Saturday, March 1, 2003

up and down the island

We are not up very early again. What is it with us? Do we think we are on vacation? When we do set out, we are vaguely walking north and east with some breakfast in mind.

On Madison there is this little place called the Gardenia Deli or something. Last year I ate here with my friend SuRu on a snowy day. In the remembering she confused it and merged it with another restaurant which was on the other side of the street, I think, where we ate another time. I had the hardest time convincing her that there were two restaurants. Anyway, I spy the place and it's getting near eleven and certainly time for food. I order a fried egg sandwich with tomato and bacon. FFP has some hash but also orders a bran muffin. The coffee isn't refilled and it isn't that great. But the food is good and cheap.

We continue our walking. We spy the Crawford Doyle Bookstore across the street. It is such a great store. It's tiny, with a balcony holding rare books and library ladders to get to everything. I kept seeing books I'd just read or bought and then ones I wanted. In the end, I bought a book with some walking tours of a couple of areas including the Flatiron/Madison Square area where we were yesterday and a small book of short pieces about New York from an old New Yorker writer and a novel called Beautiful Bodies.. I always feel righteous buying something in an independent bookstore instead of the guilt I feel when I buy something at Barnes and Noble or on the WEB from the aptly named Amazon.

We walk and walk until we are actually in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood. Once I peek down a side street and see a woman in white walking a white standard poodle next to a snow bank still left from the blizzard. This needs photographing, I decide, and whip out the digital camera. FFP has been checking out restaurant menus, considering coming back. Some really interesting ones are just off Madison, down steps in quaint locations.

We decide it's time to start back if, in fact, we are walking all the way back. For variety, we veer to Park and then to Lex with its extra patina of shops and people. It's Saturday so families are out, brunching, shopping, just walking. We walk and walk. About 1:30, we spy a bistro we loved on another visit, Orsay. Heck, so what if we just had breakfast a little while ago? How about a light lunch and a glass of wine. By this time we've browsed another couple of independent bookstores although we have resisted buying any more books.

We are accommodated, reservation-less, both facing out from a banquette in the back. We read our books and order a glass of wine each and a nice bottle of fuzzy water. I get some tuna and salmon tartare and it's light and tasty. FFP gets some pea soup (delicious, I tasted it) and chicken paillard. Unlike the very round and thin preparation we saw at Artisanal, this is too much food. I taste it, too. After the meal, we have a nice coffee. The table next to us has been occupied by three earnest people, probably all under 25, discussing a script. When we get up to leave FFP says, "Movie or play?" They look shocked and say 'movie.' Then he asks the title and they say it is confidential.

We walk and walk, cutting back across on 52nd to stand in front of '21.' We notice an interesting Museum of Television and Radio next door to it.

We will be going to '21' tonight. We walk back to the hotel, by the rat people and go to our room after checking our e-mail in the library. We rest, go down to the hotel gym for a bit, and rest and read some more. Then we dress for dinner.

We've never been to '21' and we are tourists, so what? My expectation is that they will be uppidity without cause (and that the food won't be that good to redeem it). We walk over there and go in. Some of our party has already arrived and is ordering drinks. We are graciously shown to the bar to join them. When everyone has arrived (several other Austinites except Marie's mom from Las Vegas and a couple from Florida), we are seated at a round table in the saloon part. The ceiling is decorated with sports stuff and toys and memorabilia of various kinds.

Somehow it is determined that Marie's mom and one of the waiters come from the same part of Italy and they have a long discussion about it with much hand movement and head nodding. I order two appetizers. The foie gras and the tuna tartare. I look at the wine list and say that some Italian selections look like good values and Jon picks one. The food is stunning, the wine is nice, the service casual but attentive. I don't know what the more formal rooms are like but I feel that I must come back and I'm glad I came. The foie gras was a generous portion and so nicely prepared. FFP got it, too, and agrees. Then he ate a filet which he says was stunning. The breads were great, too.

Before dessert, we bid our friends goodbye for now and catch a cab and go back to 44th Street. We head straight for the Algonquin, though. We have a coffee drink while we wait for the Oak Room to clear from the early show. We don't queue up first for the 11pm show, but we get a great table, two top on the banquette just in front of the piano.

Peter Cincotti is a teenager but he is playing in The Oak Room, backed by a fine bass player, tenor sax player and drummer. He is playing the piano and singing and some of the compositions are his (with his mother's lyrics and some of his own). He has been described as phenomenal and this show was nothing less than that. His style is the jazzy American standard style we love. His CD is coming out soon and I'm going to have my order in. We will probably be rocking on the porch of the rest home someday saying, "I saw him when he was just a boy."

We have another coffee drink and FFP has dessert while we watch the show. There is a bit of banquette beside us where you can't put a table because the piano bulges out there. (Have I ever mentioned how very narrow the Oak Room actually is?) The staff seats a lady there and she is, it turns out, Peter's cousin and god mother.

Show over we retrieve our coats and walk the short distance to the Iroquois and bed.

the rat people

a poodle and her owner look pure as the snow

Marie's mom talks to a homeboy (from Italy) in '21'

stuff hanging from the '21' club saloon ceiling

FFP and a friend from Austin

"The city has never been so uncomfortable, so crowded, so tense. Money has been plentiful and New York has responded."

E.B. White, Here is New York, 1949

 

JUST TYPING
There are icons.
There are places you want to say about.
I've been.
One such place is an address,
Shortened.
Just.
21