree, not dump it into a tureen bubbling above a Sterno so guests could just ladle into their bowls and then into themselves.

Then I started eyeing the couple with the guy in shorts. That man bested even me. He twisted the tail, sucked the head and then went and sucked the legs! A true disciple of the crayfish. When I saw him stand up to revisit the buffet after he finished his bowl of crayfish, I did a mini fist pump from my corner of the dining room to express my glee.

Aquavit Crayfish Festival, August 17-22, 65 E. 55th St (b/n Park and Madison), New York, NY