Tags: recipe,, food,, soup,, modeling,, cooking,, carolita, johnson,, saveur.com

Inakaya:
A fancy Japanese place on 40th street, right next door to The New York Times building. I’ve had numerous occasions to treat myself to a seat at what looks like a sushi bar, but it’s since it’s not all sushi, I’m not sure what to call it. Maybe a robata/sushi bar?  In any case, it’s great to sit there, because sometimes you can catch a frozen but still living crab fidget a little in it’s grave of crushed ice, which is kind of creepy and neat, like watching the end of a thriller about crabs. But it’s also fun because the guys preparing your food will pass your robata orders to you on a long wooden serving paddle, while yelling something purportedly uplifting. Every time they do something there, they yell something out in Japanese, and everyone on the staff joins in. You walk in, they yell, you sit down, they yell, it’s kind of like letting hapy people in a Japanese boot camp serve you. It’s amusing when you get up to use the toilet and they yell something, which I’m sure only happens when they think you’re leaving. (I don’t think they’re saying, “enjoy the super high-tech wand-washing fountain toilet with the heated seat and automatic hiney-dryer.” But they might be. Yes, by all means use that toilet! You’ll be in there all day marveling at the technology.

You’re wondering what robata is? It’s Japanese BBQ. I really like the sweet potato robata, but the okra is also delicious, not gooey at all. My favorite thing to have for lunch is the chirashi sushi lunch special, $18, which comes with soup or salad. I always get the miso soup, which is rich and delicious. If I’m hungrier than usual, I’ll order a side of robata. I’ve also had the bento boxes, which are copious and delicious, but a little more expensive. The cheapest one is still plenty filling.

Inakaya is pricey, but worth it. They do have lunch specials, which are in the high but reasonable range if you’re looking for something extra-special, as well as someplace a little quieter than the rest of the places midtown. I once met a friend there for drinks and sat at the bar for quite a while alone while she was delayed, and felt very comfortable with my little wooden box of saké, and some robata. It’s definitely a place where you can feel at home alone.

That’s a picture of me above at Happy Hour, where they pound “mochi” and let the guests participate. They also share the pounded mochi amongst all the guests present. Full disclosure: I was not alone when I did the pounding (I don’t drink alone at Happy Hour!), but I go there for lunch mostly alone.
Inakaya: 620 Eighth Avenue (Aka: 231 West 40th Street), New York, NY 10018
(212) 354-2195

Tres Pasos appeared one day just downstairs, right across the sidewalk from the subway station. It’s my daily pit stop on my way to a job or the park, and often gives me a reprieve from my kitchen when I can’t stand the heat in there. I can design my own taco for $2.50, with crisp, colorful pico de gallo, the greenest, freshest guacamole, cilantro, and a good dose of jalopeño. They know my habits by heart, and smile as they fill my taco before I bother to speak. The choice of meat is either pork, chicken, or beef. I’ve only tried the pork, which is alternately tender and chunky, or a little more like shredded cochinita. Either way, warm spices like cumin, oregano and cinnamon (and the rest of what goes into achiote) call forth gustatory memories of my Aunt Carmen’s Christmas pork roast, and the portions are as generous as those memories. ¡Me gusta!

I went downstairs just now to buy a couple, intending to photograph them, but I completely forgot, and ate them.

So, to continue with the $6 burritos, which are humungous: I have been unable to bring myself to order one, but I’ve watched the City College kids Hoover them down quite appreciatively. If you sit outside on the bench next door at Vinegar Hill Bakery (review TK), you’ll be sitting next to their like, or maybe just a tired old-timer taking a load off on his way to another bench further down Broadway. I told one such neighbor that I believed the heat of the jalopeños took the edge off the summer sun, and she let out a surprised cry of “Oy!” as if I’d set myself on fire right in front of her. Which was the first and only time I’ve ever impressed anyone in this neighborhood.

Don’t be surprised if they call you “mami.” That means you’re nice.
Here’s their menu.

