Category Archives: restaurant ramblings

Mermaid Parade 2008

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 8, 2008 – 1:01 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat, restaurant ramblings
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Most people see the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade as an opportunity for frivolity in the sand, a chance to bare it all in the sun, the one time they can feel free to be themselves. I, on the other hand, see it as a chance to eat a hell of a lot of hot dogs and judge other girls’ spare tires.

And so I present to you . . .

The Last People on Earth You’d Want to See Naked
are Always the First to Take Off Their Clothes

I took these pictures in the span of about five minutes, because that’s how long we cared to watch the parade before deciding that we NEEDED Nathan’s hot dogs. The stand on the boardwalk had less of a line and more of a glob of people standing around it, the idea being that it was more efficient to push and shove your way to front any chance you got than to actually wait your turn like decent, rational human beings. Luckily, halfway through our 45-minute wait, I heard my name being said behind me with a question mark, and I turned around to see Leah, who was in a couple of my creative writing workshops at THE Ohio State University and could always be counted on for stories about maybe liking girls when the rest of the class was writing crap about trying yoga for the first time. We chatted about her MFA in creative writing and the fact that she’s actually using it to work for a food and travel magazine (swoon!) and how badly I want to go to Columbia for my Masters and my great boyfriend and her great girlfriend and so on and so on.

When my friends Sonya and Adam got to the order counter finally, I let these elderly ladies who had been sort of edging their way in front of me squeeze in behind them. Sonya turned back around to stand with me, and one of the ladies said to her, “You go ahead.” I said, “Oh, she’s with him,” and the other lady said, “Trust me, we know. We’ve been listening to you for the last half-hour. They’re together, your boyfriend’s on vacation in California, that girl has her Masters degree from Chicago, and you want your Masters degree from Columbia. Well, we live right by Columbia, and we could’ve had a kosher meal up there. For half the price.” Sonya and I laughed, but we secretly thought they were totally creepy.

An hour after first feeling the pangs of hunger, we found a grassy knoll on which to lunch and went about our munching

and slurping

and gnawing like the rabid beasts we are.

My chili cheese fries came with a tiny fork, which was a real shame, because I was ready to plunge my entire head into those things until I saw that they evidently expected me to be civil about it. And the corndog? THE BEST ONE OF MY LIFE.

So, yeah, it was a great time. It’s just kind of funny that we went to Coney Island on the crowdest day of the year just to eat some hot dogs that are there year-round.

Restaurant Review: Roebling Tea Room; Renegade Craft Fair 2008

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 25, 2008 – 2:39 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat, restaurant ramblings
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A couple of Sundays ago, my ladyfriends and I wanted to meet for brunch–and it should be noted here that brunch in NYC can strangely fall anywhere between the hours of 10 a.m. and 8 p.m.–in my neighborhood of Williamsburg, which is uncharted territory for us as far as brunches go. We planned to check out Egg, which New York Magazine named Best Overall Breakfast this year, but their sign-in sheet was packed, and they stopped serving at 2, so we deliberated for a while

and then walked down to the Roebling Tea Room, which you will be incredibly interested to learn is named after the man who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. (And also the street that the restaurant sits on, but that’s better left unmentioned.)

My friend Emily had her brother’s Yorkiepoo (I know, right?) with her because she’d thought we’d be eating outside, and dogs on patios here are as numerous as taxicabs, but luckily Penny happens to be the cutest dog alive and won our waitress over with only a swish of her little hypoallergenic tail. It also helps that pretty much everyone who sees her mistakes her for a child’s plush toy at first, so Emily could just stuff Penny in her bag and let everyone believe she’s the kind of grown woman who’s unable to leave home without her playthings.

We were seated right away–despite the fact that we were a group of six and the place looked packed–in front of the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows that line the front wall and make it evident that the building was once a warehouse of some sort. They filled the room with light and ruined all of my pictures, but it was well worth it.

The walls were covered in green paper with white molding, antiquey sconces, and equestrians on white horses, the tables were thick, dark wood, and the waitresses were neighborhood women with infrequently-washed hair; funny how those things all fit together.

Bridgette ordered the baked cheddar eggs, which came in a little souffle crock next to a bigger crock of grits, surrounded by two huge slabs of raisin toast with apple butter. I’m used to scrambled eggs that I make myself from $1.99 grocery store cartons, so hers tasted dreamy to me, and her grits had a cheesy taste to them that we didn’t expect.

Emily and Beth ordered egg and cheese sandwiches that looked so boring to me on the menu but turned out to be monsters with dense, seeded bread and a folded heap of fillings. They’re a couple of dieting assholes and left the top of the bun untouched, and I was soooo jealous . . . until my pancake appeared.

The menu touted it as “A BIG BAKED PANCAKE (DUTCHSTYLE W RHUBARB & SPICED BUTTER)”, and never have capital letters been so appropriate. It filled the entire plate and more, piled high with warm fruit and a mound of flecked butter that had just begun to pool. The middle was a bit underdone for my taste, but the outside edge was delightfully crunchy, and the whole thing was filled with fruit. At the time, all of my friends and I were like, “Mmmmm, rhubarb!” But, umm, the menu was wrong, and we realized later that it was actually pears.

