Best of Manhattan 2001:Eats & Drinks

"An orgasm in your mouth"?

We’re not even going to touch that one. Suffice it to say, however, that that little analogy was pointed out to the editors. Here’s their 2001 Tomoe review:

When you actually get there, though, the space is a very pleasant surprise–open, airy, casually elegant and moderne, with evening’s last light (or, in winter, twinkling city lights) blasting through expansive window views north to 21st-floor midtown Manhattan. You can’t even see the bustle of 42nd St. from up there. It’s downright peaceful. You feel the preshow Broadway jitters sinking away from you as you stroll toward your table (which is nicely placed for plenty of elbow room and privacy).

The food is classic Forgione: high-class American with a few sort-of-Asian hints, mildly inventive without startling you with its genius, served in American portions. Forgione leans toward fish and seafood–roasted oysters, softshells, a clever salmon pizza, big fishes like striped sea bass. But the kitchen also knows when to turn a black-and-blue steak. Sensible wine list. Simple desserts like key lime pie or sorbet, light enough for a pretheater crowd. As always at a Forgione establishment, the young waitstaff is well trained, flawlessly polite–and largely minority, a nice added touch.

With its understated class and uplifted location, Above seems blithely unaware that it’s on the 42nd St. strip. And as the name suggests, it floats well above most of the tourist shovel-food joints in the area. The only concession it makes to its location is the brisk and efficient way the staff gets you out in time for your 8 o’clock curtain.

Anyway, we were sitting there, recovering from the night before, when two Hasidic men in their early 20s walk in. They’re decked out in Sabbath finery–white socks, satin robes, big round fur hat, the works. They go right over to the long wooden bar and started asking the bartender, a tall, tattooed lass wearing a tanktop, about the game–baseball, we guess, since we heard her explain that it was football on one tv, the U.S. Open on the other. After some more conversation the two belly up to the bar and settle in. They take off their hats and one of them dangles his stockinged feet out of his black shoes as the bartender brings them two bottles of–what else?–Budweiser.

You could almost see the wheels turning in the minds of the braintrust up at Picholine, which is the overrated Upper West Side restaurant of which Artisanal is the spinoff. Fingers scratching pates, deep philosophical musings: how can we push an already absurdly precious foodie culture in a new direction? How can we do a few things more? What remains? Thus, a restaurant that fetishizes deeply special cheeses, to assume its position in the pantheon of silliness next to the eateries that already fetishize wine, beef, fashion models, desserts, overworked pizza pies, lesbians and guys with jobs in media.

None of which would be as much of a problem if the establishment weren’t less pleasant than it should be at these prices. Talk about obnoxious advance publicity–we were hearing about the place last winter. And yet there we were, like sheep, on a hot night not long after Artisanal’s spring opening, eating improved bistro food not noticeably superior to that at Balthazar or 10 other places, while dodging errant elbows from patrons who were waiting for tables, weaving through the aisles, scanning the humid air for illustrious faces. All the while, a ripe stench emanated from the cheese counter. Yeah, we know–it’s the funky foodie stench of artisanal fromage. Well, to hell with it.

Plus, the guy at the maitre d’s station was a bit of a dick. Plus you need a signal flare to attract a waiter. Plus, if you like cheese–which you probably should–we can name a handful of other restaurants where you can learn about, and eat, cheese in something other than a panicked, humid, stinking, overdetermined 125-decibel murk, din, hurlyburly, mosh and brawl.

Il Mattone, a perennial winner in "Best of" annuals, is another story altogether. We prefer the thin-crust pizzas, well-done, either plain or topped with excellent sausage, pepperoni or onions. There’s also the hungry-guy special, a Sicilian number that can feed four. A pie with a Caesar salad is fine dinner. When we want variety, it’s a switch to the Napoli sandwich, an enormous concoction stuffed with prosciutto, sopressata, capocolla, mozzarella, tomatoes and olives. Another good bet is the fusilli Calabria, a sensibly sized portion of pasta with plum tomato sauce, sweet sausage and mushrooms.

Best yet, instead of the often gruff or impersonal clerks who take orders at restaurants, the Il Mattone staff is friendly, even when harried. When you’re greeted with a "Hey guy, what’s shakin’?" it might seem kind of jocular to the effete, but it’s vintage New York bonhomie that’s a mini-opera to our ears.

Actually, we doubt Grossinger’s served herring in cream anywhere near as good as Blue Ribbon’s. You’ve got your heavy bowl filled with onion pieces and big, soft, sweet slabs of good herring, and it’s all held together by dollops of sour cream so that you’re eating a soulfully and pungently fragrant bowl of peasant food that goes down easy and pads the gut in a satisfying way. You’ve also got your beer near to hand, and hopefully some friends around you–here with you at this smart, casual, excellent restaurant. Or maybe you’re alone, sitting all sleek at the bar, dreaming of the timeless glamour and sophistication of the Catskills in days of yore.

But in the case of Barrio, whose appellation is presumably a nod to the former L.E.S. slum that it has recently come to inhabit, the name manages not only to confound, but to pander and insult as well. For starters, we doubt there’s anything about Stanton’s bodegaville era that Barrio’s proprietors (or the bohemian gentry who patronize it) would ever care to see replicated in their dining experience. Dogshit stew, perhaps? Baking diaper chowder? A DJ to distract you with obstreperous, bone-rattling crack-merengue while monster rats make off with your seared tuna and taro roots? It’d be quite another thing if Barrio actually served Mexican or Dominican food or Hispanic anything food: high-end pan-Latino, beans ’n’ rice, whatever. But we can only gather that the name is a sort of cute homage whose meaning must somehow point to the physical space.

Is Barrio’s interior some kind of loving evocation of regions Chicano? Of the dusty, forlorn, dilapidated quarters of say, East Los Angeles, or Mexico City? Not that we can tell. Take the dining area, accented mainly by a tin ceiling, abundant brasswork and exposed brick. It most recalls the vast interiors of middlebrow yuppie chow halls from the early 90s, Ernie’s and that kind of thing. The tiki lounge on the second floor is robust with extravagant Polynesian/Thai furniture. No, the only Hispanic architectural nod in the entire place is the rather cartoonish pyramid structure that sits atop the kitchen and upon which rest some artifacts vaguely suggestive of pre-Columbian Oaxaca: quite fitting if the descendants of Zapotec should one day descend the misty cliffs of Monte Alban and hobble up to New York City for an evening of pan-Euro fusion.

In the end the only thing Barrio, this odd farrago of unremarkable cuisine and mixed architectural metaphors, really pays homage to is cluelessness.

Toward the last stool, amongst the 90-pound record geeks and 6-foot-7 bikers, you notice a young lad in a state of extreme repose–laid out flat on the floor, his feet propped up against the bottom rail and his eyes rolled back in his head–sleeping it off? Pushing through the nonchalant loiterers, you bend down, grab his shoulders and yell (name has been changed from something beginning with "C" and ending in "L"), "Pete? Pete is that you?"

After a few good shakes he comes around long enough to ask for a pint glass from the barman. So he can puke in it.

"Pete! Pete, look, I’m not going to ask for an empty glass so you can…sweet Mary Mother of Christ, Pete! The purse! Watch the purse!"

And with that, an 8:15 p.m. Thai dinner is at your feet, practically good enough to return to the buffet table. Twenty minutes later Pete is outside having his picture taken by Jon Weiss with a 250-pound African-American bride–not his own, blushing and still in her veil–like a champ. And that is what they call a New York City moment. In Iowa they call it pathetic, incontinent and possibly vagrancy, but not here.

But it’s not only the food. What we like about this place is the handsome, monochromatic concrete-floored ambience, which we find reassuring. There’s none of that crappy tikki-tacky Asian decor that always bums us out when we encounter it in Thai joints–Joya vibes like a regular restaurant that just happens to serve good Thai food, rather than like an orientalist theme park. There’s a wonderful little garden out back when the weather’s nice, cool art on the walls, the usual well-dressed young semi-bohemian clientele and what appears to be a relatively fecund pick-up scene at the bar up front.

But here’s the thing: show up here on a weekday morning, right after the place opens, and a different, and appealing, reality unfolds around you. The tables are mostly empty, so you can spread out while you drink your very good coffee, peer out the window at the quiet and leafy street and ease yourself into the new day. Here’s a bunch of regulars, coming in for takeout coffee, for a happy word with the waitress and to throw their coins on the counter and grab the newspapers off the rack on their way out. At the next table down, there’s a cop in uniform, eating breakfast and talking about the Mets with the guy working the griddle across the room. In other words, you’re watching a community come to life and conduct itself in a way that transcends the diner’s twee ambience. And especially when the autumn light’s right, and the sun’s coming up over Prospect Park, it’s a beautiful thing.

