New York minutes/Early October 2009
The good & good deal: Fairway Cafe, once again, where my consort and I headed unhesitatingly after he expressed an interest in satisfying food with cheap wine after the absorbing and haunting “Serious Man.” Hard to complain about a window table, a perfect hanger steak with fries for $21 and a fine Caesar, especially after the warm flatbread with herbed olive oil. The only downside is that $5 and $6 glasses of drinkable wines make it awfully hard to swallow gouging anywhere else . . . 2127 Broadway at 74th Street.
The Epago: Co. in Chelsea, where we ducked in early after our first High Line perambulation and where the message could not have been clearer — eat, pay and get (the hell) out. We were seated instantly, at one of the long, cramped communal tables, and we all but instantly had $10 tumblers of wine in front of us along with the $5 special “toast,” topped with greens and rendered prosciutto. We shared a radicchio salad with raw shiitakes and a few chunks of Taleggio, then a dainty pizza topped with, if the menu was to be believed, roasted cauliflower, bechamel, buffalo mozzarella, Parmesan, green olives, chile, garlic and parsley. One bite in Bob wondered, “How much do you think it costs them to make this?” And as satisfying as the charred crust was, it was hard to think the thing was worth $17. WIGB? Probably not. Keste is calling.