Category: Restaurants

I went all the way to Flushing…

…and I ate a hamburger.

For those of you who don’t live in NYC, this is almost equivalent to eating at McDonald’s in Taipei.

Flushing is New York’s second Chinatown, in some ways now more dynamic than the one in Manhattan. I went out there to do a little on-the-ground research for The Rough Guide to New York City (still catching up on that back work–thank you, generous RG editors), so I was imagining, say, grazing through the Flushing Mall food court, or popping into a Korean joint for some bibimbop, or slurping a bubble tea, or something along those lines.

But after I’d traipsed all over the damn place following the “Flushing Freedom Trail,” which is totally boring and consists of a bunch of old Quaker shingle houses that have nothing to do with Asians of any kind, I was a little addled. And I was walking down Main Street and saw the sign: “Try Our Handmade Fries, NOW ONLY $1!” And there was a gorgeous photo of funky-lookin’, perfectly crispy fries with their peels still on.

I think the poster resonated because I’d just been at the Burget Joint in Le Meridien in midtown, which is a fantastic place but serves those ho-hum standard Simplot fries. I’d just been thinking how much cooler the Burger Joint would be if it had fries that looked…why, like these on this poster!

So I walked in to Joe’s Bestburger and ordered me some fries. And then I was happy to hear the woman behind me say, “I just want to try your fries!” See, I wasn’t the only sucker.

I’d heard vaguely of Joe’s Bestburger–I thought it was some new franchise. But I see now, with a little googling, that this one in Flushing is the only one. If I were going to open a fast-food hamburger joint, I wouldn’t immediately think of Main Street Flushing, but maybe that’s why I’m broke.

Anyway, Joe’s has a sharp red-and-white color scheme and snazzy little LCD panels displaying the menu, and additional panels on the registers, so you can see your order being rung up. This reminded me of Fatburger, in LA, which has the same thing. (Hmm, I’ve become quite the burger connoisseur in the past few months. I hope that mad-cow thing is a hoax.)

But Fatburger’s register screens don’t talk. After I’d placed my order–fries, oh, and a cheeseburger and a soda, since I was there, you know?–the cashier guy said, “That’ll be $4.28.”

And then the register said, in this bad robotic girl-voice, “You got a DEAL! Add a real ice-cream shake for a total of five dollars! Do you want to take this DEAL?!”

During all this, the cashier had to pause awkwardly, with a look on his face like, “Yes, my job of upselling has been outsourced to a computer. When will the war against the robots begin?” I opted out of the deal. But another 72 cents for a shake that normally sells for $2 is kind of genius.

Another genius/insidious pricing thing is that water costs $1.25, and soda, with free refills, costs $1. That one I fell for, and I drank a good cup and a half of root beer, thank you very sugared-up much.

While I was waiting for my order, some little old man in a cap and a Members Only jacket bellied up to the pick-up counter and started berating the woman there (who, incidentally, was one of the most cheerful, normal-looking people I’ve ever seen working at a fast-food joint–does Joe’s BB offer good health-care plans?). All I heard was that this place was dirty, dirty, and something about how the fries shouldn’t be like that. I think he was objecting to the peels still being on, which made me want to knock him upside the head. The cheerful woman just smiled and said the health department had given them the highest rating of any resto on Main Street. I wanted to give her the thumbs-up, but I refrained.

So I sat down and ate my burger and my fries and my big cup of root beer. The fries were perfectly crispy and looked remarkably like those on the poster. They were served in a little styrofoam cup, with a little wood fork on the side, all Euro-stylie. Another poster on the wall alerted me to the “gourmet” toppings I could’ve had. There was garlic mayo, I think, but I’d just gone for the all-you-can-pump ketchup, in those nice wide and flat paper cups, which are much better for dipping than those little narrow ones that you get at Wendy’s.

And my burger was goo-ood, especially for the bargain price of $1.95. Joe’s BB touts its freshness, and while it’s no In-n-Out Burger, because the tomatoes still probably had to travel hundreds of miles to get sliced up in Flushing, it was pretty tasty. There was some magic sauce. Oh, and I had the choice of raw onions or grilled onions. I chose grilled, and they were super-caramelized.

The burger was even a wee bit pink in the middle, which you pretty much never get at a fast-food setup. It wasn’t pink enough to make me worry, though. See, secretly, I’m always a little relieved when they don’t ask how I want my burger cooked, because if they do ask, then I’m obliged to say, “Medium rare, please,” even though I know that I’m flirting with death, or at least my brain dissolving into nothing. Because I can’t choose to eat overcooked meat.

