32

The day I turn 32, I take a self-portrait then weave my arms through my t-shirt of David Bowie’s mugshot and into a jacket that looks like I skinned Elmo. It is a Tuesday, Election Day, and I have resolved to spend the day as I wish, which thus far includes bundling myself up tight and heading downtown on the ferry. On the top deck, I tie my hair up so it doesn’t become one giant knot and the wind courses over my ears. I should probably have a hat, but I don’t. Exiting at Stuyvesant Cove, I trot in my black leather boots over to B&H for a grilled cheese and tomato soup and coffee. I know I’m one year older; it's nice it's not something that makes this day any different for any strangers walking past me.

I sit and read Charlie LeDuff’s Work and Other Sins, his collection of writing from The New York Times, in Washington Square Park. Youths skateboard and an old man sits on the bench next to me reading the newspaper. My hands and my nose protest that it’s slightly too cold for this, but I persist as I read a story about a pimp trying to make it in New York City after great success in Boston. When my hands and nose give up, I amble over to Mercer Street Books to buy myself a birthday present. Despite over 10 years in the city at this point, I hadn’t been there before Steven Jude took me there on a warm day this past summer. I had already bought too many books that day, and in trying to decide between Anais Nin and Sherrill Tippins and Frank O’Hara, I ultimately decided to leave them all on the shelf. But today, peering amongst the stacks while fielding birthday messages, my birthday present takes the shape of David Rakoff’s essay collection Half Empty, and I look forward to consuming his intellectual snark after I finish...yet another book I probably didn’t need to buy.

As the clock ticks ever nearer to 4pm, I make my way to Cafe Reggio to meet Meena, a new friend I met at an art gallery a few weeks ago. It is nice to know that even after a decade, there are still more good, interesting humans to include in my life, that I haven’t a threshold of friendships, even though it’s something DJ Khaled might prefer. Meena wants to take me for birthday “tea and cakes,” she says because she is British. We sit in the nearly 100-year-old cafe on MacDougal Street that’s normally crawling with tourists but today is merely a venue for working or meeting New Yorkers. There is an eclair and a croissant and blackberry tea and talk of politics, music, food before we cross over to Thompson Street.

“Do you want to play chess?” Meena says, and what a question! I don’t think it’s something someone’s asked me since middle school and, delighted by the novelty, I say yes. We go to Ches Forum. I have not played in years and my minimal skill is evident. As I remember the game minimal confidence erringly grows to hubris that correctly shrinks down again in fits of laughter. The music in the background is classical and “very chess-y,” Meena says, sort of intellectually crowded and complex in ways that make us laugh at both it and ourselves.

Walking down Bleecker Street later, bars with outdoor seating have propped up flat screen TVs so people can sit and watch the election results come in. It’s still early, a bit past 8pm, but my home county of Broward in South Florida, so far appears blue, which is a welcome change from years past. But of course I have already voted and it is my birthday, so I prefer to think about that instead.

I take myself to dinner at my new favorite spot, Kimika, on Kenmare Street. My plan is to indulge as much as I did for my birthday in Hawaii last year, to take care of myself and not worry about anyone else, a luxury I don't normally I afford myself. I remember the freedom in that, in just making myself happy, and that translates to dinner this evening. I don’t have to share, I don’t have to order anything I don’t want to order, I can eat as much of every dish as I want, and I don’t have to make clever conversation. All I have to do is enjoy the food, and I do indeed: their spicy shishito pepper margarita, olives in chili oil, figs with shiso and prosciutto, their signature rice cake lasagna with kimchi, various broccolis cooked in beef fat (!!!), apple crostata with melt-in-my-mouth pastry, and those miraculous, sinful, fabulously unholy mochi bomboloncini with warm nutella centers. Chef Christine Lau comes out and we do a birthday shot of tequila together because hers was the week before.

I leave with a feeling of having taken care of myself. This was a day I asked myself what I wanted to and my goodness did I answer with aplomb.

Morsels

The last time I saw Julia, a man took our picture with a Polaroid camera and said the bright white of the flash would dissipate from our faces after it developed. He lied, maybe not on purpose, but he did. In it, we look like two friendly ghosts. We kept waiting for it to get darker as we ate pizza and salad in Crown Heights after a gig of hers at The Owl on Rogers Avenue, but it never did.

The day I see her again, so many months later--a phenomenon not unusual for anyone these days, I’m sure--we’re sitting under a peachy pink umbrella on a hot summer afternoon, drinking frose cocktails I’m sure meant for women who wear leggings to brunch and won’t shut up about SoulCycle. But we don’t care, it’s hot out, steamy, the kind of heat that makes your clothes cling to your chest, and a basic bitch cocktail is the perfect remedy.

