Paul Smalera

Another issue of New York Press brings with it another restaurant review from yours truly. Harlem is still mostly undiscovered territory to me, dining wise. I’ve eaten at perhaps a half a dozen restaurants above 96th street. One of the ones I enjoyed most (though you can hardly call it a restaurant) is Charles’ Southern Kitchen on 125th. So good it inspired me to reach back to my ’80s childhood for a headline: Charles’ in Charge.

For those who read my post about The New York Times’ thoughts on the East Village, circa 1985 , I’ve found another gem from their archives, this time from 1997, closer to the time I was boppin’ around the Village, Soho, Chinatown, etc. The story chronicles the very start of a new building trend in my neighborhood: Along East 2d Street, New Market-Rate Apartments. Some quotes:

HISTORY has shown the East Village and the Lower East Side to be tough places to operate real estate. Most buildings are old and many tenants, among them many immigrants, are poor.

Jesus. Besides my landlord, there are at least another dozen or so that have become real estate barons based almost completely on picking up buildings in the East Village and Lower East Side at firesale prices, and sitting on them, until, well, now.

 Current market-rate rents for a one-bedroom apartment run from $900 to $1,400 a month and are usually between $1,100 to $1,200, said Robert T. Perl, president of Tower Brokerage on East 10th Street, which manages about 250 apartments in the area. But tenants who arrived about 15 years ago are paying anywhere from $300 to $600 for a similar-sized apartment — though at the time about half of them lacked a modern bathroom or kitchen, Mr. Perl said.

If my rent was $600 a month, I would gladly bathe with a bucket and sponge, and cook on a hot plate or camping stove.

Mr. Quillen, the son of Parker and Joan Quillen, antiques dealers based in Palm Beach, has been making all-cash deals for semi-distressed properties. Last year he bought a 20-unit building at 104 Suffolk Street, and in April he closed on the 26-unit 109-111 Ludlow Street, with a largely Chinese tenancy. The sale price, $905,000, was four times higher than what the seller had paid for the building six years ago, he said.

Something tells Mr. Whitney Quillen is doing pretty well for himself these days. Although, unless he is unscrupulous, he has to wait for those tenants to kick off, move out, or violate their lease before he can make those apartments market rate. I wonder if he managed to do so in these ten years. After all:

”Only the children can speak to me,” Mr. Quillen said.

And they very well may have grown up into LES hipsters who would rather throw away their Converse sneakers than give up a cheap apartment on Ludlow Street. Next time I walk by, I’ll try to gauge the building… Stay tuned…

As you’ll see in my latest New York Press review, I was quite smitten with the soy-fueled goodies at Kyotofu. Have a read, and do yourself a favor– check it out!

PS-Yes, Alone in Kyotofu is a play on the Air song from Lost in Translation. I highly suggest you check that out too!

The New York Times weighs in on the East Village, where I live, circa 1985:

Sometimes an area’s appearance differs markedly from its reality and that is true of the East Village. ”There are bohemians who live here who are only pretending to be bohemians,” said Alfred Marston, chairman of Community Board 3 at 137 Second Avenue. ”Actually, many of them are the most straight-laced of people who work days in the financial district and want to shed that prim, professional image at night and on weekends.” UNLIKE other areas of the city, said Mr. Marston, a financial consultant with a doctorate in economics, ”a lot of people who feel they have missed the boat in their private lives head for the East Village looking for a renewed lease on their youth and, obviously, some of them find it because more well educated, professional people keep coming.”

It’s reassuring to know that even 22 years ago people here were bitching about the yuppies with day jobs moving into the E.Vil and ruining it for the true artistes. However, not all has remained the same:

Quality-of-life problems abound. Residents complain that garbage remains uncollected for weeks, graffiti are endemic and the Fire Department says the East Village is among the most arson-prone areas in the city.

Granted, there is a personal irony in coming across this article today, as I Googled looking for a good Indian restaurant in the ‘hood, because I had my first semi-serious run-in with a totally crazed drugged out guy, probably about my age, looking for “80 cents to buy some vodka.” Perhaps he was stuck in 1985, because $.80 sure don’t buy any vodka I know about.

What really sticks out, when the article talks about prices for housing (buying and renting) is how little prices have actually gone up 22 years in terms of just the numbers themselves. ($500k for a two-bed, for instance). I don’t think though, that salaries are anywhere near as valuable, relatively speaking, as they were in 1985. Translation: even if we have more dollars in 2007, we can buy less with them.

Read the article if you have a second. I assure my out of town friends no one is swarming over vacant lots and abandoned buldings anymore, because there are none.