But if they don’t ask, and then the burger is still a tiny bit pink, I think that’s a pretty good compromise. I’ll probably still feel the prions creepin’ in in a few years, but oh well. They were good, burger-rich years.

One other good-or-maybe-creepy thing about the place was all the flat-panel TVs. The sound was turned off, fortunately, and they were evenly split between CNN and the Food Network. Plenty of inspiration to muse on the future of food in America, while I sat there eating more fries than I wanted and drinking more root beer than was good for me.

Anyway, I know I’m part of the problem, not the solution, when I say this, but for the whopping price of $4.28, Joe’s Bestburger was pretty freakin’ good. I mean, I don’t think I’d tell anyone to go all the way to Flushing for it, but if you happen to be there, and for some reason don’t want some Sichuan duck… Oh, what an idiot I am.

So that’s what that is… or, A Visit to Minangasli

Since I’ve been back in NYC, I’ve had a relatively low workload and a fresh appreciation of all the nifty things to do here. So when I got really, really hungry the other night, I suggested to Peter that we go try Minangasli, an Indonesian restaurant in Elmhurst that’s gotten a lot of coverage in the New York Times recently (also a proper review here).

Having grown up on gado-gado (I’m not sure why–was it a stylish vegetarian thing in the 70s?), then come of age in Amsterdam, where Indonesian food appears in automat windows, I have some exposure to the cuisine, but hardly an understanding or true appreciation of it. But a few years ago I read a Saveur article about one island that made me drool, and the review of Minangasli made it sound overwhelmingly good, even if you didn’t order the beef brains, so I was excited to try it.

And it was good. Don’t get me wrong. But it did not make my face glow and my veins rush with a feeling of heartbreaking joy, like I get when I eat at Sripraphai or Spicy Mina. And it wasn’t like the food wasn’t spicy hot–the deep-fried kingfish we had was covered in a great sweet-spicy sambal, and the beef renddang was really rich. It was all tasty, and I also got a sweet avocado shake. And lamb satay.

Oh, and we ate a lot of green jackfruit. It was kind of artichoke-y, and slightly fleshy, even a bit pink on the inside. Jackfruit is something I can now remove from the long list of tropical goodies in my head: in one column, there are names like soursop and custard apple and alligator pear, and in the other are pictures, like green bumpy things and brown smooth things and things the size of footballs, and I’m slowly sorting out how things match up by process of elimination. (But if we put in a third column about how things taste, I’m back at square one.)

Anyway, I hate to resort to the very word I make a halftime freelance career of striking out, but the spices at Minangasli just didn’t “pop.” (For those who don’t read women’s magazines, this term is usually applied to body parts: “Coloring in the inner lash line really makes the eyes pop.” Which is a ghastly thought, which is why I always underline it and write “Really?!” in the margin when I’m copy editing. To no avail.) At Spicy Mina, you can almost discern every flavor as it travels across your tongue, even if it happens too fast for you to consciously register “Cardamom, cumin, cinnamon, clove, coriander…” There’s that sensation, and there’s also the pure heat. I think it takes the combo of the two to get the awesome endorphin rush. At Sripraphai, it’s the killer one-two-three punch (is that possible?) of fish sauce, lime and incredibly hot chili.

In Minangasli’s favor, the staff is exceedingly friendly. The prices are fabulously low. Its location in Elmhurst is lively and convenient (another reason to ride the V). The waitress (owner?) wears a cute little green apron that has “Minangasli” Bedazzled on it in orange rhinestones. Now that pops.

But I’m a junkie, and I need stronger stuff, I’m afraid.

Astoria: Land of Opportunity

Forget what I said a couple of posts ago. I’m very happy to be back in Astoria, mostly because I’ve gotten back to my usual activities: eating and walking and poking around in grocery stores. Last night Peter and I went to dinner at a place called Mundo (31-18E Broadway, but really, on 32nd St. just south of Broadway). This is old news to cool Astorians, as it’s been open since last summer, and I don’t know why I haven’t gotten it together to go before.