LaChantee and her boyfriend, Brandon, ordered a couple of salads that had exciting toppings but were still salads and therefore don’t deserve mention. But they did have homemade potato chips, and that’s the only reason I’m still friends with them.

Our food took approximately an hour to arrive, and no one seemed concerned about patting us on the head and thanking us for waiting, but that and the noise level in the place were the only drawbacks. My iced green tea latte tasted like the most delicious grass imaginable (and I mean that in a good way), and LaChantee loved The Lovers Tea, which arrived in a nicely sized pot with strawberries, vanilla, and sweet cream. The prices were very reasonable (and maybe even cheap) for the amount of food we got, and wine and tea list was extensive. After tasting what I did, I want to go back every week until I’ve tried the whole menu.

To wile away the afternoon, we headed to McCarren Park Pool (featured on this past season of “America’s Next Top Model”) for the Renegade Craft Fair and passed two people doing what appeared to be performance art. This pretty much sums up my neighborhood:

The craft fair took place in the pool, which has been drained for more than a decade now, and was rows and rows of vendors selling their homemade wares. Emily picked up enough Christmas presents to give the entire state of New York a happy holiday, but I kept my purchases to one necklace with a glass strawberry (mostly because I’m too cheap to spend $65 on a felted purse). HOWEVER, the fair was totally inspiring and made me want to go home and start making things right away. Those vintage-fabric skirts selling for $200? I could make one for $2. Those greeting cards with the funny phrases? My best friend and I have been thinking up even funnier ones for months now. And those $65 felted purses? I’m commissioning her to make one for me as we speak.

There was also this amazing project called 1 Bite 7 Days, which is going to be a documentary based on the Japanese proverb that says you gain seven days of life for every new food you try. I didn’t get to participate, because I was too interested in chowing down on Mister Softee ice cream,

but I love the idea of it, especially because Boyfriend Kamran has crammed so many exciting new foods down my throat in the year and nearly nine months I’ve been dating him. I think I should get seven extra years, by the way, for agreeing to eat the GONADS OF A SEA URCHIN with him.

We’re Never Leaving the House Again

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 19, 2008 – 11:19 am
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend, narcissism, restaurant ramblings
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Tuesday night, in an attempt to get me to spend time with him before he goes home to The O.C. this weekend to see his family, Boyfriend Kamran invited me to dine with him at Serendipity, the restaurant I convinced him to take me to on our third date right before we went to the Empire State Building for the most cinematic first kiss in history. There was a twenty-minute wait–the shortest amount of wait we’ve ever encountered there, I think–so we sat outside on the green concave benches and discussed the uses of bundle theory and substance theory, which is the sort of thing Kamran’s really good for at crowded restaurants.

As we sat mindlessly staring at the fake cake in the display window, a man in a blue-and-white-striped polo shirt with a shaved head and a very tan body approached the door and attempted to open it from the outside. It didn’t budge, so he pushed harder as an Asian woman with long, frizzy hair approached from the inside, but still nothing happened. We figured that it was a joke, that the two knew each other and that he was trying to keep her from coming outside. But the woman’s face moved from a look of confusion to one of anger as the man leaned on the door with all of his body weight, and we realised he seriously didn’t understand that the door pulls out rather than pushes in. When he finally figured it out, he turned around and looked at us, saw that we were smiling to ourselves about how ridiculous he was, and started laughing, saying, “You knew all along, didn’t you?! You were laughing at me!!!” And that’s when we realised he was drunk.

He came waltzing over to Kamran and–it’s hard for me to use this phrase–bumped fists with him, patted him on the back, and slurred something about a wife and kids while the frizzy-haired lady rushed past us and into her waiting SUV. The guy noticed and motioned for her to roll down her window so he could talk to her, and I was like, No, lady! No!, but she did it, and the guy blew his alcoholy breath all over her, and she chattered on nervously about how she thought he had been holding the door shut just to be mean to her. Kamran and I took his distraction as an opportunity to run for cover in the restaurant, but the guy followed us in a moment later. He shook hands with the man at the host stand, so I thought that maybe he was a regular who was meeting his family there or something, but the host watched him uncomfortably for a few minutes as he touched all of the kitschy items for sale in the waiting area and then quietly asked him to leave.

It’s important here to note that Kamran isn’t the sort of person who tries to get close to casual acquaintances or needs friendships of convenience; he gets combative when participants in reality television shows talk about how much they “love” each other after one episode, and he generally dislikes all other human beings (which is naturally the reason we get along so well). So I could see the “what the hell?!” sweating from his pores when the drunk guy stopped on his way out and full-on wrapped his arms around Kamran’s neck and pushed his body against Kamran’s for a hug. Kamran just smiled out of politeness while the guy buried his face in Kamran’s shoulder and whispered things like, “I’m with you. I belong here.” He stopped on the other side of me and said all surly-like, “That guy’s name is Josh. He looks like a Josh, right?” And I said, “He’s the Joshiest,” because you don’t argue with shaved-headed drunks.

