New York

Eat, Bicker, Love – Now with eating!

/ Eric Brown / 8 Comments

I know, I know. The blog is called Eat, Bicker, Love and I haven’t really talked about any of those things. I’m not sure I’m planning to chronicle the differences of opinion that my loving wife and I have, at least not in any particular detail. I have often said that we always agree on the destination and we never agree on the route. On the other hand, if you can find someone who will join you in quitting your job, selling your house, and traipsing around the world for the better part of a year, you should be willing to permit your lovely spouse to offer the occasional helpful suggestion. My wonderful wife is a very, very helpful woman, always eager to provide her guidance and wisdom about how a process might be improved.

We are now back in Brooklyn after our lovely weekend in (or on) Nantucket. Gone are the topsiders, the tomato pants, the yachts, the whale-themed everything, and the clams. (Actually, we still have clams. I’m not sure whose bright idea it was, but we carried the clams in a little cooler on the plane back to New York. I would think that carrying clams on a plane so close to 9/11 would have troubled the authorities, but apparently there have been no clam-based acts of terrorism to date, and we always seem to be fighting the last war.)

We have swapped the gentle tradewinds of Nantucket for the gritty clamor of Brooklyn, a borough that has seen its good times and its not so good times. When I was a kid, I was never very fond of Brooklyn, which I saw as a little full of itself. Between Welcome Back, Kotter and Moonstruck, Brooklyn struck me as a bit precious about its Brooklyn-ness. Living in Queens, (now THERE’S an unpretentious borough!) there were many years that I stayed out of Brooklyn on principle. What I knew about Brooklyn you could put on the head of a pin. I didn’t know Bay Ridge from bay rum. And yet times change and people grow. Now, I am not just a Brooklynite, I’m a Bushwicker. We’re staying in Bushwick with our dear friend John. This isn’t Brooklyn Heights or Park Slope or some other hoity toity part of Brooklyn, its Bushwick, where people sit on the stoop, without really moving, for weeks at a time. Seriously, there are these two guys on our block who just sit there all day long and, well, I don’t actually know what they do. They have big, bushy, un-ironic mustaches and everything. Bushwick is still a solidly working class neighborhood, although it is now seeing its share of tattooed, ironically mustashioed, multiply-pierced pioneers who have been priced out of Williamsburg.

The upside is that you can get beer brewed by blind albino monks and bacon that was cured with nun’s tears from pigs that were sung to sleep each night by Audra McDonald. Life is actually pretty good in Brooklyn. I’m beginning to get into the rhythms of Brooklyn, which are just a little slower and a little more sane than the throbbing scrum that is Manhattan. Don’t get me wrong, I love Manhattan, but like a big boy, I’m learning to appreciate other stuff.

Speaking of food, I thought I would use this time to finally get to the “Eat” part of this blog’s title.

We have done our share of eating, and I figured I’d give a rundown of the culinary highlights to date.

First off, let me extoll the wonders of Raffetto’s, this ancient little pasta shop on Houston Street in Greenwich Village. They sell fresh pasta by the pound. When you order it, they take out the dough and cut in on a machine that is over a hundred years old. I’d pay just to watch them cut the pasta.

It’s also really, really good stuff.

A few words about Wylie Dufresne’s two restaurants. I had been dying to try WD-50, Dufresne’s place on the Lower East Side. He’s one of the country’s better-known purveyors of what has come to be known as “molecular gastronomy” or “modernist cuisine.” Rather than try to define it, a good example of this sometimes whimsical approach to cooking was the hangar steak tartare, which actually wasn’t raw at all. It was cooked sous vide (basically boiled in a bag at a temperature that keeps the steak really rare), then chopped fine like steak tartare and served with a bearnaise ice cream. Bearnaise ice cream, for heaven’s sake! You don’t eat that every day. That was by far the most inventive of the dishes we tried. Dufresne is closing his restaurant rather than give in to a rent increase, and I was expecting him to pull out all the mad scientist stops, but I found the menu surprisingly restrained. Everything was terrific, but it wasn’t all cooked steak tartare with bearnaise ice cream either.

We then went to his other, somewhat less expensive place, Alder which turned out to be more inventive than WD-50. We had a lamb shepherd’s pie tartare that was indeed raw lamb served with the other components of shepherd’s pie. My favorite dish was  rye pasta with pastrami shavings on top. Get it? Pastrami on rye! How about that! There was also a really out there dish of pickled beets with coconut ricotta and thai basil. The basil had been turned into dehydrated crunchy balls of some kind. Really kooky and delicious.

Now, a word about service. I’m no snob, but hoo boy do these kids need to learn a thing or two about how to wait a table. Janine and I both waited our fair share of tables once, so it’s not like the profession is beneath us. Damn, it’s hard to find a decent waitperson these days. If you are shelling out a couple hundred bucks for dinner, at the very least you want the person bringing the food not to act like they hate you. My pet peeve? Your waiter drops the check and you say “Thank you!” in your chipper-est, happiest voice and they say “No problem” in that disaffected, eye-rolling way, like the world’s crankiest teenager. Really? No problem? Why would taking my money be a problem? I would settle for a simple “you’re welcome.” We don’t have to become besties, I just want a little human kindness. Is that so hard, youth of today, or is it a problem?