I guess it’s because I didn’t know they had manti (really, there shouldn’t be a dot on that ‘i’, and it’s pronounced “man-tuh”). Those are the dainty little Turkish meat dumplings that are drowned in garlicky yogurt. Their daintiness is testament to the legions of limber-fingered kitchen slaves, I mean loving Turkish wives and grandmothers, who are dedicated to churning them out by the thousands. They’re so tiny it’s almost like eating breakfast cereal when you scoop them up with a spoon.

So the dumplings were divine; we also had very tender and tasty baby okra, a delectable Argentine-style empanada with that nice sweet/meaty filling, tasty cold lentil patties wrapped up in lettuce, and artichoke hearts served with fava bean paste molded into pretty shapes. That latter thing even somehow made Egyptian-style fava bean paste (bisara) a bit more appealing.

And we had some nice warming gluhwein to start, and a really yummy, fluffy almond cake for dessert. And it was reasonably priced.

And I haven’t even gotten to the vibe and general decor, which is really a treat. Astoria generally suffers from the faux-bistro phenomenon. These are the restaurants that cater to diners looking for a “non-ethnic” experience, but they’re only eerie not-quite-right imitations of places that are a dime a dozen in Manhattan. Crappy fonts on the menus, overly decorative plates, gum-chewing waitstaf and a clientele made up largely of real-estate agents and their girlfriends–these are the giveaways of the faux-bistro. But I can’t complain too much because I’m generally happy that Astoria isn’t overrun with yuppies and hipsters.

Which is what makes Mundo so nice–it’s a hipster place without the hipsters, and it doesn’t seem to be trying too hard. Someone’s photos are hung on the wall from coathangers. Tiny disco balls and miniature shoes dangle from the ceiling. The music is global electronica. And the owners are a young Turk and an Argentine, both of which delight me because (1) fanatical Greek Astoria needs more Turks, who, frankly, cook better food, and (2) Argentines are the newest arrivals in the neighborhood, and they seem like the youngest and coolest, but I haven’t really known where they hung out except for that bar Ize on 36th Ave.

So we went home full and happy. And then this afternoon we had lunch at the Ecuadorian joint on 36th Ave., the place where the windows are always steamed up, where $12 bought us two bowls of fish soup, two platters of meat and rice and beans, all-we-could-eat hot salsa, and two sodas. Not to mention kind service and the Discovery Channel dubbed into Spanish.

Then we popped over to the Fisher Landau Center for Art, which I’d read some passing reference to last year and was surprised to see that it’s just a few blocks away from where I live. Usually all that cool art stuff is down in LIC proper. It’s three floors in a big warehouse, with Rosenquist and Rauschenberg and all that jazz, but I liked all the Shirin Neshat photos and a little mechanical sculpture using bird feathers, by Rebecca Horn. The whole first floor was all animal-y. Imagine my chagrin then, when I asked how long the place had been open.

“Oh, since 1991.”

“Whaaa?” (I reel in shock.)

“Well, it was just appointment only until 1993.” (Helpfully, kindly.)

“Huh.” (Still dumbfounded.)

“And we didn’t put up the banner until a few years ago.”

Oh. That explains why I’d never even heard of the place?

And it’s free. It kills me to think how much free art I’ve missed in the eight years I’ve lived here.

So then Peter and I had to kill a little time before meeting a realtor, so we stopped in the Bangladeshi store, where they had whole mace, date syrup, mango leather and lots of frozen fish. The guy at the counter asked, “Was everything all right?” as if we were in a restaurant, and when I was eyeing the mango leather, his cohort handed me a free sample. And then I asked what those round things were behind the counter, and the next thing we knew, we were getting the full betel-nut demo and taste test.

We were discreetly spitting and I was kind of dizzy by the time we met the realtor. The house sucked and cost a whopping $700K, but we quickly put that out of our heads with more shopping, at the kindly Guyanese guy’s store, on 36th Ave. The guy stocks fish sauce, which Peter has been complaining about not being able to get here for years. If Fisher Landau is my missed opportunity, H&V Grocery is his.

Sweet Astoria–so bursting with opportunities for fun and tastiness that it really doesn’t matter if you miss a few.

Spicy Mina: Go There AT ONCE

Oh. My. Gawwwwd.

I think that’s the most articulate review of Spicy Mina anyone has ever been able to muster, because the place is so delicious and so spicy that it just slams through the language centers, and all the other centers, of your brain.

I’m probably preaching to the converted here, but in case some errant New Yorker whom I don’t know pops by, here’s the deal: Spicy Mina is a restaurant specializing in “Bangladeshee Cuisine” (according to the awning). The eponymous chef toils quietly in the back, almost always out of sight, but for the occasional glimpse of a sandal and a sari.