*

The lightness I feel in my chest knowing B&H Dairy continues to survive the pandemic is practically levitating. SJT and I celebrate such a feat by dining there live and in person, and I am dunking my fresh mozzarella on challah bread into cold, cold borscht as if it hasn’t felt like decades since I was there last time. We slurp iced coffees and clink silver spoons against white ceramic bowls while young teens walk by dressed like they’re auditioning for The Craft. Ah youth, I smile, watching their Doc Martens amble past. I’m glad joy presents itself for me now less as trying to look cool and more like going shopping for vintage cookbooks at Bonnie Slotnick’s with SJT. While we are there, a woman named Jeannie tells us that eight short ribs is simply too many, how could you ever eat all of that. Later SJT promises to make me short ribs for my birthday, as many as I want.

*

HanOre returns from summer out of state and it’s jacket season, hers a red leather and mine the navy wool blazer I co-opted from my dad’s giveaway pile several years ago. We wrap them tighter around us as we sit at Amor y Amargo on East 6th Street in the East Village, nibbling on the roasted nuts we were required to buy by Governor Cuomo before sipping on smoky cocktails in high ball glasses. We talk about seduction and what it means to be a New Yorker, and how those things overlap. Somehow after two cocktails I am still standing and we go to Niagara a block away, the home of the Miss Manhattan reading. I miss my grungy weird little art bar and get a well drink in its honor with French fries lain across red and white checked wax paper. They’re too salty, but I don’t care. I’m just glad it’s still open.

*

Syd arrives to Le Moulin a Cafe and speaks French to the waiter. It’s so perfect he even laughs in French. I am drinking decaf iced coffee because I have been fighting insomnia but I miss the taste. The sun is hot but there’s a perfect chill in the air for my new emerald green chenille sweater, the one I love so much I have been wearing it for two days. I hardly remember what we ate because Syd--a history colleague I am delighted to also call my friend-- is so exuberant, joyful, vibrant I just remember laughing the whole time. Nobody ever comes up here, so it’s a treat when a friendly face appears. Later, we sit by the river and the sun shines and we talk about sex and television. Next to us, too close, even, an older woman undresses to absorb the sun and we’re reminded that New York is not dead.

*

As I’m preparing picnic goods for the park, I’m wondering when the last time it was that I truly entertained. It wasn’t going to be a big to-do, I was really just going to make a kugel for myself for Rosh Hashanah because last year’s turned out so well. But then I was reading Ruth Reichl’s Comfort Me with Apples and she was talking about dinners with groups of friends at Alice Waters’s house and I was inspired. I missed friends in groups and cooking for them, even with my limited skills. We found a spot near the river and unwrapped the noodle-y, dairy-full casserole laden with raisins (yes, RAISINS, because I LIKE THEM) and I gave out first then second then even third helpings. Later, I packed leftover challah and kugel into Ziploc bags for friends to take home like a real Jewish mother.

*

When Magali meets me in Long Island City, we go to a French bakery, a miraculously independent business trembling under the weight of all that too-new, too-nothing glass and concrete dotting the river and blocking the sun. I have a long, crusty (in a good way) ficelle with ham and butter and a chai tea and we sit in the sun, a parade of pups going by. I roll my eyes at dogs in strollers because honestly, what the hell is that even. Magali tells me about Zurich, where people have special bags they put their clothes and belongings in so they can swim home from work. I would never, ever want to swim in the East River, but I saw once in a documentary that people actually do it. I nibble on the ficelle as I consider the possibility. What doesn’t kill you makes you more of a New Yorker.

Have Some More

Our bowls of pasta arrived sometime recently, but I don’t remember because time began slowing once our broccoli rabe appetizer, accented with strips of crispy pancetta, arrived at our table.

I am with my friend NE, human glitter, a poet who brims with shine and sparkle and intellect and knows how to appreciate joy and pleasure in big and small bites. We will be having dinner at Fiaschetteria Pistoia, which I will soon learn is a sliver of Tuscan culinary heaven on Christopher Street, where a man with tattoos in the window makes fresh pasta by hand, BY HAND, spinning dough into strips that will eventually become spaghetti, pappardelle, and lord knows what else. Waiting for NE in the tiny hallway next to a kitchen cordoned off by glass, I watch as another man makes slabs of veal in a pan, tossing in generous heaps of olive oil while the cast iron sizzles the meat to a light brown. Small plates of pasta, artichokes, vegetables leave the tiny kitchen window and exit into the room decorated with exposed brick painted white. A Keith Haring poster of Rome and another for Italian ice cream dot the walls. When we sit down at a tiny gray marble table, the words “Fresh Pasta is Never Al Dente Because it Was Never Dried” float above our heads.

We rip slices of bread, offered to us in a tiny brown paper bag, into a olive oil from an equally tiny ramekin. A waiter offers us wine from a selection of empty bottles, each tagged with ‘White’ and ‘Red’ like Alice’s bottles in Wonderland are with ‘Eat Me’ or ‘Drink Me.’ We don’t, instead pouring ourselves water from a repurposed bottle etched with what look like window panes.

