In a week, you will be starting to make your promises for the New Year. Eat healthier, work out more, stop texting every sexy brunette you meet on your travels, etc., etc. But until then, you might as well live it up. Allow us to propose a few anti-resolutions…
Attending to one's finances in a responsible manner is likely on the agenda for 2010. So tomorrow (or this weekend, or next week), ignore such a depressing thought with a $235, 90-minute facial at Emerge Spa. Your face, feet and hands are treated like Russian toast—slathered in caviar and antioxidants to rejuvenate the skin and smooth away lines.
We hate to advocate the indulgence of alcohol, tobacco and decadence, but they've always worked for you in the past. Spend a night in Koullshi's underground layer of all things leafy (well, most things leafy), where belly dancers serve as backdrop to 10 styles of hookahs and more than 80 brands of cigars.
There'll be plenty of time this year to save cash grilling steaks at home. Until then, sink your teeth into O Ya's Aragawa Style Wagyu strip loin, which goes for a cool $190. But don't worry, you can also pay $39 for a single order of Hokkaido sea scallops with black truffle—you know, if you're looking to spend sensibly.
If going heart healthy is on the list for 2010, then go out with a bang at Craigie on Main, where heads of milk-fed Quebec pigs are completely available. The off-menu half-head is brined, cooked in its own fat, roasted crispy brown and devourable to the skull with a side of pig au jus. It also feeds two people, in case you don't want to be the only one with pig-head nightmares later that evening.
Should yours be a sweet tooth on par with Willy Wonka's, disregard your dentist's advice to cut back on chocolate at Hotel Chocolat's tasting room. Think of the private, by-appointment setting as your own personal chocolate college—a place to try rare cocoa varieties, explore the optional wine pairings and bring only those dates who share your passion for nougat.