What she’s doing back there is obvious, though, once the samosa chaat appetizer arrives: She’s creating the most delicious Indian food you will ever be lucky enough to eat.

You might also order, say, an appetizer called halim, because it’s got lamb, and you’ve never heard of it before. It will be delicious and soupy and full of ginger. Then along comes the creamy chicken korma, the one “mild” thing you ordered, and it’s bursting with all kinds of fruits and nuts. And the palak paneer, quick-fried spinach that’s super-oily and thick with dried red chiles and chunks of nicely browned fresh cheese. A whole fish smothered in mustard sauce plunks down in the middle. Chicken biryani, which you ordered because the waiter said, “She’s making a very nice one today,” gets squeezed on the side. And some aloo paratha. And some garlic naan. And a mango lassi. And the beer you brought with you.

Ahhhh. Breathe deep. The endorphins are rushing with every bite of warming spice, each flavor perfectly distinct: there’s cardamom, cinnamon, clove, cumin, a sinus-clearing rush of ginger, and a hiccup-inducing skinny green chile, which gives a different heat than the smoky red chiles. You’re giggling a little, feeling a little collective high with the others at the table. One…more…bite…

That’s the Spicy Mina experience. That, and winding up with scads of leftovers, enough for a whole meal again the next day, not to mention a check that comes to only $30 per person even when you grossly overorder (what’s described above was for, um, three people).

Mina has had a checkered restaurant history since 2003, when I first heard of her place in Sunnyside. Mina, just Mina, was the name, and the place was cold and fluorescent-lit, and once I peeked in the kitchen on my way back to the bathroom, and I saw it strewn with dishes the way your home kitchen gets when you’re cooking Thanksgiving or something–just completely out of control and unoiled in any “professional” sense. I felt a pang of empathy for the apparently chronic in-the-weeds-ness. The first meal I ate here was so mind-expandingly tasty and so tragically cheap that I almost cried when I saw the bill–this woman deserved to be showered with money! How could she practically give all that food love away?

Well, I guess she couldn’t, because the original Mina closed. Then Mina went to work at an Indian restaurant on 6th Street in Manhattan, which is somehow hilarious–that in fact, in that strip of lookalike cheap-ass curry joints, one secretly held a priceless gem. Which is a _very_ different situation from in college, say, when you’d come to NYC with a gang, and someone would claim to know that one of those restaurants was better than the others, but of course it wasn’t.

And then Mina wasn’t working there. And there was a disturbing quiet period.

And finally, we’re where we are today: Spicy Mina, 64-23 Broadway, Woodside, NY. Open 7 days a week. Maybe twenty paces from the 65th Street stop on the R/V/and-sometimes-E-and-G. The decor is warmer, with lots of candles. The waiter (Mina’s husband? He seems very worshipful. But if not, I’ll take him) is a bit more organized. Beer is available for purchase at the bodega next door.

This would all be heavenly, except: Spicy Mina needs more business. If this restaurant closes for lack of custom, the world is truly an evil place.

See, some people are idiots, and whine that the food takes too long to come. That’s because this amazing woman is cooking it from scratch for you! Bring some peanuts to snack on, or whatever it takes…

Some people bitch that Mina isn’t consistent. This is also an utterly pointless complaint, because it’s always freakin’ great, even if it’s not the same as last time. Yes, I secretly mourn a certain rendition of the bindi masala (spicy okra), in which the okra were dry and almost caramelized; I’ve never had it that way again, but it has always been delicious. I just carry that one version in my heart, a little okra-y secret.

Some people complain they order things, and then they aren’t available. Tough shit. Order what she does have, and you’ll like it. Again, can I emphasize enough that this woman is cooking her heart out every night of the week, and not cutting any corners?

Peter and I ate there again tonight. We brought newspapers to read while we waited. We drank beer. I gushed at the waiter, even though I always feel a little silly about this–I can’t pull off an ebullient Tamara-style “I want to marry you!” sort of praise, which makes people laugh, so I just gush and gush sincerely, and the waitstaff backs away, with a frozen smile.

As we were leaving, Mina came out. I gushed at her. She said, modestly and obviously, “I am Mina.”

Yes, and you are my new goddess. Bow the hell down, all y’all. Bow DOWN.