Tres Pasos
3385 Broadway (at 137th St.)
New York, NY
10031
212-281-2814

When I made my first attempt to move back to New York from Paris in 1998, I lived on St-Mark’s street near Avenue A. This was in the old days, when drug dealers acted as my security guard on the stoop. I lived with two and a half roommates (Jason would turn on the christmas lights in his window when he was available to spank girls during the sex act), in an apartment where I could see through the gaps in the living room floor to the apartment below. It was nothing personal, but I didn’t really like having roommates, so I used to go to another living room: Alt Coffee. There, I could sit on a seedy, cozy couch with my soy chai and read my “Futurological Congress.” Or sit at a dinky old computer and trade love emails with a kind of silly, unrealistic man (who forgot to tell me about his live-in girlfriend) in Germany. It was escapism, Alt Coffee was.

I was one of the contributors to the graffiti and sticker art in the bathroom. I’m one of those people so broke that I spent hours taking tiny little sips of my one hot beverage. I didn’t love the place: it was simply comfortable the way being at a friend of a friend’s house on a holiday can be. You sat there feeling like the one people might ask about later: “Whose friend was she?” When I moved back to the neighborhood in 2002, even though the rest of the neighborhood was already taking on the aspect of a hipster mall, it was still there for me when my two Italian roommates made life intolerable by watching “Sex and the City” on a loop all day long.

Alt is reopening as “Hopscotch,” which painfully (to me) and eloquently speaks of the patronage it will be catering to. No more strange vaguely homeless looking, but oddly confident and self-contained personalities. No more mystery, no more spiders from Mars. It’s true, I’d often go home rather than use the really disgusting bathroom, but maybe that should’ve been anyone’s measure of how long is too long to stay: if your bladder is bursting, you’ve been there roughly four hours. No, the new clientele will be stroller jockeys, and aunties of stroller jockeys. The last bastion of the gritty survivor who wouldn’t dream of living on Park Slope is gone. In fact, I think it wouldn’t be too facetious to call this a bit of Park Slope Spread.

Even the person bemoaning the “draining” away of the East Village’s “grit” in this New York Times article about Alt Coffee, seems to think that the place where Alt got its first furniture is a place called “Dumpsters.” How clueless is this city becoming?

Ah, well! I have no more time to complain! Life moves on. The gritty keep moving. I moved up to West Harlem where Starbucks died on 138th street and Broadway. The only gourmet coffee you can get here is at Vinegar Hill downstairs, where espresso is only a dollar and is served to you by my neighbors. It gives me hope for our neighborhood. For a little while, anyway.

Baltimore has lots of faces—the astonishingly good (and also astonishingly free) Walters Art Museum, the plasticky and scrubbed if benignly pleasant waterfront, some new little fusion restaurants that could, the grim dead-end commerce echoed in The Wire, all those others I haven’t seen—and, of course, plenty of history. My aunt Bridget grew up there, and on a trip into the city she introduced Carolita and me to a few places she’d seen change a lot over the years. The old department stores, abandoned (white flight, I gather), their gorgeous edifices looking lonely on the nearly empty street. Drusilla’s Books, an antiquarian bookstore almost too perfect to be real, which everyone who cares about such things should keep in business by frequenting its website. The strip-joint and porn-shop block called The Block, which used to feature some famous burlesque dancers, said Bridget, and which now has a phalanx of cop cars poised to bear down if anything especially untoward should go down. It all seemed tame and low-rent rather than Sin City, like a quickie trip back to a few storefronts of the old 42nd St., but I did keep my eye on the basically genial-seeming sleazemongers as we strolled with my beloved girl cousin Jane at my side.

One of the other historic sites we stopped by was the Lexington Market. I just learned this from a Baltimore civic website: “Baltimore’s Lexington Market, the world’s largest, continuously running open-stall food market, has operated since 1782 at the same site it occupies today on the city’s West Side. General John Eager Howard, a hero of the American Revolution, donated the land for the market, named for the Battle of Lexington, on his return from the war.” Battles since include the economic downturn of the city proper; though genuinely bustling, the Lexington Market is surrounded by and filled with the clear signs of hard times. It’s also filled with delicious food. I understand Carolita and Bridget loved the sandwiches they had from the fish stand, but what I wanted was sausage: something like a bratwurst, which I can never find on the East Coast. If Manhattan still had a true German neighborhood, I bet I’d be able to find bratwurst there instead of having to rely on having to go all the way to Madison, WI, to visit State Street Brats or, better, have something properly soaked in beer and turned on a backyard grill. Anyway, a lot at Lexington Market looked tempting, but there was only one lunch on my mind as soon as I saw Polock Johnny’s, despite the Sausage Master and the Konstant’s Hot Dogs (as well as the pleasingly named Omlet Side Show and the best not thought about Cattleman’s Pride) elsewhere in the market. The other thing on my mind was the very unmodern and un-New York name “Polock Johnny’s,” plus the sausages lovingly painted on the booth’s ceiling.