NE is talking when the broccoli rabe arrives, its green stalks and florets dipped deliciously in olive oil, but I don’t remember what she says because I slide a chunk of it into my mouth with a sliver of pancetta and my brain stops working, the broccoli falling apart next to the crunch of the pancetta, releasing flowers and spices onto my tongue. She stops mid-sentence, eager to “have what I’m having” as When Harry Met Sally would say, and takes a bite. We look at each other, eyes wide. Wow.

We make our way through the small plate loaded with the shiny green vegetable until there’s just a little bit left.

“Have some more,” NE says.
“You have some more!” I say back, pointing a fork at her.

We both giggle and take each other’s advice. A lone floret rests on the edge of the plate when a waiter tries to remove it, but I make him pause so I can give it to NE. A smile spreads wide across her face.

Our pasta arrives in two small bowls lined with blue trim. I slide mine toward me, ribbony pappardelle made yellow by the redness of a bolognese-style ragu. I'm careful not to “chow down,” and remember to taste. The silken pasta glides next to the chunky, meaty ragu and slowly my brain begins to stop working again. I have trouble forming sentences. I try not to speak because that means more time I’m not eating. And NE is having the same experience with her Cacio e Pepe, this hand-rolled spaghetti with pecorino and black pepper that’s tangy and creamy at the same time. I taste it and eat it with all manner of impropriety, nibbling the strands of pasta from my fork one by one.

We go back to our own dishes, but NE insists. “Have some more!”

When I hear her say it this time, I realize she is not just saying to keep indulging in Cacio e Pepe. Enjoy, she is saying. Take pleasure! Live! Taste! Be in and of your senses and this moment. The food is so good, she says I start blushing. She wants to marry every man in the restaurant, especially the one who makes the pasta. After a while we stop speaking altogether and just look at each other and shake our heads. We both feel a little drunk, despite having only water to drink. This food euphoria is something new, a buzz not unlike a strong glass of wine. The pleasures of good food shared with a friend extend beyond the stomach. We are tasting joy, and in good company.

A Good Man Sunday

If I learned nothing from 30 Rock, it’s that a trip to Ikea can make nails scratch against the chalkboard of a relationship. 

It turns out it’s actually true: apparently the stress of buying large items or even confronting the possibility of what a future might look like can drive some couples to tear at each other’s throats (literally or figuratively, I’m not sure). So when SE told me he wanted to go to Ikea, I said sure, thinking ‘What a fun thing to do on a Saturday!’ all the while keeping Liz Lemon and Criss in the back of my mind. SE hadn't watched too much 30 Rock, so he didn't know. 

But we didn’t fight, surprisingly. While SE would be happier in a room that looks more like Don Draper’s apartment and I would be pleased as punch to be in a place that looks like the Madonna Inn in California, we began to find things we liked that overlapped and made each other happy. And all SE really wanted to get there was a knife. I did find that being in there made me extremely tired—I noticed that the setup is not unlike a casino in Vegas, where there are no windows or clocks so you cannot quickly comprehend the passage of time and force yourself to leave quicker. By the time we had lunch after finishing the top floor (meatballs and ligonberries, of course), I was half in the bag, but continued to make my way through the marketplace, even procuring some cute, colorful plates and bowls and plastic Tupperware-esque containers along the way. I passed out for a hot minute in the ‘As-Is’ section after grumbling about the probably poorly behaved children who left their footprints all over some furniture that was perfectly good aside from the occasional scratch. 

We then decided to explore Red Hook a bit, walking down Beard Street to some of the piers. Growing up in Brooklyn, Red Hook was not ever a place you went for anything on purpose, SE told me. Nevertheless, it was this gorgeous, crisp, bright blue, cloudless day and for a while we just stood on the pier. This was not before going to a place called Nobletree Coffee, however. I wanted some coffee, and Google Maps said it was close by, so I decided to go. Now, having been there, I can say that Nobletree is undoubtedly one of these places that people who hate gentrification also despise—a place with a wooden bar and cold brew coffee on draft, its baristas with mustaches and suspenders not so much for irony but for quirky enjoyment, flavor profiles listed for each coffee they sell. These people love coffee, take coffee super seriously and, I hoped, would not snarl at you if you wanted to add some fake sugar to your latte like I did. You walk up to the bar and order from a barista in no particular order, perhaps the same way you might at a bar that did not serve coffee. You just catch the barista’s eye and order, much to the confusion of people who tried waiting in a line and were then thrown off when people just kept walking up to the bar past them. I ordered a latte, was asked if I wanted to open a tab (????), declined, and paid for my beverahhhhge. I am not a regular coffee drinker, so I don’t normally have an opinion about the flavor of the stuff, much less know anything about what a good cup of coffee tastes like. There was a place near Grand Army Plaza I used to love because their coffee tasted like fudge, but they closed and since I hadn’t actually been able to drink coffee for a long time. But I had been feeling better these days, so I decided to go for it. And let me tell you—it’s one of the best made cups of coffee I think I’ve ever had. It was the kind of cup of coffee that makes you understand what coffee is supposed to taste like, simultaneously nutty and fruity and creamy with no bitter aftertaste. What sorcery was this? Even SE, who can drink coffee but hates it, tried it and said “I still don’t like coffee, but that’s the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.” What higher praise can someone ask for? I felt like a gentrifying gentrifier, but damn that’s some good coffee. 