Sub Rosa… is Sabrosa

So I get a little email last week, alerting me to something clever someone’s concocted re: Thanksgiving.

This doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens just enough for me to assume it’s some tedious PR thingy. But I scan it, I click the link, and…oh yes. Someone seems to be living my fantasy over in Oregon. (What is it about Oregon these days? Must be the wine?)

See, it’s these genius bohemian types running a secret restaurant. And listening to groovy music. And carving stone. And making wine. And having naked barbecues!!! (OK, the carving stone part I’ve never really fantasized about, but everything else fits like a glove.)

Here’s what they are planning for Thanksgiving:

At Sub Rosa we’re always turning ideas inside out just to see how they look from a different angle. Take Thanksgiving for instance.

The American Indians had held harvest celebrations for centuries before the Pilgrims showed up. America’s early settlers had a rough go of it and ended up ill and starving. The generosity and compassion of the First People saved our ancestral butts. Let’s take it back just a little further in time to find the real inspiration for this idea – no, not to Leif Erickson, but to Christopher Columbus.

Chris was looking for India and spices when he ran into the outer shoals of the Bahamas. Spice wise, it is not that hard to make the bridge from our traditional Thanksgiving dinner to an East Indian Thanksgiving meal.

Pumpkin pie leads the way to India – nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, cloves and baked pumpkin. If you know your Indian food, you instantly recognize these as staples in the Indian kitchen and key ingredients in your mom’s favorite pumpkin pie.

So you jack that up with crystalized ginger and a cardamon whipped cream and you are sailing straight towards Kerala, a province at the tip of India. Cumin rub on the bird; stuffing with dried fruits and cinnamon; Horseradish mashed potatoes; Cranberry chutneys gone to Bombay and back all help turn your American standards into East Indian delicacies.

The Dinner Recipes:
Appetizer: Curried Nuts
Greens: Gujarat Green Beans
Starch: Horseradish Mashed Potatoes
Curried Yams with coconut milk
Turkey: Cumin and Coriander spice rub
Condiments: Cranberry Chutney
Cucumber Raita
Stuffing: With raisins, cinnamon, almonds, celery and of course, bread
Dessert: Chiffon Pumpkin Pie with crystallized ginger galore

Garam Masala – Classic Indian spice mixture

Here’s a little Indian music to listen to while you prepare the meal and feast on the dinner. Click to play.

Prep Music:
Ashwin Batish – Bombay Boogie
Ashwin Batish – New Delhi Vice
Habib Kahn – Indian Blues
State of Bengal – Walking On
Bally Sagoo – Indian Dub
Yerida Gunginalli – The Drink That Has Gone Up
Zakir Hussain and the Rhythem Experience – Rap-anagatum

Dinner Music:
Ravi Shankar – Vilambit Gat in Teental
Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt – Meeting By The River [needs volume]
Thievery Corporation – Lebanese Blonde
Talvin Singh – Light
Habib Kahn – Triangle
Habib Kahn – Raindrops
Ustad Sultan Khan – Rag Bhupali

Sounds good to me.

Pret a Manger, you are dead to me.

I’ve been mentally composing a post with this title for more than a year now. Pret a Manger helped me through some desperately poor months in London, when I’d get a £1.50 egg-salad sandwich and go sit in the Tube station to eat it during my lunch break from The Economist (uh, The Economist bookshop, that is). So I was excited when Pret came to the States a couple of years ago, as I was still quite poor then too. But the U.S. managers managed to jack everything up.

First, it was the switch to inferior chutney in the “Coronation Chicken” sandwich. Then they stopped making that really good raspberry bar (they have one again now, but it sucks). Then it was their scaling back even farther on the mayo, even on sandwiches that needed it, like egg salad. Then it was the realization that all their slicey sandwich bread is really just hideous and gummy. Uck–then it was those weird images they started putting on the sandwich boxes–like those little baguettes with shoelaces drawn on them? What’s the point of that pointlessly whimsical exercise? There’s some weird text with it, but it makes no sense, so of course I forgot it. Especially lame, considering how bad the bread is.

But, but, but… Every time I was about to chuck out little PaM just like a lover who crossed the pond and then turned out to be not so great on my home turf, something reeled me back in. First, of course, is location–one above-ground just outside the Time-Life building, and another down in the bowels of Rock Center…and that one gives you a discount if you have a Rock Center tenant ID.