Well, the Beef Polish, which Jane and I both had with ketchup (we keep it simple, despite the tempting extras listed above), was delicious, filling, resistant but not tough, tangy, juicy, and toxic in just the right ways. We did not require a napkin to blow our noses (.05, 3 for .10), since it wasn’t very spicy, and although “A bag because yours is breaking” is an affectingly poignant phrase (and only costs a quarter), we didn’t need that, either. The Beef Polish completely hit the spot, and across the aisle was a chocolate shop that provided some locally made sweets, including some not at all bad marzipan dipped in milk chocolate. Nearby, a band played; Baltimoreans talked, snacked, and danced. If I could find sausages this good in a market in my city, with decor this snappy to match, I’d dance too. Next time I go, I’ll have a Muffinski.

Polock Johnny’s
Lexington Market, 200 N. Paca St., Baltimore

Guest blogger: Emily Gordon, a.k.a. Emdashes

When I first started to go to Los Angeles for photo shoots, I missed the ease of how one can grab a quick lunchtime bite in NYC. More often than not, in LA, a quick bite meant fast food. And though In-N-Out Burger and Baja Fresh are pretty terrific, I’m not much of a fan of McDonalds, Burger King, or KFC.

As I adjusted to the more casual pace of Los Angeles, I actually began to sit while lunching, and I hence discovered my then-new favorite place to do lunch – Fred Segal on the corner of Melrose Avenue and Crescent Heights. To this NYer, Fred Segal’s excellent Italian restaurant was a taste of New York bustle infused with a huge amount of Los Angeles. And having lived in Milano, Italy for nearly two years, I’m a bit of an Italian food snob, so when I say that Mauro’s is good, it really is.

When I’m in town, I can usually be found there a few times a week, sitting on the outside covered patio digging into a fresh fruit salad and perfectly dente penne arrabbiata. Their sautéed combination vegetable dishes, broccoli/ asparagus/ mushroom, for example, are also terrific. The veggies snap in the yummy rigatoni primavera, and though I did once get sick from the spaghetti with tiger shrimp, it too was ambrosial.

Of course, Fred Segal is also a high-end conglomerate of fabulous boutiques that attract fashion cognoscenti and fashion victims from mostly NY and Los Angeles. That’s one of my favorite things about the place – it’s NOT touristy in the Disneyworld sense. And that’s what also attracts the stars, who are ogled much more discreetly in this stargazing Mecca. Indeed, the last time I sat in the full-service restaurant with a talent manager friend, Salma Hayek was at the next table – I didn’t notice, of course

Guest blogger: photographer/writer, and airplane pilot extraordinaire (and old junior high school friend) Jeff Berlin.

In a little nook on the periphery of Astor Place, you’ll find a teeny tiny little place that you might walk past even if you were looking for it (as I have, many a time), were it not for the wisely installed bright flags with Japanese writing on either side of it’s narrow front. It’s not a sit-down place. In fact, you’ll be lucky to find standing room on a cold day. But it’s yummy. It’s “Japanese comfort food,” as the little sign inside says. If you don’t mind rubbing elbows, stand inside. There’s a bench outside that seats three strangers, or four friends.

The thing you want to appreciate is that this is the Japanese equivalent of hot dogs or knishes. In Japan, you’ll find this food at the outdoor markets. I know, because I’ve had “Takoyaki” there myself. What is Takoyaki? They are defined at Otafuku as “octopus balls.” Who am I to say different? You get six, with some dark savoury sauce and a dollop of mayo as a topping (they ask you how much you want before they dollop it), finished off with a sprinkling of bonito shavings. The light pastry outside contrasts with the hot, creamy inside, and the little chunk of octopus you’ll find, usually on the second (and final) bite of each “ball.” You can even watch them being made on their little rolling, vibrating grill in the window. If octopus balls don’t tempt you, go for the cheese or plain versions.

Other warm, comforting snacks include the well-known Yakisoba, and the lesser known, but no less soothing to a hypoglycemic 4 o’clock zombie, Okonomiyaki. Otafuku is also one of the only places that won’t cost you an arm and a leg and take an hour and a half if you’re hungry in the neighborhood. Have a snack there while you wait for Decibel (my favorite saké bar) to open, just down the block, at basement level.

