newyorkette

The Ayurveda Café at 94th and Amsterdam literally has everything you need, and you don’t even have to ask for it. There’s only lunch or dinner. They decide what you get, and they have your pleasure and well-being at heart. It’s different every day, and each meal contains the six flavors that Ayurveda requires: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent and pungent. But all you’ll notice is how good it all tastes. When I arrived, I was asked if I wanted to sit down or take out. I said I thought I’d like to sit down, and was assured, “as you desire,” by a gentle waitress.

I sat down to a basket of peppery papadum accompanied by its three little saucers of Indian chutneys (including the ever-loved coriander sauce), and cold water in a modest stainless steel goblet. Dinner arrived in a round stainless steel tray in which a mound of rice (brown or basmati, as you desire) was surrounded by five little stainless steel bowls containing the five more elements comprising the main meal, all vegetarian, all perfectly balanced in terms of spice, texture and quantity. A little curry, a little yogurty raita to pour over the little salad, gently spiced lentils, some stewed tomatoes, one perfectly unimposing, not too greasy and thoroughly satisfying potato fritter. I had brown rice, perfectly cooked, which is rare for brown rice. I was also provided with a basket of nan bread, but didn’t need it.

The mango lassi? Perfect.

The café is linked to the Ayurveda Center around the corner on 96th street between Amsterdam and Broadway, offering you a complimentary meal if you have one of the Center’s “treatments,” which include Ayurvedic massage, facials, body scrubs, the like. You just show them your receipt, paying only for your drink if you had one, and, of course, leave a tip. I can’t imagine anything more pleasant than a massage and a complimentary meal that includes every taste in the Indian spectrum at the end of a hard day. Try it. You’ll like it. If you don’t need a treatment or consultation, the meal costs only eleven ninety-five for dinner, and seven ninety-five for lunch.

I’ve been lucky enough to get booked for two jobs in Mexico, fitting for a Wrangler designer at their factory for one or two days at a time. And since travelling for work always means dining or lunching alone at some point, I did have an opportunity to commune with myself for a day. Actually, I’d planned to avoid eating anything I’d eventually have to pay for myself, hoping to wait all day for the obligatory and sumptuous end of business trip dinner that the client would treat us all to.

But around 1pm after watching the pelicans gulp down their catches again and again, my stomach started growling. Foiled, I went to the Bikini Bar, where they handed me two menus. One offered items to be consumed at said Bikini Bar, while the other suggested tidbits to be delivered to one’s lounge chair on the beach, which is what I opted for. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s really hard to find decent food up here in Washington Heights. The day I moved in I was reduced by desperation to eating Caporal Fried Chicken, whose storefront right by the subway exit exudes the smell of future hardened arteries whenever I climb up those stairs to come home. I’ve experienced a bit of food poisoning here, a bit of indigestion there. There was a brief Camelot when I found Coral’s diner, but that ended with their ambitious redecorating, complete with the installation of flat TV’s, and the elimination of the cozy counter at street level.

I was at a loss till I discovered Tommy’s Pizza. It looks like a dump, yes it does. But Tommy’s regular slice gives you the thin, crispy crust that even non-crust-eaters will relish on the way out the door, the edge of which retains the rim created by the careful hand-shaping of the pie, after savouring the perfect balance of tomato sauce and “mozzarella” cheese. The ingredients may not be high end, but the texture and balance of flavor somehow is., and Tommy’s knows exactly when to pull that slice out of the oven for a perfect “cuisson.”

There’s nothing but the classic pizza here, no basil leaves or fancy dried tomatoes to be found anywhere, Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s Cheap & Cheerful features the thrifty, delicious midtown lunch of the week for all you Conde Nast interns who need to get out of the building, or all you tekkies or garment district slaves, or showroom/fit models out there. Have a Bi-Bim-Bap for $6.95 at Pergola on 39th street between Broadway and Avenue of the Americas.

Bring your vegetarian or meat BBB to Bryant Park, nab a table or table-chair, open the huge clear plastic bowl of lovely glistening, Korean-style, slightly fermented, crunchy soya, carrots, spinach, mushrooms and asian vegetables. The spectrum of color is a feast in itself, so take a deep breath and gaze at it for a moment before you dig in. It’s all very good for you—the Korean fermentation process makes the vegetables easy to digest. It comes with it’s accompanying miso soup and your choice of white or brown rice.

Pour the little tub of hot sauce over it (half is enough, believe me) and toss it all together. Some people like to add the rice into the veggies before mixing, but I like to eat the veggies first, then have my rice with the soup. If I know I’ll be coming home to a bare cupboard at dinnertime, I’ll save the rice for later and add it to soup or veggies at home. It’s such a copious meal you might actually have leftovers or be able to share with a friend who’s not too peckish.

