newyorkette

(picture from here)

Wendy Wasserstein, uncommon woman, died today (see Charles Isherwood’s NYTimes article here). Her work was admirable, and nobody offered a better or more eloquent portrayal of the “women who embraced the essential tenets of the feminist movement but did not have the stomach for stridency.”

Now, if only the whole self-perpetuating misery of “women struggling to reconcile a desire for romance and companionship, drummed into the baby boom generation by the seductive fantasies circulated by Hollywood movies, with the need for intellectual independence and a sense of achievement separate from the personal sphere” would also rest in peace.
Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all tried it at least once. God knows it’s how I learned that there’s no such thing as a free meal. Dear, dear, the indigestion directly linked to the boredom and anxiety, the coming home late and exhausted with my smile muscles hurting and my brain numb.

No, dinner whoring (see The Post’s article on it here) was too much like work for me. I turned to a different kind of whoring after that close brush with my “inner callgirl.”
Read the rest of this entry »

(I mean besides Nathan’s hot dogs)

Why I (heart) Brooklyn? Why do I?
Heh, heh. Because it’s over there, and not here in Manhattan!

Yeah, yeah, all my Brooklynite friends love to evoke the charms of Brooklyn. To hear them talk, you’d think you were in the Brooklyn of Arsenic and Old Lace, only cooler and with music. But I’ve been to Brooklyn, you see, and I know what’s out there. Kids, kids, and more snotty little kids. What’s more, it’s where overgrown kids from Manhattan go when they’re ready to settle down and reproduce. And make more… you got it: kids.
It’s also, egads, a haven for people who play or like to listen to… the, the wha..? the theramin?
Read the rest of this entry »

For a nice, steaming bowl of ramen to help you get rid of New York’s latest 4-week cold (aka The Snot-Bomb), get on the uptown R train and get off at 49th street where you’ll find Sapporo without even crossing the street Read the rest of this entry »

Menkui Tei has two restaurants, but the one I’ve recently discovered is the one at 63 Cooper Sq (on 3rd Ave, next to Hair Mates. Downtown has been filling up with ramen noodle houses (which in Japan is considered fast food, or more precisely, Chinese food), probably due to all the Japanese people either coming through or moving in. To demonstrate who they’re catering to, besides you I mean, Menkui Tei features handwritten signs in Japanese taped all over the walls. For your convenience some are translated, such as the “we have garlic paste for your noodle,” my personal favorite.

Menkui Tei is all day eats, so you can drop in whenever you’re hungry or cold, and there are booths as well as a counter. But they’ll usually offer you a table for one first.

They often have specials that add a portion of protein (meat, chicken, tofu) and a side of rice to your noodle selection for a bargain of a prix fix. Their Yasai Ramen (vegetarian, but certainly not only for vegetarians) has a spicy, muddily grey-brown but surprisingly refreshing broth, which is mysterious, and wholly gratifying. There are plenty of juicy shitake mushrooms in it to make you feel like you haven’t been gypped. And the price, under 8 dollars, is also just what you need.

Japanese soft drinks that can usually only be had at Sunrise Mart (just down the block around the corner from Astor Books), such as Calpico (or Calpis as the oldtiming hardies still call it) are available, as is your average run of the mill hot sake. But there is always a sake du jour, and a fine selection of sake by the glass. I recommend Kaori, which is like fresh clear water, only better.

Read the rest of this entry »

(image: carolita johnson)
The New Yorker has it’s “Tables for Two” column every week and it’s obviously a lot of fun for the kids that get to write it. They get to stuff their literary little faces at the magazine’s expense, and in return they write food porn for all those food leches riding the train from Connecticut into work with nothing but an organic protein bar in their briefcase.

HEY! I’m all for it! Yeah! I’d love to get that gig! I hope that institution never dies, like the Back Page (replaced by the Caption Contest), may it rest in peace (for a while and then come back like a phoenix)!

But I don’t have that gig, so starting Monday, I’m doing my own “Tables for One“! That’s something the world is missing, a weekly review of places you can go alone, eat well or cheap or both, and not feel like a lonely jerk that everyone is looking at like you’re a big weirdo with no friends. Yeah. Try going to Pastis alone, see how it makes you feel, you poor lonely freak with no Significant Other or Others!

So every week, I’m gonna give you the lowdown on a nice little to eat, sometimes cheap and cheerful, sometimes a little out of my price range, and emergency eats (like when you come home and drunkenly spill your warmed over leftovers on the floor, or discover that everything in your fridge is past its expiration date).

Stay tuned…. Will post every Monday.