We walked along the waterfront a little bit, then hopped on the Water Taxi back to Manhattan (fun fact: the ferry to and from Ikea is free on the weekends, and also picks you up from Van Brunt street in Red Hook), the sky beginning to glow orange as the first inklings of sunset twinkled across the sky. Arriving back in Manhattan, we walk from Pier 11 at Wall Street back to the train, passing the building that doubles as The Continental, the assassins’ hotel in one of SE’s favorite movies, John Wick. I take pictures of him in front of it so he can send to a friend who’s equally obsessed with the film. We head back uptown and for no good reason eat Chocolate Chip Cookies at Insomnia Cookies, the warm, gooey chocolate a perfect counter for the chilly night. SE likes the outside of the cookies and I like the inside, so he peels off the edges for himself and gives the wobbly, chocolatey centers to me. It’s a perfect appetizer before we head downtown to the barbecue spot Blue Smoke, where every Sunday they have 50 cent wings. The wings are grilled then tossed in what they call their Alabama white sauce, creamy and savory and tangy and oh my goodness. Every bite is juicy and flavorful, a wing worth writing home about. 

SE planned us a gorgeous day (my only addition was the coffee), and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. Give me some furniture, some cookies, some wings, and my good man on a Sunday and I’ll be just fine. 

The World is My Oyster(s)

On Tuesday night, SJT and I find ourselves in the tunnels of Grand Central Station, below the walkways leading to the street, for a trip to an iconic New York landmark, perhaps as iconic as the building that houses it. The Grand Central Oyster Bar has been just below street level for over 100 years, its curved archways, countertops, and dark wooden bars delightfully from an era not our own. Though in 1974 it had become simply a rundown coffee shop, it was taken over that year by Jerome Brody, a restaurateur who transformed the space back to its former glory. It's now owned by an Employee Stock Ownership Program, and continues to be one of the city's most beloved spots--even if you'd never been there, you knew about it. You may even recognize it from previous years' cast introductions to Saturday Night Live, and it recently won the Design Icon James Beard Award.

And yet, SJT and I were among the group who knew about the legendary restaurant but had never gone. We resolved to remedy this with their new(ish) happy hour, which is held Monday-Wednesday from 4:30-7pm, and Saturdays from 1-5pm in their Lounge and Saloon spaces. The Lounge, with its modern white tables and chairs and banquette seating, gave us a view of the entire restaurant, so we waited patiently for one to open (they're first-come, first-serve). It felt vulture-like to prey upon the tables of people slowly putting on their jackets and leaving their empty wine glasses behind, but we knew it had to be done. He watched over one entrance and I the other and with a combined magic of occasional nods and eyebrow arches we wound up with a table vacated by four older, athleisure-clad women.

We sat, observing the three curved lunch counters to our left, with another one in the back, resolving to sit at one of them next time for the sandwiches that are only served there. I love sitting at lunch counters, with their spinning stools and handwritten menus overhead, for that feeling of being in another time.

From the happy hour menu, we chose Bluepoint Oysters and wine, a rose for SJT and a chardonnay for me. Normally, the Oyster List at the Oyster Bar is about five pages long, including not just the oyster name, but the geographic origin, size, and flavor profile. I have since learned that Bluepoints are regular sized, of mild flavor, and hail from New York's Long Island and Connecticut's Copps Island.

More older women in athleisure commandeered spaces around us, as did men in suits and women in neutral work attire. Grand Central Station is smack in the middle of midtown, of course, so it draws both tourists and businesspeople in great abundance. And yet here we were, two freelancers awaiting their giant plate of oysters.

I did not eat oysters until after I moved to New York, fearful from a young age of what might happen if one eats a bad one based on a story my mother had told me of her own experiences many moons ago. But after I ate one oyster and didn't die or end up in the hospital, I figured for a while I would continue trying them. I find them less fishy, less slimy than clams, with a meat that's just the right amount of slippery and chewy. I notice that I don't order them of my own volition (I wonder if this is a side effect of that original deep-seated fear), but if someone wants to eat oysters, I am happy to tag along. And since SJT has been on an oyster kick for the last few months, I have been happy to tag along. The Oyster Bar was his latest selection, and what would not be fun about testing out a New York icon?

I realized after coming back from L.A. that what most interested me about the city was what was left over from what I'm going to call its golden age, the '40s, '50s, and '60s. Restaurants like Musso & Frank with their famous steaks and Dal Rae with Cherries Jubilee prepared tableside are legendary spots I would have been excited to check out had there been time. But what about in my own city? There were so many incredible, historic places I had yet to visit and perhaps it was time to start digging in, to not take them for granted and try them while I was able.