Then they redid the place with that groovy wallpaper. And I discovered their breakfast pastries–well, really only the pain au chocolat–were pretty good. And their baguette sandwiches are a big improvement on the sliced-bread sammies, as long as you can block out the image that you might actually be eating shoes.

When I was just in Heathrow, I went to the Pret a Manger there and surveyed the offerings. Many of the sandwiches were marked “low mayo.” So I guess it’s a global problem, this mayo-loathing. I couldn’t hold it against them. And they had bags of parsnip chips. They were fantastically sweet and delicious. But of course they’ll never sell them here in the States, because people get turnips and parsnips mixed up, and parsnips smell like pee when you boil them anyway.

Then, the clincher: I stopped in the other morning for a pain au chocolat (at the aboveground store, on 50th St.), and the new manager personally welcomed me. I’d normally think that was lame and smarmy, but the new manager was hot, all with a Latino accent, a silky ponytail, Euro-look square glasses, and very, very intense eye contact. He had on a groovy shirt too, which kind of went with the wallpaper. He looked as though he’d been beamed from some lefty-bohemian coffee shop in Mexico City or Buenos Aires–a lefty-bohemian coffee shop that Believed in The Revolution, but didn’t take itself too seriously, really–straight to Pret a Manger. And he looked happy about it.

If this is PaM’s latest attempt to pander to the American consumer, I’m buying. But if he gets fired, then, really, that’s it, for the last time: dead to me.

Winding down in Santa Fe

Yes, I went to Aqua Santa. Yes, it was all that. (Fennel and olive and blood-orange salad! The pasta with the clams and lamb sausage and helllllla garlic! Lillet up the wazoo!) But NO, those fuckers didn’t have the Meyer lemon mousse. They knew I’d love them anyway, with their cute little flowery thrift-store granny plates, and their butter-yellow walls and their gigantic kilim as the only decoration in the whole room, oh and their fireplace. I had a passionfruit panna cotta instead. I _guess_ that’s OK.

I also went to Tiny’s, a local [New] Mexican institution. Now, Tiny’s—there’s a restaurant you can judge by its exterior. I mean, with a name like that, it’s gonna be good. And the interior was straight from my childhood. It wasn’t an exact replica of my local of yore, Pete’s, aka “The Home of the Half-Breed,” which was the clever name for the steak-enchilada combo plate. But the spirit was the same, in the stucco-texture glossy white walls hung with bad Southwestern art, with lighting a little too bright in the resto and too dim in the lounge. As an added bonus, there was also a large-scale model train running around the central chandelier, and a vast collection of ceramic novelty flagons, all gnomes and pheasants and Bavarians gathering dust. Every person in the place, man and woman, had very obviously dyed hair.

One brassy lady could be me in 40 years, grabbing her wine glass back from the waitress to take one last sip…even though the waitress had brought her a whole fresh glass. Of course she made a saucy joke about it as she did it—but who orders wine in a restaurant where you’re going to eat cheese and chile and fried dough? Only a serious alkie, that’s who. She looked like she was enjoying her night out with her lavender-haired lady friend, so who am I to judge?

I had a big mess o’ chile and cheese in the form of chiles rellenos, a tasty dish in which tortillas, a typical building block of any NM dish, are replaced by deep-fried egg batter. Brilliant. But any sinus-unclogging the chile might have done was surely canceled out by the mucous-enhancing powers of the dairy products. (Did I mention I’ve contracted a hideous cold? I drive around all day sneezing and hoping I don’t drive into oncoming traffic in that second when my eyes squeeze shut.) But even though my green chile didn’t have the instant-healing benefits it’s usually credited with, it was worth it just to sit there and savor all the New Mexican charm, such as the waitress saying, “See ya, Shorty!” to a guy who really was short, and the sound of a heavy ceramic plate hitting the glass tabletop, just as the server gives the obligatory, “This plate is very hot” line. And the band setting up in the lounge saying, “Testing, testing” for the fortieth time.

And the sopaipillas so hot out of the fryer I couldn’t touch them right away. The waiter even brought me butter with them, which I have never, ever encountered. I tried a little, but, for the first time in my life, I have to say they’re better without butter. Just honey. Coming so soon after saying for the first time that I might’ve preferred walking to riding my bike for one particular moment, I feel like the whole world is sort of slipping on its axis. But maybe that’s just the Sudafed talking.