Otafuku
236 East 9th
212-353-8503

The other day, a self-assured, infinitely likable, well-traveled person confided in me that the thing he hates about dining out alone is that “They treat you like a leper, and they always give you a dark table where you can’t even read a book!”

I was immediately intrigued by his use of the word “leper,” which I realized I’ve rarely heard employed outside attempts to describe the experience of dining out alone! Upon reflection, and after trying to imagine anyone treating this eminently respectable person like a leper (try as I might, to no avail), I am quite convinced that the only person making the lone diner feel like a leper is… the lone diner! It has simply never happened to me anywhere, nor have I ever seen anyone regard a lone patron as a leper when I worked in restaurants myself. Perhaps you think I simply never perceived the obvious pity in so many maitre d’s, and you blush to think of my obliviousness to shame? I’ve never wanted to say “pshaw” before, but here I really must emit a hearty, “Pshaw!”

Fifteen years of living in various kitchenless rooms in Paris with nothing but a “Camping Gaz” burner and one small pot to cook my meals in, and a bathtub with a plank of wood over it for a table—forced me to overcome my initial embarrassment and become an inveterate, well-received, lone diner. I will therefore share my expertise with you.

Besides arriving with just the right amount self-confidence (not too much, but not too little) and a smile (rather than an apologetic plea for mercy on your face), another key to being treated accomodatingly, if not lavished with positive attention, is to keep going back. If you’re on the road and this isn’t likely to happen, be pleasant and project the image of a person who’ll leave a nice, 20% tip: keep in mind that one person occupying a table will invariably result in a lower tip spread over two seats than a couple would yield.

It may add to your comfort level to be aware that most hostesses or maitre d’s do not object to the custom most lone diners observe of not dallying overly long at their tables. Restaurant staff will also usually give preference to regulars—lone or not—over strangers, even when the place is crowded and fully booked. I’ve been a hostess, and I know the importance of regulars to a restaurant’s survival. We were admonished at the Café Costes (where I worked illegally for a summer) never to turn a regular away.

As for the dreaded dark table, it’s likely all the well-lit tables have already been reserved, or perhaps all the tables are rather badly lit. If you want to read, opt for bright establishments, or favor sushi bars, Japanese noodle bars, and diner counters. That said, I’ve been given extra candles upon pulling my book out at my favorite, rather dimly lit Tibetan restaurant without even having to ask.

What will people think? Whether people imagine you’re a sad sack whom nobody wants to dine with, or assume you’re simply treating yourself to a tranquil dinner temporarily relieved of your usual adoring retinue comes down to one thing: the expression on your face. Indeed, I’m sure I’ve caught socially encumbered diners coveting my solitude.

Finally, the whole point of going to a restaurant is to be served. You’re meant to enjoy it the way you’d enjoy a massage or a hard-earned vacation. I’ve noticed we Americans seem to have a proclivity for feeling guilty when served. Not so me, ever since I understood this: you are paying for this privilege! You’re contributing to the economy! As long as you are a gracious patron, you have nothing to feel guilty about, except for not enjoying it enough!

Bon appetit!

I used to go Bus Stop whenever I was in the neighborhood, mainly because it was convenient and because one of my favorite movies has the same name. Perhaps because I never ordered anything but bacon and eggs, I never thought to do a T4One on it. Before you get to know Bus Stop, it seems to be the usual, run of the mill “greasy spoon,” but in fact, I’ve never actually seen a greasy spoon at Bus Stop: they’re impeccably clean as far as I can tell.

Yesterday, having forgotten to eat my lunch, I arrived seeking a remedy to my hunger pangs and lightness of head. Sitting at the counter I spied what looked like a tray of perfectly cooked and seasoned roast chicken with broccoli. The short order chef (no doubt feeling my eyes boring through his head as I tried to get his attention and ask about it) turned to ask the usual question: “French Toast with bacon?”—I’d been eating a lot of French Toast with bacon in the last weeks because I’d lost weight (a no-no in the fittings business, if you can imagine such an ironic misfortune!). No, not this time, I grinned, as he feigned shock. I went for the special. It was $6.95, and the roasted salmon next to it was $8.95, looking just as come-hithery.

