My $10 Tour of the East Village

Friday night, I decided I would spend my sweltering, 97-degree Saturday wandering the East Village. Who needs AC, right?

I began my morning reading The New York Times, which for the umpteenth time proves it shares a pulse with me, because the “Weekend in New York” column spotlights an East Village juice bar, Liquiteria (“Pour Me a Melon: Masters of the Blenders’ Art”). I clip the article and make a mental note to stop by for an immunity-boosting drink.

When I get to Liquiteria, I study the overhead menu and debate my choices…do I dare try the Brain Teaser, like the NY Times reporter did (it’s made of carrot, kale, apple, red cabbage, parsley and ginger) or should I go safely with Peaches-N-Dream? Just then, one of the juicers calls out to me and offers me a mango smoothie sample. I try it, like it, and then tell him I’m a newbie here, I just happened to see Liquiteria in the NY Times this morning. ”Oh really?, that was my picture!,” he says, referring to the NYT’s shot of him pouring a juice. “No way!,” I say. “You’re Cesar?” and I pull the clipping out of my bag to verify. “It is you!” I felt like I’d just met a New York celebrity. He hands me a menu and I ask him what his favorite drink is. He says it’s the Grasshopper, a concoction of apple, pear, pineapple, wheatgrass and mint ($5). The master Cesar makes my so-called “miracle juice” himself and I sip it in all its green glory, pleased. I leave Cesar with my newspaper clipping and then mosey my way over to Union Square park, silently mocking those who carry humdrum Starbucks Frappuccinos. 

170 Second Ave.

Before Liquiteria, I popped into Bamn!, the automat I’ve been wanting to visit since I first read about it in 2006. I had read that automats were how fast food worked before McDonalds (Horn & Hardart was the famous automat chain in NYC) and wanted to blast myself to the past. You put coins into a vending machine and then you pull open a window to remove your hot meal. At Bamn!, for a mere $3, I got a tasty grilled veggie burger and a free sample of green tea/vanilla swirl yogurt from the automat operator. He told me that his boss opened this automat because he was inspired by how big they were in Amsterdam. I’m all for reviving the trend – bring it to the UWS next, please!

I spent the remaining $2 on two pairs of earrings from a vintage fashion shop, Amarcord, on 7th St. between 1st and 2nd. If you go, also stop by AuH20 next door and chat with the proud owner, Kate Goldwater. (Her store’s name is her surname spelled out in the chemical symbols for gold + water.) She had plenty of affordable, trendy pieces of jewelry and invited me to her upcoming fashion show.  

Do you have any recommendations for my next East Village stroll?

The healthiest meal in NYC

   I’ve learned to save my ‘all out’ vegetarian restaurants for when I’m dining with like-minded friends, so when Adele and I decided to get dinner, it was an easy choice. Gobo, in the West Village, is on my list of must-try vegetarian restaurants. And completely by mistake, I found New York City’s healthiest meal. Kale, beets, walnuts, seaweed. None of these foods go particularly well together. There was no binding force, like an ingenious dressing. No, it was, “Hey, if you’re going to be incredibly virtuous, then take your beta carotene, perfect leafy greens, ultimate protein, and omega-3’s like a real woman. Straight up.” So I did. Then went around the corner to Yogurt-land to devise my own concoction. Let’s just say it wasn’t quite as nutritious as dinner.

The uber-healthy leftovers, though, were amazing the next morning with eggs and hot sauce. Wait, isn’t everything good with eggs and hot sauce? Even kale? and p.s. Gobo was pretty good, actually. Even the kale/beet extravaganza.

Viva España

My love of all things Spain is practically intuitive now. Like today, when walking across 50th St., I was drawn to a menu stand outside a restaurant for no particular reason, as I’d passed by many menu stands with little interest. Looking it over, I discovered it was all Spanish food!! Not only that, the menu came with a story.

It explained that the restaurant, Islero (247 E 50th), is named after a bull that killed the famous bullfigher Manolete in 1947 in Andalusia, Spain. Manolete had already stabbed Islero with a sword, and then Islero gored him in the thigh. While I admired the menu’s selection of papas bravas and croquettas (MY FAVORITE), what I liked more was that the restaurant was named after the bull, not the matador. I saw a dreadful bullfight in Spain, and as I watched the stands of Spanairds cheer on their heroic matador (waving white napkins after the bull died), I have to admit I was secretly rooting for the bull all along. Betraying my own species! But come on, if you’re provoking a beast like that, you deserve what’s coming to you, don’t you think?

Islero

Subway wisdom

There was the most putrid smell underground as I was waiting for the 1 at 14th St. Much as I love New York, at times like that, I have to ask myself why?  But lo and behold, when the train finally arrived, the subway gods answered my question. I looked up to where there are normally ads for community college or abogados and saw this e.b. white quote:

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. […] Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.”

Cheers to those of us who are #3.

Claim to Fame: Bagels and Pizza

Whenever I travel outside of NYC — which used to be rare, but then I hit up the mid-west and West Coast for the first time in back-to-back weekends — I find it comforting to see a nod to NYC. See below in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco, a place called Noah’s boasting of New York bagels. A week earlier, while driving through Minnesota, I spotted a sign for “New York style pizza.” Having stepped outside the box, I now realize that despite having the best restaurants and chefs in the world in our city, our culinary fame all comes down to carbalicious bagels and pizza.

So, when I was wandering through the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, which I nicknamed “Hippieville” because it’s where the ’60s counterculture thrived, I saw this sign and chuckled to myself. Of course this place would rebel. After all, what you don’t see are the three men who were stoned on the sidewalk. That’s when I knew I had wandered a little too far.

Escape from New York Pizza