One Stop After Steinway

Sunday, at the excited encouragement of our new friends Joe and Nicole, S. and I made our way to China Town for the Chinese New Years festivities. Swirling around us were bursts of fluttering confetti and streamers in every color of the rainbow, large Chinese dragons dancing rythmically to the sounds of exotic instruments and drums, and what seemed like millions of people and photographers bustling around in a frenzy to make every moment last a lifetime. S. bought us two of the biggest firecrackers they had. They looked like long golden metallic wrapping paper tubes, and the plan is to aim them off into the blue, twist the tube with all of your might, and then feel it frantically jerk and pop back into your abdomen with a loud startling noise as you grunt and then watch the contents blast into the sky. Multi-colored squares of tissue paper, long snake-like ribbons, and even tiny parachutes then flutter and swirl about as everybody cheers and congratulats you on a cracker well fired.

Struggling to find a great place in which to have lunch that wasn’t insanely crowded, S. and I looked for what felt like ages in the cold. We finally got to the point where we would have eaten just about anywhere just to warm up a bit. Making our way down a corroding metal stairway into a discreet basement, we sat for some awful noodle soup. I couldn’t help but notice that a gentleman at the adjacent table looked familiar. I racked my brain to try to place his face, and when I heard him laugh and saw him smile I instantly knew. It was an old friend from highschool, from nearly 15 years or so ago. Michael was as sweet and friendly as ever, and it made me happy to see him doing so well here in NYC! I hope he stays in touch with S. and I. It really is a small world.

The highlight of my day was when I had one antique market in mind, and inadvertantly asked to go to another. When we got there, I was dissapointed to realize that I had directed us to the wrong one. I wanted to go to the bigger one in the Upper East Side, and instead we were at the tiny one in Chelsea. It was too late to correct the blunder, so I scanned the tables, saw nothing, and with a pout began to walk away. S. called after me excitedly, and pointed to a drawing locked within a glass cabinet. We summoned the owner over and were careful to not appear too eager. We haggled him down a bit to $35, and walked away the proud owners of a framed black and white ink drawing of the Moai on Easter Island, sketched sometime in the 1930s. (I forget the date now, but it is marked). The title of the drawing is “In The Beginning…”

And thus continues our new beginning.

~L

IL BAMBINO AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR ASTORIA’S NEXT TWO DECADES, (34-08 31st Ave., Astoria, NY): We were in town a couple of months ago and walked past this place while it was being readied for opening. The guy we spoke to sounded Irish. The menus were for panini and Northern Italian small plates. I said to L., this isn’t Astoria food — it’s hipster food. When I lived in the neighborhood during most of the ’90s, it was always supposedly on the brink of becoming trendy, but whenever someone tried to open a cafe or bar or restaurant catering not to one of the entrenched immigrant and ethnic groups but to young professionals and fresh-out-of-college hipsters moving to the neighborhood, it flopped. The Brick Cafe, which opened shortly before I left the nabe in 1999, was perhaps the first exception, and even it drew somewhat on neighborhood tropes (mostly tad Italian food, glass-enclosed sidewalk cafe) so as not to feel too alien.

Things have changed. Friday night we went there for a bite and the place is not flopping. Apart from the two of us, every other table was occupied by a big party opening bottle after bottle of wine (BYO for now) and ordering a steady stream of plates. We got a neat little broad-bean-chorizo-pesto salad and split a terrific panino ($8) of prosciutto, fig spread and gorgonzola. The party taking up the rest of the place looked like midcareer publishing types. The music was indie rock, the staff multiculti. In otherwords, there was nothing Queens about the place. It was pure brownstone Brooklyn. The surrounding stretch of sleepy 31st. Ave seems to be becoming Park Slope with its “Himalayan” Teahouse (ersatz Zen food, half sort of Himalayan if you squint, half pilates-instructor Japanese) and that fusiony, interesting Japanese place down the street.

