Also, file this under WTF did I expect?: I wound up starving in the Chelsea Market the other lunchtime and stupidly decided a small square of Amy’s amazing pizza would leave me just unsatisfied enough to succumb to something else within an hour, so I stupidly decided on a cup of what the reeking seafood place sells as lobster bisque, for $3.50 plus tax. The first spoonful was confirmation of what I suspected: Neither word belonged in the description. I spooned up enough to realize I was just hoping for satisfaction where none would ever materialize and threw the rest into the trash can just being emptied. And went off to get that amazing pizza. Within 10 minutes my upper lip was puffed and throbbing. As scornful as I am of food allergies, it is funny that I have that reaction whenever I eat “lobster” or “crab.” But never when I eat lobster or crab.

Of all my many mottos, maybe my most used is: Expect the worst — you’ll never be  disappointed. And never was that more applicable than when I got called for jury duty. I went kicking and bitching, feeling only slightly better when my consort pointed out that someone so obsessed with pol porn should give a fuck about how the system works. So I bought a weekly Metrocard rather than my usual $20 one, I brought 16 books to read and I was determined to stay mellow for the minimum-required two days and more-likely 10 days expected for service. Which of course meant I was liberated in midafternoon on my first day. I had plenty of time at lunch and afterward to wander around the neighborhood I still know best from the weeks after 9/11, when most of it had no electricity, let alone phone service. I was struck by how many restaurants are now Vietnamese, Thai and Malaysian, but after my Great Disappointment at Nha Trang, I suspect it remains a destination primarily for one cuisine. You can get better Asian all over town now. But Chinese might still be best there, at least in Manhattan. Unfortunately, Cambodian didn’t get much of a chance uptown. The little place I kept passing on Third in the Nineties but never crossing the avenue to try is gone. I used to think flacks would be the new dinosaurs, in this wonderful age of all-knowing blogs with their shoe leather-meets-cellphone street “reporters.” But obviously, without professional help in catapulting the propaganda, you’re doomed. Especially in a neighborhood where  the kool kidz don’t congregate.

The best part of this silliness is that all the food bloviators bowing toward Bianco seemed unaware of St. Louis slices senza Provel. It’s a leading digital indicator that e-rule by the masses may not be sustainable. Don’t believe what you read in the comments. Or in your slick magazines, for that matter. “Hot food zone” within walking distance? Uh. Huh. If tuna burgers were on the menu at Shake Shack, maybe. 

Then again, things could either be really bad or, as I often suspect, bad people are taking advantage of a bad situation to be even worse people. Some do it by laying off workers knowing they can get away with it with every headline reporting the same phenomenon. Others do it by arranging birthday dinners in restaurants where dessert comes with the meal. The other night in the quieter back room at the reliable Mermaid Inn on Amsterdam, the annoying thunder-thighed woman at the next table with a mellow guy looked absurdly pleased with herself when the waitress arrived bearing two tiny cups of the chocolate pudding the kitchen sends out to save on a dessert menu/pastry chef/table time. One had a candle in it. And I guess you could call it the cheesy course. 

And talk about undercutting your emotion: A little sign in the bathroom at Klee is some variation on the old “live your life so fully that when death comes to you like a thief in the night, there will be nothing left to steal.” Followed by some variation on “please don’t pilfer the design touches here.” Suggestion can be powerful.

I know this is probably inappropriate. But when I got the email announcing the $12.95 deal-with-drink at a Meat District mediocrity, my first reaction was: Who will be the next to die for a mistake? Opening that restaurant in that location made about as much sense as aiming for high-end Italian when your forte is hamburgers. The guy once sent me gorgeous flowers after I dissed his schtick in the NYT, but somehow I suspect we are all Icarus now. If the last joints standing are Mexican, though, I for one am not going to be choking on $30 guacamole.

My truly cynical side constantly wonders if all the layoffs everywhere are really attributable to tough times rather than craven acts undertaken under cover of “everybody’s doing it.” Certainly the news is mixed on the food front, where restaurants should be folding like towels rather than warding off hordes of patrons (tried to get into the West Branch recently?) The other day two encounters reinforced both suspicions. The first was in a busy overpriced food market where the manager of a restaurant-related shop that would seem to be one of the first to bend over and grab its ankles in this economy is actually doing quite well (I’d name it, but even he said he was afraid he was jinxing a good run). Then I moved on to my lunch in a cozy little place that was packed just after 2. At the next table a 40-something guy was talk-talk-talking at a woman whom I presumed to be his mother; I tried to tune them out but could not overhearing: Tuition issues, teenagers’ weight issues, “I haven’t calculated how much the Cobra is going to cost but think have enough to get by for a year,” while older woman interrupts her silence only to complain that the filling in her taco is more fat than meat “and it’s never been like that before” and then to ask TTTer: “What about that story in the paper today, about people suing over being laid-off?” Yikes. They departed with him saying he was going home to curl up in a ball, her complaining that her soup was on the check as “special appetizer” and was “the most expensive thing on the bill.” Times are tough, but at least people can go out to eat rather than slurp soup in silence  at home. Special of the day? TMI.