My friend Renée was visiting yesterday from Indianapolis, so I took off work and we did the museum thing. We hit the Met and the Natural History Museum both in the same day, including the butterfly garden temporarily on view at Natural History. Renée is a dinosaur buff, so after seeing the dinos at Natural History we went uptown to Dinosaur BBQ for dinner with some friends.

To kill an hour between when the museum closed and when we had to be at Dinosaur, we stopped for tea at Alice’s Tea Room on W 73rd. The tea and scones were excellent, but the place takes the Alice-in-Wonderland thing a little too far. Renée called the glittery butterflies painted on the walls “too girly.”

Dinosaurs vs. butterflies: Dinosaurs win!

(Photo above: Renée Petrina)

“Eventually, I believe, everything evens out. Long ago, an asteroid hit our planet and killed our dinosaurs. But, in the future, maybe we’ll go to another planet and kill their dinosaurs.”

— Jack Handy

1. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, 646 W 131st St., Harlem. Huge, crowded, hard to get seated for dinner on the weekend, awesome.

2. Bar BQ, 689 6th Ave. (at 20th), Brooklyn. More of a bar, this place makes the list because it’s a block from my apartment and good people work there.

3. Virgil’s, 152 W. 44th St., Times Square. If you must eat in Times Square, eat here.

4. Hill Country, 30 W. 26th St. (near Broadway), Manhattan. They only have one kind of sauce, but it’s really good. Do not get suckered by the weird meat-by-the-pound ticket system.

5. Spanky’s, 127 W. 43rd St., Times Square. A suitable standby if Virgil’s is too crowded.