Speaking of the world slipping on its axis…[rant starts here], I’ve been splitting my time between 97.3 KISS FM and 104.1 (“Latino and proud”) for all my latest hip-hop needs, and I heard the song that officially makes me old and cranky: its refrain and tune is taken from one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, but in this case, it’s about gettin’ with his lady: “Sugar on my tongue/Yippee yippee, yum yum.” Normally this doesn’t bother me—it’s the march of progress and postmodern repurposing and all. I didn’t get in a lather like some people when what’s-their-names used “Every Move You Make” as an RIP for whoever-it-was-who-got-shot. At least they meant well. But dang, I hope David Byrne made some cold cash off his song getting sold out for pure skank.[end rant]

Off to bed. Home soon. Home to the land of pavement, where there is no mud, nor big jumpy dogs. Nor men who wear shotgun shells on their belts. Nor green chile, alas. There’s always a trade-off.

I HATE when that happens…

By which I mean I hate when I eat a crappy dinner, and then come out and realize I should’ve eaten at the fantastically gorgeous, well-priced and delicious place just down the block.

I fell victim to my own indecision and hunger, the very thing I hate when traveling with other people. I missed lunch, then sat around all late afternoon emailing and working, and so was ravenous and incoherent when I stepped outside. The animal-hairy B&B owner (herself very nice and clean) had mentioned several places in the area, a couple of which I was curious about anyway, and one new one that I hadn’t heard of — Aqua Santa, right across the street. So I wandered out, and didn’t see Aqua Santa, so bore left toward the other two places I’d been curious about.

But this was C-grade curiosity, really. Both of these places came with warning signs: one had a big photo of mariachis out front, and no menu; another had a menu featuring veal marsala, and hand-written notes of praise, all faded, tacked to its board. The former was totally packed and boisterous-looking, and I didn’t feel up to a Mexican party bonanza, even if it was well loved by locals, as the B&B owner claimed. So I went for the latter, despite heavy misgivings.

In the school of judging-a-book-by-its-cover restaurant reviewing from the outside, from which I like to think I’ve earned a PhD, all its pros could also be cons, and vice versa: dorky name (Dinner for Two…even though they also serve lunch), random location, low-rent atmosphere, low- and high-brow menu (veal marsala, but also an escolar special, with saffron risotto), open kitchen, little white tree lights, chef boasting of CIA credentials on menu.

One or two of these elements could be the sign of a hidden gem; all of them, in retrospect, mean disaster. I think because of Kabab Cafe, which looks a little unpromising from the outside, I have a weak spot for this kind of dressed-down, seemingly amateur setup. I got burned on a similar guess in Montreal last spring, but unfortunately that didn’t spring to mind when I hesitated on the doorsill of Dinner for Two. I just spun a heartwarming tale of East Coast chef trying to make it in the Wild West, and went in.

This was the sort of meal in which I mentally compose a positive-spin review for the guide, trying at every turn to justify it, but really…no. No “If Casa Sena is out of your price range, but you still want some multicourse pampering…” No “throwback charms (entree price includes soup or salad) add value while delivering modern cuisine…” Certainly no “surprisingly good selection of wines by the glass.” My waiter–who said, “Here is my wine menu, and here is my food menu,” so perhaps he was his waiter–was out of my requested Viognier, so brought me another one that was incredibly bad-smelling, in a way I didn’t know white wine could be. He offered another, better one, but it too tasted as though it had sat in the fridge for ages–and I’m not really a picky wine person.

I guess I’m coming off like a snob, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been in such a low-rent but trying-hard restaurant. There’s something odd about a menu that describes a dish as “warmed white bean stew.” I mean, I hope it’s warmed. Did they know they needed an adjective at the beginning, so just used a Mad Libs menu writer?

I usually associate pretentious with extremely expensive, separating-the-elite-from-the-peons sort of restaurants. This was pretentious in the way that the star of the local community theater production of a Mamet play is pretentious. Dude, you’re wearing the same suit the guy wore for Death of a Salesman, and it hasn’t been cleaned, and it’s only your relatives in the audience, and they’re not getting all your cocaine jokes. I appreciate your enthusiasm and dedication, but have a sense of perspective. In the case of Dinner for Two, “sense of perspective” would mean perhaps not playing Handel’s “Water Music” in your industrially carpeted dining room that seems to be inside a trailer. The black tablecloths and red carnations were very Adam Ant. My waiter was wearing all black. The windows were insulated with plastic sheeting.