It is a delight that the Oyster Bar was one of the first places I visited in this new view of the city I'm trying to have. Cracked open and laid on ice, the oysters arrived with tangy cocktail sauce, mignonette (a tangy, almost mauve sauce made of vinegar and shallots), lemons, and a big container of horseradish. We squeezed lemons and dipped sauces, but the oysters were perfectly lovely on their own, too--mild indeed, almost pillowy, and chilly. It was like being in another era for a while, so much that I imagined fixing my imaginary pillbox hat and rushing out to catch a train in my kitten heels. But alas, I was wearing cowboy boots which, I think, part of me still ultimately prefers.

The Bar Mitzvah You Never Had

If you have never been to a bar or bat mitzvah (or never had one, like me), perhaps you are not familiar with the traditional Jewish celebration of a young person becoming an adult. To say there's lots of singing and dancing and food is accurate but a wild understatement. We're Jews, so we know how to party like the world is coming to an end because there are so many times for us when that has actually happened. We don't just dance, we do the hora, where we hold hands and spin in a circle to a seemingly endless degree. We don't just say prayers, we sing them and clap along in rhythm. We don't just pat celebrants on the back, we lift them up and down in a chair above our heads to music. In my opinion, to be Jewish means to have an appreciation for all things over-the-top and loud, even if one isn't over-the-top and loud oneself, because it's having an appreciation for life being lived to the fullest: not quietly, not with hesitation or reservation, not in hiding. "By living life to the fullest," Rabbi Elisha Greenbaum writes, "we justify the gift that is life." 

With all that being said...a place in New York where you can experience this very Jewish fullness of life that one might experience at a bar or bat mizvah without actually attending one is at Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse on the Lower East Side. Before last night, I had previously only heard tell of the restaurant, known for its dancing and parties, but hearing about something is very different than experiencing it first hand, as we did for JT's birthday. 

Sammy's has been on the corner of Delancey and Chrystie Street since 1929, when the neighborhood was still largely comprised of Jewish immigrants. It serves classic Jewish foods like stuffed cabbage, chopped liver, kishke, kreplach, and a host of other roasted and grilled meats (and the occasional vegetable), and every table is provided with a container that might normally hold maple syrup but is instead filled with schmaltz, or rendered chicken fat (sometimes it's goose fat). This is a leftover tradition from kosher cooking, where one couldn't use a fat like butter in preparing a meat dish because meat and dairy couldn't be mixed, so one used schmaltz instead because it was a fat with which one would still be able to cook. u

The sign above Sammy's by this point must be ancient, its mustard backdrop with red and blue Hebrew-style letters faded from years of sun exposure. And you don't walk into it, you walk down to it, into a room lit from above with fluorescent lights, whose wooden walls are pasted with a collage of images from decades past, the occasional college pennant or wedding invitation or faded, peeling photograph just barely holding on. It's almost like being in a more excitingly decorated Elks Lodge, long tables covered in white cloth smushed against walls and into corners, around which sit iron and wooden chairs tightly squeezed together. On these white tables are wooden bowls filled with pickles, teeny white plates, paper napkins, utensils and, of course, Sammy's signature schmaltz. 

When SE and I enter, most of the people in JT's birthday party have already arrived, and we squeeze ourselves like a close family onto a long table by the DJ booth. There are bottles of vodka in front of us frozen inside ice and placed inside white plastic tubs, tiny glasses for shots and carafes of cranberry juice for chasing. The DJ is maybe in his early 70s, grayish, balding and slightly frail at first sight, but throughout the night he takes us from traditional Jewish anthems like "Hava Nagila" (to which the entire restaurant danced the hora, and our party separated to raise JT--wearing a crown and a Sammy's shirt given to him by the restaurant as a gift--up and down like at the bar mitzvah he had 17 years ago) to Billy Joel's "Piano Man" to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" to The Fontaines' "Build Me Up, Buttercup" and ultimately, Flo Rida's "Low" and Nelly's "Hot in Herre." We're all soon singing along at a loud, vodka-fueled volume, instantly friendly with the other party guests, only some of whom we knew. We're literally rubbing elbows and so-and-so I just met asks me if I would like some deep-fried kreplach or a potato latke or the chopped liver, into which a large smattering of schmaltz has just been ceremoniously poured for all to see by a well-trained waiter. People dig in with gusto. That's what you're meant to do here, after all. 

Photo by Steve Silberman

Vodka continues to flow, and after a brief dance break, our entrees make our way to the table with a resounding thunk of ceramic onto plastic wood. We pile slices of juicy steak and salmon and roasted chicken, slide thick potato chips or heap mashed potatoes onto delightfully mismatched plates. I swear I could have eaten the entire plate of the salty, tender steak but alas I had to share. All the while, music continues to play, we sing, we eventually put on party hats and sunglasses, getting up to dance in a tiny space in a corner of the restaurant. The rest of the parties at the restaurant do the same, the small spaces between each of the tables becoming tiny dance floors for both older patrons in floral dresses and younger patrons in platform shoes. 

