altered states
señor member
[I posted this on the main board, but it makes more sense here. Thanks to BoBabe for bringing it up, no matter how painful.]
CBGB's closing? Ah, well, past it's prime, etc. Second Ave Deli? An outrage! (That's how I know I'm getting old.) I'm bummed for all the people who won't get to sample it's (mostly) great food and real New York ambiance. Not tourists, not people who came from Omaha two years ago and will be up in Westchester in another six months, but real New Yorkers! This sort of place existed throughout the city when I was a kid, from Midtown to the outerist outer boroughs, but with gentri- and mallification they're as endangered as honest Republicans.
The matzoh ball soup was just incredible. No, it wasn't anyone's mother's, but it was better than any other restaurant's attempt. imagine: a matzoh ball as big as a baseball and so light and fluffy you could pet it. Pastrami and Turkey were the best, anywhere, period. Also this was the last true Kosher deli in Manhattan. Don't talk to me about Katz's or Carnegie - any place you can walk in and order a ham sandwich or a side of sour cream for your (meat) pierogi is just nonsense.
And BoBabe is right on about the staff. Irreplaceable. The old crazy waitress with the huge black wig... The even older, tiny, permanently bemused waiter immune to the kvetchiest of customers (we're talking New York Jews here, folks)... The Asian bus"boy" (age 40ish) who treated pleas for fresh pickles like requests for him to grate his index finger into your soup... the "hostess" who got her training no doubt triaging prisoners at the train station to the Gulag...
Also, for FAs, especially those partial to the Ashkenazi species of BBW, this was paradise. 2AD seemed to be a miraculous guilt free zone, an oasis in Manhattan where ordering a salad was truly a sin against G-d. The only nod to watching one's self was Diet Celery soda, and the various zaftigs in the room always ordered it along with their bucket of chopped liver and acre of pastrami. For me, there was just no more beautiful sight than to see a hefty chick chow down on a sandwich as big as my head within the safe, snug embrace of a 2AD booth. Almost as cool, in the back section, the tables were ludicrously spaced so that anyone with hips beyond the width of a loaf of rye bread was forced to sqeeeeze in and out of their seat, with bellies and buttocks often threatening to clear tables of pickles and challah bread.
I'm so depressed right now I feel like throwing a brick through the window of the nearest Subway, then choking Jared with a coathanger.
CBGB's closing? Ah, well, past it's prime, etc. Second Ave Deli? An outrage! (That's how I know I'm getting old.) I'm bummed for all the people who won't get to sample it's (mostly) great food and real New York ambiance. Not tourists, not people who came from Omaha two years ago and will be up in Westchester in another six months, but real New Yorkers! This sort of place existed throughout the city when I was a kid, from Midtown to the outerist outer boroughs, but with gentri- and mallification they're as endangered as honest Republicans.
The matzoh ball soup was just incredible. No, it wasn't anyone's mother's, but it was better than any other restaurant's attempt. imagine: a matzoh ball as big as a baseball and so light and fluffy you could pet it. Pastrami and Turkey were the best, anywhere, period. Also this was the last true Kosher deli in Manhattan. Don't talk to me about Katz's or Carnegie - any place you can walk in and order a ham sandwich or a side of sour cream for your (meat) pierogi is just nonsense.
And BoBabe is right on about the staff. Irreplaceable. The old crazy waitress with the huge black wig... The even older, tiny, permanently bemused waiter immune to the kvetchiest of customers (we're talking New York Jews here, folks)... The Asian bus"boy" (age 40ish) who treated pleas for fresh pickles like requests for him to grate his index finger into your soup... the "hostess" who got her training no doubt triaging prisoners at the train station to the Gulag...
Also, for FAs, especially those partial to the Ashkenazi species of BBW, this was paradise. 2AD seemed to be a miraculous guilt free zone, an oasis in Manhattan where ordering a salad was truly a sin against G-d. The only nod to watching one's self was Diet Celery soda, and the various zaftigs in the room always ordered it along with their bucket of chopped liver and acre of pastrami. For me, there was just no more beautiful sight than to see a hefty chick chow down on a sandwich as big as my head within the safe, snug embrace of a 2AD booth. Almost as cool, in the back section, the tables were ludicrously spaced so that anyone with hips beyond the width of a loaf of rye bread was forced to sqeeeeze in and out of their seat, with bellies and buttocks often threatening to clear tables of pickles and challah bread.
I'm so depressed right now I feel like throwing a brick through the window of the nearest Subway, then choking Jared with a coathanger.