Okay, just a few more and I’ll take up more restaurant reviews later.

Russ and Daughters Café. Russ and Daughters delicatessen is a smoked fish emporium on Houston Street that has been there since 1914. No fish cured in nun’s tears for Russ and his daughters. Well, certainly no nuns. When I was a kid in Queens, the local supermarket also sold smoked fish. I remember piles of these brown, desiccated things called chubs that looked absolutely inedible. Well, it turns out they’re edible. And Russ and his Daughters finally got smart, just this year opening up a café on Orchard Street to so people can sit down and eat their shmabulous smoked fish and other delicacies. And they know what they’re doing, too. Your bubbe and Uncle Morty are not coming to the café to eat a hundred bucks worth of caviar. Who’s going to do that? All together now…hipsters. Yes, there are cocktails and seats and lots of subway tile at the café, but who are they hurting? Hipsters have to eat too. We went for breakfast and I had kasha varnishkes, which is bow tie pasta with salty, chicken-y buckwheat groats topped with an egg.

Kasha Varniskas

This is just the world’s best damn breakfast ever.

And oh my sweet jesus was it delicious. I could eat that every morning of my life and be very happy. Everything else is good, too. We watched the counterman slice the lox so thin you could read the newspaper through it. This guy clearly moonlights as a mohel (although one is happy that he practices first on the fish). Oh, and our waiter, Larry, was a saint (well, in the Jewish deli sense). He was a lovely little man in one of those elegant white coats who looked like Bob Balaban only happier and who not only seemed thrilled to see us, but he seemed happy for us that we were eating such delicious food. “That’s going to make a wonderful snack later!” he said with barely contained delight when we asked for a little to-go container. I wanted to take him home with us just to have him around to make us feel good about our decisions in life. “Excellent choice of bathroom tissue!” I’m sure he’d exclaim to us at the supermarket. “Nice job brushing your teeth!” “Where DID you learn to tie your shoes so well?”

I miss Larry. That kid at Alder should go to Russ and Daughters, order the kasha varnishkes, and watch Larry do the job the right way. Punk kid. Get off my lawn.

I think that should do for now. While I’ve got you, my friends, do you have any recommendations for restaurants we should try in New York? I’m getting hungry.

 

The Lady Under the Stairs, Part II

/ Eric Brown / Leave a comment

How can I describe the wonders of our home away from home? When you walk in you get a hit of something – is it menthol, you wonder? No, you realize, remembering your early twenties. It’s roach spray! This place is a studio, with a bed on some kind of hand-constructed platform, and a small living area that has its own built-in fold-up wooden board that doubles as a dinner table. The couch slides out to make a second bed, which must be really terrific when you have friends stay over. And then there’s the stuff – there are books, clothes, and cupboards stuffed full of plastic bags and defunct cleaning supplies and heaven knows what else. The bathtub backed up on the second day, right before the smoke alarm started chirping. It is, in a word I learned from my daughter, janky.

And if you walk too much or with too heavy a foot, our friend downstairs starts banging on her ceiling with a broom handle, or the butt of an AK-57, or her head, or something. We’ve started mincing around in fear. I’ve now created a map in my head of the creakiest floorboards. It’s like a scene out of the Diary of Anne Frank.

That bizarre bit about Norway started to come into focus when I reviewed the house rules on the website, (copied verbatim):

1. Please NO SMOKING!
2. Please Do not wear shoes in the apartment.
3. Please Do not put luggage on the bed or couch.
4. You can place your luggage on the counter tops or padded benches
5. Please Do not put shoes on the bed, couch or in the draws.
6. Please Do not run air conditioner all day (summer time)
7. You can put your clothes in the empty draw (if you want).
8. Sometimes when you flush the toilet, you might have to hold the handle down.
9. Please turn off the lights when you leave the apartment.
10. Please lock the door when you leave the apartment.
IMPORTANT:
– If anyone in the building asks who you are, please tell them that you are friends from Norway.
PLEASE ENJOY MY CITY!!!!!!

Wait, what? Norway? I have to walk around with a cover story that I’m from Norway??

Am I supposed to attempt a Norwegian accent?

It might have also help if they offered up some basic facts about Norway. I mean if a neighbor asks who you are and you say you’re Anna’s friend from Norway, what if they say, “Quick! What’s the second biggest city in Norway?” Or “Who’s the Prime Minister?” Or what if they pull out a map and ask you to point to Norway? You’d be made. I had not realized that role play was a requirement of apartment sharing, but all of a sudden I am feeling woefully underprepared.

This gets to the deeper issue of that famous social media short term rental booking service. Is it a good thing? Would you like your apartment building turned into a hotel? In New York, it’s not exactly legal to rent out your apartment for short term renters. But hey, if you’re a traveler, it can be a great deal, and if you’re an apartment dweller, it’s a way to recoup the crazy high rents in places like New York. Of course there’s the matter of opening up your home to strangers, who will paw through your undies and otherwise invade your sacred space. I’m not sure I’d do that.

