Apparently there is so much terrible news about Sandy it can’t all be printed, because I just learned the Bridge Cafe took a huge hit. This is the curse of “location, location” — even when the food was at its best, the most compelling reason to head there was the atmosphere, transporting you back to the 1800s right under the Brooklyn Bridge, right where devastating amounts of water could come slamming in. My consort and I first ate there before the South Street Seaport became a mall, and our reward at lunch was seeing James Beard ensconced in all his immensity alone at a table in a back corner. We were new to New York and unaccustomed to how often legends move among us here. I went back a year or so later to meet Leslie Revsin, who was the chef and had agreed to advise me about the wisdom of then insane-idea of giving up my job at the NYTimes to go off to restaurant school. Now they’re both dead, and so is Pierre Franey, who also agreed to advise me, by phone. I hope the place itself is not next . . .

Now I know why buildings in Manhattan have to be thrown up in record time these days — if construction takes more than three days, the promo signs are obsolete. I spotted one on Park Avenue South touting a new apartment house as center-of-the-cool-food-universe by showing matchbooks from nearby restaurants with travel times below each. Candela was a five-minute walk. Except it’s now Irving Mill. I forgot to look for Barca 18, but having actually braved bogus Wildwood only to walk right out, I would say omitting mention of any restaurant in that space might be a very wise idea. It’s not worth another steelworker’s life.

I rarely leave the island except to go to the airport, so heading to Brooklyn for a little story was like packing for Liberia must have been for the Chimp’s handlers. I armed myself with a friend as an escort and tracked my route on Hopstop and even tried to do research on a destination for lunch, only to find we were bound for where the internets don’t go. So after wrapping up my bit of work, we started out for the subway by a slightly different route and had a series of experiences that really brought home how soulless the island has become, even in my neighborhood, where fresh chorizo and crema were once available just blocks away from my kitchen. We stopped first at a butcher shop where three types of Puerto Rican sausage made in-house were laid out tantalizingly on the counter along with fresh sofrito and containers of seasoning blends and a variety of other sausages the store simply carried. The meat in the length-of-the-store case looked gorgeous, and a little stand in the front was selling cooked food. The butchers also could not have been more charming (when were we two last called “girls”?) And then we stumbled upon a tiny narrow shop selling Mexican ingredients, some of which I have never seen fresh, where I bought two champagne-style mangos and a pack of 32 tortillas, all for exactly $3, from the nicest young kid at the counter. We had lunch next door at a place where I was too stupid to take a menu and which does not seem to exist on the Google. And that’s too bad because the waitresses in their crisp white shirts could not have been more gracious and patient, and even with over-ordering we paid $19.50 for guacamole, two huaraches, two rajas-con-queso tamales, a huge chorizo cemita, a fruit drink and a seltzer. We were surrounded by families pushing strollers the size of SUVs and by young people tucking into things that looked even better than what was on our table. And then we made our way back to the train for the short ride to the borough where every block is now a bank, a nail-sploitation salon and a Duane Reade.