Falai--Manhattan

212.253.1960

8:45 reservation. Ouch. I'm too old to eat that late, especially in such cold weather. After a few beers at Clerkinwell (still alive I'm glad to say) my wife, other wife, and her newly anointed husband, mosied right in to get a seat in the back. My initial impression was that my other wife had dragged us to some fancy-pants place, with clean white walls and models who aren't embarrassed to wear their jeans so short that you can sneak glances at theirs g-strings poking out and wonder why you're so grossed out. Ehem.


More to the point, these places are chalk-a-block full of weird sophisticated aced food that I'm not going to like. Fortunately for me, the food was good. The portions were small yet beautiful, and since there were four of us we got a pretty good sampling without having to pay for the exorbitant tasting menu. The Gnudi was particularly tasty. And I had a very nice cappuccino at the end.


The service, however, sucked asshole. Not just ass, but no, puckered right up the sheriff's badge and sucked away. There's a few hard and fast rules that every place should live by, and if you don't abide by them I don't care how beautiful your presentations are, how illustrious your dining room is, or how pretentious your clientele may be, you're burying your tongue in my turd-cutter:
1) If your table is ready to order food by the time you come to get the drink order, then they've waited too long.
2) If you offer bread a second time, make sure you didn't already clear the plate with the oil and butter on it.
3) If you are going to sell $100 plus bottles of wine, and want to make a show of clearing the glasses I suggest either waiting until all of the glasses with the first wine are empty before you clear them all, or clear the empty ones and come back and switch out the lone straggler afterwards.
4) Make sure your food is served at the same time, to the people that ordered it.
5) If you do not know what you're serving, then don't fake it, just say I don't know and go ask the chef or manager.


There are probably a million more rules that anyone who's actually worked as a waiter could tell me, but I'm fairly certain that of my short list our waiter at Falai violated at least three. Why oh why do these restaurants devote so much time and energy to the food, and then have some dimwitted faux-hawk toting nincompoop deliver it? When will anyone learn? I suppose Falai is worth a second try, but it's going to be when it's earlier and warmer outside. I'll keep you posted.

The plastic straw

I was at lunch at Spitzer's the other day in the LES and had a coke. The waitress, a cute little number, decided to put a straw in my coke with the little twist paper thing floating off of the top. I immediately pulled the straw out of the drink and put it next to my glass. The straw will now reside on this planet for another 500 years.

Aside from lipstick users, and you know who you are, why the hell does the drinking straw exist? I don't feel that it makes the drink taste better, nor do I feel it makes the drink easier to drink. In fact, with the exception of a mind eraser, I can't think of a drink that absolutely must require a straw. Furthermore, there are plenty of drinks that using a straw becomes unthinkable, like beer or coffee or sparkling wine.


So what gives? What compelled that girl to not only put a straw in my drink, but also to add enough flair to point out the fact that there is a straw in my drink? I often use this train of thought with people when I get going about the straw. There are about 8 million plus people in New York. And on average I would say that we each have a cocktail, soda, bottle of water (that's another story) etc... so it's safe to say that there are approximately 8 million drinking straws tossed in the garbage, in our sewers, or on the ground a day. That's 29.2 billion a year. Since the turn of the millennium NY has discarded 300 billion fucking straws!

I'm not one to crusade unnecessarily as I am too lazy and or busy for that. But I think it should be a standard to offer a straw, as opposed to plopping one in my drink for no good reason. Okay, so I've said it. Hopefully the nine of you reading this will join me. That's nine less drinking straws a day, three thousand a year, 32 k a decade. Almost a .0000001% decrease. So much for starting locally.

Manhattan Inn-Brooklyn

718.383.0885

Despite what 5-leaves has done (and then closely followed by Lokal) Manhattan Inn has been the first to pluck one of the low hanging fruits that is Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint. As Bloomberg's abatement kicks in, and the Emerald City fully develops, more and more of the mom and pop stores on Manhattan Avenue, the main commercial drag of Greenpoint, are going to slowly convert to cozy, hipster inspired restaurants. Mark my words beloved nine, there will be a point in a decade or so when the entire stretch of Manhattan Avenue will be a bustling hotbed of night life activity, gourmet restaurants, and bridge and tunnel fuckwads. All of this without a sour, gin-blossomed Polish person in sight.

Eventhough Manhattan Inn is a trailblazer, and in spite of it perhaps, it is a sort of phenominom. Months ago it was the epicenter of Brooklyn Music due to its unique backroom that has an antique white-washed piano smack in the middle and elevated booths surrounding it; almost a caberet feel but with ironic schtick. The front area is really just a narrow bar, and like the back room this schtick comes in the form of hi-top tables that are actually recylced school desks. All in all this gives the entire room a uniquely old feel, as though it's been there for decades covered in old bed sheets just waiting for the right dreamer to come along with his/her parents money and finally open that roller disco.

The food is a little more confusing than that last sentence. If I had to describe it, which I do as this is what the iconman report is all about, then I'd say it's a complete jumble fuck. Part comfort food (somehow that has become a cuisine) part asian, and part tapas. It's not bad per se, but it's hard to have a hankering for tofu salad with sesame and pork ribs with kale and cornbread. I suppose they're lucky, a few years from now the competition will be stiffer and more refined cuisine will come with it. But for now, I'm glad for their success, because from one successful restaurant comes many. That and I love being right.