The food’s all right, too. The coffee, like we said, is great, and Mary’s Favorite Oatmeal? Come to think of it, it’s good.

We’ve mostly been to the Fried Dumpling on Chinatown’s desolate Mosco St., but the original on the Lower East Side is even better. As long as you’re not too picky about fried foods, this is the place to go when funds are wanting. It’s so cheap, we wonder why there’s never a line of homeless people outside.

Kang Suh is just about the only restaurant in Koreatown with both a decent sushi bar and real charcoal (never gas) table barbecues. We love grilling our own shrimp, but the shortribs marinated in soy sauce tend to go over even better. (Be careful not to put utensils that touched raw meat in your mouth!) You can do no better than Kang Suh’s steamy miso and seaweed broths on a cold winter night. And their bibimbop in a hot stone pot is so bold in its gooey, crusty deliciousness that you’ll wonder why upscale Korean joints bother pretending that their cuisine isn’t soul food.

Are these touches actually there? They are. That we enjoy them while not really noticing them is exactly what makes us so partial to Louis: like the most sublime of jazz harmonies there’s no single element here calling out for attention. No competition from superior bartenders either, or an overloud sound system, DJs, cellphones or loud talkers. Even on Wednesdays, when there’s live jazz (the place is named for Louis Armstrong), you can still have a conversation, still hear yourself think. Because of this you’ll find a lot of twosomes–couples or friends–coming in to nibble on cheese plates, sampling the grape (the list is short, accessible, but still capable of pleasing most palates) and talking, a primary activity this place is quite automatically conducive to. We hope Louis continues to be the generous, understated place it’s established itself as.

No. If we want to meet for a drink around 57th St., we’ll go upscale with it, and drop by the Russian Tea Room. Why not? There’s a beautiful, sizable bar right inside the door, the stools are comfortable enough that you can sleep on them and any establishment on the planet that presumes to serve Russian cuisine is obligated to know its way around cold, hard spirits. So pleasant is it to have a drink here amidst the Tea Room’s famous red and green and aureate splendor, in fact, that we’ve put a little effort into wondering why we didn’t think of this years ago. Like many diners in New York, we’ve got a sentimental attachment to the Tea Room, but we’re almost perversely hoping that the disappointing reviews the restaurant’s attracted since its recent reopening persist. If the notices get better, the place’ll get more crowded–foodies will start flocking, in addition to the elderly loyalists and the tourists from the sticks–and it will become that much more difficult to belly on up and acquire a Stoli on the rocks.

To erase that horrid sight and smell from our mind, we went to Mexican Radio for some real nachos. They’re great–nice, crunchy tortilla chips (sometimes red, blue and yellow all at once) with solid black or pinto beans nestled on top, accessorized by chewy muenster cheese, some potent fresh sauce and–here’s the best part–pickled jalapeno rings. The rings add good texture along with the heat, and the whole plate sets off that little mariachi band that lives in our head, resting calmly until just such fantastic nacho occasions arise.

So we feel as though we have erred upon the Fort Greene yacht club when we reach an orderly arrangement of plastic tables and chairs under umbrellas on a boardwalk platform–a sort of Latino Baby-O’s.

We order everything on the menu: the chicken sandwich, the cheeseburger, the chicken fingers and the shrimp basket. Our waitress (heart-of-gold cholita: black lycra skull cap over blonde hair, French manicure, tight bluejeans, eyebrow piercing) carries the order to the grill and returns with a handful of salt packets and ketchup in a plastic squeeze bottle. "I love these things," says Chudling, "because you can individually ketchup each fry." When our orders arrive on styrofoam plates with plastic utensils he does precisely that. We all do. The fries are good, apparently freshly cut. The chicken sandwich is another story: three breaded, deep-fried, heavily salted chicken fingers on a standard fast-food white bread bun upon a leaf of lettuce and an anemic slice of tomato. The shrimp are large, disappointing, frozen, flavorless things–but come with the same good fries.

The comedian leaves the stage and the p.a. pumps out a few classic disco tunes before switching to salsa. It’s close to 11. We cash out at $20 apiece–not bad for a killer view with fries.

Okay, so we’re being disingenuous. We actually were aware of Casimir’s garden, and that it was precisely within it that, when the weather was fine, you could find the many, many Bastiens, Thierrys, Françoises, Amelies and Pierres of this world we live in, lolling in attitudes of exquisite dissolution, dribbling the ashes from their Gauloises on their cashmere v-neck Helmut Langs.

More power to them. But our thinking, when we walk into Casimir for brunch, is that if they’re out there, then we’re alone in here, which we’ve found kind of nice. Imagine it: wake up on a Sunday morning, slouch over to Casimir, cursing the summer sun, and when you get there with your newspapers, the whole big beautiful bistro premises are (mostly) yours and yours alone, and you can spread out in one of the banquettes, revivify yourself with eggs and a bloody mary, and have absolutely no experience of the chattering, the waiting, the low-level hysteria, that generally attends Manhattan brunching. On sunny summer days at Casimir, they do you a favor, if you’re smart enough to notice it: they keep humanity away from you, segregated out in back (where most of it, after all, should be). That’s a nice thing.

Nowadays, as former landmarks like the Cammareri Bros. Bakery (where Cher met Nicolas Cage) become slick West Coast-style bruncheterias, the old standbys are increasingly hard to come by. But on a good old Italian block of Union St. on the eastern fringe of the neighborhood, the guys at Latticini Barese are serving up some of the finest Italian sandwiches in town. While every ingredient shines alone (and is available separately), the careful placement of the freshest mozzarella, high-quality prosciutto, roasted red peppers and fancy balsamic vinegar onto crusty, chewy Italian bread is magical.

Tears well up as we think back to those good old days. We reckon that eating enough of these Latticini Barese sandwiches may very well bring the Dodgers back home to Brooklyn.

Our waiter circles the table and pours from the pitcher, spooning those pieces of orange and apple and whatever else into our glass and splashing huge amounts of wine into our mother’s glass, so that we finish the meal with our daily recommended dose of vitamin C and our mother is giggling in her charming inebriation. She’s telling us stories about the first time she was drunk and the first time she was stoned and we know this is a good time to listen and nod and say nothing.

Out on the street–after she’s managed to pay the bill and wave goodbye to the waiter–she’s laughing hysterically and pushing us gently for no apparent reason, but we’re getting on smashingly. Back at our apartment, she’ll giggle up the stairs and take a nap.

Le Zie’s regional specialty, Venetian, doesn’t always go over with us, even in Venice, and in New York "Venetian" can sometimes mean just "bad Italian seafood." Not at Le Zie. Though it’s a largish menu for a smallish kitchen, and there’s always a long list of additional specials, we’ve ranged all over their offerings in the last two years with very rare disappointments. Lately, we recommend the lobster risotto, the spaghetti bottarga, the giant salt-baked whole red snapper and the best macaroni and cheese in town.

And we’re loving the squid ink taglialini. We first had squid ink pasta not in Venice but in Sicily. It was as black as printer’s ink and very pungent, almost gamy, if you can say that of a seafood. Lots of Americans, even New Yorkers, would probably be scared of it. Le Zie wisely offers a lighter, more laidback squid ink sauce, with taglialini slipping around in it like pasta eels, and a few mussels and baby shrimp tossed in, more or less as garnish to the main event, the sauce itself. With a glass of the house Salice Salentino, it’s a dish that fills both your stomach and your senses. Waiter, un po di piu, per favore!

The door policy is the only wrench in the works. Abaya’s staff will ask, "How did you hear about this place?" when you try to enter; don’t freak, it isn’t a spy trick. Owner Frank is simply trying to collect some marketing information. So say where you heard about the best new spot in New York and you’ll be let in, gingerly.

Staff is super-nice to a man, though they do have beverage transport problems. Our coffee cup went away at one point, never to return. Wine shows up after entrees arrive. A tanned once-broker told us, "Pastis, that’s a great scene." Scene schmene, it’s all about the fries. They come with mayo. Light golden batonettes of exterior crunch encasing soft potato within. Stop talking to those foreign hipsters and eat your fries before they get cold. And have faith–you and your coffee may someday be reunited.

For entertainment we laugh at the locals drunkenly consuming their food and talking loudly about something irrelevant like how drunk they are. Sometimes there’s a homeless man looking inside with his face pressed to the glass or a tipsy couple trying to give each other piggyback rides. And on more than one occasion the counter guy has told us that we drink too much–then asked us out on a date that doesn’t involve drinking.

Palace makes for a head-shaking kind of stop-off, captured best by their sign out front: Palace Fried Chicken–We ain’t just chicken. No, we thought, they’re not.

