Entries from The Amateur Gourmet tagged with 'West Village'
The First Meal
The first meal that you cook in a new apartment is very, very important. We all remember what happened last time, don't we? I attempted to inaugurate our Park Slope apartment three years ago with Edna Lewis's fried chicken (fried in butter and lard) and didn't get the fat hot enough. The result? Gooey, gloppy, undercooked chicken and a cursed apartment that gave us bad heat over three harsh winters. (OK, I exaggerate: I liked that apartment. But the heat did suck)....
Back to the Big Apple
Big changes are afoot, loyal followers of my blog. For three years now I've lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn--steps away from Franny's (one of my top three favorite restaurants in New York)--and pretty content with my BK lifestyle: brooding with the other writers at Gorilla Coffee, skirting over to Key Foods for catchy 60s ditties as I buy vegetables wrapped in plastic, and traipsing over to Grand Army Plaza on Saturdays for the weekly farmer's market. Content, that is, except for one major factor: our heat. It went out repeatedly. Last year, it went out so many times our landlord bought us two space heaters--one of which almost set our couch on fire. So, suffice it to say, when our lease came up again I put my foot down and decided not to renew. This started an epic quest on Craigslist to find a new apartment, but little did we know that this bold decision--a decision that gave us only four weeks to find a new place to live--would lead us to the apartment of our dreams....
McNulty's Blue Eyes Herbal Tea
Last week I had a tiny bit of a hangover after meeting friends for drinks the night before. The solution? I fried up two eggs, sunnyside up, toasted some bread and squished it all together into an oily, decadent sandwich. And because I was craving something greasy and yolky, it was seriously one of the best bites I can remember having in recent memory: it totally and completely hit the spot. What does that have to do with tea? Well a week before last, both Craig and I were sick with nasty, ugly colds. And with our sore throats, we didn't want coffee, we wanted tea. I reached into my cabinet and pulled out a gift that my friend Matthew Horovitz gave me for my birthday: tea from Mcnulty's Tea & Coffee Co. in the West Village....
Karahi (Indian Food in the West Village)
We all know that the first rule of real estate is "location! location! location!" Apparently, though, it's also the first rule of New York friendships. Want to see a lot of someone you really like? It helps to live in the same borough. Take my friend Lisa, for example. There was a time we both lived in Chelsea and when we lived close together we made videos about bulimic tomatoes and miracle almond cakes. Then I moved to Brooklyn and she moved to the Upper West Side. We still see each other, of course, but we'd see each other a lot more if she came to her senses and moved to Brooklyn or if I came to my senses and moved back to Manhattan. Either way, the point is that Lisa has a boyfriend named Eric who I hadn't met yet and so we made a date to meet for Indian food on Sunday so Craig and I could meet this Eric character....
Lunch at Lupa
The West 4th stop of the D train has two exits: one on Waverly Street and one on the actual West 4th, in front of the IFC movie theater. These two exits, for me, mark two very different moods, two very different frames of mind. To exit on Waverly is an act of self-denial, a focused foray into the world of bagels and coffee--a quick one up at Murray's on 13th and then back down to Joe on Waverly where I will sit and work for hours. To exit on West 4th, on the other hand, is to embrace a world of gastronomical wonders, to ignore all the mandates of "should" and "right now" and to relax into a land of creature comforts, of lobster rolls and gourmet cheeses, of yolky gelato and crispy paninis....
Perry Street
If you leave a restaurant happy, does it matter if the meal itself was anything but perfect? Yesterday I had this very experience at Perry Street, Jean-George's oft-ignored Greenwich Village outpost where savvy diners can enjoy a three-course lunch for $24. I'd been meaning to try Perry Street for a long time--ever since it opened--but an opportunity never arose. Then, yesterday, after a morning meeting, I was in the Village looking for lunch and soon I was face to face with Perry Street. The glass exterior was a bit daunting: what would it be like inside? Would I be dressed appropriately (in jeans and flip-flops)? Would it be crowded, empty, filled with nudist monks having an orgy? I took a deep breath and decided to try my luck. I'm glad I did....
