My Dinner with Rachel Maddow

If there’s one restaurant I love it’s NYC's Momofuku Ssäm Bar. And if there’s one TV commentator I idolize it’s MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. So it was hugely exciting for me to have dinner with Rachel, who is also a foodie and cocktail expert, last night. At Ssäm Bar. The table, which included Rachel’s partner, artist Susan Mikula and a special guest star or two, was a late one—Rachel doesn’t finish taping her show until after 10 pm so there we were eating bo ssäm (the restaurant’s much-documented 6-pound caramelized pork butt) at midnight. The conversation ranged from Gitmo detainees going to Palau (that country’s president had been a guest on her show that evening) to the ice cubes in Ssäm's excellent Old-Fashioned (they’re hand-cut in Queens by an ice-cutting silver medalist—Rachel said she'd never seen better ones). I didn’t think Rachel Maddow could get any cooler but anyone who can eat bo ssäm at midnight (after digging into Momofuku pork buns and fried chicken and before tasting four kinds of cake from Momofuku Milk Bar) is my all-out hero.