Fork-to-head, we opt for Roc, the Italian offshoot of the Upper East Side’s Elio’s, although comparing the two is futile: aside from sharing a Thursday night special of spaghetti and meatballs, Roc is the Monitor to Elio’s Merrimack.

Seafood is Roc’s forte, whether it’s the shellfish soup, swordfish, lightly fried calamari, shrimp with asparagus, crabcakes (in season), tuna carpaccio, marinated salmon or a simple bowl of pasta with a white clam sauce. We skip the lambchops, but the steak is incongruously the equal of any slice of cow that the nearby City Hall offers. Veal prepared in different ways, depending on the chef’s mood, chicken and sausage with green peppers or eggplant, delicious broccoli rabe and sauteed spinach and any number of pasta and risotto specials are just a smattering of what you’ll find on the menu.

We prefer to have supper early, maybe half past six, when a quiet crowd from the neighborhood fills the dining room; a bit later, the restaurant is SRO and, because of the acoustics, somewhat loud. Which, if you’re in a boisterous group, fits the bill since no one can hear your conversation. One evening last spring we reunited with several high school classmates and by the time the entrees arrived, and nostalgia trumped updates on family and careers ("Did you really ball Debbie back in 11th grade?"), the din from our own corner, liberally punctuated by language that would make Bill Clinton or LBJ blush, was deafening. But since an office party of 12 was yakking and drinking like it was New Year’s Eve, our indiscretions went unnoticed.

When out-of-town friends ask for restaurant recommendations Roc is number one on our list; we’ve yet to hear anything but "thank you" for the suggestion.

As the years went by, we told ourselves that someday we’d grow out of "slumming it," and would never end up like the drunks who seemed to live there 24-7. We were never going to be one of those bitter musicians who got fucked over by the industry, never going to spend our rent money on booze. We were above all that. We hadn’t given up on life and we still gave a damn.

Surprise.

Now we look at the young kids coming into the place telling us their hopes and ambitions and nod knowingly to the older timers. They’ll be joining us soon enough.

Usually these are individuals one interacts with only in compromising, substance-abusing and generally "enhanced" or "intensified" situations. And often just the once. Yet the peanut gallery is never too good to stop what they’re doing, acknowledge your presence and shout, "Hey! You gotta cigarette?"

The management is older, wiser (see the–loaded?–revolver next to the cash register) and friendly. If you get bored, there’s the pool table, or the lotto machine (usually a big hit with out-of-towners). But chances are, you won’t get bored.

We never did cut out the smoked salmon. So we’re at AQ, and that supple orange flesh is glistening at us from the refrigerator case. We’ll have that, uh, salmon on the bread thing there, we say.

Gravlax pizza, we’re corrected.

The flags of Scandinavia stand sentinel, and wiry modern classical is piped in softly. Small shopping bags of asters on the tabletops. There is an adjoining gift shop that sells art glass, silver doodads and Finnish slippers.

Coffee and the "pizza" comes in under $9. It’s a big serving with salad, a coffee cup full of Ruffles and a pool of pink mayonnaise flecked with the teensiest bits of hot red peppers that makes some good dipping for the chips. An anised slaw is found atop the house-cured gravlax. Beneath it are chunks of tomatoes and avocado. All mounded on a tomato and cheese focaccia. The salad contains mixed greens, tomatoes in a smoky-heat marinade, corn niblets and capers. We will order it again.

AQ also offers a salmon lasagna ($9). The pasta sheets are crisped on the top outer fringes and alternated with salmon and a "parmesan roasted garlic" bechamel. On the plate are dribbles of dill pesto, a garnish of chopped tomato and more plump capers. Ribbons of smoked salmon in a sour cream dressing are piled on top. We would have thought a bechamel-layered dish with sour cream dressing would be too unctuous, but the composition of the dish really works. The garlic and the dill cut the creaminess.

How do we know? A friend told us.

Fact is, we think most everything at Rancho Alegre is pretty darn good. The menu can be a bit overwhelming (we won’t even try to describe it here–you’ll see), but it’s reasonably inexpensive, and the chips and salsa are complimentary.

Thing is, though, is that we’ve been in there when it was quiet, and we’ve been treated royally by the small staff. Once more than a couple tables are filled, watch out–there’ve been occasions when the service has driven us out of the place before we’ve even placed our order. If too many tables are active, the staff tends to panic and turn hostile. Especially if they decide they don’t like the looks of you for some reason. That happens, they can turn just plain rotten.

To avoid this, try getting there right when they open–because an hour after that, they’re inevitably packed. The food just might be worth it, though.

Yes, the framed picture behind the bar is him, and he’s also got his own postcard (!), which he seems happy to dole out when they’re handy. Where’d he pick up the moves?

"I was working at a post office in San Francisco, and one day I was, you know, sorting the mail, and I realized…hey! This is a lot like dancing!"

The bar features even more excellent people-watching (our favorite is the Tommy Lee lookalike who always pulls up in an old Mercedes talking on a cellphone, and parks like a dying man on the way to the cure). There’s also the occasional Coyote Ugly moment, though not nearly as well-executed as you’d see at Hogs (more the quiet girl in school who may not have much sexual experience, but she really, really wants to try). However, ladies, the barmaids are young, attractive and all-American (though unlike at the Village Idiot, not just out of prison). So hold onto your boys. Or girls. Or both.

Actually, it’s somewhat inaccurate to call this place a neighborhood restaurant, since it’s good enough to draw patrons from other parts of Brooklyn. And besides, when you think "neighborhood restaurant," you tend to think of one of those unspeakable places that serves glutinous eggs Benedict to aging wives on Montague St. But whatever. It’s poached eggs we came to discuss, and specifically the poached eggs in red wine and mushroom sauce that Max & Moritz will serve you if you ask them to.

We like this dish because it’s as close to real food as you’ll find within the confines of the kandy-koated institution known as brunch. There’s nothing sugar-frosted or batter-dipped or mint-garnished about it. What you’ve got, rather, is two eggs over two English muffins, swimming in a rich burgundy-colored sauce that would be equally appropriate over a pot roast. This belongs to that minority of brunch dishes that don’t make you feel like a child or someone who might once have hung around a fern bar.

Mezzaluna has the look of your average small Italian restaurant–flea-market wooden chairs and tables, bright colors splashed on the walls, the whole atmosphere just a little too quaint. We make our way toward our table as non-Italian busboys holler "Buon giorno!" at us. Although none of the entrees grab our attention, the prices do. One of the girls, apparently having read the concern on our face, mentions casually, "Don’t worry about what you get or how much it costs. We’ll order for you." Pointing to another girl she adds, "She’s paying today because she’s borrowing her mother’s plastic."

This seems somehow wrong to us, but before we could say anything, the waiter is taking the orders: seven entrees of penne with mozzarella, two cheese pizzas and seven Diet Cokes. Wow.

Mezza’s packing up with tailored schoolgirl uniforms and Prada wallets. We know most of them, but everybody pretends not to know the girls they go to school with. The pizza arrives first and doesn’t amount to much more than your average brick-oven pizza. The penne is decent, but the portions are remarkably small considering that they cost 15 bucks each. There isn’t enough mozzarella on our penne, so one girl orders a bowl of mini mozzarella balls to enhance it. Naturally, we let our friend with the plastic take care of the $233 tab, which, even if Mom is paying, is a little much for one 15-year-old girl. We leave when the Chanel lip glosses come out of the Gucci bags.

Real clam houses are all but extinct in Manhattan. The remaining few are holdouts in the fast-evaporating old Little Italy: Vincent’s Clam Bar on Mott St., Umberto’s and our pick for the best of the lot, Little Charlie’s Clam Bar.

Little Charlie’s has been doing business on an ugly industrial-looking stretch of Kenmare St. since 1926. So far, the restaurant remains untouched by the frilly redecoration that has force-dressed the rest of the neighborhood and turned Little Italy into the odiously renamed precinct of pretension "Nolita." The place is spacious, decorated in Eisenhower-era Nautical Goombah: red lacquered sharks levitate above red-check tablecloths. The menu hasn’t changed since the days when La Guardia meant mayor, not airport. Sit down wherever you like and prepare for a plate of clams that a reincarnated Uncle Don, dead since 1978, would remember from his first date after the war. Cold, quivering things arrive on a white china platter, cosseted by a bed of ice and escorted by nothing more profound than a ketchup and horseradish cocktail sauce. The meat is firm, salty and succulent. They fill the mouth with a pleasant brine just before they slide down. The contrast between the tongue-delighting soft flesh and the porcelain-like shell scratching against your tooth makes eating a dozen littlenecks off the halfshell an oral, quasi-erotic delight. Wash them down with an equally cold beer and you’ve found New York nirvana.

