Chapter 6: Ticket to Ride - New York (or Sometimes You Don't Want the Hawaiian Kona Chocolate Soufflé)

I love dessert. L.O.V.E. dessert. It happens to be tied for first place in my overall ranking of favorite dining courses (tied with appetizers - though either could really take the lead depending on mood). And it seems I've passed this love for all things sweet down to the gremlins, who now expect dessert nightly, to the point where they won't finish dinner because they're "saving room." Listen, gremlins, you don't eat that dinner I spent the last two hours preparing, you ain't gettin' no dessert. And what you don't get. I do. (evil grin). But that's a different story.

I just happen to have quite the sweet tooth. This was most evident on my honeymoon many moons ago in Disney World (don't judge). Listen, the parks are nice, the rides are ok, the hotels fun. It's all great. But, the food. Oh my, Disney restaurants are some of the best out there. And the capstone to our
honeymoon was a little place called Victoria & Albert's. For those who don't know, this is a fancy, seven course, shirt and tie, mucho dinero, kinda place that serves things with letters that have weird symbols on them.

The meal was fantastic. But the end... the pièce de résistance... a Hawaiian Kona Chocolate soufflé. Just knowing that awaited the end of these courses, my anticipation was just... through the roof. Course after course was served, Colorado bison with black garlic and charmoula (what's a charmoula? Who cares? Just eat it!), Kurobuta pork loin with zellwood corn succotash and arugula pudding (do those words belong together? I don't know). Delicious stuff. But eventually... dessert.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And eventually the waiter came by. You see. The thing with soufflé is, it's delicate. And the first one they made for me. Well, it dropped, and they weren't about to serve a de-puffed soufflé. Ok. So, the wait continued. Eventually it came.


The time was no issue when the end result was something with that sweet, sweet payoff that makes you sit back in your chair and think, "that is some good cake." My problem with Ticket to Ride has always been, the game is too long for how light it is. It's waiting anxiously for an hour for a delicacy only to receive vanilla ice cream. If you give a Doug a long time, he's gonna want some soufflé.

Ticket to Ride: New York seems to fix this. It gives you the vanilla ice cream you crave, without the long wait. A shortened game carries all the strategy and tension of its big brothers and sisters and cousins (or whatever), without the mismatched time commitment. I prefer New York to the larger boards.