Pergola is huge, and has a rather cavernous atmosphere, so to find your Bi-Bim-Bap you’ll need to go all the way to the back and hang a left. It’s at the sushi bar, of all places. There are tables upstairs, but you don’t want to eat up there (kind of dark and not very cozy) unless it’s too cold or rainy, so Bryant Park or a peaceful corner of your workplace is your best bet. You could always sit out on Pergola’s “terrace,” but it’s grim, and makes me feel like I’m in the world of Bladerunner during a blackout.

NB: you must go early (show up at 12pm) to get your BBB before they’re all gone. They’re very popular and in limited supply.

Pergola
109 W 39th St, New York 10018
Btwn 6th Ave & Bway
Phone: 212-768-2211
Fax: 212-768-2266

Click here for other reviews.

I’ve always like La Taza de Oro. I go there now and then, as does Harrison Ford, if what I hear is true. A latino greasy-spoon style diner with tables for two and a counter for numerous singles like me, they do a swell café con leche, and when you’re in the mood for a chuleta like your mother made (or like your latin friend’s mother made), it’s here, just as greasy, just as crunchy on the edges, completely unhealthy and wholly carnally satisfying.

The other day I found myself far from home and very hungry, and right in front of La Taza de Oro. I took a seat at the counter, asked what was good and was rained upon by a torrent of enthusiastic suggestions from the men at the counter. Try the chuleta! The roast chicken! You like beef? Carne guisada! Read the rest of this entry »

^{Takahachi Tribeca}

Before I found Takahachi Tribeca I’d been a regular at Takahachi East on avenue A and 7th street for a few years. Takahachi Tribeca is far more befitting of a Tables for One experience than its sister restaurant. It’s quieter, for one thing. It’s not full of raucous couples and groups of buddies. I have experienced no excess of infants or non-adults, indigo, dandelion, or otherwise, there. Don’t be fooled by the austere entrance. Once you enter, the suffused bright light ceases to intimidate and becomes what anyone hopes to see at the end of a tunnel. Even if you have to wait, you don’t actually feel put out, the sweet Japanese hostess and/or waitress that welcome you at the door make you feel as if you’re generous and kindly as you wait.

^{Kura Sushi, on the corner of 1st avenue and east 4th street.}

You’d think finding a great place to have sushi in New York would be easy. It’s pretty easy downtown, to the point that I had trouble deciding on a place to review today. But I’ve suffered several very mediocre plates of sushi in the last week trying to find us a good sushi Table for One uptown. I have to admit I’m very picky, but I’m assuming you are, too.

Back to the sure bets. This week’s is Kura Sushi in the East Village. I always liked the name of this place on east 4th and 1st ave. Because the “Kura” reminds me of that line in Carmina Burana: mortuus in anima, curam gero cutis (dead in the soul, I shall look after the flesh). When I’m exhausted and dead in the soul, sushi is always the cure. Sushi, jazz, and a nice glass of Otokoyama saké.

Everything is good here at Kura, including the music. Someone here likes Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis, which is the first good sign. Read the rest of this entry »

^{(image: carolita johnson)}

Since I can’t really afford most of the places reviewed therein, I love it when TNY’s Tables for Two features a slightly gross-out review. And needless to say, even when I’m grossed out, I’m always grossed out in delight.

This week Nick Paumgarten reviews Mario Batali’s Del Posto, in which we can, depending who we are and what tastes we’ve cultivated, either drool over the thought of the pig’s head in broth, or get kinda queasy.

My favorite line is:

Some of the dishes may have you looking around for the hidden cameras: the pici, for example, a hollow pasta served here with black truffles, coxcombs, and duck testicles, which are bigger than you might imagine and do not taste like chicken, or duck.

I do love reading, cutting out, and saving the more delicious Tables for Two to refer to whenever someone wants to take me out to dinner. And of course I know well that my own Tables for One isn’t nearly as well-written as I am still just a humble bloggette. I have much to taste, and much more to aspire to!

[TNY: Tables for Two]

^{(Laurel & Hardy plays on flat screen TVs with the sound turned off)}

I hadn’t thought of Big Nick’s as a Tables for One kind of place, but last week I was out late, too tired to go home and cook, and I had an odd craving for a crab burger and Laurel & Hardy films.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Another dive? Well, I love dives. And I need them, too. I, like many people who lived the free and bohemian life of the international globetrotting soul-searcher, am broke! I’m paying years of back taxes. I’m doing it willingly, since it was my choice to come back to the states. And dives are my friend. Big Nick is my friend. This I know because Big Nick tells me so. There are signs all over the place declaring that “Big Nick cares,” and even balloons I can buy that will tell the world as I walk to the subway: “Big Nick is my friend!”

Big Nick’s is comprised of two “joints” as the menu says: ” Big Nick’s burger joint & pizza joint,” and todays Tables for One comes from the burger joint, whose entrance is on the right. (The pizza joint has a separate entrance on the left. But you can have pizza in the burger joint.)