Lucky for you, though, our resident Chicago-philes have located a small chunk of their beloved city believed to have been airlifted and dropped off at a major intersection in Bayside, Queens. At Fontana’s Famous, the gyro is enormous, delicious and inexpensive; the grease-soaked red-and-yellow walls a stage for rowdy gyro-guy dialog ("One yeeros sandweech! Two yeero plate! Souvlaki, fries, chizburger fries!"); and not one, but two elephantine mounds of lamb and beef flesh guarded by two elephantine men with swords, who will never cut off a single shred of meat unless it is well done and lightly charred. Topped with a cup of tzatziki (the garlicky yogurt/cucumber sauce), two tomato wedges, raw onion, fresh parsley and a dash of paprika, this sandwich is the real thing. If only John Belushi were behind the counter...

But there’s still one great place to get a sullen start to your morning, and it’s hidden away in what many people wrongly claim to be a sanitized Times Square. First of all, anyone who needs some early-morning nookie would be amazed at the number of hookers still prowling 8th Ave. in the morning hours. There’s this one fat redhead who walks around in skimpy lingerie, and that’s an image that’ll really shock a person into consciousness. Start your day like that–as a witness or a customer–and you’ll want to follow up with a dark and drunken breakfast at Smith’s Bar and Restaurant.

Enter through the door on the right and you’ll find yourself in a typical restaurant setting that’s still nicely underlit. They’re serving food out of the back, and it’ll eventually become a nice lunch place with some well-reputed sandwiches. To start your day like your hardworking forefathers, though, enter through the left. That’s where Smith’s puts the Bar in its Bar and Restaurant.

The bar at Smith’s is open every weekday at 8 a.m., and it’s only a few steps away from the breakfast setup they’ve thrown together in the front corner. The lighting is low, the fixtures are dark wood and there’s a nice selection of humanity sitting in appropriate silence lined up along the bar. The breakfast selection is standard stuff, but the bar is open for anything. Grab some bacon, eggs and potatoes for $5.25, and then pay a reasonable price for a fairly strong adult beverage. Skip the bloody marys and the mimosas and throw back some brown liquor to fit in among your fellow scum. There’s always a mix of alcoholic older guys, barfly dames who are probably 10 years younger than they look and a nice selection of Teamster types hanging out toward the front of the bar. They can get kind of loud, so keep to the back.

The breakfast is fine, and the booze is always good. Ignore the holding pen with tables for normal breakfast folks who walked through the wrong entrance. These people are idiots. Even if you’re just having coffee, you should do it while leaning on a bar and looking down the length of it at some fine miserable living. It’s worth going out of your way for the daily theater of watching the lumpen businessmen (many of them out-of-towners who found the nearest open bar) trying to pick up those feminine alkies. Will he be able to get the bedraggled dame back to his hotel in time to still make that 10 a.m. conference? It’s a cliffhanger every time.

Over the years friends have raved about lots of other Ballato dishes–liver ’n’ onions and all the veal dishes especially–and the wine list is wonderful, but when the waiter comes for our order, and asks if we’ll be having the usual, we say yes. Unadventurous? No, just smart.

But Brooklyn has by now achieved the bourgeois bohemian critical mass that generates a viable dining scene, and the evidence of it is everywhere. In the bellowing toddlers perpetually underfoot in the neighborhoods. In the proliferation of clipjoints peddling antiques. In the fact that even the old white working-class drunks up in Windsor Terrace have conceded the fight, and don’t bother calling you "faggot" anymore. And in the thriving dining scenes of Smith St. and 5th Ave.–but especially of the latter, where the scene’s quality is the more obvious for the almost weird way so many good restaurants are located so close to one other.

At 5th and Carroll St., for example, you’ve got the excellent Italian al di la, as well as–exactly across the street–Mike and Tony’s, in the barroom of which we like to consume alcohol while al di la prepares our table. Then, not even a full block down the street, you’ve got Cucina. Next, between Garfield Pl. and 1st St., there’s Vaux Bistro, as well as Blue Ribbon Brooklyn, arguably the best thing to happen to the act of eating in Brooklyn this year.

And that’s not even to mention more tangential establishments. Like the comfortable tavern Great Lakes, located on the corner of 1st St. just to the south of the Blue Ribbon, or that nice bar called the Loki Lounge on the corner of 2nd St. Meanwhile, walk half a dozen blocks south and you’ll encounter, between 6th and 7th Sts., Coco Roco, king of all Peruvian chicken joints.

It was quiet in the afternoons, but as night wore on, it became filled with failed bluebloods from the neighborhood, the once-successful, small-dog-owning types. It also, for some reason, attracted a lot of celebrities, from Taylor Mead to Mike Piazza to Tony Randall to John Turturro, who stopped in for a drink one night with producer Harvey Weinstein. There were a few others we couldn’t name then or now, but we were told they were major Hollywood studio bigs.

Yeah, well.

And that little problem helps explain why we decided to find ourselves another bar.

Because along with major Hollywood players come half-talented "singers" and "actors," all of them knowing it’s Their Time to Be Discovered, all of them stinking to high heaven of the worst kind of desperation. They never actually approached the producers and executives, these little failures. No, they all tried the same damn trick. They all thought they’d make the producers approach them, see? And they did this by sitting at a far corner of the bar–as far away as possible from the producer in question (just to be able to relish that walk across the floor when it happened, we figure), and they sang. Or they "performed." Loudly enough to be heard across the bar.

There was one guy, Jesus, why he wasn’t killed we’ll never know. Late-30s, skinny, a little too well-dressed, a little too loud. You know the type. He’d sit at the end of the bar, tell the people around him in a projected voice how he was an actor, but was in between roles at present. Then he’d begin to sing.

Show tunes.

To make things worse, he was one of those creepy types who’d pick out someone near him and stare meaningfully into their eyes as he sang.

It only took witnessing this routine two or three times to know we had no intention of sitting through it again. We also get the impression that a few major Hollywood types left the bar thinking exactly the same thing.

One morning, though, while riding over to Park Slope, we noticed Bergen Bagel on the corner of Bergen St. and Flatbush Ave. We parked our bike near the patrons eating outside and entered the unfamiliar shop. Inside, the store was long and narrow with five or six tables lining one of the walls; two coolers full of sodas, various juices and energy drinks lined the back wall. Then we saw several employees loading out trays full of freshly baked muffins, black and white cookies–and bagels. Couldn’t complain about the selection: everything, cinnamon & raisin, onion, garlic, egg, plain, poppy, sesame, whole wheat and salt. The cream cheese choices were abundant as well, including plain spreads in vegetable, scallion, olive, walnut & raisin, sun-dried tomato, lox and fat-free varieties. For the lactose intolerant Bergen Bagel pleases with plain or vegetable tofu, sun-dried tomato tofu, lox with tofu. For the heartier breakfastgoer, they offer meat-based spreads like chicken salad, tuna, baked salmon, shrimp and whitefish salad. Now every weekend, after a late night out, we head to Bergen Bagel because the service is always good and we don’t have to deal with the residents of Park Slope. Plus the guys behind the counter have a sense of humor.

So, a bit fed up, but still quite devoted to their excellent martinis and incredible papaya salad (worthy of its own "Best of" category), we’ve taken to eating at the bar. And we’re glad to report how delightful it’s been: instant seat, same excellent high-end Thai-French fusion delivered a little faster than usual through the cordial and impeccable ministrations of Benjamin, the Elephant’s French/Guadeloupean hybrid. Benjamin pours the Ricard generously (note to pastis tipplers: requests for Pernod go unanswered!) and he’s beloved of just about every beautiful girl who comes into the place, a fact that does not bother us even a little bit.

When our mood requires it, eating at the bar here can also be done in cozy anonymity, the backlit bar’s creamy, amber lighting bathing the room in a warm, rosy-ish luminescence and conducive to a kind of languorous, spectator mode of dining wherein we sit and pick slowly at our food while predicting a couple’s end-of-date success, observing lips and gestures, all the while noting the rhythm and mechanics of this tiny Thai industry with its churning little kitchen.

Run by the folks who owned Motor City, another kickass bar located in another wonderful neighborhood, Ludlow St., the Ding Dong Lounge attracts a big local crowd. On any given weekend night, you’re bound to meet Mr. or Ms. Right-On! So if it’s an uptown Saturday night for you, check out the place. You won’t be sorry, and maybe you’ll get lucky.

We were wrong.

The more we looked, the more it became obvious that there was a dog turd on the floor.