Anyway, they were trying sort of hard, and that in itself is not a terrible thing. I got the fresh-black-pepper treatment (though not with the largest peppermill I’ve seen so far in this town, to their credit) on my maybe-it’s-even-bottled blue-cheese baby-greens salad (“That’s my favorite,” purred the waiter when I ordered). Then I got my escolar wrapped in bacon, perched atop my saffron risotto and a spray of baby asparagus. On top of it all was a cheesy pink orchid. “Oh, beautiful!” I couldn’t help exclaiming in that horrible contrary way I have, and hate myself for. Surely the guy can see I think it’s heinous. I ate it all. It wasn’t a big portion, luckily. It tasted like when the corporate caf or your dining hall caters a fancy reception. Not totally egregious, but every bit mysteriously tastes exactly the same.

(As a side note, if that escolar does its Olestra-like thing on me, I will be very, very upset.)

Then the dessert course–I ask what they are, but I hear nothing I want. Bananas Foster done tableside–For Two, natch–is by far the most appealing; cherries jubilee is the other a deux option…I thought it was extinct. So then I’m in the awkward position of having to say, “No [none of those things sound good, and I’d rather end my meal with a dry piece of toast than have one of those boring desserts], thanks. Check, please.”

Forty dollars later (wait, wasn’t this supposed to be the bargain option, according to the review I was writing in my head?), I stagger into the street, thinking vaguely how I might feel better if I just threw up. Two nights ago, I spent $40 on a meal in a marginally less dodgy place, but walked away happy–at least then, I’d ended with a really good bread pudding and an espresso with a beautiful crema. That place, Il Piatto (since we’re naming names), was not a superlative Italian restaurant, but it was satisfying–the sort of one-step-above-mediocre place that locals like because it happens to be in walking distance and they know everyone, and the sort of place that visitors appreciate because there are so many locals there, and in the case of New Mexico, it’s not serving enchiladas, which you may be well sick of by Day 4 of your Santa Fe sojourn. At Dinner for Two, I couldn’t tell whether the clientele was local or visitor, but one table (of two others besides me) was riveted by a story of a man who drank tequila with ketchup, as he’d apparently run out of mixers. I think the woman telling it, in her 50s, was maybe recounting a college story, but it could’ve also been from a recent trip to Mexico. It was hard to hear over the Handel.

After Dinner for Two, I figured I’d better put in an appearance at the local piano bar, since it’s right across the parking lot from where I’m staying. I looked forward to nursing a strong drink in the dark. No such luck–Vanessie is the airiest, loftiest, pale-piniest piano bar in eight states, and the crowd was all straight people from some healthcare convention. The white-haired ones were drinking things with creme de menthe, but that’s as campy as it got. I pretended to get a cell phone call and ran out before someone could take my drink order.

Out in the parking lot was when I realized my real error. Or rather, had the salt ground into my wound. Across from the Ikea piano bar was Aqua Santa. Modest sign (why I hadn’t seen it before), in that attractive serif font where the tail on the Q curves under the next letter, and a little silhouetted sheaf of wheat between the two words, all of which are graphic design shorthand for modern, artisanal, hand-crafted. Warm cream walls. Kiva fireplace. Woman with pink-streaked hair listening seriously to older mentor-like artsy woman at one table. A mob of happy, winding-down people at another table, sipping dessert wines. I ask to look at a menu, and the waiter, all young and charming and serious, but not too serious, says, “Here, take it with you…and a card.”

Nice heavy parchment. Minimal use of adjectives. The wine list takes up two-thirds of the page and is all old world. Lillet is the house aperitif. The food is just one or two things in each course, but I could eat all of them: creamy cauliflower soup with Parmesan breadcrumbs. Fireplace roasted beets, endive and dried apricot salad. Linguine with Manila clambs, lamb sausage, bread crumbs and Pecorino. Braised shepherd’s lamb with roasted garlic, polenta and hazelnuts. AND, hell YES, panna cotta with passion fruit and blood orange. Oh, and Meyer lemon mousse. And all of it cheaper than at DfT.

I almost wanted to sit down and eat dinner all over again, but the kitchen was clearly cleaning up. So I asked what days a week they’re closed. Sunday and Monday, alas. So I have to wait two days to dine with my true love. Aqua Santa, I apologize for anything that’s come before, for all my dining indiscretions–I was desperate…and you’d better have that Meyer lemon mousse on Tuesday.