I know you all want to hear about my lunch with Ruth Reichl, but Ruth Reichl Ruth Shmeichl---I met PIM this week!

She's here for business and on Tuesday we had lunch at Balthazar. We were supposed to have lunch at a fancy SoHo noodle joint but it was closed for lunch on Tuesdays. So I found Pim on the corner of Mercer and Prince and she looked adorable in her dress and we walked together the few blocks to Balthazar, this being our first time meeting each other face to face.

"I feel like I already know you," she said to me.

"Me too," I replied chirpily.

Then for a moment I thought Pim was going to get hit by a car and she didn't and then we laughed and I told her "that'd be quite a blog post." I would title it Chez Shmushed.

Ok, ok, so I can't write much because guess where I'm headed right now? To meet Pim again. I can't tell you where because you might stalk us and kill us. But here's what we ate at Balthazar...

We shared a Tuna Nicoise---isn't this a beautiful picture?

And then we each had, on Pim's suggestion, Steak Tartare.

This was the perfect lunch dish to get in summer: cool, bright, refreshing. And it was so well made: at one point Pim's chef boyfriend David called and I heard Pim say, "the steak tartare is better than the one we had in Paris."

We also had fries which Pim felt needed salt:

For dessert, we shared this fruit tart:

Pim worried that the strawberries were too white but when we tasted them they were moist and flavorful.

The meal was such a success that we're going to have another. No camera this time, at least on my end. Maybe Pim will write about it and then you'll have the he said, she said version of food blogging. As always, it's a real treat to meet food bloggers---especially the ones that I'm a big fan of like Pim. Off we go for round two!