So what do you do? Do you call attention to it? Say, "Hey, look–there’s poop on the floor"? That’d be like shouting "fire" in a crowded movie house. Besides, we didn’t want to cause trouble for these people. It’s just that there was, well...some poop on the floor.

We all know how common it is for people to bring their dogs into bars around the city, and that’s fine. We like dogs. But we’ve never seen someone let their dog take a squat in the middle of everything, and then just leave it there. That’s just plain rude. Didn’t they notice? Didn’t anybody else? Didn’t someone see fit to tap the owner on the shoulder and say "Hey, your dog, there–he’s takin’ a big dump"?

We’ll never understand people. But there it was, in a tavern we really like. Just sitting there.

Funny thing was, as the afternoon wore on, other people came in, sat at the bar, sat at the tables, walked all around the poop. They must’ve noticed–they were sitting right there. But there was nothing. No reaction at all. The final straw, and the thing that convinced us that maybe it wasn’t such a big deal after all, came shortly before we left. A fellow walked in and, as he was going to take a seat at the bar, he not only stepped in the pile of shit, he slid through it. And even he didn’t say anything!

(For the record, we have been back several times since, and have seen no more poop.)

Over the past year, our affection for Manhattan Hero–renowned for its hearty servings of hot rice and beans–has only grown. Whenever we need some serious sustenance, we head down 7th Ave., willing to brave the long lines to get our fix. Sometimes, one of their fabulous ham and cheese sandwiches, tuna salad wraps or roast beef and turkey clubs–impeccably prepared by our pals–is just what we need. We’ve enjoyed their superb roast chicken, next to a pile of mashed potatoes, too. On a cold winter day, we suggest you take the plunge and experience the pleasure derived from Manhattan Hero’s "Banana Boat." How do they make this amazing concoction? Take one fried banana, add a layer of ground beef, top that with some gooey, fresh mozzarella cheese and smother it with marinara sauce. Now there’s a meal that’ll get you through all the day and night. Still, it’s usually a heaping portion of white rice and black beans, complemented by some plantains and fresh steamed vegetables, or maybe a pile of concrete-heavy, awesome garlicky yucca, that gets us every time.

That’s why we’re so happy about Il Gelatone. We’ll have to wait until our next trip to Italy to make sure, but early response indicates that this new Murray Hill parlor stocks the real thing. You wouldn’t believe how much flavor and how much pleasure their little treats bring. The nut flavors seem particularly hard to get right outside the Mediterranean, but in repeated trials Il Gelatone’s pistachio and hazelnut gelatos induced appropriate rapture. Like we said, more rigorous testing is necessary.

Monday nights at 288 are our sensory deprivation tank–we sink into the candlelit bar and let Michael O’Donnell decompress us with his ministrations. Workday’s gone, tomorrow’s tomorrow. The Harps and the Pilseners and the black-n-tans keep coming, and baseball chat’s of the highest order. Michael’s a Mets fan and knows his ball. He gazes up at the screen with us, our upturned faces looking like a Norman Rockwell version of contentment. If we’re lucky, our team’s on the West Coast with a 10 p.m. start time. If we’re even luckier, owner Jo’ll stop by with dog Buick for a bourbon and some small talk. She’ll offer to buy us a round. No thanks, we’ll say, Michael’s already taken care of us.

So what is it we like about Cafe Bar? Well, we like the thrift-store-style assortment of brightly colored and oddly shaped couches and chairs and lampshades. We like the old-school sign. We like the lack of pretension. And, most of all, we like the slightly bizarre mix of people to be found within: recently arrived hipsters, young Queens natives relaxing before or after nighttime forays into Manhattan, stout middle-aged gentlemen in sunglasses and impeccably tailored dark suits...

Yeah, that’s right. It’s the last crowd that really puts this place on our "Best of" list. There’s something about the glint of pinky rings in the weekend afternoon sun, something about Jaguars and Mercedeses and Lexuses and $300 cellphones that makes us feel we’ve stumbled into...well, enough said, perhaps. Cafe Bar is a nice place to go for an alcoholic or coffee drink with friends–before or after the Warm-Up, maybe–and really, who needs to know more?

Funny how, at the best restaurants, quality yields effortlessly to quality, one strength following another. Just because it’s the natural order of things, as inexorable a part of existence as the fact that night follows day or that if you sit on the couches at Alt.Coffee you’ll want to check yourself later for crabs.

Thus the cheese course at Le Bernardin. You want it, it’s there. There’s no bleating; no aggressive publicity about how the restaurant’s cornered the world market in cheese service, and has rendered all other cheese-servers on the planet irrelevant. There’s no shameless fomenting of a phony hysteria, as there’s been recently at at least one restaurant we know of that stresses cheese. No. There’s just the laden cheese cart, the dude tapping each loaf as he instructs you in its pleasures and a subsequently leisurely engagement with the pleasures of curdled milk. Another extremely nice thing about an extremely nice restaurant, and a cheese course to rival Chanterelle’s mighty one down in Tribeca.

So what’s up? In the last few years there’s been like a softshell revolution in New York area restaurants. You can get softshells all summer long now, well up into "Best of" time. Are they farming them in Israel? Freezing them to make them last into September? Genetically altering or otherwise cruelly manipulating them to stay permanently soft, like veal calves?

You tell us. All we know is, we love having the extra months to eat softshells. Over the last couple of summers we’ve gone on what must be described as softshell binges, ordering them compulsively every single time we’ve seen them on a menu, even in establishments where we really knew better. This summer, we bet we ate softshells in 20 different New York City restaurants, from Le Zie in Chelsea to Bayou in Harlem. (It was a mistake at both places–a rare one for Le Zie.) The most creative version we had was at the Upper West Side branch of Rosa Mexicano, where they were deep-fried in a cornmeal batter. At Jean Georges this summer they served a wonderful crab sampler appetizer that included maybe a quarter of a softshell. Honmura An offered them fried on a bed of crispy noodles–very nice. Nobu does a delicious softshell sushi.

But the best we had all summer were among the least fussily prepared, and they were at one of our favorite summer standbys, Le Jardin Bistro. They were simply sauteed with parsley and garlic and served up hot, letting the sweet, juicy-crunchy taste and texture of classic softshells shine through. Sitting out in Gerard’s garden with a plate of peelers in front of us, we had to restrain ourselves from requesting saltines. Otherwise, they were as near perfect as softshells get in this city.

Here are a few choice delights:

Now, we’re sure that all these things–and the many other offerings at Kitchoan–are fine. Just dandy. Really. Super-delightful, even. We’ve even had someone much wiser than ourselves explain that Japanese desserts rely more upon texture than sweetness. That’s fine, too. But we’re still pretty damned hesitant about the prospect of ingesting some kind of fruit thing coated in seaweed and bean dip.

Now about that garden. Garden? Nay, brother: call it rather a yard. Because what they’ve got here is expansive real estate: there’s different regions to this place; different experiences depending on where you’re sitting; appealingly scruffy as this place is, it has different moods. Sit over yonder under the tree, for example, and one’s perhaps overcome with a romantickal languor, ah, alone there in the evening shade, senses bathed by the rustling of the leaves, forsooth, one is sore tempted to write a villanelle.

Sit over on the other side, meanwhile, near the fence, and you’ve got a more traditional dining experience, complete with straight-up chairs and a table set for many (if also with someone’s toddler rooting around at your feet, but some call that charm). All in all, an excellent, comfortable, low-key space in which to sit on a hot summer night, or even on a cool autumnal one: you’ll feel like you’re on the poignant stage set of some opera about the ramshackle Brooklyn bohème. Beautiful light sifting down at sunset, and good cheap food, too. And hi there, girl–fetch us a Stella!

Bendix serves everything, and they’re not shy about giving it to you. Exotic salads flirt with all-American staples, offering combos perfect for any palate. Chili con carne shares menu clout with shrimp ginger and red curry chicken. A side can be ordinary french fries or Thai-style fish cakes. Veggies like pumpkin and bok choy often grace a dinner plate. Diner staples like a bagel and cream cheese are made better with lox and garnished with capers. All this at a reasonable price that guarantees there will always be a crowd.

We were on the scene recently for a young publicist’s going-away party. Feeling sentimental (as well as secure enough to admit that Journey is one of the best anthem bands ever), we braved the increasingly strong smell of urine toward the back of the bar and pumped a few bucks’ worth of memories into the jukebox, treating the bar’s inmates to "Don’t Stop Believin’." Twice.

"Just a small town girl/livin’ in a lonely world/She took the midnight train goin’ anywhere." We became aware of a man who was either in the last stages of a terminal illness, or a junkie, or both, getting up and beginning to pace the table where his three children looked on in confusion.