Friends, there is good pizza, and there is good pizza. Having grown up in New Jersey, I was used to the idea that if a pizza place managed to stay open for more than a year, the pizza they were serving was probably going to be good. Small town economics dictate that crappy restaurants close fast. Yet here in Manhattan, bad pizzerias are everywhere, and they stay open for years! There are simply too many people on this island who don’t know or don’t care what a good slice should taste like. May I suggest, for those of us who do care what a pizza is supposed to be, that you read my New York Press review of Cronkite Pizzeria and Wine Bar, a new joint on the Lower East Side? Although they are definitely a gourmet sort of place, they are doing all right by me. Mangia!

Photo: Wendy Ploger

Stranger than fiction, there's a restaurant called E.U. in my East Village neighborhood that is just unable to stay open. And I swear it's my fault, if you believe in causality. Maybe my girlfriend's. You see, every time we have gone to eat at EU (three times now), they close within 48 hours, only to re-open, still the same visually, but palpably weakened in terms of karma. My study:

Closure the first: After a long, contentious, crazy battle to open, E.U., the European Union, finally started serving in April 2006. Mind you, when we moved to the E.Vil, we had our eyes on EU as a perfect addition to the neighborhood. Yes, my girlfriend and I are hipster gentrifiers. I'm sorry, we'd rather be crunchy, long-time residents, but that wasn't in the cards. We like the East Village for what it once was, not what it is now, but our chances at scoring some $500 a month 3 bedroom suite pretty much went out the window when we weren't born in time to take advantage of living in the drug-ridden, crime infested neighborhood this once was (which may actually be preferrable to the bridge and tunnel infested, street fight, striped shirt douchebaggery carnage inflicted on my neighborhood every weekend night.) 

So, EU opened, after battling like crazy for a liquor license against a community board that stupidly stood idle while a hundred other dumb bars got or renewed their licenses. Yes, the green lantern bar with the awful name (No Malice Palace) on 3rd, which regularly creates a sidewalk queue while the inside of the bar is actually empty, just to drum up some buzz, has a license, but a restaurant serving braised beef cheeks and razor clams does not. Go figure. They opened for three days to give BYO a go, but after they got told they could not operate as BYO, they got closed. But, that one night we got to eat dinner there, the beef cheeks were OUT OF SIGHT.

Closure the second: Brunch. Good burger. Good eggs. Still no booze. They had re-opened in advance of the license, which I gather Giraldi et al. thought was forthcoming. In fact, it was not. Again, le shutter for EU. If the actual EU closed this often, Germany would still be on Weimar currency.

Closure the third: Brunch, again. Good burger (fried egg on top, Aussie style, but I guess Aussies were once Brits, right?) Then comes Eater to tell of the Sunday night meltdown that apparently happened mere hours after the hostess told us we had to sit at a two top right next to another couple because the next table over "had to stay a four." At 1pm. In a restaurant that had six other occupied tables. Out of, like, fifty. Neighborhood brunch place? Uh, if my neighborhood brunch place is empty, you'd think they'd have the courtesy to space out the diners OR just say "anywhere you'd like," when we go to sit down. Perhaps this is why EU advertised for a whole new front house on craigslist.

Finally, according to Eater, a new chef, Akhtar Nawab, the FOURTH attached to this restuarant in less than two years, (Burrell, Ochs, Elliot) has brought some solid experience to the resty, along with hopefully enough of a clue to bully the management for a decent front of the house. And they've re-opened in just four days, the shortest time ever in all the jinxes we've apparently put upon EU by attempting to dine there. I looked forward to seeing what Ned Elliott could do, but now Giraldi and Hennings say he was just a warm body while they went after their man Nawab.

Please, EU, don't give up the good fight just yet. We really want to see what you've got to offer. And may I put a word in for the braised beef cheeks, if Akhtar deigns to serve them? 

I feel like I discovered Ftrain.com years ago, well before I was aware of anything like a blogosphere. There were just blogs back then, little unconnected islands of thought percolating through the phone wires. And because I responded intellectually to Paul Ford's writing on that site, I have always kept a mental note to check it out, every few months, usually late at night or during a slow moment in time, when I feel like I've reached the "end" page on the internet from that stupid commercial.

Usually I was rewarded by some little post or link, but recently, many times I was not. Then, of course, came the majesty of the Gary Benchley serial saga on The Morning News followed by the excellent novel based on those articles, Gary Benchley, Rock Star. We had several months of Ford in full bloom as the book hit the publicity circuit. But lately, again, radio silence. Now I don't spite anyone's need to get away from these glowing screens, but as a reader, I simply missed the site.

