The Best New York Birthday Party I've Ever Been To

#Fab5 at last years festivities, identities protected

Between May 29th and June 7th, 1991 four of my best friends from college and I were born. That means that every year, for 10 days straight, everyone we know is forced to celebrate "Birthday Week." We've given ourselves some very high-school era team names, and will argue with anyone brave enough to challenge us that the first week of June is indisputably the best time of year to be born.

For the last few years, we have all celebrated together with big, joint open-bar parties, but this season, being the gemini divas that we are (and taking into consideration the fact that 24 is a lame, yet scary, age to be turning) we all agreed we wanted to do our own thing.

Thus spawned the BEST New York city birthday part I have ever been to.

The first party of the season, which took place the night I got back from Europe, was at an authentic Italian restaurant in Little Italy called Puglia. We were told that the evening would cost $65 for unlimited food and wine, and were all expecting a nice, under control, grown-up-because-we're-24-year-olds-now dinner

What we got was so, SO much better.

The restaurant was set up with six long tables that seated 15 people. Three of the tables were for us (the bday girl is POPULAR), one was for a group of 20 year old boys who we tried to flirt with and one was for some girl's Sweet 16. There was a jug of wine for every two people, which the waitresses refilled throughout the night.

If school doesn't work out, this is my next career move

As the appetizers started to circulate (garlic bread! eggplant rolitini! stuffed mushrooms! clams casino! more garlic bread! Needless to say, I was not getting a make out after this meal) a middle-aged woman in a sequin dress took to the "stage" accompanied by an old italian man with a piano. It was magical.

They sang traditional italian songs (and played "The Napkin Song," which is a new personal favorite, on 5 separate occasions) as well as an operatic adaptation of Kesha's "Timber." We were all standing on our chairs going nuts, with the exception of the 16 year olds and their parents who were very, very sober and looking at us in horror.

To close out the evening (after 17 courses of food and at least three bottles of wine each), the sequined goddess sang "The Hora," during which the 20 year old boys lifted their birthday boy in his chair in true bar mitzvah fashion.

The whole experience was magical, and is something I would recommend to anyone celebrating a birthday in NYC. It has also given me, the fifth and final birthday girl of the week, a lot to live up to.