On the way home, we hopped in a cab with a driver whose name was Shiv (awesome!), and he immediately began coughing stuff up from his lungs and spitting it out the window repeatedly. His face was sagging, and his nose was crooked, and the constantly flying phlegm didn’t help matters. Kamran’s stomach was feeling a bit queasy to begin with, so I kept glancing at him with a horrified look on my face, just waiting for him to puke up our Cinnamon Fun Sundae right there in the back seat amidst all those hacking sounds. And then the guy’s cell phone rang. It was this really cheesy MIDI (though it’s decidedly better than this one that I recorded for Kamran and happen to keep on my work computer–what?), and I was like, Jesus Christ, who’s still using that sort of crap as their ringtone? And then I thought, Wait, don’t I know that song? And then I realized that it was the YEAH YEAH YEAHS.

What a frightening, frightening world we live in.

Tabletop Shrumps

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 12, 2008 – 3:45 pm
Filed under it's fun to be fat, restaurant ramblings
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Boyfriend Kamran and I eat a lot of our meals at the Comfort Diner (be forewarned that the website looks to be circa 1997 and was possibly designed by your semi-retarded little sister) near his apartment, because they have down home foods like sweet potato fries and buffalo chicken sandwiches and homemade coconut cakes (not that we ever order cake when there’s a Tasti D-Lite a block away, ’cause we’re not embarrassed to love it).

Anyway, on their green tiled tabletops, they have this weird little mosaic shape that doesn’t really look like anything. Light brown, outlined in gold, and vaguely abstract. In the course of the year and a half we’ve been eating there, we’ve taken to calling it a skewered shrimp. Or “shrump”, which we think is the most hilarious pronunciation ever.

What do you think?

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Restaurant Review: Shake Shack

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 9, 2008 – 1:23 pm
Filed under it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat, narcissism, restaurant ramblings
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After a long afternoon of doing everything we could to not so much as look outside, Boyfriend Kamran and I decided that it’d be a real waste of his astronomical Manhattan rent if we didn’t take the short jaunt down to Madison Square Park and enjoy the 6th annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, even if it meant melting on the sidewalk two feet outside the door.

Unfortunately, we decided this at 5:30 p.m., and the thing ended at 6, so by the time we reached Madison Ave., the crowds were leaving with heaping takeout containers of pork. We passed some tents on Madison but went on into the park in hopes that the best BBQ would have prime locations there, but we were soon lost amidst beer and dessert tents and lots of laughing, pig-filled sweaty people. When we finally wove our way out, police officers were waving everyone away from the BBQ tents, saying that everything was closed, but some helpful workers directed us around the corner to a lone stand that was still serving. We tipped over strollers and old ladies to join the expanding line, but alas, there was no food left.

Not willing to admit defeat, though, we found a puddle of yelloworange BBQ sauce spread on the street and figured that if we could just get our hands on some half-chewed pork butt, we could work something out:

No? Okay, fine. Instead, we took it as an opportunity to have dinner at Shake Shack, which is a burger institution around these parts. I’d only ever ordered the black and white shake–vanilla ice cream with a hint of hot fudge–in my few visits to the Shack, so I was excited to get my hands on those renowned burgers for the first time.

And they were good, no doubt, in the way that your mom’s burger is good; very freshly-made and very grilled-in-the-backyard with no added spices or marinades. Kamran had the Shackburger, which was lightly smoothed with a layer of sauce that tasted like a very spicy mayonnaise, and I had a plain ol’ cheeseburger with yellow mustard. It was yummy beef to be sure, but it was no ginormous, perfectly-seasoned slab like the one at Cozy Soup ‘n’ Burger, which I’m going to argue is the best burger in New York City until I die.

Our desserts were similarly good. Kamran had a caramel shake that clearly used quality ice cream, and I had the Shack Attack, which was a squat container filled with thick chocolate custard, chocolate-covered cookie dough, chocolate chunks, and chocolate sprinkles. (It supposedly had hot fudge in it, too, but it was either swirled in or nonexistent.) I had a bit of a chocolate overload by the time I was finished and kind of wished that the custard had been vanilla and that the hot fudge had been poured on top of that, but you know, complaining about too much chocolate is ridiculous.

I don’t want to be the lone naysayer when it comes to the place, but I want to give it to you straight–I think Shake Shack gets most of its accolades because it’s cool to like it. Much like Magnolia Bakery, there’s always a massive line outside the Shack, but Magnolia cupcakes really are better than any other cupcake in the city. (Well, at least the icing is.) With Shake Shack, it’s more that it’s in the middle of the the park and affords you the opportunity to eat a decent meal outside without cars whizzing the entire time like they do on the patio of a regular restaurant. Plus, New Yorkers love to talk about how “worth it” long lines are, because waiting around strangely makes things taste better.

I certainly like Shake Shack, and oddly, I think I romanticize the place more than anyone I know. I’m always asking Kamran if we can go there, because even if the food is just good, dessert in the park is great.

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