Now comes a sudden deluge of posts! Ford has been blogging regularly since 2007 was begat, apparently some sort of New Year's Resolution, get it, get it?  Part of my interest is that Paul is a web geek who writes. After being a web geek for several years, I too am writing, though the first novel is probably at least nine months off and I have happily abandoned the coding part of my brain, except for boutique projects for friends who need websites and of course keeping up this little blog, which is really only hear to call attention to my work as a writer.

Although his posts have been apocryphal so far, I will be reading the blog with great curiosity to see what comes of his efforts. I suggest checking it out sometime.

Put a few million people on a tiny speck of rock in the middle of a whole lot of other people and strange things happen. I'm talking about Manhattan, of course. Ironic Sans: The Astoria Notes actually deals with, der, Astoria, Queens, but that is a whole 'nother speck of rock, just a larger speck than the speck I'm currently living on. If you've ever had issues with neighbors, even if they weren't necessarily horrible The Burbs types of encounters, you'll want to read Ironic Sans' bizarre tale about being told, by his neighbor, that she was pretty much following every move he made in his domicile, sometimes complaining, and sometimes twisting his habits into her own roommate eviction device. Enjoy. 

(This link is from kottke.org but I know I've seen Ironic Sans before…)

Since I'm going to be doing some more food writing in the coming months, I thought I might start an occasional feature on the blog of writing about good meals I've had between reviews. I was lucky enough to be dining with my photographer/girlfriend Wendy Ploger when I ate brunch at Flea Market, which on the surface seems like any number of tiny French bistros that line the streets of Manhattan. 

I don't think anyone goes to a bistro expecting to be introduced to the future of food, a la foams, cooking in plastic bags, Parcojets, or any of the other exotic kitchen devices and techniques that have gained currency in recent years. No, what you expect is to enjoy the original culinary revolution: the techniques, precision and combination of ingredients that brought the French to global preeminence and made the name The French Laundry a perfect one for Thomas Keller's more modern culinary revolution.

What you're seeing in the picture above is what the Flea Market does well. The place has a cute feel, good music, and a slammin' brunch Croque Madame. The Croque ("munch") is nothing more than a good piece of French bread with a slice of ham, some Gruyere cheese and bechamel sauce, heated and grilled so that it gets all gooey and perfectly melted. It's then topped, as shown, with a poached egg. Do you know how easy it is to make a bad one of these?

I've had some real stinkers. Hard (not runny) yolk. Bad cheese. Unmelted cheese. Cold cheese. Icky ham. Stale bread. Old sauce. If it's not all perfect, it's not worth eating. So to make it as good as Flea Market does, and to pair it with a lightly dressed mesclun, as above, that makes use of the sauce and egg yolk as a de facto second dressing, shows that not only can someone in the kitchen make a Croque Madame, they understand the thinking behind it and why the ingredients are prepared the way they are. It shows competency and appreciation for the old ways. It complements the atmosphere of Flea Market, where you feel you might actually be in a bistro somewhere on the Left Bank. It's food that doesn't know how artful it is, even as it outclasses so many other pedestrian meals.

Lichee foams and thyme sorbets are great, but for my money, nothing beats a perfectly poached egg. Flea market, on Avenue A right across from Tompkins Square Park, is a place I'd recommend to those who agree. The service is fine, the wine list works, and the price is right. It probably won't change your world, but then again, if you've never experienced a great duck confit, it just might.

Perhaps I shouldn't follow my thoughts on fact-checking with my noticing an error in UrbanEye (ne Urbanist), The New York Times' answer to hip email newsletters everywhere, but this morning Melena Ryzik, editor of the daily newsletter, points readers to The Factory Retooled, her article about 205, a hip new club that looks like Warhol's famous Factory on the inside. She says,

"[Monday]’s killer karaoke night is still more or less under the hipster radar. It has, however, been discovered by celebrities like Ed Norton, Liev Schreiber and Rosie Perez, who — surprise, surprise — can really belt it. If you can, too, stop by."

Mas problema. As New York magazine's Daniel Maurer blogged this morning, 205 was shuttered by the NYPD because of Warholian allegations of coke and other drugs being dealt in its hallowed simalcra-quered halls. So, one can assume, Monday night karaoke, it probably didn't happen.

Doing a daily email like that must be a royal pain, but the last time UrbanEye/Urbanist caught my attention was when Kampuchea was reported as being open for business on a night they had not yet opened. I had called the restaurant, as I was planning to review it for the New York Press, and confirmed that their opening night was indeed postponed.

Of course information posted on the web goes out of date, but a daily email about events in New York should be pretty well vetted before going out, otherwise doesn't it risk sounding like so much marketing spiel? Before using UrbanEye as a guide to go anywhere or do anything, it might be a good idea to pick up the phone and confirm. 

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