I have mixed feelings about this. The food was delicious, the place was fun and inviting, and I suppose the emerging critical mass of transplanted college grads means we might not have to leave the neighborhood constantly for a social life. But it also means it’s only a matter of time before many of the things that have made Astoria so applealing for many years now — the stable, multigenerational family character, the vibrant ethnic businesses, the tight sense of community — begin to give way to Everyplace Else. Italian bakeries will give way to “artisianal” breadmakers with less soul and prices three times higher, neighborhood shops will go upscale, the cafes where you can forget about work and converse for hours over coffee and baklava will get free wifi and industrial scones shipped in from New Jersey. On the other hand, with all these native English speakers, the neighborhood might get a decent bookstore. (GRADE: A MINUS)

THE PASTRAMI FROM MUNCAN FOOD PRODUCTS (near 44th and Broadway, Astoria, NY): Across the street from a Bosnian butcher shop, a few blocks from an Italian salumeria, Muncan specializes in Central and East European smoked meat products. Run by what I understand to be a Romanian from Serbia or something like that, they’ve got mititei, dry sausage, blood sausage, bratwurst, weisswurst, Hunagian, German and Croatian styles of salami, bolognas, hot dogs, several headcheeses, beef and lamb basturma, smoked ribs, pigs’ feet, pigs’ ears, slab bacon, pork shanks, veal loaf, pork loaf, pork butt, and just so you don’t need to make too many other stops besides picking up some beer or vodka or slivovitz or raki, they’ve also got a few kinds of burek, loaves of bread and wheels of kashkaval.

It could take years to try everything, especially if I don’t want to die of a heart attack, but I can tell you that this one kind of Croatian dry sausage we tried was quite good, and more importantly that the beef pastrami is just plain extraordinary. It’s firm, juicy, smoky, garlicky, peppery and not excessively salty. Crusted in spices and the thinnest layer of fat, it’s an absolute marvel. I called L. at work to tell her about it as I sliced bits off for breakfast.

“It’s off the hook,” i said.

“Did you just say ‘off the hook’?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, god,” she said to a coworker. “S. just used the phrase ‘off the hook.’ Get on the phone. Tell Amy what you just said.”

“Hi Amy.”

“Hi.”

“This pastrami from a place down the street? It’s off the hook.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Sure, she laughed then. Shortly after getting home, though, she tried some.

“Oh, my, god. This is… off the hook.”

“I told you.”

We finished off the rest of the slab with some rye bread and mustard.

“That was off the hook.”

Oh, and at $6.99/lb. I’d have to be an idiot to buy supermarket cold cuts ever again. It sure is nice that the Cold War, bad IMF and World Bank policy and strife in neighboring Yugoslavia brought so many people here from the Balkans during the 1990s. Yum. GRADE: A PLUS

Last night I left work and walked to the Barnes & Noble a few blocks away. Hovering above me, the Empire State Building was glowing a warm candy-apple red. Snow crunched beneath my boots, the top sheet of ice cracking and giving way like the top layer of creme brulee as I suddenly sank into the softness with every step. I found my way to the cafe section and sipped on something warm as I filled out his Valentine’s Day card. I felt so content and happy.

He found his way from home to me an hour later, sneaking up on me with a soft kiss on my neck. We braved the storm together, snow blasting all around us as he hailed us a cab. He whispered sweet nothings in my ear in the back seat. We met up with friends and associates at the New York City Center, where an evening watching a ballet troupe perform Flamenco was enjoyed by all.

We snuck out during the third standing ovation, up to here with them, and snuggled on the R the entire way home. We got off one stop early… on Steinway… and walked through piles of snow and ice towards the little Moroccan restaurant and lounge a couple of blocks away. It was dark and glowing in romantic candlelight, and we sipped on hot mint tea and devoured a beautiful lamb tagine and a couscous platter.

On the way home, the wind and icy rain nearly blew us over. As I sang “Pineapple Princess” loudly into the wind, he ducked into a little shop open late. I turned around, confused, not knowing where he went off to. He emerged a moment later with a beautiful bouquet of fresh crimson roses and a gorgeous smile. I showered him with kisses in the snowstorm, as we rushed the final block home.

Our first Valentine’s Day in New York, in our cozy beautiful rowhouse, only one stop after Steinway.