[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: August 10.2007]
"So today it is quite hot again and the/erotic throb of mere air replaces the traffic..."
Words by the British poet Jeremy Prynne which I wrote on the first page of the tiger skin tome which tells me where I was this week ten years ago. And the weather has only gotten worse.
In New York, and busy apparently, drinking at McHale's, the Ninth Avenue beer'n'burger pub which sadly closed last year, and Smith's opposite, which has had its teeth and claws removed.
In addition to unmemorable meals at Rosa Mexicana and Cité - need I say chicken fajitas, need I say halibut? - I devoted a Thursday evening to my favored combo of "The Loft" followed by Redeye Grill.
"The Loft", I should explain, was a weekly comedy show at the Chelsea venue Catch A Rising Star. The latter had previously been a rather good Spanish tapas bar, long before tapas were fashionable, with a cabaret room in the back. Now it was one of the better comedy spots in Manhattan, much less predictable and formulaic than Caroline's. It didn't hurt that the proprietor was convinced I was a London promoter, and comped me drinks on the basis of this tacit assumption. Every Thursday, "The Loft" permitted Marta Ravin to host a sort of sub-Seinfeldian sitcom, in which the characters were also guests who interspersed their acts between Martha's neurotic shreds of plotline.
A regular highlight was a young comic called Jason Nash, who as James Taylor performed a first-draft upbeat version of "Fire And Rain." He also killed as an evangelical hot gospeller, praying to the Lord to "share the booty." I haven't seen him in years, but he's still working.
My habit after this show - and it's relevant that I was living on West 57th - was to take a late supper at the Redeye Grill near Carnegie Hall, which was on the way home and took orders until midnight. The Grill (home of the "Dancing Shrimp" bar - why? there's a shrimp, it dances) was, and is, a big, two-level space serving as a kind of all-purpose fancy fish shack. The raw bar was good enough; there was a full sushi bar; it was safest to stick to simple entreés. The people watching was all it should have been in midtown Manhattan after hours.
Ten years ago, I did screw up the order. Thinking that a substantial salad would make a healthy but filling appetizer, I ordered the Cobb. For some reason, I casually upgraded it to a Cobb Royale, expecting a few decorative lobster chunks. I'd follow this with a plain grilled hunk of mahi-mahi, porcini sauce and a few home fries.
The Cobb Royale, of course, turned out to be a huge and costly entreé, the salad tossed table side and topped with half a good-sized lobster. It's $43.00 on today's lunch menu (I've eaten the regular Cobb salad there recently for lunch, and although not cheap, it's a good version). There is no record of dessert in my notes; I am sure the waiter was chuffed enough.
On Saturday, I preceded a day's work with eggs Benedict at the Brooklyn Diner. Yes, folks, that's the finer diner. Dinner at a long-neglected midtown Italian, Osterio del Circo. The estimable Sirio Maccione, capo of Le Cirque, opened the Circus Hostelry apparently to give his sons something useful to do. A cheery spot on opening, the interior strung like a circus tent, it's still there today behind a strip of hedgerow. I ate here a few times; used to take out-of-towner there to give them a New York-ish experience. Food was fine, if not special enough to keep this on the regular rotation.
Ricotta-stuffed spinach ravioli to start, on this occasion, with a tomato-basil sauce. Then the irresistibly named stinco d'agnello, a braised lamb shank served - if my notes are to be believed - with a poached pear crepe. Well, that's what it says, and no - the dessert was just a plate of biscotti, a glass of vin santo following on the heels of a Calera pinot noir.
Next week in 1997 is busy, but we'll take quite a close look at the recently deceased March Restaurant, in its glory days. There will be ten courses.