"Just a city boy/born and raised in south Detroit/He took the midnight train goin’ anywhere." A man at the opposite end of the establishment, wearing no shirt and a large snake wrapped about his bare torso and neck, rose and started nodding his head in time to the riff, though almost conditionally.

"Payin’ anything to roll the dice, just one more time…" Amidst the building drums, the gentleman pacing the table stops, points and announces to no one in particular "This is my song, man. This is my fucking song!"

We smile.

The man in the snake takes a long pull off his beer, turns to the man next to him and says confidently, "This is my song! I love this fucking song."

Hold onto the fucking feeling. Right?

Ahh, who are we kidding. To get the best croissant, you must get on a plane, transfer in Paris, rent a car in Marseilles, drive to Aix-en-Provence, retrace the same block about four times before you find the Hotel Cardinale. Pat the little white chien that comes out to greet you. Check into the charming room on the first floor. Explore the town. Stop at each of the multitudes of bakeries in a vain cream puff search, as no other foodstuff in all of France will satisfy Miss Michelle. Discover candy calissons, navette cookies and fruit glaces during your quest. Walk and buy old thick-glassed bottles and lavender soap at their open-air market, and drink pear beer and local vin rouge in their bars. In the morning say in an awful accent to the man in the office, "Petit dejeuner pour deux s’il vous plait." He will demand with the slightly off and disarming Provençal humor, "So, what do you want?" "Croissant et cafe au lait," you will state. In a little while he’ll bring a tray of plump best-you’ve-ever-had croissants with butter, jam and accompanying vase of small baguettes standing on end to be swished down with the cups you pour from steaming pots of coffee and milk. Chat with Diane about all the silly things you said and did the night before and let your laughter climb as high as the tops of the tall white French windows and echo above you.

"Out of coffee?"

"Yeah?"

"But…but this is a diner."

"Why don’t you have decaf instead?" he said.

"We don’t drink decaf." It was morning, and we were already uncaffeinated. And then the kicker:

"What do you want me to do about it?"

Hmmm. What do you want me to do about it.

Okay, if you want to get all precise about it, then we’ll allow that a little sass should accompany the Manhattan diner experience. With service that ranges from inattentive to outright contemptuous, sass is what’s proffered here. And in spades. But since bitchy appears to be the collective disposition among Cooper’s waitstaff and not the attitude of one bad apple, we can’t help but feel that there’s a deeper meaning to be gleaned here, that maybe this behavior represents a sort of final (if unsavory) necessary stage that all ethnicities at one time or another have entered in order to complete the age-old process of assimilation. The governing idea here being that one is not fully adapted to or absorbed by American culture, and especially New York culture, until one is at ease giving his white predecessors the finger, figurative or otherwise. Thus, from servile and uncounted to naturalized and surly, our immigrant waiter friends are really only doing what’s expected of them: becoming one of us.

Framed in this light, our runny omelet looks slightly more savory. So congratulations, Paco, and welcome to America. Now reheat these eggs, you asshole.

It’s not quite as bad as all that–not at Grand Central, at any rate. At first when we had to kill time before hopping the Hudson Line upstate, we used to wait downstairs in the great old dark subterranean saloon that’s attached to the Oyster Bar. Then, one day when we entered the terminal from Vanderbilt Ave., we noticed the Michael Jordan’s bar up there on the balcony, looking down over the grand urban space of the Main Hall. And ignored it, of course, and humped down to the Oyster Bar again. Michael Jordan’s is almost exclusively for the rubes, and we’ve got a reputation to protect.

It was this past Christmas that changed us. To be sentimental about it, we felt a little seasonally soft in the heart–what we wanted most of all to do, laden down as we were with presents for the northward relatives, was to watch the merry holiday Main Hall throng, get off on the lovely wreaths on the marble walls, dig the holiday music wafting over from the east side of that magnificent New York City place. We were dressed appropriately in many layers of soft, neutrally colored flannel, and we carried in our satchel a flagon of our relative’s favorite bourbon. Oh yes, we had a Yuletide tear in our eye as we took our stool at Michael Jordan’s. The Irish coffee they served us sucked. And the guy from Toledo on the next stool almost took our left eye out with his big, bumptious, Buckeye elbow. But they couldn’t fuck it up for us. No. They couldn’t fuck up Christmas.

When it’s not the holiday season, of course, Michael Jordan’s is about a million times less crowded, which means that it’s that much more pleasant a place to have a beer before getting northbound. And Grand Central? Can’t ruin that either: to borrow the phrase about Gothic cathedrals, Grand Central proves that God is light. The bar at Michael Jordan’s, simply on account of its location, might be one of the best places in midtown. It’s a nice place to wait for a train.

With its wood floors, beaded curtains hiding the service station, and pots of bamboo, Mekong seems authentically Vietnamese. We imagine the light summer rolls, the rice-paper wrapping so delicate you can almost see through to the shrimp, to be the real thing. Same goes with the succulent grilled lemongrass beef or chicken, waiting to be chewed off their skewers. Mekong’s fantastic shrimp and papaya salad is always fresh and crunchy and hotly tangy all at once. The entrees include flavorful big bowls of soup and the traditional stir-fry. There are also unusual dishes like stewed salmon with a luscious caramel sauce and a healthy shot of black pepper, and our favorite, tender chewy squid curried in a casserole. It’s not a creamy curry, but rather a biting, translucent sauce loaded with garlic, lemongrass and other savory additions. We recommend a French Colonial 33 beer, which packs a bigger wallop than others, to accompany the heat. Have a thick, sweet Vietnamese coffee for dessert at the bar, where, we understand, there can be some scene-making later in the evening.

They used to be a dollar, now they’re $1.20. When the price went up last fall–that is, for three weeks or so before the price increase–the Lopez family put up signs throughout the joint warning customers of the upcoming increase, so there’d be minimal surprise or confusion. For a 20-cent increase. Now that’s what we call class.

In the second category: Alsatian wines; the paintings of Wyndham Lewis; solo camping vacations; and the early Rush album Caress of Steel, which contains some of Alex Lifeson’s best guitar work and Geddy Lee’s most impassioned singing, especially on the six-part epic "The Fountain of Lamneth," and that provides a crucial portrait of the mighty Canadian band in their youth, when they were still a relatively straightforward power trio, before they achieved the mature songwriting craft that would lead to the later masterpieces Hemispheres, Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures.

Oh, and here’s another overrated thing: matzoh ball soup at bastions of Jewish "authenticity" like Barney Greengrass or the Carnegie Deli. Yes, yes, we know–it reminds you of the stuff your dear old bubbe out in Maspeth used to make, etc. etc. But this is New York in 2001, you don’t have to live that way, and the matzoh ball soup we prefer is to be found at the Blue Ribbon Bakery, the West Village franchise of the estimable Blue Ribbon mini-chain. We almost never go to the Bakery without ordering a bowl of the stuff: appreciating as we do the thin, flavorful broth and the rich, mushroomy, almost gamy flavor of the dense balls (two of them) themselves. And when we say dense, we mean dense. Extricate one of these bad boys from the broth and fling it across the room, and you’re liable to brain a busboy.

Anyway, a bowl of the Blue Ribbon’s matzoh ball soup, a plate of the cornish hen and a vessel of the dark Paulaner beer they’ve got on tap, and we’re feeling good, if none too authentically Jewish.

But if you must leave, the sandwiches are premade, so you’re in and out in a hurry with quick, pleasant service. The duck sandwich is $9.75. A long thin fresh baton papered with thinly sliced, not-at-all-greasy smoked duck, a spark of berryish red wine jelly, a bite of baby spinach leaves and rounds of sheep’s milk cheese. Other sandwiches range from the $5.95 C.L.T. (chicken, lettuce and tomato) to the $17.50 Foie Gras Burger.

Pick up some housegifts while you’re here: pretty jarred fruits or flavored oils. Lunch on the covered benches at 47th and 3rd or make like a Parisian and eat your ridiculously long sandwich while you ambulate about.

Anyway, the area is officially called the Fez Lounge. The decor is nice and dark and intimate, so it’s kind of a shame that everybody in the five boroughs gets the idea to meet there on the same night. A few people have discovered that the afternoon scene there isn’t too bad, but with its slightly indulgent Moroccan decor, this is really the kind of setting that’s best after 10 p.m. So if you really want to appreciate the late-night charms of the place, make a date with someone to meet there on a Monday night. And don’t make it one of those irritating gatherings where you get everybody together, since that would kind of defeat the purpose.

The dark setting is perfect for couples, and it exists on the border of a popular spot that’s still forgotten in the wake of the weekend. A downstairs concert may lead to quick surges of people early and late in the evening, but those won’t last. This is still the night to indulge yourself in a pleasant vibe that you’ll seldom find in this setting. And don’t order cosmopolitans, even if nobody’s there to see.

