December 2007 Archives

Some of us are back in our hometowns, unwrapping gifts, sipping eggnog by a crackling fireplace, quibbling lovingly with family members, escaping the house at night to get drunk with high school buddies, brining turkeys and baking Christmas cookies as Josh Groban's dickless lilt puts Grandma to sleep, fa la la la la and a bottle of rum.

And some of us are battling the stomach flu alone in Sunset Park, drinking watered down ginger ale, trying to keep bowls of thin rice congee down, crying our eyes out watching our Netflixed Love Actually* on repeat, and flipping channels in a vain attempt to get away from that relentless, toothy holiday pox Rachael Ray as she shills crackers/donuts/stoups.

So since some of us are totally in the holiday spirit this year, we thought we'd put together a list of the top five loneliest places to eat in NYC. We've excluded the ramen bars and pizza joints -- those places were designed for singletons just like you, so you always feel as if you're dining in solidarity.

No, no, the following places make you feel worse than you did when you walked in. They serve to remind you, with every practical bite, that you have no one to go home and have dinner with. That in your life, dinner is not a social event, but a functional refueling. If you find yourself in any of these places, take a look around you. You could:
A.) find another loser like yourself and no longer be lonely, or
B.) join me for dinner and give me grief for putting the blog on hold.

And don't be too hard on yourself -- top ramen over the sink in your underwear is still worse. So is straight up alcoholism.

The Top Five Loneliest Places to Eat in NYC

In descending order:

5. Any Taco Bell, but especially a Taco Bell Express. The seats bolted to the floor, the harsh overheads, the dubious, dubious meat, the sweaty, runny beans, the browning lettuce -- what did you do to make you hate yourself this much?

4. Katz's. You're drunk and you want to eat something before you get on the train so you don't ralph in the tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. But you get your pastrami sandwich, ask for fries, and the guy yells at you to go to the other station. And you sit down at the service only tables and get yelled at by the waiter to move to one of the gazillion other empty tables. And then (because you're drunk), you lose your ticket and you get yelled at by the burly bouncer type at the door who demands an extortive fine. All of which serve to remind you that you are alone, you are pathetic, and you'll never be a REAL New Yorker.

3. Anywhere that serves any kind of tube meat or has "dogs" in the name. Seriously, think about what you look like.

2. Woorijip. You are a lonely fuck if you are eating steam table rice cakes with disposable chopsticks from a foam tray at Woorijip. And if you have forgotten what a sad, lonely fuck you are, just look at the sad, lonely fucks around you, looking minty green under the harsh fluorescents, sitting on their low stools along the bar in the front of the dining room, yelling about their therapy sessions into their cell phones as they stuff their traps with cold, tacky jap chae.

1. The subway. Nasty. What, you're too hungry to wait the 30 minutes it's gonna take you to get home? Or you want to make sure you eat a little something before you start drinking tonight? Those platforms are depositories for all manner of bodily fluids and excretions. Which, of course, you know and generally block out for sanity's sake. But while you're eating? You know better. And if you forget, the smells are easy reminders that drunkards know no discrimination when it comes to finding a place to take a piss (or toss their cookies). The subway car seems marginally better than the platform, but that seat was probably just vacated by a homeless guy who finished jerking off the stop before you got on. And for god's sake, put a glove on before you touch that pole.

Bonus: The other day I was in Shanghai Mong trying their ja jang myun/ramen combo. There's this little circular room where a little lip of a bar juts out from the wall, and about ten single diners can enjoy their meals with their backs to the center of the circle. The great thing is that at about every other seat, there's a mirror at face height that says, "You Are a Princess". I like to imagine all of these gruff Korean businessmen going in for a sweat-inducing bowl of spicy seafood noodle soup and having to stare back at their own visages framed in these curlicued "You Are a Princess" mirrors. Ha ha ha...ha...ahem...this is how I get my kicks these days.

*Is there a better Xmas rom-com? I don't think so. What a dehydrator.

I'm working myself to the bone right now and am probably only going to update very sporadically until February, when we relaunch the website I'm working on for my day job. Check out the blogroll -- plenty of good reading there. Please come back in Feb. when hopefully a few more brain cells have regenerated.

Name: Molly Osmond

Occupation: Merchandise Analyst at a women’s sportswear company

Borough: Brooklyn

Relationship status: Married

What did you eat today?

