Calexico--Brooklyn

347.763.2129

I feel like I've been saying it for years, to the point that all of my wives roll their eyes and quote me: "Low hanging fruit, ripe for the picking." Yes. That is Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As Williamsburg slowly morphs into upper-middle class Soho the kids are moving east and north. Greenpoint, though still relatively Polish, is now being infiltrated by the younger middle class. The junior graphic designer and architects, accountants, and other hipster related white-collar professions. Manhattan Ave is the main drag, be-lining straight through. See my Manhattan Inn post for more clarification, but I have been preaching to anyone that will listen (and that list is dwindling my dear nine) that if you have an inkling of restauranteurship in you, this area is a no brainer.

Enter Calexico, a Mexican restaurant on Manhattan Ave right next door to the illustrious Dunkin Donuts. Five of us went on a Sunday night, in the middle of a fucking monsoon mind you, and we waited a full hour before sitting down. The place was packed. I mean, sardine can, only place in town, packed. Granted, our wait was a result of poor management as much as anything else (the douchebags at the table nursed their dark beers like they were twelve) but that only drives my point further: we had no other choice but to wait!

The food? It's Mexican food. The degree between bad and good is slight, as it's always the same ingredients. The guac was flavorless, so I'm gonna lean on not-so-good food by my now patented Guacamole=restaurant quality litmus test. But it wasn't bad. It was edible. And for Manhattan Avenue that's a beginning.

Here are the notes from my logbook:

I hate people

Good

Busy

Kids

Decent

Crowded.

How's that for note taking? I should get a job in the steno pool.

Gramercy Tavern--Manhattan

212.477.0777

The venerable Gramercy Tavern. Been dying to go for a while but it's always so hard to come up with a reason to eat in the city. I hate eating after work in my suit and there's no way in hell I'm going back to Brooklyn to change and then return to the city. Despite the logistics, which I for one feel is not covered enough in online amateur restaurant reviewing, the Gramercy Tavern is just never on the radar.

And what's the big deal? The food was good but the prices were expensive. It's not like I shit myself. In fact, I had the meatball and thought the hillbillies at Hearth do a better job. My wife had the fish croquette to start and a white fish (either halibut or sea bass, I can't read my writing--yes it's that bad) as her entree and the server didn't mention that it comes with the same cassoulet.

That's about all I got. I think it's appropriate to give a lack luster review for a lack luster place. Oh wait. One exception. German Chocolate cake, boomshakalaka. This cake needs a come back. I'm sick of eating flourless chocolate cake, or molten chocolate cake, or some version of the two. Let's get some coconut and caramel on this bitch and call it German.

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.

Carino--Brooklyn

718.384.8282

You can always tell a new restaurant by the disjointed service, it's choppy and the staff take ten too many steps because the systems aren't in place to make things fluid and efficient. There's also a lot of bickering because the requisite hot-ass hostess is actually forced to do things that pretty girls just don't do: like work. In my younger days I would have teed off on this place, but now that I'm older and wiser, and have had the displeasure of opening not one buy two facilities in the city (notice the gaping hole of 2007 entries), I am much, much more patient with the service of a brand new restaurant. Especially when they're at least some hot ass girls struggling to not break a nail.


Enough of that. This is a restaurant blog dear readers, and a for that we should keep things focused. We originally wanted to go to this place when it first opened around June. The cooks and chef were all from Bonita, but were frustrated that their authentic Mexican cuisine was being doctored by the good people at Diner so decided to do it on their own. I'm reporting this from a somewhat reliable source though I have not heard that from them myself. It's gossip, pure and simple. We didn't go in June because they did not have a full liquor licence (one tremendous mistake of Bonita's) and there's no way I'm eating Mexican without a Margarita nearby. So we waited. Eventually they got through the steeple chase that is the SLA and voila, here we sat a month or so ago.


Their guacamole is pretty damned good. I've said this before about Mexican food, if their guac checks out then most everything else to follow will too. See Elote post for more extrapolation. Here's something not posted in the Elote post: what is up with habanero salsas? For the record, they don't taste good. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to tell you what a habanero even tastes like, because my mouth is suffering from a minor chemical burn. I appreciate spicy food, and understand the complexity of say, a chipolte pepper, but habanero peppers are down right inedible. They've somehow permeated the condiment barrier and are now standard at every fucking Mexican restaurant in the city. Why? So some douche bag can show off his ability to stomach battery acid? Well I for one have sworn off trying to enjoy the little bastards. Let that douche bag become the poster child for acid reflux, I'm gonna stick with the much more refined jalapeno based salsas.

But this is a restaurant review damn it! The food was pretty good despite the staff's best efforts to fuck it up. Now I feel better.

Paprika--Manhattan

(212) 677-6563

I used to live around the corner from Paprika another lifetime ago, and never remembered the place which doesn't mean much as New York is constantly changing, for better or worse. We went there on a double date as my wife's maid of honor has a new stud, and we had to go to do the typical nice-to-get-to-know-you-yet-judge-you-when-you-leave-the-table-to-sneak-a-cigarette dinner. Right before I ate a pork pie at this grimy meat pie place across the street and was fucking glad I did. Not only did it allow me a beer or two to ease the pain of having a double date, but I also ate some food that was edible.

And how happy I was for that edible meat pie. Firstly, and this should have been a warning sign, we had reservations but they sat us after waiting ten minutes at an awful table. How awful? The table didn't have any wine glasses because they'd run out. This should have, and would have sent me into a frenzy, or at least back over to the pie place because there's nothing worse than waiting for a wine glass with a full bottle of wine already on the table. Especially since when glasses actually arrive it's approximately 180 degrees having just come from the final rinse cylce on a Hobart 66. Which is exactly what happened.

Dinner was okay in that most of it wasn't memorable. The only thing I jotted down was that my meal was disgusting. And it was. Once again I should know better than to order a seafood pasta special seasoned with lemon. Lemon, the smoke screen of rotten seafood. This pasta dish was so lemony that it tasted synthetic, like the cherry flavor in bubble gum. And the angel hair had glued itself together into one big clump of soft starch. While I was cutting through my Angel Hail clump, I had the pleasure of getting to know someone while at the same time hanging out with people I've known for ten years. Thank God the food was so lousy, because in comparison that aspect of the night was quite enjoyable.

Without a doubt the best part about Paprika was leaving. We were spit out right in the East Village, which on a Friday night is quite a place to be. I was instantly nastalgic, and this reminded me that the city is much bigger than my little feifdom in Brooklyn. Not that any of you care but we ended up in some LES bar listening to a saxophone cover band. And the bar had clean glasses for our wine.