We were, admittedly, intimidated for a few months before stepping inside for the first time. From the outside, Rolf’s can look foreboding. The menu’s a little pricey, it looks dark and fancy. And there are all those Germans hanging around. But once we steeled ourselves and stepped inside, we found ourselves in a completely unexpected environment. Rolf’s is sort of fancy, yes–but without a dress code or an ounce of pretension. As many patrons wear shorts and t-shirts as suits and ties. It’s brighter than we expected, too. And the staff was incredibly friendly all around. It has an Old World feel about it that’s very comfortable. That makes sense, given how long they’ve been there.

The menu, unsurprisingly, is packed with German basics. We usually go for your basic wurst platter–it’s simple (potatoes, sauerkraut and four kinds of wurst) and it’s a gut-busting delight. We’ve had more than our share of German food over the years, but we’ve never had wursts like these. Tender, delicate and subtle, which is hardly what you’d expect from German sausages. And though we tend to avoid sauerkraut anyplace else, we’ll happily make pigs of ourselves on Rolf’s’.

Add to that a fine selection of warm breads, and a mind-boggling array of fine beers in German pints (which are bigger than American pints): You’re in for the gorging of a lifetime.

Be warned, though–it can add up. A meal for two (with six pints each) can approach $100. On the bright side, you won’t feel like eating anything for the next few days, so we guess it balances out.

On the other hand, we’d be committed to Blue Hill under any circumstances short of its serving ingredients from, say, Chernobyl, Bergen County or Fort Greene Park. We appreciate this pretty little West Village restaurant for its gracious service, its excellent wines by the glass, its fine cheese course, its crabmeat lasagna, its braised cod and its poached duck and its rack of lamb, and even for its nice stemware–but particularly for its warm chocolate bread pudding, which comes served with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sorbet and that’s sprinkled with cocoa nibs. (Which are exactly what they sound like–wee niblets of chocolate that do their duty toward amping up the dish’s general chocolatey flavor.)

It’s almost impossible to describe the pleasure of a dessert without lapsing into cliche, so we won’t try. Suffice it to insist that the pudding takes its place amidst a restaurant’s considerable strengths.

Fortunato Bros. espresso granita is a dark, rich, triple-caffeinated revelation. It’s sweet, but not annoyingly so, and it packs multiple shots of strong Miscela d’Oro espresso into every glass. We were skeptical at first (the last time we had granita our tongue, insides and all our bodily fluids turned blue for a month), but we soon learned that this drink hardly resembled those "blue raspberry" nightmares offered at convenience stores in Queens.

Fortunato’s espresso granita may make you jittery, and it may give you an ice-cream headache, but it won’t change the color of your insides. And you’ll be helping to fight corporate globalization, to boot.

Watch attractive black-clad men hang on black-clad Whoopi’s every word. Pretend to be deep in conversation with a pal, rather than starstruck, when friendly Woody Harrelson stands next to you at the bar. Eavesdrop on Hilary Swank recounting her dreams at the next table. We guess when you win an Academy award it’s okay to wear sweats to the theater. And when your skin is that luminescent you don’t have to wear makeup. Or even brush your hair.

Depending on your waiter, burgers may or may not be available pretheater. Not everything is on the menu every day. We especially like the portobello mushroom and vegetable plate with pesto. Also the smoked salmon appetizer with cornmeal pancakes, and the homemade toll house cookies with ice cream.

Desserts are large. An order of house red is served from a small pitcher–it’s more than one glass. It’s a very drinkable medium weight, medium dry. There is always some munchable on the bar. They have a tv too. One leading man tells us he’s sick of it–"When you eat there day after day..." Well, unless you’re starring on Broadway, you don’t have to eat there every day. Just when you need a little stardust.

Depending on your mood upon entering, it can either be delightfully off-kilter or downright scary. It’s one of those sociable places–at least around the bar–where people’ll just up and talk to you.

Maybe that explains the crowd.

We were in there early one evening, standing against a wall near the door, drinking wine for some reason, scanning the bar, which was half-loaded down with beefy, overly natty mob enforcers (or mob enforcer wannabes) loudly talking shop. The other half was loaded with aging, faded socialites.

One of the latter–a ruddy-faced Northern European who was probably quite the international playboy at some point in his life–latched onto us (again, for some reason). He introduced himself, then, in between yoo-hooing at various acquaintances passing on the sidewalk out front, gave us a brief history of the place and a thumbnail sketch of the various rules and regulations.

He was most excited by the fact that Yoko Ono eats there every Wednesday night. Why anyone would be proud of this, we’re not sure, but there it was. He didn’t cite any specific time, but given that the place closes at 10:30, it can’t be too late.

Of all the artsy-fartsy restaurants in town where she could hang out and be all Yoko Ono on everyone, Lord knows why she chose a place like Gino. Who knows? Maybe she got hooked on the weirdness, too.

Granted, she’s probably not too thrilled with this sort of information being disseminated to the public this way, but maybe with all those thick-necked leg-breakers around, she doesn’t have anything to worry about.

Open for about a year and a half, Max is a great inexpensive Italian restaurant. They’re packed nightly and especially on weekends; since most of their 10 or so tables are two-tops, and they don’t take reservations, we suggest arriving early. Show up much past 8, you’ll be asked to give your name and cellphone number (of course you have one), then encouraged to find a nearby bar to get a drink at while you wait 45 minutes or more. Or you can hang out at the bar by the garden area. If you’re lucky maybe you’ll get a date with one of the hot waiters.

The menu lists 12 different sauces–the waiter will pick an appropriate one if you don’t specify which you’d like. For fish, there’s lemon sauce and a good chutney. Rice pilaf is a standout and complementary side. Post-poisson, try homemade ice cream, creme brulee (correctly shallow with a big perimeter, so you get a lot of caramelized crust) or the generous serving of pecan pie. The customers are big people with big white teeth who like to eat meat. But there’s room for a little fish-lover too. Pro service. It’s pricey, but addictive.

So when we relocated to New York City, the greatest challenge was getting our chile fix. The canned stuff tastes like aluminum, and the version served at most Manhattan restaurants isn’t up to snuff (Jalapenos? Nopales? Wha?).

Although it’s pretty much impossible to get good New Mexican food here, the closest we’ve found is at Lupe’s East L.A. Kitchen, in Soho, which offers delicious Mexican-by-way-of-California cuisine–similar enough to New Mexican chow for our desperate palates–for under 10 bucks a plate. Portions are generous and the salsa isn’t diluted to tourist-level dishwater.

One of the best things on Lupe’s menu is the chili verde. It’s so good, and so reminiscent of the food from our onetime homeland, that we had to ask sous chef Mateo Hernandez to tell us the ingredients. He was happy to answer. "Anaheim chile peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, tomatillos and oregano," he said, although we suspect there’s a lot more to it. The chili is meat- and dairy-free but imparts a creamy flavor that tricks the senses into believing otherwise. It’s also spicy as hell, so you’ll need the tortilla it’s served with to absorb some of the heat from your tongue.

Above all, the Flying Saucer is a hangout. Until it opened last year, a poor man could walk for miles down Atlantic Ave. without finding a place to sit down with a cup of coffee and crack a book. Of course, we’re not counting the execrable Brooklyn Diner, perhaps worthy of an award in the "Best Brooklyn Late-Nite Cop Goof-Off Hangout" category. The Flying Saucer fits the bill perfectly. It occupies the first floor of a classic brick rowhouse and has all the usual amenities–good bagels, cheap coffee refills, a self-policing book exchange, board games, a cushy window seat and a large comfortable outdoor space. Even when it’s busy, it’s never quite packed. It’s the kind of place you want in your neighborhood, instead of that national chain or the linoleum cubbyhole run by models. More than that, it’s an effortlessly friendly place, where anyone can enjoy a fine summer afternoon on the price of a cup of coffee.

Anyway, this bright, fun joint is a hoot, and the food’s okay, too. We’ll order the calamari salad with lemongrass lime-ginger dressing; or the vegetarian spring rolls, both in their fried and fresh incarnations; or the miso soup, a superior dish littered with tofu chunks that aren’t too large, in that revoltingly mushy miso way; or the teriyaki salmon, a rectangular chunk of fish bathed in a delicate sauce. Or anything else. The handily numbered menu’s huge, and there’s a wide-ranging sushi menu. Faan’s decorated according to the Enlightened Playskool school of interior decoration: big blocks of rich color, from the pink pillar in the middle of the room to the green, chocolate-brown and slate-gray walls. It’s all right. Beats sitting out on the concrete terrace, sucking in fumes from the Smith St. traffic.