Cappuccino, cinnamon raisin bagel toasted with butter, tuna salad on wheat bread, leftover grilled pizza with sweet sausage and ricotta (a lazy, no cooking day!)

What do you never eat?

Peanut butter, anything with coconut milk, whipped cream, marshmallows, fast food, potato chips

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

mustard, expired yogurt, fizzy water, champagne, assorted jams, baby carrots

What is your favorite kitchen item?

8” Wusthof chef’s knife, by far! Microplane zester is a close second, followed by my 4 qt All-Clad saucepan

Where do you eat out most frequently?

‘ino, on Bedford Street, Bocca Lupo, in Cobble Hill, Lunetta, on Smith Street, Blue Ribbon (all their locations)

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

Pizza! Always pizza. Preferably from Otto, with a fantastic bottle of red alongside.

Molly blogs at mk-cadeaux.com.

It's like this bag was made for me:

Details: a watermelon radish:

Daikon and burdock:

Actually, it was made for me by my very crafty friend Sarah. Inside pocket:

Yes, she's awesome. And no, you can't have it.

UPDATE: Reader Rose says that "roots" is Aussie slang for "f*cks". So sneaky cheeky!

I wasn't going to write about it since you've heard it all before, but I have to give it up to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where I had another swoonworthy meal. (Disclaimer: I know the chef from my Greenmarket days. He knew we were there and asked us if we wanted the tasting menu. But I will also say that I have had the tasting menu anonymously, and we were treated just as well then.)

I'm dying to visit in summer, when nature is just giving it away for free, but there's still plenty to celebrate in Stone Barns' greenhouses, root cellars and henhouses. I was crazy for the morning egg this time -- a soft-boiled egg is dredged in panko and fried, then laid in a shallow bowl strewn with a pretty bedding of just-snipped micro herbs and lettuces. The waiter pours a steaming, deeply earthy mushroom broth from a glass teapot around the egg. The whole thing is so yin -- warm, fortifying broth of foraged mushrooms from damp, shady woods, the crisp, maiden panko that has to be pierced with knife and fork so the yolk can run free. It exemplifies what I appreciate most about Dan Barber's cooking -- no macho gimmicks, just understated magic and a subtle alchemy that never upstages the food.

La Doug thought it quite daring to end the savory segment of the meal with the succulent sous vide chicken -- moist, luscious breast and a swath of dark meat with crisped skin, all reclining on the sweetest wedges of yellow carrot. My favorite dish: a shot glass with rich, tangy buttermilk panna cotta, punctured by shards of fennel and tart apple with a spoonful of green apple sorbet floating on top. Di. vine. Gush gush gush.

But I digress. The real reason I wanted to talk about dinner was that our dining companion Jon turned us on to his latest obsession, sagrantino. The sagrantino grape is native to Montefalco, a small town in Perugia, Umbria. It's a sort of Cinderella story -- local guys do good by overlooked indigenous grape, nationalists and bacchanalians alike raise their glasses to the new prom queen. The 2001 Paolo Bea Montefalco Sagrantino Secco we drank was full of dusty, raisin-y tannins, gloriously swishy and staining. As Food & Wine suggests, it'd make a great gift for the oenophile in-laws you're trying to impress. Looks like Italian Wine Merchants has the 2003 for $94.05; you can also get it at Crush Wine Co. for $89.95. (It ain't cheap, I know, but you get what you pay for.)

Name: Lucas Benjaminh Krech

Occupation: Lighting Designer

Borough: Brooklyn

Relationship status:In a Relationship

What did you eat today?

Shade Grown Organic Honduran Coffee, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, yogurt and raisins for breakfast. Falafel for lunch. Rice and cheese with hot sauce for dinner. I just got back into town from working in California for two weeks and the food shopping has been slight.

What do you never eat?

Animals.

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Soy Milk (For Coffee). To be perfectly honest, it's coffee more than food per se that I find necessary. When I travel for work I often bring my small stovetop espresso or Vietnamese coffee maker with me depending upon what the lodging situation is. Those hotel coffee makers are really only good for heating up water to make Vietnamese style coffee.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

My large stove top espresso maker.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Mud

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

A steak from Peter Luger. If the world is ending, no need to keep up the vegetarianism.