It's a sense of celebration and vibrance I have often associated with being Jewish, and it comes naturally to many of us at the table that evening. It's the bar mitzvah we never had. Without even thinking about it, I know this is the way you proceed with joy: with laughter, with singing, with dancing, with so much food you can hardly stand and, if you're lucky, with a little bit of schmaltz.

Farewell, Angelica

It's not a secret that New York is constantly changing. It is perhaps a vast understatement at best. Sometimes, the more I see it change, the more I worry about its future. Especially when it comes to places like Angelica Kitchen closing.

I first went to Angelica Kitchen, an East Village vegan/vegetarian restaurant, in 2013. And what's magical about it--or, what was, as today is the last day of service in the restaurant's 40 year history--is that every time I went back, the food was just as good as the first cold winter day I went in there. Right down to my last day there, this past Wednesday, when I walked in after a photography seminar to find the place whirring with people in a way I have never seen before. Normally it's so easy to walk in during the week and have the host seat just me at a petite table for two. I'd sit out, facing the restaurant and read the menu, always thinking I'd get something different...but I almost never did. The Dragon Bowl, a plate of steamed veggies and tofu served with dressing of your choice (I usually got the house-made vegan balsamic vinaigrette) and brown rice, was just perfect as it was and, as my mother often says, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'd sit and sip my cup of their Cranberte--a blend of teas and cranberry juice-- while I waited for the food to arrive, then delicately work my way around the plate of veggies with a pair of chopsticks until it was all gone.

Angelica Kitchen was, by all intents and purposes of the phrase, a neighborhood restaurant. Though the restaurant was absolutely fantastic, you'd never find it listed in anything like a top restaurant guide. It wasn't fancy, and the service wasn't always great, but it was delicious and reliable, the way your local diner might be. I'm curious about the number of restaurants in the entirety of New York City that have been open for four decades or more, places that have seen history come and go, that made history and made community themselves. Angelica served the community in the quirky East Village, but it also created a community around vegan and vegetarian food when it was still thought of as totally wacky 40 years ago. If you have read this blog before, you know that I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian--I simply love good food; better yet, good food that's consistent and affordable. I've also written before that finding a restaurant in New York that you want to regularly return to (and can afford to regularly return to) is no small feat. Restaurants close here probably literally every month, if not every day. In a city of so many options, you need something that makes people come back and Angelica Kitchen was one of the few places I regularly returned to.

But the restaurant had to close because of rising rents, rents that are rising because corporate chains are moving into the neighborhood. There's no limit to what rent they can pay, and landlords know that. So the independent businesses are bearing the weight of these decisions, and far too many of them--across the neighborhood and across the city--are closing. I have now seen several downtown performers like Tigger! and Penny Arcade accurately describe what's happening to our fair city: it's being infiltrated by the people we moved here to get away from. I'm scared that the closing of a beloved neighborhood staple like Angelica Kitchen will bring on many more and make the city into the suburban shopping mall I ran like hell to escape. Or, as The New Yorker headline so aptly put it this week: "The East Village Loses Another Place for the Young, Hungry, and Weird."

So here I am this Wednesday evening to say goodbye to this place that has kept me company so many nights when I wandered in alone after work or after shopping or just after a long day. I love macaroni and cheese dearly, but when you're in a rough mood and you need comfort food, sometimes the calorie count just doesn't pay. So I'd go to Angelica and treat myself to dinner, and suddenly so much would feel better. Miraculously, though I have almost always been a party of one here, I have never sat at the communal table to the left of the door. Tonight there's a rotating cast of dinner guests as so many other parties of one come in and out to say their goodbyes, too.

I am seated with a woman from Toronto, a man from Israel, and another man from Los Angeles. They have been coming here for five years, 25 years, and 17 years, respectively. We all share our Angelica stories this evening, each new person coming in and saying the same: "I'm so sad to see this place go." In between asking if you could please pass the pitcher of water or is this glass yours or mine? It's a place that has been a part of their lives: bringing new dates there, coming there after breakups, bringing family, friends, or getting take-out at Angelica To-Go next door. Later, a woman and her 20-something daughter come in and sit next to me: the daughter grew up going to music lessons across the street on the weekends, and they would come in to Angelica afterward for lunch. It may not have been the kind of place on a "Top Restaurants in New York" list, but it is definitely the kind of place that occupies a place in people's memories.

Soon my Cranberte arrives and the hot, sweet, tangy drink warms my tongue after a semi-chilly, almost-spring day.  It's followed by my Dragon Bowl, with its chickpeas, tofu, brown rice, greens, seaweed, and squash. I treat myself also to a maple tofu whip--I only rarely got dessert at the place, but I didn't want to leave just yet. A small swirl of the dessert arrives, topped with cinnamon and I take my time making my way to the bottom of its bowl, looking around at the iron chandeliers, the patterned wallpaper, the peach paint on the walls above it. There are still people waiting in line to get in, even though the restaurant closes soon. The man next to me orders a blueberry kanten parfait, a kind of jam trifle in a short glass, and shares with me. It's delicious, I think to myself, as I always did about any of the food there. And not too long after, the host spins the "Yes, We're Open" sign around and it's time to go. I look back, and the words "Sorry, We're Closed" in the window make my heart ache.