At Noodle AA you can get a plate of three dishes over rice for under five bucks, including anything from sauteed watercress to fried slices of Spam (yes, Spam). Of all the midtown-area noodle houses, this one serves the best soup. We particularly enjoy the beef stew noodle soup (with egg noodles, naturally) for the tender, anise-scented chunks of (not too) fatty beef and for the stellar broth that, after mingling with the cow juices, will have you feeling ever more fortunate to be the last one in your friendship circle with a job.

More: the menu should appeal to you; the guy behind the counter should neither be blasting mook rock nor prone to call you "chief" or eager to talk to you if you’re disinclined. Nourishment should materialize in front of you invisibly, and with a minimum of effort on your part; you should feel absolutely comfortable and unself-conscious; you should be allowed to aspire, in this environment, toward the condition of a well-fed, well-watered variety of jelly, or at least aspic. Heck, we’ll take it even further: the place should be in a soothing neighborhood, there should be absolutely no sexual tension about it and you shouldn’t have to cross any busy streets to get there.

Thus the 12th St. Bar & Grill, to the bar portion of which (it’s actually a separate entrance) we often go for a peaceful solo dinner after a day’s worth of heroic esthetic labor. The light’s appropriately amber, there’s no stupid jukebox, the food’s good (we like the pressed sandwiches), there’s no "edge" or pretense, you don’t feel at all embarrassed to be sitting there alone and with your shoes untied, and when it’s warm the door’s most often thrown open to the lovely tree-shaded block outside. If life gets any better than that, let us know.

The bread, formerly served in loaves but now as buns, is indulgent. The dough is thick and firm, yet it flakes smoothly and gently in the mouth. The pale rolls are as rich as scones, only fluffy and moist. The large raisins throughout sweeten the affair, punctuating the creamy taste. You may find yourself filling up on these instead of Molly’s equally excellent corned beef and cabbage. Drop by sometime, ask kindly and the almost always smiling staff (when they say "Failte," they aren’t kidding) will give you some bread for the road.

Obscurely situated down a flight of narrow steps that end at the restaurant’s rather large dining room, Hop Kee, with its blank facade, goes unnoticed by most passersby. It’s well-known by Chinatown locals, though, and devoted commuters (our grandfather has been known to brave the Merritt Pkwy. all the way from Connecticut for a weekend heaping of moo-shu pork), guaranteeing a packed house. Diners come for exotic dishes of crab and snails, Asian-flavored porkchops and the popular plates of fried flounder or spring chicken. Those too impatient to endure the wait (although they move diners out quickly) can order takeout, which boasts everything from dim-sum to exotic desserts. And they do it from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m.

The food is good. Try the kala bhajee (banana fritters), egg-sized, fluffy and sweet–a plate of four is a nice appetizer at $1.85. The alu paratha (mashed-potato-filled bread) is the best on the block at $2.50, and we recommend the chicken kurma ($6.75), a lovely mild alternative to the usual tandoori chicken or vegetable curry. That’s our favorite meal when dining alone there; however, if you’ve got company, the Chef’s Special Dinner for Two, $22.95, is a very good, filling meal with soup, appetizers, entree and dessert included.

Royal Indian’s a fun place for a party: if, and we do mean if, the beloved and we decide to make our relationship permanent, we will probably have our party/reception there. We’d rather have a banana fritter at the Royal Indian than a wedding cake the size of Everest in some boring hall.

What makes Guy & Gallard’s chai tea so special? Their chai mix comes in powdered form and in the spicy variety. And they steam the milk, or the skim milk, or the whole milk, or the soy milk if you prefer. They mix your drink completely before filling the cup up with milk, to make sure all the powder’s dissolved. If they’re feeling nice, you may even get a little extra chai on the top–always a nice touch for those in need of an extra jolt. It’s the tastiest we’ve come across in the city. Plus a medium only costs two bucks, while Starbucks serves up the liquid-based version for a whole lot more.

Yeah, it’s probably all of the above that brings us back regularly to Dusk. We even like the fact that it’s so nondescript on the outside that we always have to give newcomers elaborate instructions on how not to walk right past the place. That speakeasy aspect just adds to Dusk’s special place in our hearts. Thanks for another year, kids. See ya soon.

Dinner’s even better. A tender, juicy, char-broiled Brazilian steak, so large our companion had to devour the last third of it, over delicious mashed potatoes and with kale-like leafy greens alongside, all for around 16 bucks. We’ll take that over the tourist-oriented Brazilian clip joints up around Times Square any day.

More than the steak, we find just about every aspect of this place delightful and conducive to soul-baring good times, from the light, airy space with its deliberately mismatched wooden chairs and tables to the generous-for-such-a-small-place list of reds and whites by the glass ($6) and the sign requesting diners to turn off their cellphones. We recommend going early to beat the crowd; by the time we left last (on a Tuesday night), every table was full and there were Portuguese-speakers waiting on line to get in.

The Greenpoint Tavern, or Rosemary’s, is not a place where one fritters away anything. One does, however, abandon with relish, or perhaps toss aside with complete disregard for the consequences, at this, the last stop on the train to Kokie’s and a family-and-friends intervention session.

One does not fritter at all in the GPT. One enters and finds one’s acquaintances scattered throughout the otherwise empty room at 7 p.m. on a Sunday, slumped over their styrofoam pints and falling off their stools. Then, after assuring them that one is indeed exactly who one purports to be, one is called upon to explain where in the hell one has been all day, as if by entering at this hour one has arrived later than the Yanks in 1942, coming upon one’s friends well after the mortar had landed and the lot were reduced to sleeping in the Tube.

Whether the clientele be the Polish men who sit silently and chainsmoke, or the young girl who has lost a significant amount of clothing because they pour ’em like you make ’em at home, or simply an average Joe looking for an inspiring round of "You May Be Right" from the jukebox, one does not go to the GPT for anything like killing time, or a bloated sense of boredom or even mediocrity, all of which are synonymous with both frittering and the Village Voice.

Nothing struck our eye more indelibly than a mutant Gap ad on poster stock. Late middle-aged Asian man with a stoicism lapsing into a clenched-jowl ice grill, strapped absurdly into a puffy orange vest, against empty background. This was a few months after the great common-denominator clothier announced everyone had to wear leather, or corduroy or khakis, and the acidity still burned when the copy read, in perfect simulation of typeface and color, "Everyone in Sweatshops." An excellent job, we thought, and fancied extending the theme–maybe a Mexican, 5-3, bootleg XFL cap, hairy upper lip shiny with perspiration, white apron caked with blood, oil and garbage, leaning over with an aching back as three boiling pans hiss in three different directions, getting assistance from that same My Generation-demographic Chinese guy, who’s hauling soggy cardboard crates of Andy Boy lettuce with arthritic fingers. The tag, in a small green box: "United Colors of Lunch Break."

And so, back in the present, imagine our surprise when we passed by the 34th St. post office and stepped right into that fucking ad. Inside Fresco Tortilla Taco we got all the prima facie indicators of a Mexican place: illustrated menu plastered above the cashier, a few token tables in a takeout joint, plastic utensils in those gray half-sine-wave dispensers, kitchen behind the counter. To say nothing of, well, the nachos, enchiladas, soft shell tacos, fajitas, lunch specials and lingering spicy smell. But behind the register we were misunderstanding an unexpected accent, as the gentlemen barking, "Okay, what you want?" was of indubitably Chinese extraction.

We’ve been back dozens of times since. To give you a glance behind the newsprint at our kooky operation, Fresco Tortilla Taco goes by the colloquial "Dollar Taco Place" down 333 7th Ave. way, owing to the establishment’s wise decision to price a Snapple upward of a black bean soft shell. For lunchtime in a desolate epicurian tundra, nothing beats Fresco. Nothing fancy, just reliably good food apportioned for an offensive lineman. Try the Tex-Mex chili and steak combination plate, where inside your piping styrofoam you’ll also find two tortillas, Mexican rice, your choice of black or pinto beans, lettuce, tomato, sour cream and salsa. For $4.95, son! And they’ll ask, "You want C7? Chili and steak, C7 on menu. Right there."

The counter man gets his share of ignorant comments from the lunch-hour clientele, black, white and miscellaneous, like a few guys we’ve seen who’ve confusedly asked how much for the chicken lo mein. And it’s not the only "Mexican" place in town that seems to be run by Asian people. The slaving Mexicans grunting by the frying pans here reaffirm a simple American truth: one generation of immigrant exploits the next. If everyone we knew in advertising weren’t getting laid off, we’d suggest an ideal photo shoot for their next Benetton job. ign="left">