Not really a place to bring a date unless you’re testing him/her to see if they’re too finicky for a longterm relationship, but Read the rest of this entry »

^{Unless the lone diner in question looks like this, it’s safe to assume she’s happy to be dining alone. (image: carolita johnson)}

I bought the Sunday Times this weekend, but neglected to read it till today because I spent the weekend not alone. This morning I found Bob Morris’ article “The Rudeness of Strangers”, thinking it was about rude New Yorkers, and was surprised at the content. Oh, I get it now… We’re making a reference to Blanche DuBois, the pathetic, old and lonely but still hot under the collar, desperate old maid who liked to say: “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

New York is hardly the place where a woman eating alone is the object of pity. More likely, if she’s the object of any negative ideas at all, she’s the object of annoyance to a hostess who would rather seat two at a table than one, or the waiter who stands to make only half the tip he’d make if he were waiting on a couple. I’ve worked in restaurants, so I know. (NB: once you’ve established yourself as a regular, most waiters and hostesses will give you preference over an unknown couple if it comes down to a choice.)

But it never occured to me that a waiter would “make a fuss” or assume I’ve been stood up, as Serena French seems to assume people think about her when she dines alone. The only time I can think it might be rough would be if I had the misfortune to end up in a date-restaurant alone, but this is usually avoidable. No, dining alone, as Bob eventually manages to understand, isn’t always something a person wants to be saved from.

So what is the protocol, he wonders? Let me tell you, as the well-seasoned dine-a-loner that I am. Read the rest of this entry »

^{(image from La Esquina’s take-out menu)}

Much has been made of La Esquina, where hipsters go to feel special and be insulated from ordinary people (word, from jossip for example, has it you can’t get into the speakeasy without a special phone number, but when I went to the restaurant for brunch one Saturday, Serge, an owner told me this was nonsense. Though he did also ask me, in a very nice way mind you, if I’d be interested in cheating on my boyfriend, so maybe it’s only true for some).

The Corner Deli, which is the taqueria third of the Corner/Esquina triumverate (there’s the deli, the fine restaurant, and the speakeasy all contiguously located on that corner) is a non-hipster (but not a nohipster) joint. Open to everyone, you can sit at the counter elbow to elbow with deliverymen, students, artsyshoppy bobo types, and me.

It used to be that I couldn’t enter L’Occitane without stopping to sniff at eclectically scented candles, or muse over a quaint, tiny tin of solid lavender perfume. But L’Occitane is no longer a novelty. It’s been there for years. After a while I realized I didn’t need expensive soap, so I stopped going. But then I rediscovered L’Occitane as the place to get the thing I want when I get to the corner of Prince and Mercer with my sugar low: a cappucino and a nice moist and “meaty” croissant.

A good croissant is hard to find in this town. First of all, if you find one, you may have to suffer for it. Try going to Balthazar in a state of hypogycemia. You won’t like it. Hopefully you will have left your machine gun at home. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not a huge fan of Nolita, which I regard as basically a high-priced junky mall, but if you have to be there, and find yourself hungering for curry on rice at a non-peak hour (like after 2pm) you can duck into Rice, on Mott Street. The teeny-tiny high tables inset in the wall and barstool chairs are where you want to sit if you’re going solo. There’s not really enough room for two anyway, unless you’re on a hipster date, like the couple in front of me the other day. These dates are amusing to watch, so if you don’t have your New Yorker or your Chandler with you, you’ll still have the kind of cynical yet tender diversion you seek while passing the time waiting for your curry.

I used to avoid noisy, intimidatingly crowded, annoying Rice till I figured out that the off-hours are actually quite pleasant. Read the rest of this entry »

I had to ask the guy at Pak Punjab to spell it out for me, and this is how he spells it: glujamon. But he pronounces it “GLAH-jamon.” It’s spherical, it’s about the size of, well, aw jeez, the only thing I can think of that size is, ahem, uh, your average testicle. That said, it’s more like a baba au rhum, without the rhum.

In the “cheap and cheerful” category of Tables for One, you’re not a New Yorker (or New Yorkette) if you haven’t counted on Gray’s Papaya at the corner of 72nd & B’way at one time or another. The “Recession Special,” two hot dogs and a drink for $1.95 will get you through that pesky little rough patch after paying your taxes.

Some people’s rough patches are longer (and peskier) than others, Read the rest of this entry »

(image from here)

I’m a true believer in the luncheonette/diner as the haven for those who want to (or have to) eat alone while surrounded by the texture and variety of people and banal-yet-eclectic conversations that can’t be heard anywhere else: your seat at the counter of your local (though gradually becoming extinct) luncheonette/diner. In this case, the Stage Restaurant at Second Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets, next to STOMP. 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.”

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.

(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.