I’ve always tried to do at least one lunch during the annual NYC Restaurant Week celebration and this year it was at the way-high-in-the-sky Korean spot Gaonnuri east of Penn Station. I went Tuesday with Bill.

Restaurant Week 2014 actually covers three weeks (starting yesterday).

I realize some seasoned restaurant-goers argue you’re not getting the chosen restaurant’s top-shelf offerings if you order off the Restaurant Week menu but I’ve not once felt like I was getting an inferior experience while dining as part of the promotion.

I view it as a great opportunity to set foot in establishments that I wouldn’t otherwise visit given what the tab would end up looking like on a regular day. All of the Restaurant Week participants I’ve hit over the years have seemed genuinely motivated to please. After all, the timing of the event coincides with what’s considered a down period for most fine dining establishments in the city.

When the promotion launched in the early 90’s, three course lunches were 20 bucks plus tip at all participating restaurants. Now it’s 25. If you add a drink and a healthy tip, it ends up being 40 bucks a head. All but a few of the top places in Manhattan opt in on the promotion.

I thought Gaonnuri was great. Located on the 39th floor of an office building at 32nd and Broadway, the dining room offers unobstructed views of Manhattan in all directions but south. Bill’s Bossam appi-teazer was loaded with fresh-as-it-gets kimchi. More kimchi accompanied our Dolsot Bibimbap. A piping-hot stone bowl main course loaded with veggies, an egg and galbi over rice was notable for what happened to the white rice that had contacted the bottom of the bowl. When the server dug up the contents and mixed it all together, the crispy/chewy chunks of rice blended beautifully with the beef and brownish-red colored hot sauce added at diner’s discretion. Delish. Dessert was great too. Two artistically-presented little scoops of ice cream rested on cookie crumbs. On the way out, we soaked in the views (pictured above). My high opinion of the experience varied upward from Bill’s who said he was expecting greater creativity and quality.

-Somebody needs to update the Wikipedia page of the great Seattle musical duo The Dutchess and the Duke. Defunct since late 2010, the Dutchess and the Duke have resurfaced unexpectedly as a collaborative pair. Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison did a gig in the small lounge inside of Chop Suey in Seattle two weeks ago. They’ve announced they’ll do shows in Chicago and Milwaukee in late August and their label Hardly Art has indicated there will be more dates to come. The Dutchess and the Duke put out two of my favorite full length records of all time on Hardly Art in 2008 and 2009. Their split in 2010 appeared likely to be long term given a published remark made by Lortz in the run-up to the release of one of the two records he made under the name Case Studies. Those two releases were put out by Sacred Bones. I loved both of them although I’m excited about the prospect of new D and D material given how Morrison’s wonderful voice complements Lortz’s masterful songwriting and Stonesy guitar sounds.

-The FAA’s issuance of a prohibition on US flights to Ben Gurion Airport effective 1215 PM Tuesday has forced United, Delta and US Airways to cancel trips to the heavily-used international airport in an unincorporated area near the Tel Aviv suburb of Lod. Since all of the US departures operated by the Israeli carrier El Al subsequent to the FAA’s order have launched as normal today, it makes you wonder whether the US government is overreacting to the hostile deployment of a missile a mile from TLV. Ben Gurion is the most secure commercial airport in the world by far. US aviation regulators (perhaps with prodding by the executive branch) likely got cold feet about efforts to operate commercial flights into what they now view as an escalated threat zone so soon after last week’s downing of Malaysia Air flight 17. But the cue on how to proceed here should have come from the actions of El Al, which has not suffered a terror-related attack involving one of its aircraft in four decades despite the carrier’s obvious allure to bad guys.