Hot smoothies at Surf City Squeeze on St. Mark's Place: Wintertime comfort or failed contrivance? OK OK. I guess if you remember our recent East Village retrospective, the very question might seem a painful emasculation of what the area once was. But if our story should have taught you anything, it's that people will always enjoy the East Village better if they pretend it was only just invented. With this in mind, I approach the counter and order a cran-pineapple-raspberry smoothie—magma-style, please.
"How are you going to heat it?" I ask the Asian barista with choppy black bangs and choppy English. She pours my blend into a pitcher. "I just put it in the microwave," she answers, speaking in the future tense. As I wait I wonder, Why doesn't everyone do this? It'll be like liquid cobbler. But I start to realize why not as the minutes pile up. She takes the pitcher out of the microwave, but she can't pour my drink into a cup or it'll melt the plastic. I pace and pace. "Too hot," she says. After almost 20 minutes, she sets my smoothie cup down on the counter. I note the viscosity of the sloshing liquid and realize that smoothies are so called because they're thick with crushed ice. This is just rather heavy juice.
Anyhow, I pay my five bucks, take my concoction out onto the street and begin to drink. Mmm! Hot pie down my gullet in the cold cold night! My belly burns with sweet purple fruit! I take a break from sipping, and then I learn the second problem with hot smoothies: They lose heat fast in this weather, quickly becoming lukewarm smoothies. If you don't drink it soon enough, it's like you're cleaning your apartment the morning after a smoothie party; so many ingrate guests didn't finish their drinks, left them sitting around on countertops or windowsills. For some reason, you take a sip from one and ugh! Why did you do it?
