Wednesday, October 3, 2012.
New York City, Day Two. Hamburger Dump In A Gilded Hotel. Eataly. The Icon.
We had New Orleans weather for our one full day in New York. The drizzle was over, but the streets were wet, the skies were overcast, and the temperature was in the eighties. We appear to be paying nature back for the spectacular weather in our six cruise ports last week.
Mary Ann and I had breakfast in the pleasant, hip bistro of the Strand Hotel. Then I got to work on an abbreviated Menu Daily for my subscribers, knowing full well that the Marys would hit the streets without me as soon as they could focus their eyes.
I caught up with them in time for the first hamburger of the day. Mary Ann read somewhere that the best hamburger in town came from the Parker Meridien hotel--a classy, beautiful property. We couldn't find it, so ML got to work searching for clues online. "It's behind the curtain, it says here," she said. Curtain? What curtain? And then--in the same way the Big W is revealed in "It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World"--we all saw it: a heavy, tall, dark maroon, velvet curtain, covering an improbably wide swath of wall space. If you looked behind it, you saw a neon hamburger in the darkness.
The Burger Joint is well named. Think of the most worn-out, beat-up, grubbiest Bud's Broiler you've ever been to. That's what this place looked like. The walls were covered with accolades from all the major print media. Between the testimonials every square inch of the walls--and every other writable surface, including lampshades and signs saying "Do not write here"--was covered with scrawled messages.
It's one thing for me to restate my thesis that even the best hamburger is still just a hamburger. And this was far from the best. But when the Marys go along with that--when they agree that we do a better job cooking burgers at home--I feel I'm onto something. So I pressed forward with these two points:
1. There must be some hard-wired part of our brains that makes us turn off their sense of taste when the image of "hamburger" enters our consciousness.
2. New Yorkers will swallow absolutely every rumor they hear about the best of something or other, no matter how obviously nugatory or goofy (op. cit.) it is. When it comes to really good food, New Orleans people make Manhattanites look like suckers and amateurs. The Big Apple is the best restaurant city in the world, but it's also the home of the most absurd restaurants in the world.
Mary Ann was outraged by this pronouncement. It was as if I had attacked her religion. The Church Of The Sacred Hamburger. She said I insisted that everyone think as I do. But didn't she just now say The Burger Joint wasn't all that? This ball bounced back and forth until it was on the verge of entering the world of politics. (MA's mind is never far from politics.)
We moved on. After a good bit of wandering we fetched up in the highlight of the day: Eataly. This is a fascinating new project from the mind of Chef Mario Batali. Who--since he is a major star on food television--was a big draw for the Marys. I like him too. Mario (a tight buddy of Emeril) was a consistent help to New Orleans in our rough times, and his approach to Italian cookery is the most enlightened in the world today.
Eataly looks like a long-extinct but onetime grand department store. Spread out throughout the main floor are displays of all things edible and Italian: pasta, olive oil, wine, cheeses, coffee, canned tomatoes, on and on. As you might imagine, the emphasis is on the high end of this spectrum, although in looking over a lot of the stock no scary prices turned up.
In addition to being a highly advanced version of the Central Grocery or Nor-Joe, Eataly has several restauroid installations. These function a little like carrels in a food court, but with food at a level you'd find only in the best mainstream Italian restaurants.
The one we landed in was the pizza-pasta café. Wood-burning, stone oven, of course. House-made cheeses and salumi, of course. What came out was so close to the best in the world that making a distinction is silly. The crusts are charred here and there, had a wonderful lightness and yeasty flavor. The toppings were fresh and intense. We had what the server described as a "pizza salad" (greens and tomatoes tossed over a basic cheese pizza, and a thicker pizza with fresh milk mozzarella, olives, and garlic. Superb.
The pastas (made in house, of course) were equally good. One was tossed with a creamy garlic and herb sauce with mushrooms. The other was a straightforward bolognese. All flawless.
We ate all this on the second floor, where a sort of balcony looked over the main floor. From there I could see that my on small misgiving about Eataly was no illusion: it really was packed with people. We learned this again when we tried to get an espresso. The crowd at the espresso bar was impenetrable during either of two tries.
It was headed toward late afternoon when we left Eataly. Where will our tired feet take us now? Who knew? I just toughed it out until MA declared that she'd had enough and was ready to return to the hotel. It must have been tough for her to do that, since we leave New York and end our vacation early tomorrow. ML and I were quite ready to call it two weeks.
When dinnertime rolled around, the Marys said they weren't hungry at all. I was only a little hungry, and all I wanted was a New York hot dog. Even with suggestions from the concierge, however, I was unable to find a stand. I guess they all go in at dark, on the opposite schedule from that of the Lucky Dog carts at home.
But Mary Ann, who is always willing to satisfy my needs, brought up the idea of eating in the hotel's bistro. If somebody else wants food and you don't, any calories you take in don't count. Right?
Still, MA resisted ordering anything. Mary Leigh found macaroni and cheese on the menu; that was arranged. When I appeared, we were told that the bar on the hotel's roof had a bigger and better menu than downstairs.
Up we went to the twenty-second floor. It was dark up there, and we soon discovered why. The greenhouse-like sliding roof was open, and dominating the view of the city was as fine an apparition of the Empire State Building as could be imagined. With that easy mark, I took the first really fine photo with my new camera.
That was the good news. We ordered a mixed mezes plate of hummus, baba ghanooj, and the like. And a similar guacamole plate. The macaroni and cheese, of course. I had a cocktail called The Fitzgerald--a kind of hybrid of two of my favorite cocktails: the Negroni and the Manhattan.
The service was terrible, and the music was worse. And the five bucks or whatever I planned on spending for the hot dog had now ballooned to over $100.
But the view made up for everything. The only thing missing from perfection was a pianist player in a tuxedo accompanying me (also in tuxedo) on "Autumn In New York," a great song that's been on my mind for many weeks. It's good to live it again.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