Cheese and Sugar

RaGo's birthday was four months ago, but I didn't have a chance to celebrate with her until this week. There are few things in the world the woman loves more than cheese--especially gooey, melted cheese on top of, well, whatever you got--so I gave her a list of options of places I'd like to take her that might feature such an experience.

From the list, she chose Raclette in the East Village, where they do the real deal raclette thing: the edge of half a wheel of cheese heated and bubbling then scraped with a special knife onto your plate of potatoes, meat, salad, vegetables, you name it. I had never had raclette before, but I once flirted with a man on the train who was from Switzerland and told me it was huge there. Just cheese on cheese on cheese scraped for your life onto your plate. It was the perfect place to take RaGo.

What's interesting about Raclette is that they only do reservations online--I've become aware, at my old age, that this is not in fact unusual, but this was my first encounter with the experience. I even tried to call and there was a message saying the equivalent of "nah, you can't do that here" but, you know, a lot nicer than that. The other interesting part about this is that, though RaGo and I made these plans literally weeks ago, I did not find out until the day of that you even needed a reservation (though, to their credit, it does say so rather largely on their website, so the onus is totally on me). So there I was, hours before we were supposed to meet, frantically perusing their website for reservations and trying to call, but to no avail. I saw that they did, in fact, accept walk-ins, so I resolved to go down there early--like, way, way early--to see if I could snag us a table. I had made a promise to RaGo and there was no way I was going to mess it up. Just in case, I scoured Google for "fondue east village" and "melted cheese east village" only to find the most consistent recommendation was still Raclette. And I gathered my life together and headed down, arriving at about 6:45pm (we initially wanted to meet at 8). I explained my plight to the gal at the hostess stand, inhaling the scent of pungent cheese as soon as I walked in. She asked when we wanted to come in, looked down at her iPad, and found us a table. And that was it! I had done it! Praise RuPaul.

The evening was brisk, and I walked over to The Bean to have an iced tea and read from my book for a while. I returned to Raclette later and our table was ready, and they even let me sit down though RaGo wasn't there yet, something I find more and more is a rare occurrence these days. Shortly she came in through the door, though, and we began staring at the piles of cheese gliding onto plates, mouths watering in anticipation. We both decided on the Suisse plate, which included roasted potatoes, pearl onions, cornichons, arugula, and a meat of your choice (she chose prosciutto, I jambon de Paris). And what sort of birthday would it be without a bottle of wine, Cabernet Sauvignon, which we split.

Soon it was our turn to be cheesed, and our plates came out followed by a gal holding that giant half-wheel we both stared at lovingly. We watched as the waterfall of cheese fell first on my plate then, after another heating session perhaps, on her plate. The waterfall somehow expertly fell over the whole plate of food, and we began digging in, mouths somehow still watering as we continued to eat. We drank our wine, we ate our cheese, we chitted and chatted and after the bottle was finished (don't worry, mom, my liver is fine) we had spent nearly two hours in the restaurant, perhaps in true European style.

But RaGo's birthday was not done yet, and we made our way to Chikalicious, a dessert bar where you can get a prix fixe dessert menu featuring an amuse bouche, "entree," and petit fours (there's also the Dessert Club across the street where you can get funky a la carte items like black sesame ice cream in a churro cone). The menu changes every day, but we got the Warm Chocolate Tart with Pink Peppercorn Ice Cream and Red Wine Sauce, preceded by orange and brown sugar sorbet and followed by a teeny coconut marshmallow, teeny alfajor (Argentinian caramel cookie), and teeny vanilla ice cream on top of a teeny chocolate cookie. Praise RuPaul yet again.

Everyone deserves a little bit of luxury on their birthdays, I think. Whether that's in the form of melted cheese or not is entirely up to you.

Columbia Loves Eddie

“What should we do for our anniversary?” I asked SE.

The truth was, we had already thought of a fantastic idea to celebrate one year since our first date, an idea that was “us”—staying at the Waldorf Astoria before it closed last month. We had fallen in love with the hotel on my birthday, and as soon as we left we wanted to go back. But we dragged our feet and the opportunity passed us by.

But surely there had to be something else that would be just as good an option?

There were. And we ended up coming up with not just one idea, but five. Sort of.

The first idea wasn’t ours and, technically, it wasn’t even “really” part of our anniversary celebration.  J & R invited us to see Rocky Horror Picture Show in Chelsea and only when we sat down in the theatre did SE realize that this was the most “us” thing we could have been doing—beyond the Waldorf, beyond all the other things we had planned that day. Sitting in a theatre yelling obscenities with the rest of the crowd at Richard O’Brien’s 1975 cult classic (because, if you’ve never been, that’s what you do), while a group of college students acted out Brad and Janet and, of course, Dr. Frank-n-Furter in front of the screen, doing the Time Warp, and listening to first-time Rocky viewers (“virgins”) make faux-orgasm noises to an audience of people they’ve never met.

