In the Mavericks' most recent game, Nowitzki hit a last-second 3-pointer to lift Dallas to a two-point victory over the Chicago Bulls, while Bryant was able to carry the Lakers past the lowly Sacramento Kings on Saturday night, dishing out 14 assists even as he passed Wilt Chamberlain's place on the all-time scoring list.
Throughout the evening, dishes meant for others were sent to our table by mistake.
"We keep plugging along," said the club's president, Charles Kazanecki, 67, who grew up in St .Hedwig's parish nearby but long ago left for Piscataway, and who was working the kitchen this afternoon, dishing up kielbasa and pierogi.
Each afternoon, dishes such as warm salad of potato, fried egg and Clonakilty black and white pudding; spaghetti carbonara; porcini risotto; or peppery, perfumed pastrami with remoulade and pieces of what resembled XXL melba toast, are all knocked out at £6.50.
The next morning, dishes were placed on ice and gently washed with ice cold PBS.
On one such night, a dish of chitarra pasta was overwhelmed by its creamy sauce of walnuts, garlic and Parmesan ($14), and a simple dish of grilled calf's liver ($18) was sadly overdone.
But on another night, the dish could have been made by a mother with two kids, a job and a husband with an attitude: It was rushed.
So America's hottest stand-up will still climb on stage this Sunday night to dish out the funnies and the gold statuettes.
There was never much doubt that the night — every dish invented for the evening, on a menu that was kept secret until the last minute — would be daring and gastronomically gratifying, if a bit overwhelming.
And so, crucially, does the Canlis salad, a menu highlight from the restaurant's very first night, a dish that Brian Canlis sometimes tells people is literally in his genes, his mother craved and ate so much of it when she was pregnant with him.