My roast chicken came (hither) with rice and beans, and a few stalks of bright green, just crunchy enough broccoli. The chicken was tender, the skin nicely roasted, transparent, supple, and bronzed. I’m not sure if they added the extra leg just for me (diner folks seem to enjoy overfeeding me), or if you’ll also get two legs, instead of just one, and a thigh. I’m fairly sure you can ask for white meat, if you prefer it. As far as white rice with red beans goes, it’s made by and for people who know how it should be done.

Today I had perfectly done grits with my fried eggs and sausage, but I usually have it with home fries, which I invariably finish. That means they’re not dry and cakey, like at some other diners. But I’ve said before that what makes a diner is the people: here, we have convivial Greek owners who speak perfect Spanish (who yet appreciate a cheerful “kalimera” now and then), and extremely affable Spanish-speakers, working together like a well-greased pit-stop team (and sometimes at the same pace).

The two languages are semi-interchangeable, with the Spanish-speakers pitching an occasional jesting “malaka,” and Kosta rattling off prices and menu items in Spanish. As is the coffee: there is café hispanico, and café americano. The Spanish coffee is better, of course. Being made with half and half, I believe, it is not good for you. But it is delicious.

Even worse for you and more delicious is their homemade flan, which is worthy of buying, repackaging at home, and pretending you made it yourself for your friends. Hehehehehe.

Last apparent endorsement: the cops eat here (burgers, usually), as does the very cool, rastafarian mailman.

Bus Stop Restaurant
3341 Broadway
on the corner of 135th and Broadway
(take the 1 train to 137th street station).
(212) 690-2150

Feeling ugly? Go to Tomo!
All kidding aside (and explanation forthcoming), I went to Tomo once, this past summer, on the recommendation of my friends at Takahachi Tribeca. But I was not inclined to give it a review in T4One, because I’d gone on a Friday night, and been surrounded by collegian daters, all rather annoying. I gave it another try last night, because it’s only a few subway stops from home, and I’d decided I needed to treat myself to some sushi to cure my blues after paying a photographer nearly six hundred dollars to try and make me look like a model. (My agency has insisted that I need to cave and get what they call a “comp card.” This is essentially a 4×8 card with several cheeseball photos of a model posing in different outfits, trying to look marketable. Somehow, there’s nothing more depressing than trying to pass yourself off as marketable, based on photos of your face and body in different unreal situations, taken by a guy who’d much rather be shooting Halle Berry for a cover for “Vogue.”)

So after slowly and fitfully beginning to recover my dignity (and my own, more merciful self-image) at home for a couple of hours, I ran to Tomo. And voila, on a Sunday night: much more cozy. Japanese families and friends were occupying some tables, other tables were filled with regulars. I was offered a table even though there were plenty of diners, and a few waiting, which I appreciated. In fact, I was not the only lone diner—there was a very mopey little middle-aged guy who had the table next to me, whining for cutlery and water. If you were to observe us, you would see the do’s and don’ts of dining out alone. He was definitely giving lone diners a bad name. I was cheerful—overjoyed, in fact—to be being served instead of munching taco chips at home with the TV on. My waiters were gracious to me, very accomodating.

All food tastes better when you feel welcome and slightly coddled by the serving staff, but the sushi was perfect “en soi,” as they say. I ordered a miso soup to start, and it came in a nice, wide bowl swimming with wakame seaweed and soft tofu, and tasted as good and wholesome as my own home-made. The set sushi combinations are rather safe (not to say “dull”), the usual tuna, salmon, yellowtail and tuna roll. So I ordered sushi a la carte: two octapus, two squid, salmon roe, flying fish roe, an ume/chiso roll (not too salty, as it is in other places), a salmon skin handroll (this one, rather like a salmon jerky handroll, unfortunately, didn’t measure up to Gari’s), and my favorite as a last, melt-in-your-mouth taste, a cool, creamy sea urchin.

I was still hungry afterwards, so I ordered a vegetable tempura appetizer, which was light as a feather but nevertheless substantial enough. Since I was feeling a little under the weather, I didn’t order saké, but the water comes with a slice of lemon, and is very refreshing. It all came to about $47. That’s what you pay when you prefer a truckload of sushi to one tablet of Xanax, I guess! Still, one has to eat, and one has to cheer up. It was worth it, and I don’t do it every day.

Tomo
2850 Broadway (at 110th street, just outside the uptown 1 subway station)
(212) 665-2916
You can even order online: www.absg.biz/tomo

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