SE has before spoken of another couple we’re friends with. “You know how they’re kind of sweet and cute and 1950s?”
I nodded.
“Yeah,” he says. “We’re not that.”

And I happily agree. I feel like our regular state of mind is less in a 1950s living room and more backstage at an ‘80s comedy club. But without all the coke.

Both of us had gone to Rocky Horror in high school. Which, it seemed, was also the case this evening as young goth kids waited in line behind us to get in, swapping fake IDs to see who looked most like the picture on the card. They wore corsets and white pancake makeup and combat boots, and there we were, already or nearly 30, sensible sweaters under sensible coats, noshing on popcorn, very possibly the oldest people there. I’m happy the children continue to find out about Rocky Horror; in some ways, I think it draws the people who need to see it, to know they’re not freaks in a world where being weird isn’t cool yet (read: high school). Maybe in a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania” they can find part of themselves.

Neither of us were goth kids at our respective high schools, but I wouldn’t say we also fit perfectly into any categories—I was an overachiever and aspiring punk, he a lacrosse player who also sang in an emo band—but I know for me at least it helped to learn there were other cool, weird kids out there who became cool, weird adults and maybe found other cool, weird adults to spend time with and, if they were lucky, even love.

*

But don’t get me wrong, the rest of our day was amazing, too.

We started with pastrami salmon sandwiches at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side. All of the synagogue services were getting out at the same time, but luckily we beat the rush to this legendary, hundred-year old appetizing spot (“appetizing” the noun, not the adjective—it’s a store in the Jewish tradition where fish and dairy products are sold. Learn more here!), to which neither of us had actually been before. We were seated by a table near the fish counter, to which pregnant moms wobbling with toddlers in tow sidled up and ordered whitefish salad to go. Our waiter, maybe in his late forties with graying hair and chunky metal bracelets on his wrists, was decked out in a head-to-toe white uniform and hustled our orders out of us with an old-school New York accent (“What can I get for ya? Orange juice, coffee, just water? Open face sandwich or closed? Onions, tomato, capers?”), then ambled across the linoleum floor to retrieve them. We dove into fluffy but not dense bagels with  smoked salmon and cream cheese, and I added a little crunch of red onion later on for some extra spice.

Then we made our way to Levain Bakery for their renowned chocolate chip walnuts cookies. The place, open over 20 years, has become an institution for their cookies. They’ve been written up in almost every major publication and somehow neither of us had never been there, either. We expected to wait in line, but given what I had heard about how long it usually takes and how the line can extend down the block, I was expecting much worse than the maybe 15 minute wait that we actually encountered. And praise RuPaul and all that is holy, was it worth it. We got two cookies and headed to Central Park before sitting down to eat them on some rocks near a lake, breaking open the still-warm gooey cookies with our hands. It was so rich, a little crunchy on the outside and mushy on the inside, absolutely perfect. And I don’t even usually go for cookies with nuts in them, but these were the business.

Later on that night, we went to another iconic New York spot, Minetta Tavern. The restaurant opened in the ‘30s and used to be a hangout for writers like Ezra Pound and Dylan Thomas, but it was bought and renovated by chef Keith McNally in 2009. It has since become known for its Black Label Burger, a patty blended of three different cuts of beef (prime ribeye, skirt steak, and brisket) then topped with clarified butter and onions. Your arteries may be screaming after reading such a thing, but until you’ve tried it (and maybe you did or did not stop talking immediately after eating it, felt a weight in your heart when you realized half of it was gone, and can still taste it in your mouth) keep an open mind. We went there explicitly for the burgers and ended up also ordering the famed roasted bone marrow appetizer, and…I have to say I have never known such decadence in my life. I had never eaten bone marrow before but I didn’t know its texture was basically fat that melts in your mouth, to be utterly cliche about it. And then when the burgers arrived we took our first bites and it was just as mouth-melty and wonderful, the juicy yet somehow creamy and still totally cooked???? meat of the burger in my mouth, pressing against the thick brioche bun that prevented all of this lusciousness from rushing down my chin. AND THEN we put some leftover bone marrow on them and I thought my brain was going to fall out. WHAT IS HAPPENING I DON’T UNDERSTAND. Such decadence! And from a burger, no less! My brain was melting along with the bone marrow. It was our anniversary but while we were eating we barely spoke, this experience freaking out our mouths in the best way possible.

“Oh my god,” we said in turns in the back of a cab, minds still reeling from these burgers, as we headed to the Waldorf for cocktails. The next weekend would be the last weekend of its existence for a while and we wanted to take it all in and say goodbye. We clinked our glasses and sipped on some liquid artistry, looking around at the glass and wood and leather that made up this place we had known for such a short time but had only begun to adore. I almost didn’t want to leave as we finished our cocktails and took pictures in the lobby. “How can a place we’ve only been a few times mean so much?” SE said to me. With any luck, after its renovation it will be just as wonderful as we remember, and maybe for another anniversary in the future we’ll be able to go back.