Most of the time it seems to work just great. The visitors are nice and respectful and the apartments are clean and convenient (although I did once stay in a place that had a brand spanking new kitchen but not a single utensil), and you almost always get value for your money.

Unless you live in fear like we do.

Yesterday, we opened the door to leave the apartment and our downstairs friend darted out of her apartment, as if to note our egress. It happened again the next day. Now, we creep softly out our door so as not to be detected, and to elude her malevolent gaze, but maybe to relieve her of her burden slightly.

I will say that she did throw me for a loop the other day. We were sitting around and the doorbell rang and there she was again, and I’m preparing to be quizzed about my recipe for ludefisk, only this time she came bearing positive feedback. “You’ve been much better about the noise.” I thanked her and told her that we were doing our best.

I am sympathetic. This woman is certainly not enjoying what may well be a regular stream of interlopers who dance around on her ceiling. But she lives in an old building with crazily creaky floors. Is she really expecting a family of levitators or trapeze artists to move in?

I’m kind of cheezed at the obvious liars who left positive comments on the apartment’s website, though, although I should have read between the lines. Everyone noted the good location, but almost nobody said anything about the apartment itself. This should have been a dead giveaway.

Here’s how I’d describe it: “It’s a really great place if you don’t mind the roach spray, the overflowing bathtub, the chirping smoke alarm, the junk everywhere, having to make toast with a broiler, the wheezing air conditioner…oh, and the lady downstairs.” On the other hand, the place would be a problem if Gandhi lived downstairs.

Oh, and the wifi is terrible. The final cut.

The other day a group moved in upstairs in the middle of the night. It was like the Rockettes were performing a special dance with rollerboards. Janine and I looked at each other, a bit sheepishly. If we stayed in this place for long, we’d become the Lady Under the Stairs. I put in my earplugs and made a note of that.

Nevertheless, believe it or not, I suspect we’ll continue to roll the dice on these joints. We will try to do a better job of deriving the hidden meaning from the glowing reviews, and using our mind’s eyes to see beyond the edges of the photos. Sometimes we’ll opt to spend more, or to sacrifice location. There will certainly be some duds, but I expect there will be some pleasant surprises as well. I just hope that each one will yield such a memorable story.

The Lady Under the Stairs, Part I

/ Eric Brown / 3 Comments

I was going to use this post to talk about underwear, but I’ve decided to put that off in favor of a more pressing topic. I promise to talk about underwear soon, and how I’ve only taken three pairs (okay four, but I’ll get to that some other time) and how you pack for a nine-month journey around the world, but I have another important matter that has taken up my attention these days. There’s a troll living below us, and she’s not happy. I have always been a practical fellow, and because of this I don’t care to spend too much on lodging if I can help it. I like a nice hotel as well as the next guy, but if a place is relatively neat and clean, I’m happy. And if we’re going to be able to pull this trip off, we’re going to have to find some economies. So we begin our trip with a cautionary tale of budget lodging. We are now in New York after a very brief visit to LA. We arrived here last week to deposit our only child at college, and we’re planning to spend a month or so. It is, after all, my hometown, but I left more than thirty years ago, and it would be nice to get reacquainted. We’ll be staying with a friend in Bushwick starting September 1, but we needed to find a place for our first ten days here. Thus, we decided to find accommodations using a famous social media short term rental booking service. As it turns out, the place we found has some issues. Here are the good parts. It’s near Houston Street and 1st Avenue , which is just dandy. We’re right where Nolita, the Lower East Side, and the East Village come together. There’s Katz’s Deli and Yonah Shimmel’s Knishes and Russ & Daughters smoked fish. There’s also some pretty good goy food too. And it’s steps from the 2nd Avenue F train stop, so it’s really convenient. The apartment’s in the rear of the building, away from the street, so it’s quiet (except when the troll bangs on our floor with a broom handle). And it’s cheap. About $150 a night, which is cheap for this part of town and a lot cheaper than a hotel. Besides, you get a kitchen and some room to stretch out and you get to live like a local! Well, you don’t want to live like all locals. We have a troll living downstairs. Or maybe she’s one of the three billy goats gruff, or some other dyspeptic character from an Aesop fable. Whatever she is, she’s pissed. A few minutes after we arrived after a long flight with Maggie’s college luggage, we received our first visit. The doorbell rang and there stood a woman in her sixties – a little thin, a little tar and nicotined. “You’re making a LOT of noise,” she advised. Well, the floor creaks, but it wasn’t like we were tap dancing. “I’m very sorry,” I replied, surprised. Then it got a bit weirder. “Are you friends of Anna’s from Norway?” she inquired. I was non-committal. “Hmmmblmmbbb,” I hedged. Then she asked me if Sven or Joost or whatever his name was got his green card. Was this a trap? “Who can say?” I waffled, thinking I was in a spy novel. If I was in a spy novel, this was a safe house – you know, the kind with the bare light bulb and the bad plumbing. But first, I had to figure out what to do about the troll. Next time – The Thrilling Conclusion